It has now appeared that India has miles to go to claim that it is a liberal democratic country. What better example of the country's liberalism-deficiency can there be than External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement in Parliament yesterday that author Taslima Nasreen will be given shelter in India provided the latter refrains from hurting sentiments of people in the country. Stupidity of the statement is self-evident. Taslima is not here in search of a shelter. She had been safely living in Sweden for many years after she went into exile in the face of violent wrath of fundamentalist sections of Muslims in her country, Bangladesh, for writing books critical of Islamic extremism. A Bengali writer, she wants to be closer home and stay in Kolkata. That is just the reason why she has come to India. The rider attached to the minister's assurance, alas, is a threat couched as a piece of nice advice: you will be shown the door unless you behave. Politicians of the Left, the Right and the Centre in India are all identical when it comes to appeasement of violent mobs venting their ire at individual writers, artists and film makers. How unlucky we are that we have allowed the political class to be the sole arbiter to define matters relating to our freedoms! No I am not talking about the freedoms enjoyed by a bunch of thugs led by a legislator to hurl chairs and flower pots at an unarmed author at the Press Club in Hyderabad, a group of goons who attacked art students in the Baroda University or people who virtually hounded out a painter by using weapons of litigation. I wish the country upheld what French writer Voltaire said most succinctly: "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." That is liberalism and India is still far away from being in a position to accept this basic principle of democracy. Democracy is not merely about holding periodical elections. It is also about building institutions and strengthening civil society to ensure individual's rights. Three cheers for our democracy!
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Solidarity with Taslima Nasreen
Country-wide outrage against the assault on The Hindu by Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa on November 7, 2003 when TN Assembly ordered the arrest of its senior journalists for breach of privilege was a genuine outburst against the willful attempt of a ruler to gag the media and freedom of speech. There were street protests across the country by writers, intellectuals and journalists, among others. Jayalalithaa was forced to backtrack under enormous public pressure. I wish Taslima Nasreen's plight of being forced to flee from Kolkata as the CPI(M)-led government of West Bengal has chosen to surrender before the demands of fanatic elements of Muslims has triggered protests that atleast remotely match the national condemnation against Jayalalithaa's attempt to muffle the media.
The central issue in both cases is free speech. Today it is Taslima, tomorrow the fanatics will go for the jugular of some other writer or artist. India cannot claim to be a true liberal democratic country if it shows even slightest signs of accommodating demands of illiberal and undemocratic bunch of people who can resort to their version of freedom of expression - violence. Remember, Britain defended and protected Salman Rushdie when Khomeini issued fatwa to kill him. Could Britain have bought peace if it had sent Rushdie packing after the fatwa? No. The fanatics would instead be emboldened to demand more. Free speech is a basic principle in a democratic polity. Democracy ceases to be so when its foundational basic principles are compromised. Fanaticism of any kind cannot be doused by accommodations in the name of crazy notions of multi-culturalism and respect for sentiments of different communities. Attacks on M.F. Hussain by Hindutva brigades and on Taslima by their Muslim counterparts should be taken for what they are: collective paranoia and psychopathic behaviour. We should not succumb to the demands of people who think that only they have the right to dictate what is right and what is wrong. It is good to see Taslima getting huge support from the media and commentators. But that is not enough. There should be large visible protests and audible condemnations. We should show that we value the freedom of speech of an individual as strongly as we defend that of an institution.
