The problem with Bharatiya Janata Party’s acolytes is that they think abuse is the best form of defence. Attacked from all corners for the growing intolerance (which, in this day and age, I should write as #GrowingIntolerance), they have heaped abuse on Aamir Khan. The hostility is expressed in many forms and in various media, unsurprisingly most often in the anonymity of social media where the trolls have had a field day. But even people who should know better, like Anupam Kher (who now seems to be developing a parallel career as an “intolerance chief”), have resorted to emotional statements like “Aamir, did you tell your wife which country gave you your fame?”
If instead, these acolytes had used reason and logic (and a bit of work), they could have argued quite persuasively that intolerance in our country is nothing new. Which was the first country in the world to ban Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses? No, not Saudi Arabia. It was India, and under a Congress government. Which government ruled Maharashtra and in Delhi when rationalist Narendra Dhabolkar was murdered? A Congress-led government. Not only that, but it now appears that the National Investigation Agency which was working on the case, gave a secret report at that time to the Maharashtra government, which passed it on to Delhi, which sat on it. The agency had recommended that the ultra-Hindutva outfit Sanathan Sanstha, suspected of the murder plus the Goa blast case of 2007, should be banned. Nothing was done.
There are other examples. Kiran Nagarkar, the recipient of the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award recently, talked about his personal experience of intole-rance at the awards ceremony. His play, Bed-time Story, a reinter-pretation of the Mahabharata, was taken by the government to court, while the Shiv Sena decided to enforce its own brand of justice and the Maharashtra Theatre Censor Board ordered a staggering 78 cuts. Incidentally, the play has been re-printed and released recently without any fuss. Another playwright, the much admired Vijay Tendulkar, faced multiple threats from the Shiv Sena and other Hindutva outfits for his play Ghashiram Kotwal because his portrayal of Nana Phadnavis was deemed by these outfits to be derogatory. Did the Congress government do anything about it? No. That was realpolitik: the Congress needed the Sena’s support to keep the government going, so it looked the other way.
Similarly, India’s best-known painter, M.F. Husain, had to go into voluntary exile in West Asia because Hindutva groups launched legal cases against him all over the country, which meant that he faced the prospect of a very different Bharat Darshan, quite impossible at his age. So he stayed, and died, in exile. Did any government, Congress, BJP, Shiv Sena, etc, lift even a little finger to defend him? The sad thing is that questions like these have become purely rhetorical.
On the first day of the current Parliament session, all political parties eulogised Babasaheb Ambedkar. Yet in 1987, the Shiv Sena (the same again!) launched large-scale protests against his book Riddles in Hinduism. Some of the riddles were: “Why did Brahmins make Hindu gods fight against one another?” Or “How did the Brahmins wed a peaceful God to a bloodthirsty Goddess?” Or “the content of the Vedas: have they any moral or spiritual value?”
As you would expect from Ambedkar, he had taken strong stands against prevailing wisdom. Some of the arguments were debatable, but who wants to engage in debate when it’s much easier (and productive) to agitate?
Through the years there are many more writers whose works have been banned: Aubrey Menen, Rohinton Mistry, Wendy Doniger… Paintings and art installations have either been vandalised or stopped from being exhibited. Plays (most recently, Agnes of God) have been prevented from being staged. Films (even the Da Vinci Code) have been cut, or denied a certificate. All this in the name of religion, or occasionally because of the “denigration” of a historical figure! The protesting bodies have generally been political parties, but occasionally religious groups too have joined in the “fun”. And just to emphasise that on the subject of intolerance, all are equal, these bodies have belonged to all religions: Hindu, Muslim or Christian.
What you therefore see is a pervasive and consistent record of intolerance in the last 50 years or so. If this has gradually increased, it’s because governments — all governments, whether led by the Congress or the BJP or state-level parties — have been too scared of losing political support, and so have shied away from taking firm action against the protesters who take the law into their own hands. If this trend continues, as looks likely, the level of intolerance can only grow.
While the Congress can hardly claim to be holier-than-thou vis-à-vis the BJP, there is a vital difference between the two parties. The BJP and its allies like the Sena are often guilty of commission, while the Congress is generally guilty of omission. This has been illustrated most emphatically by the incendiary remarks of ruling party ministers and MPs in the last 18 months, the “paint the face black” attacks on writers and the moral policing by many of their office bearers. The Congress’ sins of omission have been to turn a blind eye to attacks on freedom of expression and extra-judicial censorship, and a general reluctance to enforce the law by striking hard at trouble-makers.
So, as far as tolerance is concerned, we are between a rock and a hard place. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a wonderful chance to change the narrative by issuing severe diktats to his partymen and supporters to mend their ways. But these diktats need to be brutal in tone, with no scope for ambiguity. This may actually go against Mr Modi’s personal beliefs, but he is pragmatic enough to know that the worldwide negative publicity generated by the current climate of intolerance is harming India’s development. Surely, “development” is Mr Modi’s calling card and everything else should be subservient to it?
The writer is a senior journalist
