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12. Book banning
12.1. Banning all that hurts
In the same week when the Kar Seva was due, the speaker
of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, H.K. Srivastava, made a
proposal to attack the problem of communal friction at
what he apparently considered its roots. He wanted all
press writing about the historical origins of temples and
mosques to be banned. And it is true : the discussion of
the origins of some mosques is fundamental to this whole
issue. For, it reveals the actual workings of an
ideology that, more than anything else, has caused
countless violent confrontations between the religious
communities.
However, after the news of this proposal came, nothing
was heard of it anymore. I surmise that the proposal was
found to be juridically indefensible in that it
effectively would prohibit history-writing, a recognized
academic discipline of which journalism makes use
routinely.193 And I surmise that it was judged
politically undesirable because it would
counterproductively draw attention to this explosive
topic.
The real target of this proposal was the book Hindu
Temples : What Happened to Them (A Preliminary Survey) by
Arun Shourie and others. In the same period, there has
been a proposal in the Rajya Sabha by Congress MP Mrs.
Aliya to get this book banned, in spite of the fact that
about half the book had already legally been published in
different papers. The police dropped by the printer and
later the publisher to get a few copies for closer
inspection.
The really hard part of the book is a list of some two
thousand Muslim buildings that have been built on places
of previous Hindu worship (and for which many more than
two thousand temples have been demolished). In spite of
the threat of a ban on raking up this discussion, on
November 18 the U.P. daily Pioneer has published a review
of this book, by Vimal Yogi Tiwari, which I reproduce
here in full.
The book is a collection of articles written by Arun
Shourie, dr. Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi, Ram Swarup and
Sita Ram Goel. It is perhaps the first endeavor on the
part of scholars to dig from the graveyard of history
the identity of some 2000 temples destroyed by the Muslim
invaders and rulers. The book is not an exercise in
rewriting history, but is an effort to present the facts
and give a bird's eye view of the truth hitherto unknown.
The book has as its subject matter not only the Ram
temple at Ayodhya but nearly 2000 temples throughout the
length and breadth of the country which met the same
fate as that of Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi.
The revealing articles provide the readers with an
insight into the history and nature of the problem the
Hindus have faced and continue to face. The list of
temples destroyed or desecrated helps to nail down the
big lie, propagated by some historians, that Muslim
raiders and rulers plundered temples only for the wealth.
There may have been a few rich temples, otherwise most
temples must have been as poor in the past as they are
now.
The book does not furnish great details for the simple
reason that it is just a preliminary survey. Yet the
facts are very revealing and go a long way in clearing
the clouds of doubts which have been purposely woven
around the facts. It lists some 2000 sites where temples
were destroyed and mosques were built. Not only were the
temples destroyed but even their material was used in
constructing mosques at those places. This was plainly
done to hurt the sentiments of the Hindus.
"History is not just an exercise in collection of facts
though, of course, facts have to be carefully sifted and
authenticated as Mr. Sita Ram Goel has done in this case.
History is primarily an exercise in self-awareness and
reinforcement of that self-awareness. Such a historical
assessment has by and large been missing in our country.
This at once gives special significance to this book."
By December 1990, a ban on this kind of historical
writing seemed out of the question. By that time,
especially after Indian Express published dr. S.P.
Gupta's convincing article on the archaeological findings
in Ayodhya, both prime minister Chandra Shekhar and
Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi said the archaeologists
should have a say in the Ram Janmabhoomi issue.
Therefore, at least that one contentious Muslim
construction was open to scrutiny.
Still, just like Doordarshan censors out all news that
could harm harmony, many secularists would like to ban
all writings attributing any systematic misbehaviour to
one community (except the Hindus, who can be unreservedly
accused of instituting untouchability, forcing widows on
the funeral pyre, and worse even, being communal). On top
of that, they also want books that might hurt the
feelings of a community, to be banned.