The central issue in both cases is free speech. Today it is Taslima, tomorrow the fanatics will go for the jugular of some other writer or artist. India cannot claim to be a true liberal democratic country if it shows even slightest signs of accommodating demands of illiberal and undemocratic bunch of people who can resort to their version of freedom of expression - violence. Remember, Britain defended and protected Salman Rushdie when Khomeini issued fatwa to kill him. Could Britain have bought peace if it had sent Rushdie packing after the fatwa? No. The fanatics would instead be emboldened to demand more. Free speech is a basic principle in a democratic polity. Democracy ceases to be so when its foundational basic principles are compromised. Fanaticism of any kind cannot be doused by accommodations in the name of crazy notions of multi-culturalism and respect for sentiments of different communities. Attacks on M.F. Hussain by Hindutva brigades and on Taslima by their Muslim counterparts should be taken for what they are: collective paranoia and psychopathic behaviour. We should not succumb to the demands of people who think that only they have the right to dictate what is right and what is wrong. It is good to see Taslima getting huge support from the media and commentators. But that is not enough. There should be large visible protests and audible condemnations. We should show that we value the freedom of speech of an individual as strongly as we defend that of an institution.
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Of books and authors
The book release function that we had all been eagerly waiting to happen was now behind us. A modest function it was and we all enjoyed the event yesterday. Chandini was elegantly graceful as she read out some of her poems in her second collection Voyage Series and Other Poems. The concluding lines of her poem `Virus' refuse to vanish from my mind: "I have been vaccinated/Early in life/Against all manner/And genre of life." WOW. I wish I wrote that. The book release function came off well as did the post-release party. There was hardly anyone who didn't try to give voice to scores of immortal Malayalam and Hindi numbers. The boozy occasion only honed our sense of music. When Bubbles sang `Kanan kothicha neram, kavitha polen arikil vannu...', it touched a nostalgic nerve centre located somewhere in my SELF. I feel that we were all emotionally wounded at some point of time in our lives. Funny thing is we keep on protecting that wound from being healed. Chandini, forgive me my indulgence in metaphorical language. Perhaps my friendship with you rubs off on me.
Despite the memorable event that we all chose not to miss, I was personally aware that the occasion was overshadowed by the spectre of another female author being literally hounded out elsewhere in the country. Taslima Nasreen is on the run after she was betrayed by the self-styled progressive government of West Bengal. As fundamentalist Muslims are braying for her blood, the so-called secular parties and secular individuals, barring a few, are disturbingly silent. There is an attempt to treat Taslima as the vital Muslim problem in India. She is not the Muslim problem. She is now treated as a soft target by fanatics to hurl their anger provoked mostly by imaginary fears. Shall we allow India to be a Barbaria? To surrender the freedoms that our founding fathers have bequeathed to us? It is an irony that the BJP has come out to defend her and protect her. That is politics. But we are concerned with our freedoms.
Despite the memorable event that we all chose not to miss, I was personally aware that the occasion was overshadowed by the spectre of another female author being literally hounded out elsewhere in the country. Taslima Nasreen is on the run after she was betrayed by the self-styled progressive government of West Bengal. As fundamentalist Muslims are braying for her blood, the so-called secular parties and secular individuals, barring a few, are disturbingly silent. There is an attempt to treat Taslima as the vital Muslim problem in India. She is not the Muslim problem. She is now treated as a soft target by fanatics to hurl their anger provoked mostly by imaginary fears. Shall we allow India to be a Barbaria? To surrender the freedoms that our founding fathers have bequeathed to us? It is an irony that the BJP has come out to defend her and protect her. That is politics. But we are concerned with our freedoms.
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Again about Nandigram
The CPI(M) brooks no comparison between the post-Godhra pogrom in Gujarat and the recent incidents of bloodshed, rape and looting by CPI(M) militia in Nandigram in West Bengal. For the CPI(M) which always pretends to occupy the high moral ground on all issues, the comparison is nothing less than preposterous. I happened to accost a local CPI(M) apparatchik the other day and as I broached the comparison when our talk predictably touched Nandigram, he was outraged. I presented my arguments: a) both the post-Godhra violence and and the violent recapture of Nandigram were acts of revenge, one by the Saffron Brigade and the other by the Red Brigade; b) in both cases, respective State administrations chose to look the other way when armed men went around killing people, raping women and looting; c) the intelligentsia, including pro-Left writers and artistes, was outspoken in their condemnation of bloodshed in Gujarat and Nandigram. In the case of Nandigram, the CPI(M)'s partners in the goverment RSP and CPI openly criticised the CPI(M)'s highhandedness there.
