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Members of a right-wing Hindu group attacked and cut the hair of three couples on the last Valentine’s Day near Taj Mahal, that 17 th century monument to love built by Mughal Emperor Shajahan in memory of his favourite wife. The same day, a group of burqa-clad women belonging to a fundamentalist Muslim group in Kashmir vandalised a shop selling Valentine cards and a restaurant that attracted lovers. These instances of moral policing in India by fringe groups such as the Shiv Sena, Sri Ram Sene and the Kashmir-based Dukhtaran-e-Millat were meant to express their outrage against the trappings of ‘degenerate and promiscuous Western culture’ that threaten traditional religious values. A few weeks before, a group of Sri Ram Sene activists barged into a pub in Managalore in Karnataka State and roughed up girls sitting there.
On another Valentine’s Day 20 years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. That fatwa was arguably the first open war cry against individual freedoms in modern times. It marked the beginning of the practice of treating as blasphemy any expression of freedom that questions 'traditional values and religion'. The Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh who made a 10-minute film Submission which touches on the plight of women in Islamic societies was killed by a Muslim immigrant youth while he was bicycling to work on November 2, 2004. Author Ayan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script for the film, has received several death threats. On May 10, 2007, a group of Sangh Parivar activists stormed into the Department of Fine Arts, M.S. University in Baroda in Gujarat, and vandalised a painting exhibition there. Majlis-e-Ittihadul Muslimeen legislators manhandled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in the Press Club in Hyderabad on August 9, 2007. The mind policing has begun to cast its menacingly long shadow on how and what we think and express. The free zones of cultural and intellectual expressions are growingly being encircled by expanding darkness of intolerance, bigotry and hate-speech.
Our civil liberties are under threat from the marauding forces of obscurantism out to put out anything that gives off sparkles of freedom: freedom of thought, of conscience, of religion and from religion. By extension, democracy itself is in danger of being engulfed by the advocates of culture fatwa of different shades. For, democracy ceases to be democracy if the foundational principles it is built upon collapse.
II
The narrative of 'religion or culture under attack' from practitioners of free speech and free thinking is an extension of the mindset that treats Western Enlightenment values of liberal democracy as inferior to ‘Our (non-Western) Culture’. This sense of ‘superiority’ allows them to be self-appointed crusaders to protect their religion and culture from the ‘corrupting’ influence of Western notion of free inquiry and freedom of expression. They fear that the influx of social changes that come with the universal values of gender equality, human rights, equal access to law and due process that are integral to the Enlightenment spirit of the West will undermine their ‘superior’ and patriarchal religion or culture. Central to this unsettling sense of an imminent threat to ‘tradition’ is the fear of female sexuality. For them the whole notion of ‘tradition’ crumbles if women come out and uphold their authority over their sexuality. What else could be the reason why obscurantist outfits sanctimoniously advocate the role of women in sustaining ‘tradition’?
What is good and what is not good for us is a moral question that we humans always ask in our daily life. We derive our morals from our collective idea of what is good and what is bad in the time in which we live. The collective idea has emerged from our shared experiences, achievements and progress. Slavery was acceptable centuries ago. Today, even denial of political freedom is treated as unacceptable. Philosophers and thinkers from Socrates to Galileo were faced with the charge of blasphemy. Killing or burning at stake people for their views is not an acceptable response in a liberal democracy. The right to freedom of speech is recognised as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
One cannot make a political call for restricting and limiting this freedom just as one cannot demand reversal of abolition of slavery. Slavery, restriction on freedoms, denial of human rights, totalitarianism and suppression of critical inquiry are now universally accepted as bad for humanity even as there are sections that entertained the desire to bring people back to the times when there was slavery or killing of people for blasphemy or inequality before law or suppression of dissent.
After Independence, India opted to be a liberal democracy modeled on British Parliamentary democracy. Despite all deficiencies, history has proved the usefulness of democratic exercise in India. The fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution guarantee civil liberties including rights to equality, right to freedom, right to freedom of religion, among others. There may still be inequalities in the country, but these fundamental rights have helped us overturn the social inequalities and abolish untouchability. If the advocates of ‘tradition’ had a stronger voice among the leadership of the freedom movement, we would still be living with those social ills. Thank goodness, the ancestors of moral and mind policemen of today were not strong then as they are not strong now. How many of us will want institutionalised caste system back, our freedoms restricted? Who among us want to live under the Taliban rule?