The best known case where this was effectively done is,
of course, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. This book
was banned in India immediately after its publication in
England, as part of a deal with the Babri Masjid Action
Committee to call off a Muslim march on Ayodhya. The book
makes fun of a fictional character, Mahound (and of other
people as well). However, the writer's contention that
the story was entirely imaginative and fictional, is not
sustainable. Mahound was a deformed version of Mohammed's
name, used in Christian polemical writings against the
pseudo-prophet.194 The women in a
brothel described in
the book, bear the names of the wives of the historical
Mohammed, in order to attract clients. There is just no
denying that the writer is making gory fun of the
Prophet.
Nevertheless, is that a reason for banning the book? When
some Hindus wanted a ban on the TV serial Tipu Sultan,
for its glorifying and whitewashing a cruel fanatic who
had destroyed temples and forcibly converted people, this
was dubbed bigoted. Even the fact that it contained
blatant distortion of history (which with some common
sense can easily be distinguished from mere dramatization
of history), was not counted as a sufficient reason for
keeping it off the TV screen (which would still not be a
wholesale ban). When some Hindus wanted a ban on
Ambedkar's Riddles in Hinduism, for its pathetic
allegations against Rama and Krishna, this was termed
Hindu chauvinism. Even the protest against the
republication of the book with state funds was to no
avail, and the book has been ceremoniously presented to
foreign visitors in the Ambedkar centenary year including
Nelson Mandela. So, Hindu demands for a ban are to be
ignored.
But Muslim demands to curb free speech and freedom of
artistic expression, should they be conceded? According
to secularists, yes. Khushwant Singh defended the ban.195
M.J. Akbar defended the ban. Even Girilal Jain, then
editor of the Times of India, defended the ban, arguing
that otherwise it would only being a lot of riots and
damage to property. The weekly Sunday published excerpts
from the book, and was condemned for that by the Press
Council, in November 1990. It consequently offered
apologies to any readers who might have felt hurt.196
When the death sentence against Rushdie was pronounced by
the Ayotollah Khomeini, on February 14, 1989, many
secularists advised Rushdie to apologize and to withdraw
the book. When people got killed in demonstrations
against the book, the secularists blamed Rushdie, not the
BMAC, not Khomeini, not their own implicit or explicit
support to the anti-Rushdie agitation. And many
secularists of the not too intelligent variety have tried
to downplay the affair by arguing totally beside the
point that the ban didn't matter much, since hardly any
Indian can read Rushdie's English.197
The good thing discussion on Islam going. Especially
Khomeini's fatwa made people ask: is this really Islamic
? Of course, some liberals, Muslim and non-Muslim, came
out to say that the death sentence against Rushdie was
un-Islamic. You know, the tolerance which Islam
inculcates, doesn't allow this, etc. But their
misgivings about the fatwa were put to rest by competent
authorities.
Shortly after the debate was sparked, the Islamic
Research Foundation published two Urdu books defending
the fatwa : "JNU professor Maulana Mohsin Usmani Nadwi's
Ahaanat-i Rasool ki Sazaa (Punishment for Criticizing the
Prophet), and Maulana Majid Ali Khan's Muqaddas-i Ayat
(The Sacred Verses). Their point was very simple : in
this case there is absolutely no scope for doubt, Rushdie
must be killed. Firstly, he is effectively an apostate.
In fact, he himself has said that much. He once described
how he decided to break with Islam. He was still a
teenager, and he went to a fast-food place and ordered
pork pie and a portion of shrimps. Were they tasty! In a
statement written months after the fatwa, from his
Muslim". For him that doesn't mean he is an apostate, for
he was made a Muslim as a child, and that doesn't count.
But according to the learned Urdu authors, Rushdie is
quite certainly an apostate. And for apostasy there is,
on the authority of the Sahih Bukhari Hadis, only one
punishment: death.
But Rushdie has done far worse than just leave Islam. He
has insulted the Prophet. Not that any of those Imans and
Mullahs and Ayotollahs can be really sure of their
allegation, they haven't read the book. But, in
parenthesis, even secularists puke venom over books they
haven't read. Mani Shankar Aiyar totally condemns one of
Arun Shourie's books, and then goes on to declare that he
has decided not to read it : "Shourie gave the final
touches to the manuscript of his book on Islam, a work so
vicious and perverted that every English speaking Muslim
I know was outraged... I decided then to show my
solidarity with secularism by not reading the book."198
As the late Ayatollah used to say: "It is not necessary
to jump into the dungheap in order to know that it
stinks."
