THE POLITICS OF INTOLERANCE

Hi Friends,

Once again, it’s time to inflict upon you this little write-up.

The BJP have done the only thing that a party on a suicidal roller-coaster ride downhill could do – expel Mr. Jaswant Singh apparently for his book “Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence”. Mr. Narendra Modi chipped in as only he could – he banned the book in Gujarat, apparently for the hurt the book caused to Gujaratis by the so-called insult to Sardar Patel. Never mind that the Sardar had banned the RSS making him enemy no. 1 of the saffron party. Never mind that the Sardar himself had hardly ever thought of himself as a Gujarati except in the linguistic sense. Never mind if Mr Jaswant Singh’s book is selling faster than you can count till ten.

Nobody knows how many of these worthies have actually read the book, but the political ethos of the lumpen elements is clearly this: If you don’t like it, ban it. The list is miles long.

In the recent category of the damned and the banned are Tasleema Nasreen, Lakshmana Kailash and actor Aamir Khan.

Mr. Narendra Modi did not like Aamir Khan’s views on the Narmada Project. Never mind that all Aamir Khan did was making a fervent plea to adequately re-locate and rehabilitate those displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Never mind that millions across the country saw nothing wrong in Aamir pitching in for a human cause. But Mr. Modi saw differently. So what did he do? Simple. He banned Aamir’s movie “Fanaa” which had nothing to do with the SSD. Never mind that the movie raked in crores. Never mind if the displaced are yet to be rehabilitated. Banning and damning is the order of the day.
And who is Lakshamana Kailash? He is a techie who is supposed to have posted on Orkut something blasphemous about a historical warrior-king. Unlike Mr. Jaswant Singh’s book which is in the public domain what the techie supposedly wrote is known only to those idle few who surf the net for sites like Orkut. So what did the police do? Acting swiftly on a complaint reportedly filed by a BJP worker they arrested him from Bangalore, jailed him for 50 days, and allegedly thrashed him silly – only to realise that they had got the wrong man! Please see the DNA of this August 20 for a full report.

India is not alone in this politics of intolerance. In neighbouring Bangladesh following the publication of Lajja, author Taslima Nasreen suffered a number of physical and other attacks. In October 1993, an Islamic fundamentalist group called the Council of Islamic Soldiers offered a bounty for her death. [See Wikipaedia for details] Why? She wrote about a Hindu family facing persecution from their Muslim neighbours. Ms Tasleema is still in exile, periodically begging for asylum in India. Begging, because some Islamic outfit here does not want Tasleema around. Ban her permanently, is their take on the author.

Today, to prove your patriotism all that you need to do is either deify or demonise someone according to your beliefs. Better still, burn some public property or break a few bones a la Mangalore Muthalik! Rational analysis of events is the first casualty. At this rate India’s national heroes will be found only in the archives of a British public library. What we will have instead will be caricatures like those in the brightly coloured posters sold at railway stations.
When the film “Gandhi” was still in the planning stage – as the story goes - Sir Richard Attenborough met Pandit Nehru. Panditji reportedly told him in no uncertain terms “Portray Bapu as the man he was. Do not deify him. Paint him, warts and all”. But that was in a different age and era – millions of mental years ago.

India has travelled a long way indeed from those heady days of the freedom movement when the freedom of expression won us independence. We need another freedom movement – freedom from prejudice and jingoism, where the human mind can soar to greater heights, shorn of barriers to thinking and expression. As Mr. Jaswant Singh said philosophically and with obvious anguish, “Banning a book is like banning thinking”.

Do write in. Would appreciate your observations. And forward this if you feel it worth your while.
Yours sincerely,
Deepak Tralshawala