You can imagine how the guy responded to my argument. He said that the media was giving biased reports about the incidents in Nandigram. I told him that the BJP leadershp's take on the Gujarat violence was no different. Was he saying that I should not believe what the newspapers were saying? That I should listen to what Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri were lecturing on the issue? Of course, the guy did not care to answer my questions. Rather, he was saying something which I could not understand.
I know there is difference between Gujarat and Nandigram. The one was more a carnival of violence, while the other betrays signs of militarisation of political activities. Nandigram is more disturbing because the State administration termed it as a war zone with the West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee defending the Red Brigade's action with his `paid-in-the-same-coin' comment. There is also difference in degree. Phew! I have survived the argument with the comrade. But I did not try to convince him that his belief that his party and its ideology were infallible was but a shortcut to the road to totalitarian systems that have failed elsewhere in the world.
You can imagine how the guy responded to my argument. He said that the media was giving biased reports about the incidents in Nandigram. I told him that the BJP leadershp's take on the Gujarat violence was no different. Was he saying that I should not believe what the newspapers were saying? That I should listen to what Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri were lecturing on the issue? Of course, the guy did not care to answer my questions. Rather, he was saying something which I could not understand.
I know there is difference between Gujarat and Nandigram. The one was more a carnival of violence, while the other betrays signs of militarisation of political activities. Nandigram is more disturbing because the State administration termed it as a war zone with the West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee defending the Red Brigade's action with his `paid-in-the-same-coin' comment. There is also difference in degree. Phew! I have survived the argument with the comrade. But I did not try to convince him that his belief that his party and its ideology were infallible was but a shortcut to the road to totalitarian systems that have failed elsewhere in the world.
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
Reign of terror?
The brutal way CPI(M) workers recaptured Nandigram in West Bengal over the last few days betrays the obvious disconnect between democracy and communism. The stories in the media of the plight of the `vanquished' farmers of Nandigram have exposed the contradictions of the CPI(M) as a party engaged in the political process of the country and and as a communist political group that will go to any extent to enforce its control even if it means use of arms and muscle power to coerce people. The Nandigram incidents have also shown that the CPI(M) has not learnt to behave as a party of government in West Bengal despite its successive rule there for the last three decades. The government led by the party allowed the entire law enforcement machinery in the State to be paralysed for two days just to let red brigades to invade the villages which were holding out against the CPI(M) since March 14 when 14 villagers were killed in firing by police and CPI(M) brigades. The invasion of Nandigram villages by armed party workers and victory marches organised by them will certainly have a chilling effect in areas where the CPI(M) has dominance. What is more disturbing is the silence of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Nandigram developments. Perhaps, they are hoping to use Nandigram as a quid pro quo to buy the Left support for the Indo-US nuclear deal. On the other hand, Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani's description of Nandigram incidents as `shocking, beyond words' sounds hollow after the latest disclosure of Tehelka that Gujarat CM Narendra Modi himself endorsed the post-Godhra anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002. There is hardly any difference between the Right and the Left. If there is, it is only in degree and not in intention to brutalise people.
Monday, 5 November 2007
Mimicking nature?
Watching how lotus leaves remain free from contaminants without using soaps or detergents so that we can develop self-cleaning materials from it? Observing how a spider manufactures its web that can teach us how to make fibres without toxins?
If you feel that these questions sound funny, you are not alone. I was one of those who would treat the questions as crazy till recently. A small article that I read in a recent issue of Time magazine influenced me a lot. It is about a new discipline named biomimicry.
Biomimicry tells us that nature is endowed with collective wisdom of what is good for survival and what is not. Nature is a tutorial because 3.8 billion years of evolution (yes boy, evolution, and not intelligent design handed out by an intelligent designer) has bestowed that wisdom on nature. This wisdom is key to our survival strategy. We can imitate nature’s ideas and designs to solve human problems.