Rushdie has insulted the Prophet. And the Hadis say very
clearly what the Prophet's line of action (forever to be
emulated by every Muslim) is in such case. There were
some poets and poetesses making sarcastic songs about him
and criticizing his pretense of being God's messenger.
Did the Prophet bring them to a court where they were
given a chance to recant (as some legalistic Muslims say
is the true Islamic procedure)? No, they were just
mortally stabbed in the still of the night, each of them.
They were unceremoniously assassinated at the personal
orders of the Prophet. Therefore, our Urdu-writing
Maulanas correctly conclude that it is perfectly Islamic
to kill Rushdie.199
Indians may recall that such death sentences against
people who have insulted the Prophet, have been carried
out earlier this century: against Arya Samaj
propagandists Swami Shraddhananda and Pandit Lekh Ram,
and against Rajpal, the writer of the Rangila Rasool
(more or less Playboy Mohammed). This was a book on the
sex life of the Prophet and his wives, certainly
insulting, and as a criticism of Islam rather beside the
point, but understandable as a reaction against a similar
vilifying Muslim pamphlet about Sita. These murders had
the desired effect, for the Arya Samaj became less
straightforward in its criticism of the Prophet.
Rushdie, being a mere human being, and with no belief in
eternal reward for martyrs, chose at long last to do that
which seemed the best way of getting back into normal
life: kneeling, renouncing the blasphemous passages in
his book, and embracing Islam. On December 24, 1990, he
came out with a statement: "I do not agree with any
statement in my novel The Satanic Verses, uttered by any
of its characters, who insult the Prophet Mohammed or who
cast aspersions upon Islam or upon the authenticity of
the Holy Quran or who reject the divinity of Allah".
Moreover, he promised "to witness that there is no god
but Allah and that Mohammed is his last Prophet", to
prevent the publication of further translations, not to
bring out the paperback version, and "to continue to work
for a better understanding of Islam in the world, as I
have always attempted to do in the past".
This turn in the Rushdie affair was partly the work of
Hesham El-Essawy, described as a Muslim moderate, who is
chairman of the Islamic Society for the Promotion of
Religious Tolerance. Well, it is a telling illustration
of religious tolerance in Islam: arranging for
someone's embracing Islam in order to save his life. A
perfect illustration of the general rule that Islam has
mostly collected its converts by means of threats.
However, the less moderate Muslim were not satisfied even
when they saw Rushdie crawling in the dust before them.
An Iranian paper and some Iranian clerics declared that
the Ayatollah's fatwa is irrevocable. The British Muslim
leader Kalim Siddiqui called on Iran to come and kidnap
Rushdie and take him to trial in an Iranian Islamic
court.
In a reaction to Rushdie's conversion, the Delhi Iranian
Embassy Press Attache S.H. Davisbara describes how Islam
opposes slander and backing, and asks:"How can a religion
which is so strict in safeguarding the reputation of
ordinary people allow a Salman Rushdie to cast aspersions
against its own Prophet? And if anybody does so
deliberately, as the ill-fated author did, the punishment
according to Islam is nothing but death. It is for the
same reason that no Islamic scholar objected when Imam
Khomeini ordained that Salman Rushdie should be killed.
The fatwa, as it involves an extremely sensitive issue
like the personality of the exalted Prophet himself, is
by its very nature irrevocable. Recently the successor of
Imam Khomeini, Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei, also has
reiterated that the fatwa cannot be withdrawn. It should
also be pointed out that fatwa do not lapse with the
passing away of the issuing authority. It is punishment
for a crime already committed and a warning to other
potential wrongdoers."200
The Muslim Youth Movement of Britain also rejected any
plea for pardoning Rushdie, unless some demands were met.
