Times of India, India
Dec 2 2007

The India we want

2 Dec 2007,
SWAPAN DASGUPTA,TNN

The controversy over Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has forced
Indians to confront a larger question: what sort of an India do we
want to live in? The answers are neither easy nor uncontested.

For a start, there is the weight of inheritance. When minister of
external affairs Pranab Mukherjee invoked ”civilisational heritage”
in Parliament to define the government’s policy of sheltering the
persecuted, he probably had Swami Vivekananda’s Chicago address of
1893 in mind: ”I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught
the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. I am proud to
belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and refugees of
all religions and all nations of the earth.”

>From the time it accorded sanctuary to harried Jews and Parsis, India
has played willing host to the persecuted. Armenians escaping ethnic
cleansing, Chakmas dodging Bangladeshi settlers, Tibetans at odds
with Chinese occupation and Afghan opponents of the Taliban have at
various times made India their home. And this is not to include the
three million people who fled East Pakistan in 1971 to escape army
retribution.

Unlike western powers that knowingly sent back tens of thousands of
Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukranians and Tartars to certain death in
Stalin’s Soviet Union after World War II, India has allowed
compassion to prevail over both realpolitik and even economics. The
present government may be wary of the Dalai Lama but, unlike Nepal,
India is unlikely to forcibly handover a Tibetan asylum seeker to the
Chinese authorities. The information that the government overruled
the Left Front’s objections to give Taslima an Indian visa is
reassuring.

The question of sanctuary apart, the agitation over Taslima’s
writings has thrown up another complex question: what constitutes
legitimate curbs on free expression? The Constitution and other laws
acknowledge that freedom of expression is not total and is tempered
by other considerations, notably decency, harmony and national
security. The administration and the judiciary have been conferred
extraordinary powers to be the arbiters of the common good. The
presumption is that robust commonsense and an innate commitment to
pluralism will guarantee against unreasonable restrictions on the
climate of openness.

To a very large extent, India has maintained an adequate balance
between rival compulsions. Like anywhere else, there was always a
mismatch between ordinary decencies and creative licence. But
conflicts were sought to be settled on the principle of mutual
accommodation and generosity towards contrarian views. Vote-bank
politics complicated matters but odd distortions haven’t made India
less of an open society. We are not Sudan; we don’t jail people for
naming their stuffed toys inappropriately.

Since the ban on Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, a religious police
has arrived with a determination to impose the rules of blasphemy on
a democratic culture. Both Taslima and M F Husain are in the dock for
allegedly defiling a sacred space. Telegenic maulvis are projecting
the controversies as battles between believers and non-believers – a
clever twist that conceals their distaste for the liberal space.
Despite the government’s implicit assurance to extend her visa, the
deportation of Taslima is being plotted with the very same
instruments of judicial harassment that forced Husain into exile.

Artists and writers have traditionally been heretics, questioning
staid conventional wisdom. They neither shape popular thinking nor
are they the soul of democracy; yet they are indispensable to an open
society – a reason why Communists and the Taliban can’t digest their
existence. If a rebel like Taslima is allowed to be judged through
the prism of blasphemy, India will become a much smaller country.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress