Taslima’s persecution shames India

The Centre is reportedly nudging her to leave India — at least for a while. Although Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee says India will give her shelter, the offer is graceless and conditional: she must not “hurt the sentiments of our people”— whatever that means.

The episode raises serious questions about fundamental rights of belief and expression, and the state’s duty to protect them. One doesn’t have to be Nasreen’s admirer to defend her rights. This writer is aware that she’s considered mediocre and often writes provocatively. Yet, banishing her is not the solution.

West Bengal expelled Nasreen one day after a violent rally held by the All-India Minority Forum (AIMF), once a Congress-backed organisation. Yet, some Left Front leaders claim she left Kolkata of her own will. This won’t wash. Nasreen’s departure followed a statement by the CPI-M state secretary that her presence was creating law-and-order problems, and she should leave West Bengal.

Bose hastily retracted the statement. But meanwhile, reports the media, the Kolkata Police asked two businessmen to “facilitate” her exit to Rajasthan. Nasreen’s move was certainly not voluntary. She’s clear she wants to return to Kolkata.

The CPI-M kept its allies in the dark about its decision to expel Nasreen. They have termed this “shameful”. The CPI-M is hard put to deny that it was rattled by the AIMF rally, which protested Nandigram and demanded that Nasreen’s visa be revoked. The AIMF tried to give Nandgram a communal twist by claiming that Muslims were singled out for attacks.

More than half of Nandigram’s victims were indeed Muslims. But then, two-thirds of Nandigram’s population is Muslim too. Muslims lead both the CPI-M and its rival. The AIMF’s real target was Nasreen’s past writings, which it terms “anti-Islamic”.

The CPI-M hasn’t come out of the episode smelling of roses. It shouldn’t have caved in to mob censorship, or tried to guard its “Muslim vote” by expelling Nasreen. Muslim opinion has been moving away from the LF after the Sachar Committee’s disclosures and Rizwanur Rehman’s death.

Muslims form more than 25 per cent of West Bengal’s population, but hold an abysmal 2.1 per cent of government jobs (The respective ratios even for Gujarat are 9.2 and 5.4 per cent). Instead of remedying this failure of inclusion through affirmative action, the Left Front resorted to gimmicks, including pandering to religious bigots. However, the Left’s timidity in the face of hardliners pales beside the BJP’s breathtaking duplicity. The BJP now parades itself as a defender of free expression! But the Sangh Parivar is merely exploiting the fact that Nasreen's adversaries are Muslim hardliners; and that she wrote a novel on the persecution of Bangladesh’s Hindus after following the Babri demolition. The Parivar is indulging in Muslim-bashing by claiming Islam is uniquely intolerant.

This vilifies Islam. The parivar doesn’t respect free expression or artistic freedom. It’s suspicious of creativity, and of bold experimentation with art-forms that delve into the human or social condition. It fears freedom and rational inquiry.

Not just VHP-Bajrang Dal goons, even the BJP’s “respectable” parliamentary leaders are censorship-oriented. If the government doesn't ban the books, paintings or films they label “anti-Hindu” or “anti-national”, the Parivar terrorises their authors.

This has happened with sickening frequency to distinguished artists like MF Hussain, filmmakers like Anand Patwardhan and Deepa Mehta, and authors of books on Shivaji.The Parivar imposes its fanatical will upon every form of cultural expression. It often succeeds in bullying the state into abdicating its responsibility to protect the life and limb of citizens.

Hussain’s case is a painful reminder of the Indian state’s failure to provide security to a 92-year-old painter so he can return from exile in Dubai and London and live in freedom from threats to his life by Hindutva bigots. Hussain is a victim of mob censorship and the state’s cowardice in the face of communal bullies.

True, it’s not only Hindu fanatics who demand censorship and bans. Groups that claim to be speaking in the name of Sikhs, Muslims, Christians or Jains also do the same.

Typically, the state yields to them; indeed, it acts as if it granted them the “right” to vandalise works of art and criminally assault writers. The cases of Salman Rushdie, The Last Temptation of Christ and The Da Vinci Code are instances of this.

All such groups exercise veto power over society by invoking the “hurt sentiments” of a particular community. So we end up defining tolerance as the sum-total of different intolerances, as Amartya Sen aptly put it. This isn’t a sign of a mature democracy which genuinely respects difference and the right to dissent.

Of course, some books or works of art do hurt and upset the holders of particular beliefs. But banning them is incompatible with their authors’ fundamental rights. If they are indeed scurrilous or defamatory, the remedy lies in filing lawsuits, which would lead to appropriate penalties.

Private groups or individuals have no right to decide what’s permissible and what’s gratuitously offensive, vulgar, egregiously scandalous, amounts to hate speech, or is calculated to incite, insult or humiliate.

Private censors impoverish social life by regimenting it and imposing conformity. They have no business to dictate uniform norms, whether in respect of sexual preference, dress, religious practices or social behaviour.

Societies greatly enrich themselves if they respect difference and celebrate diversity. This means accepting the unusual, the irreverent, the quirky, the “abnormal”—even if one finds it distasteful.

In the last analysis, we don’t have to read the books we detest, or eat things that we find “impure” or “bad”, but others relish. Let a thousand flowers bloom!

Praful Bidwai is a veteran Indian journalist and commentator. He can be reached at praful@bol.net.in