Loonies of the world unite!

By Swapan Dasgupta

        There is a famous photograph of V.I. Lenin, shot sometime in 1917, addressing a gathering of 'revolutionary' workers during the course of the upheaval that led to the Bolshevik Revolution. It is a photograph that has been published and re-published on many occasions and, like Adolf Hitler's iconic images during the Nuremberg rallies, it has become synonymous with the Communist movement.

        However, the photograph underwent a change over the years. The original showed Lenin declaiming while flanked by a galaxy of Bolshevik leaders, some known and others largely forgotten. By the mid-1930s, the photograph underwent some innovative editing. Leon Trotsky, who was in the original photograph standing next to Lenin was expediently air-brushed away. Trotsky had lost out in the inner-party struggle with Stalin and was banished from the Soviet Union. Consequently, he became a non person and was dubbed a fascist collaborator. Entire generations of pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese Communists learnt their history of the movement without any understanding of the role of Trotsky in 1905 and 1917 and the basis of his critique of Stalin. In the annals of official Marxism, Trotsky became a shorthand for treachery.

        History doesn't repeat itself as a carbon copy. However, there is something eerily familiar about the manner in which the writer Salman Rushdie is being transformed into a non-person by the custodians of faith in India. In 2012, the author was prevented from attending the Jaipur Literature Festival this year the West Bengal Government prevented him  from attending the premiere of Midnight's Children directed by Deepa Menta. Rushdie had also been apparently invited to a sesson of a literary festival in Kolkata but the local police sent word to him that he would be sent back if he landed up on any flight to the city.

        Apart from Satanic Verses which was banned by the Rajiv Gandhi Government in 1988, there is no ban on any of Rushdie's other books. They are available in all good bookshops in India and the film Midnight's Children is being screened in many movie halls all over India. Yet, for all practical purposes, an unofficial ban has been imposed on Rushdie making an appearance at any public function. As the holder of a PIO card, Rushdie can, of course, travel to India whenever he wants to but in terms of his public persona he has been declared a non-person.

        Rushdie is not the only one who has been permanently banned from public occasions. The Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen was more or less hounded out of Kolkata three years ago and now leads an undercover existence in an Indian city. Each year, when her visa comes up for renewal, pressure is put on the Government of India to deport her. So far the Government has withstood the pressure but it would be hazardous to believe that this constitutes the last word on the subject.

        Rushdie and Taslima are both foreign nationals and there is a suggestion that the authorities need not go out of their way to defend the civil liberties that are guaranteed to Indian citizens. Yet, the same harassment greeted M.F. Husein, till, in exasperation, he took up the citizenship of Qatar and spent the final year of his life outside India. Mercifully, no similar harassment has yet greeted Ashis Nandy for his comments in this year's Jaipur Literature Festival. Indeed, two days after the kerfuffle in Jaipur, Nandy was photographed releasing a book in the company of Vice President Hamid Ansari. I don't know if a similar indulgence is likely to be shown towards the four Kashmiri girls who had formed an all-woman band.

        There is a temptation to interpret these attacks on creative individuals and the recent fuss over Kamal Hassan's new fim as evidence of India's intellectual regression. To some extent this is true. There is a growing body of individuals, not least in the social media, who are inclined to believe that they have a monopoly of the truth. This astonishing self-assurance is coupled with the belief that certitudes are more important than open engagement.

        That there are individuals with closed minds is a problem that is not limited to India alone. Even the most evolved liberal democracies have individuals who are not merely resolute in their views and prejudices but are even willing to even kill for it. In India, on the other hand, the problem  is not individuals but the effortless forging of collectives. In the cases of Rushdie, Taslima, Nandy and Husein, it was the fear of deranged and fanatical mobs that forced the state to buckle under pressure.

        It may be said that the mobs cut across religious communities. Hindu mobs targeted Husein's art exhibitions; Muslim mobs threatened Rushdie and Taslima; and the fear of Dalit mobs haunt Nandy. But this cross-community outrage is hardly a source of reassurance. On the contrary, they suggest that what was triggered by Islamist itolerance has become contagious. 'If Muslims get so easily offended', it has been said, 'why should we show enlightenment?'

        This is a point that needs to be addressed seriously. The reason     why there are alarm bells ringing all over India over the deterioration of our democracy is precisely because an increasing number of Indians are becoming prickly. There is not enough anger at the disgraceful treatment meted out to Rushdie and Taslima precisely because self-professed members of the majority community joined the witch-hunt against Husein and Nandy.

        It may sound provocative but the harsh truth is that minority blackmail succeeded precisely because the majority community allowed its loonies to go berserk. If the persecution of Husein hadn't happened, Centre and state governments wouldn't have had the moral authority to capitalate to the clerics. In 1988, when Satanic Verses was banned, it was  possible for the BJP to put the Government on the mat. In joining the chorus against Husein, the BJP forfeited its right to speak for a expansive democracy. To reclaim our eroding freedoms, it is the majority community that must be willing to be stand up and be counted. The rest will follow. 

Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, February 8, 2013

COMPETITIVE HURT - Progress and regression go hand in hand in the Rushdie affair

By Swapan Dasgupta

There was a curious sidelight to the furore over Salman Rushdie’s inability to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival last month: the overall reluctance of politicians to jump into the controversy.

Apart from Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot who got into a mighty muddle over whether the state government had gathered the intelligence input about the assassin sent to target Rushdie or had merely responded to an alert from Delhi, there were few voices from the Congress Party. Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi rarely speak on live issues and so their silence was predictable. But the English-speaking ‘liberals’ of the party like Kapil Sibal and Salman Khurshid who are forever willing to engage with Karan Thapar on TV were, curiously, otherwise engaged.

The primary objective of the Congress was to somehow ensure that the anger of a section of the Muslim community at the likely presence of Rushdie in Jaipur did not become a community grievance. At the same time, the Congress did not want to be seen to be directing an operation that would result in Rushdie’s exclusion. It sought to avert at all costs a Muslim mobilisation of the kind witnessed during the campaign against Taslima Nasreen in Kolkata. The entire operation called for duplicity, deniability and subterfuge, attributes that were much in evidence during the course of Operation Stop Rushdie.

Remarkably, for a party that was the real beneficiary of Rajiv Gandhi’s decision to ban Satanic Verses in 1988, the BJP treated this year’s Jaipur controversy quite casually. Despite the party spokesman’s clever observation that the Government and the indignant Muslim leaders had indulged in “match fixing” to ensure Rushdie’s voice was not heard in Jaipur, the BJP didn’t take up the issue with any measure of seriousness. On the contrary, individual members of its Minorities Cell were extremely supportive of the clerics and small town publicists who saw in the Rushdie affair an opportunity to flex their sectarian muscles.

To many of the liberals worried about the implications of opposing a Muslim community demand, the absence of the BJP from the battleground was both a surprise and a relief. The surprise was warranted because the BJP rarely loses an opportunity to berate the Congress for pandering to the most reactionary elements in the Muslim community. Indeed, people have come to expect the BJP to be combative in its opposition to sectarian ‘minorityism’ and were surprised by the relative timidity of its approach.

The surprise was unwarranted. In 1988, when the BJP protested against the peremptory ban on Satanic Verses, it was part of a larger critique of secularism, or ‘pseudo-secularism’ as L.K. Advani called it. Implicit in that engagement was the contention that the political establishment was guilty of ‘double standards’ by pandering to Muslim vote banks. A greater degree of even-handedness, it was implied, could be injected into the system if organised Muslim lobbies could be neutralised by the emergence of Hindu voting clout. In other words, secularism could be restored to its pristine purity when the majority community could rise up and say ‘enough is enough’.

It was the disarming simplicity of a big idea that propelled the creation of a Hindu vote bank of sorts in the election of 1991. Although identified with the electoral fortunes of the BJP, the Hindu quotient in electoral politics has moved in an autonomous direction. As of today, the central idea behind it is neither the creation of a Hindu rashtra nor the decimation of the Muslim communities but a simple desire to not be taken for granted. It is this inherent passivity underlying the seeming activism that explains why the Hindu vote bank has been a potential, rather than real, force. The BJP may be the preferred party of those who vote with an eye on Hindu self-interest but it is by no means the only party. Very often the Congress, regional parties and even the CPI(M) in Kerala manage to get a look in.

The unique nature of political Hindu consciousness may help to explain why the countervailing force to offset minority sectarianism has been so sporadic. In the aftermath of the Ayodhya agitation, the high point of Hindu activism, there have been few national issues that have captured the imagination of the majority community. The activities of the Sri Ram Sene in Karnataka and the Bajrang Dal may have grabbed the media headlines on occasions and the artist M.F. Hussein may have been hounded out of India by a determined band of Hindu activists. But these actions have rarely, if ever, secured widespread approval of those whose politics are shaped with one eye to Hindu interests.

For the BJP, fringe Hindu activism has actually posed a great deal of irritation. In 1988, Hindu nationalism occupied the high moral ground because it stood for the rights of a community whose existence and legitimacy was being doubted and questioned by the political establishment. It may also be recalled that one of the very first acts of the NDA Government after assuming power in 1998 was to issue Rushdie a visa to travel to India—a right that had been taken away from him for nearly a decade after the banning of Satanic Verses.