Imagine there was no Enlightenment. We would be living in a dark age where secularism, rationalism, human rights, liberal democracy, equal access to law, due process and freedom of conscience and expression meant nothing. We would not be free to read books we want to read, free to practise our faiths, to doubt dogmas, to discuss and to criticise. There would be no science, no technology, no life saving medicines, no eradication of mass-killing diseases. We would be living in the comfort zones of certainties set by ‘tradition’ and religious faiths. We would be living without electricity, computers, communication networks, the Internet... The list goes on.
III
Enforcers of culture and moral fatwas indirectly derive their inspiration from relativist ideas of postmodernism. For a relativist, there is no absolute truth, no ‘grand narrative’, as Jean-Francois Lyotard writes in Postmodern Condition (1979) and no universal criteria. There are only fragmented discourses and a variety of criteria. Modernism, on the other hand, is an offshoot of the Enlightenment which advocated reason as the primary source of authority. Reason replaced the absolute authority of religion and the state. It led to critical questioning of traditional values and morals. It established reason, freedom and democracy as primary values of society.
Postmodernist advocates of relativism look at Enlightenment value system as one among various value systems. For them, reason and critical inquiry form one way of understanding the universe and religion is just another way of understanding the same. Modern medicine is just another system, one among different systems of treatment. Science is just another story and scientific truth is just one kind of truth. Shamanism explores a different kind of truth. For a relativist, there are no superior or inferior value systems, there is no absolute good or absolute bad. In a relativist discourse, a society that is based on principles of freedom and democracy is not superior to another society that denies freedoms to its people in the name of culture, religion and tradition.
Relativism is unacceptable because it gives intellectual fodder to those who hold their tradition, religion and customs, however retrograde and dangerous they are, to be as good, if not better, as reason, democracy and rule of law. An intellectual battle against relativism is long overdue. Any retrograde tradition that allows its practitioners to take arms against freedoms and democracy is bad and any value system that ensures individual liberty and happiness is superior. We have to call a spade a spade.
7 comments:
Vandalising women is not part of any culture or civilization anywhere in this world. But there are people who walk backwards and then realise that women have moved far ahead of them, which making them insecure. So they resort to false chest thumping and retrograde activities of the kind you have described so well in your exhaustive article.
It was a revelation to me that the first salvo fired on Valentines day belonged to Salman Rushdie when he was fatwaed by religious fundamentalists. The very same thing happened with Tasleema Nasreen as well. Freedom of speech and expression is the most valuable possession of a free citizen.
Who needs global destabilising when our own backyards are full of talibanisation of all colors. Forgive the riot of colors. If anarchy rages in our midst whom does the citizens turn to?
All said and done, I am still in doubt as to how much freedom is too much. Let me quote an example.
M.F. Hussain is considered the modern Picasso of our times. I whole heartedly join the bandwagon of those who propagate this idea. I am sure you are well versed with 'Guernica', Picasso's masterpiece? Well, when I saw it, I could not find any artistic acumen in the said painting. Hussain's painting of Sita, masturbating on the tail of Hanuman did not please me at all. It was a tasteless depiction of an imaginary scene. Let him paint nudes of all hues, even goddesses, but art also have to be artful. Suppose Hussain had painted the prophet and his nine year old wife in the raw, can you imagine what the reaction in the media and elsewhere have been?
Dont we become astonished witnesses and voyeristic participants in this case as well, and isnt that a brutal blow to democratic normalcy? So what is freedom all about?