We may get a design or a blueprint of a technology or an idea from watching how mussels are glued to rocks with an under-water adhesive. Or how gecko adheres to our walls and roofs without any glue. That is wonderful. You are seeking ideas and designs from nature and not extracting things from it.
Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, has been among the heroes of environment honoured by Time. She also founded Biomimicry Institute.
If you feel that these questions sound funny, you are not alone. I was one of those who would treat the questions as crazy till recently. A small article that I read in a recent issue of Time magazine influenced me a lot. It is about a new discipline named biomimicry.
Biomimicry tells us that nature is endowed with collective wisdom of what is good for survival and what is not. Nature is a tutorial because 3.8 billion years of evolution (yes boy, evolution, and not intelligent design handed out by an intelligent designer) has bestowed that wisdom on nature. This wisdom is key to our survival strategy. We can imitate nature’s ideas and designs to solve human problems.
We may get a design or a blueprint of a technology or an idea from watching how mussels are glued to rocks with an under-water adhesive. Or how gecko adheres to our walls and roofs without any glue. That is wonderful. You are seeking ideas and designs from nature and not extracting things from it.
Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, has been among the heroes of environment honoured by Time. She also founded Biomimicry Institute.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Freedom of choice
Why is religion invariably somthing you inherit by birth and not a matter of your choice? Should somebody born of parents belonging to a particular religion automatically owe his/her allegience to it regardless of his/her conscience?
When I raise these questions, I know that they do have personal ring about them. I would have been in a different religion if my parents had not belonged to the religion they were born into. So are most of the people. If religion is a set of ideas, my allegience or lack of it should be based on my acceptance or non-acceptance of those ideas. One becomes a Marxist by his or her choice. We don't tend to treat the child of Marxist parents as Marxist by birth. A parent having neo-liberal or neo-conservative ideas are not privileged to have neo-liberal or neo-conservative children.
Then, why should we give this privilege to religion alone? When we go back to the foundational period of every institutionalised religion, we see a rupture from the dominant religon existing at that time. Early members of Christianity and Islam broke away from the prevailing religion of the time and joined the new religion. It was their choice and not their inheritance. Birth in a family or clan loyal to the existing religion was no obstacle for them to leave it to join the new religion.
Has institutionalisation of major religions over the centuries allowed them to usurp people's conscience? Aren't children born into a religion programmed to absorb the ideas of that religion as absolute and final? My proposal is that we have to go back to the spirit of the foundational moment of the religions when people with conscience joined them. Thus one should have the freedom to follow a faith of his/her choice or not to follow any faith at all. That is real freedom.
When I raise these questions, I know that they do have personal ring about them. I would have been in a different religion if my parents had not belonged to the religion they were born into. So are most of the people. If religion is a set of ideas, my allegience or lack of it should be based on my acceptance or non-acceptance of those ideas. One becomes a Marxist by his or her choice. We don't tend to treat the child of Marxist parents as Marxist by birth. A parent having neo-liberal or neo-conservative ideas are not privileged to have neo-liberal or neo-conservative children.
Then, why should we give this privilege to religion alone? When we go back to the foundational period of every institutionalised religion, we see a rupture from the dominant religon existing at that time. Early members of Christianity and Islam broke away from the prevailing religion of the time and joined the new religion. It was their choice and not their inheritance. Birth in a family or clan loyal to the existing religion was no obstacle for them to leave it to join the new religion.
Has institutionalisation of major religions over the centuries allowed them to usurp people's conscience? Aren't children born into a religion programmed to absorb the ideas of that religion as absolute and final? My proposal is that we have to go back to the spirit of the foundational moment of the religions when people with conscience joined them. Thus one should have the freedom to follow a faith of his/her choice or not to follow any faith at all. That is real freedom.
(Photo: A kindergarten school in Hirsau, South Germany)
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