In 2012, however, it was a different picture altogether. After many of its activists dabbled in the campaign against Hussein and the student wing of the RSS got entangled in the spirited controversy over the exclusion of A.K. Ramanujan’s academic essay on the Ramayana from the Delhi University history syllabus, the party has found itself bereft of legitimacy to really stand up for Rushdie’s right of free speech. Having protested on a number of occasion against writers and artists “hurting Hindu sentiments”, the BJP could hardly contend that the perceived hurt of Muslim sentiments should be ignored in the name of either free speech or artistic freedom.

It is my guess that the Congress gauged the inability or unwillingness of the BJP to get too involved in the Rushdie affair, more so because the issue didn’t involve Hindus as Hindus. Indeed, the BJP was more interested in seeing whether the Congress ingratiated itself sufficiently with the Muslim clerics or alienated itself more from a liberal intelligentsia that has often been used as a battering ram against Hindu nationalism.

The net effect of last month’s fuss over Rushdie is not good for India. There is an emerging consensus that a profoundly religious country such as India cannot afford to have an excessively generous view of creative freedom and that the liberties enshrined in the Constitution must be offset against prevailing perceptions of what Roger Scruton once described as “common decencies”. In other words, if Hussein was guilty of offence, Rushdie too must be held guilty of the same misdemeanour. The floodgates of competitive hurt have been opened and it is likely the waters may come to submerge social practices and lifestyles. Events such as the Jaipur Literature Festival which have thrived on the strength of India’s relatively open society may find that they will need to enter into political calculations before issuing letters of invitation to writers.

This is a monumental tragedy. In the past, it was widely believed that a combination of prosperity and education would strengthen openness and democracy. India has suggested that this need not be so—although it will not be the first country to demonstrate that progress and regression also go hand in hand. At a time when the prevailing trend is for the bar of tolerance and diversity to be progressively raised, India is discovering a new normal based on exaggerated prickliness. 


The Telegraph, February 3, 2012

The age of intolerance

By Swapan Dasgupta

There are many in the Government who are absolutely chuffed at the ease with which Operation Stop Rushdie was played out. First, the Rajasthan Police (or was it the Central authorities?) informed the organizers of the Jaipur Literature Festival that sundry assassins financed by the Mumbai underworld were on the prowl. That ensured Salman Rushdie didn't check-in for his flight to India. Secondly, once it was known that the organizers would use technology to circumvent the unofficial Congress ban on Rushdie, the local hotelier and the organizers were deftly arm-twisted into cancelling the video linkup for fear of violence and police indifference.

Yes, there were voices of liberal outrage at the subversion of democratic freedom. However, since the indignation was confined to a class that rarely bothers to vote, has no worthwhile electoral influence and, if the chairman of the Press Council is to believed, still harbours a colonial mindset, it could be safely ignored in favour of the satisfaction among those who, apart from being more authentic, also control powerful Muslim vote-banks.

What was witnessed last week was cynicism perfected into a fine art by a government that has excelled in the art of subterfuge. Where the regime wants to offset protests against free speech, it does so unapologetically. In Punjab, crowds at a public meeting to be addressed by Rahul Gandhi were compelled to leave their shoes and any black apparel outside the venue for fear that these could become either missiles or black flags. In Jaipur, however, the authorities chose to be cowed down by the threat of small groups of demonstrators. The champions of intolerance won in Jaipur because their victory was facilitated by the might of the state.

Yet, many apologists argue that the events of last week don't necessarily imply any waning commitment to democratic freedoms. Rushdie, it is said, was the exception because his mere mention sends many Muslims into an apoplectic tizzy. And, say the apologists, the timing of the celebrated author's visit was all wrong. If there had been no elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress regimes at the Centre and in Rajasthan may well have been more inclined to showcase India as a place where the bar of intolerance is generously high.

Recent trends suggest otherwise. It is becoming increasingly clear that the kerfuffle over Rushdie was no unfortunate aberration but part of a bid to replace an argumentative society with a regulated democracy where freedom is circumscribed by constant reminders of the limits to freedom.

The attempts to muzzle free speech in the social media and the cyber world can no longer be wished away as obsessive concerns of individual ministers with particularly thin skins. Since September 5 last year, the department of information technology has held five meetings with organizations such as Facebook, Google, Blogspot and Yahoo to force a code of conduct governing their content. It is not that the government is concerned with lewd pictures and pornography. It has demanded that the social media sites "scan and screen/filter the content hosted on their websites for objectionable content about Constitutional authorities, council of ministers in Centre/states, political leadership, public authorities and disable them on their own or as and when brought to their knowledge in writing by an authorized representative of such authorities." A public interest litigation protesting the "damage (to) the secular fabric of India" is also before the Delhi High Court.

In plain language, the government is demanding the right of pre-censorship of all potentially "objectionable content" relating to public life and politics--a demand that has striking resemblance to the censorship practiced by the authorities in China.

It is, of course, possible to dismiss these moves as trivial concerns that will affect a minority of internet loonies who are unaware of the niceties of parliamentary decorum. The only problem is that when the right to determine what is objectionable is given to people who are unaffected by the charms of pluralism, the consequences can be very dangerous. The Rushdie affair last week has vividly demonstrated that for a section of the political class, the right to offend does not count as a permissible freedom. India is being forced into a mental straitjacket.

Sunday Times of India, January 27, 2012

A victory for intolerance

By Swapan Dasgupta

Those writers who indulged in a bout of needless grandstanding by reading out passages from Salman Rushdie’s contentious The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literature Festival last Friday did the cause they were ostensibly espousing very little good.

On the contrary, their symbolic defiance of the 1988 ban on the book merely served to confirm in the eyes of those baying for Rushdie’s blood that the main purpose behind the invitation to the British-Indian author was to resurrect a controversy that, mercifully, has passed its sell by date. The sundry clerics and ghetto politicians who clamoured for Rushdie’s permanent exclusion from India can now feel vindicated that they managed to contain a sinister assault on the fundamental tenets of Islam.

However, if there is one thing that is clear about last fortnight’s kerfuffle, it is that the fuss was only tangentially connected to the Satanic Verses — a book that is not openly sold in India. Since he re-established his right to visit India in 1998, courtesy the NDA Government, and then wisely procured a PIO card that assures him visa-less travel for life, Rushdie has been in India on more than six occasions and maybe more. He has delivered lectures, graced literary festivals and celebrity parties and even reclaimed his grandfather’s house in Solan. On each occasion some fringe group or other has issued statements opposing the visit and on each occasion the Government chose to ignore them. On his part, Rushdie has done nothing to either resurrect the Satanic Verses issue in India or trigger any new controversy. His behaviour in India has been careful and restrained. After all, he, more than anyone else, is aware of the huge personal costs of living undercover for at least a decade after Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced his death sentence through a fatwa.

So, what was so different this time? The difference lies not so much in the fact that the Deoband seminary asked for his visa to be cancelled and that some shadowy organisation promised to reward anyone who threw a slipper at Rushdie with a prize of Rs 1 lakh. There are some bodies that exist to take sectarian positions on matters and routinely proclaim that Islam is in danger. They do it when a US President comes visiting, when Indo-Israeli ties improve, when Taslima Nasreen asks for the right of residence in India and they do it at the whiff of Rushdie. The best way for the Government to have reacted was by ignoring them. Indeed, it seemed that was precisely what was going to happen until Rushdie tweeted and the Rajasthan Government stepped into the fray.

It is difficult to accept the Rajasthan Government’s plea that it would have a hard time guaranteeing Rushdie’s safety. Equally, it is impossible to respond to the Centre’s plea that either the outlawed SIMI or a section of the Mumbai underworld was plotting to send an assassin to accomplish what Ayatollah Khomeini had desired 24 years earlier, with a straight face. What gave the game away was the fact that no one in the Government and the Congress (with the honourable exception of Manish Tewari) deemed it necessary to express a single word of condemnation for those who wanted the ban on Satanic Verses to be coupled with a ban on Rushdie the person.  Notables in India are fond of tirelessly repeating that “we will not be cowed down by terrorism”. But isn’t that what precisely happened in the case of Rushdie?

The forces of intolerance scored a famous victory last week. They won because the match was fixed in their favour by the UPA Government and the Congress. And the outcome was pre-determined because with the Uttar Pradesh election round the corner, the Congress wanted to show a gesture of goodwill towards those who claim to influence the vote-banks. Rushdie lost out because the Congress was loath to have any influential Muslim body point an accusing finger at it. Those who felt offended and let down by Rushdie’s absence from Jaipur were regarded as inconsequential members of the non-voting classes. Their protests could safely be disregarded.

The monotonous regularity with which the bar of artistic freedom is being lowered should alarm all Indians. Yet, under the guise of secularism and the principle of equal respect for all religions, it has become possible for all groups with an imaginary grievance to exercise a veto power. This is a travesty but what compounds the offence is the fact that retrograde decisions are being routinely taken by people who know better, are not personally narrow-minded and pay lip service to India as an argumentative society.

The argument that compromises with democracy have to be made for the larger interests of democracy is specious. Over the years, intolerance is fast turning into the new normal with every group and religious denomination jumping into the fray. From a historical work on Shivaji, the title of a film and the morality of women to theological disputations, the agenda is being set by those resourceful enough to command a mob.

The ‘sab chalta hai’ attitude is no answer. Nor does it do to shower the barbarians with disdain and feign a sense of superiority. What is required is for a plural culture and mindset to take deep roots in society. Moral relativism has become an excuse to relegate decency to the backburner. As a state, India has eschewed dharma.

Sunday Pioneer, January 22, 2012