Whenever the issue of freedom of expression and freedom of speech comes up, you raise the issue of M.F. Hussain and repeat the Bajrang Dal's allegation that his painting of Sita and Hanuman is disgusting and insulting to Hindus because the Hind goddess is depicted as masturbating on the tail of Hanuman. Then you challenge M.F. Hussain to depict Prophet Muhammad and his wives. We cannot talk about freedom of expression on the basis of what a painter has not painted or what she or he ought to have painted. Your logic is flawed. It is a classic example of non sequitur, a statement in which premise and conclusion are unrelated. (Eg. 'If I read this book, all people will love me'). What is the point you are driving home? That there should not be any 'negative' portrayal of Hindu goddesses? That a Muslim artist should not paint Hindu goddesses? That freedom has a limit when it deals with religious themes? Or that a Muslim artist should not deal with Hindu themes or vice versa? You are just suggesting that Hussain should portray the prophet and his wives first and then dwell on the Hindu goddesses. Is it an argument? You have every right to like or dislike Hussain. But will you condone the Bajrangh Dal activists vandalising Hussain's painting as a show of protest against his portayal of Hindu goddesses? That is the question that my post wanted to raise in the first place.
Now let me come back to your 'reading' of Hussain's painting of Sita and Hanuman from his Ramayana series. Bajrangh Dal activists were outraged by the nudity in the painting. But they also objected to the way Sita clings to Hanuman's tail. It was the Bajrang Dal which attributed a sexual connotation to the painting, not Hussain. This painting depicts Hanuman burning Lanka with a torch as Sita hangs on to his tail. If Sita is seen as masturbating, then it is a clear case of perversion in the eyes of the beholder.
Why should I accept the Bajrang Dal reading as the absolute truth about the painting? Moreover, Bajrang Dal's art criticism went beyond mere words. In October 1996, a group of Bajrang Dal activists barged into an art gallery in Ahmedabad and destroyed 23 tapestry items and 28 Husain paintings. Husain's depiction of Mother Teresa in a Paithani sari also attracted criticism on the ground that Paithani is associated with wealth. But no one has used violence to condemn that painting.
Thank you for reading my post and commenting. I am least concerned about art being artful or not artful. Nor am I bothered about taste and tastelessness in art. But I am concerned when an artist or writer is under attack for what he depicted or wrote.
You seem to be under the notion that your freedom is all important and not anyone else's. Freedom has its boundaries my dear friend, may be not in art, definitely in life.
You seem to be arguing for an anarchy of freedom. And no dont be surprised, anarchy is just a step away from freedom.
I live in a secular society and I follow all the rules of this society. I have a vast repertoire of experiences in dealing with ordinary people from all religions and sections. And not just altruisms like the ones you pose, but real life situations where you are not given a second to ruminate on matters religious. Religion, what is that?
Freedom is an abstract idea, a word. And a word is just a plosive that needs your lips to open and close. Thats all there is to it.
Freedom is not an abstract idea or a sound. It is a concrete human situation. Living in a secular country, you may not understand it. A person living in Saddam Hussain's Iraq or erstwhile Soviet Union, for example, would understand what freedom was.
Of course freedom is not absolute. You have to observe social rules which are for the common good. Observing traffic rules, for example, benefits everyone in the society. Legal system is to ensure equal justice to all. It enriches freedom. But setting boundaries on a person's thoughts and expression and creativity is denial of freedom. Killing that person for what he said and expressed is not part of democracy which always allows room for debate and criticism. This view hardly qualifies to be called anarchist.
Artistic freedom is fine in theory. But if there is an agenda behind these expressions, it needs to be reviewed.
In my view, people who are in public gaze should follow self restraint even under the duress of being labelled retrograde or stands against achieving an artistic ideal. Although I do not believe in any religion, I would respect those who did and would not show disrespect to or hurt their religious sentiments even if my life was at stake.
Freedom should respect all rules, whether imagined or percieved. That is why I said that freedom is an abstract idea.
There is nothing wrong in reviewing an opinion, a literary or artistic work. Nothing is above criticism and review including religion, art and science. You have the right to respect religion. But somebody also has the right to question religion because religion also is a set of ideas in the public domain. Why do you give special privilege to religion? Won't you criticise Marxism on the same logic that your criticism hurts the sentiments of Marxists? Why can't religion also respect individual freedom? Do you think that India's freedom from colonial rule is an abstract idea? Nobody would have laid their lives or undergone incarceration for an abstract idea.
Both my dear friends should shut up for the time being. This debate is getting to be a stuck record.
Zindagi...Kaisi hai paheli hai...
Kabhie to hasaye..
Kabhi yeh rulaye!
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