Remark, the threat to kill Rushdie is not linked to his
horrible guilt (and therefore irrevocable, as for Iran),
nor to his apology and conversion (and therefore to be
revoked), but merely to the fulfilling of demands.
Promising to lift a death threat in return for
concessions : this is pure terrorism. The demands were
the following :
- official recognition that Islam is the
largest practicing religion in the U.K. (this is correct
if Christianity is considered split into its different
denominations);
- withdrawal of all copies of the book
from the bookshops; 3) a pledge from Rushdie that his
book will not be produced anywhere in any manner ; 4)
enactment of a law that will protect Muslim religious
sensibilities from future insults and abuse.
Mohammed Siddique, the president of the Movement,
declared :"Rushdie is misguided if he believes that his
'goodwill gesture' will appease Muslims. Until Muslim
demands are met, there can be no peace."201
Remark that a
remark how a Muslim clearly spells out the Muslim
attitude towards co-existence : "Until Muslim demands are
met, there can be no peace." Do you need more
explanation for the communal riots in India ?
One secularist comment deserves mention. The poison is
in a very little corner. G.H. Jansen, Times of India
correspondent in Nicosia, writes that Rushdie's
conversion "must have been very disappointing to the
literati-glitterati of New York and London who so enjoyed
springing to arms in defense of Rushdie and of
'freedom'."202 What are those quote marks
doing there
around the word freedom? It seems Mr. Jansen doesn't
want the right to skepsis regarding Mohammed to be
described as freedom. The bootlickers of Islamic
terrorism are treading in the footsteps of the apologists
of Communism, who use to dismiss freedom (whenever
someone drew attention to its non-existence in Communist
countries) as bourgeois-liberalist illusion.
12.2 Banning criticism of Islam
Rushdie's book is by far not the only one that has been
banned in the secular republic of India, on pretext of
its hurting the feelings of a religious community. Let
us mention first of all that, to create a semblance of
impartiality, Rushdie's book was sent into exile in the
company of a film that might have hurt the feelings of
the Christian community : Martin Scorsese's The Last
Temptation of Christ, a film that attributes normal human
sexual desires to Jesus. Not that any Christian had
asked for this ban, but that semblance had to be
created.203
In recent years, several books criticizing Islam and its
role in Indian history have been banned. One of them is
Richard Maxwell Eaton's Sufis of Bijapur 1300-1700
(Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India), published in
Princeton 1978, which debunks the pious fable that the
Sufis were bringers of a tolerant and refined Islam and
the pioneers of a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism.
Another is Arvind Ghosh's The Koran and the Kafir (all
that an infidel needs to know about the Koran but is
embarrassed to ask), published in Houston. This book
chiefly groups Quranic verses topic-wise, to give a ready
reference overview of Mohammed's teachings. Then there
is the Australian writer Colin Maine's booklet The Dead
Hand of Islam. It consists of little more than literal
quotes from Islamic Scripture. Nonetheless, to appease
Muslim pressure, the publisher is being prosecuted, and
the book has been banned. Incidentally, there was
absolutely no trouble concerning his similar book on
Christianity, The Bible : What It Says.
Banning a book for containing Quranic verses...Is this a
first step towards banning the Quran ? And that,
moreover, at the Muslims' own instigation ? Let's face it
: the objectionable lines in Colin Maine's book, for
which it was banned, also appear in the Quran and the
surrounding Islamic canon. Why should Mohammed's big
book be more equal that Mr. Maine's booklet ?
A head-on call to judge the Quran by the same standards
as other books, was the essence of Chandmal Chopra's
famous Quran petition. Mr. Chopra had filed a writ
petition in the Calcutta High Court in March 1985,
seeking a ban on a book which incites to hatred and
struggle against a group of people on the basis of
religion. His petition lists several dozens of quotes
from the objectionable book, unambiguously pouring
contempt on, and inciting war against, a group of
religious communities : the non-Muslims. It also quotes
the book as pouring contempt on religious figures sacred
to other communities, notably Jesus and Mary. The book
is, of course, the Quran.
The petition was dismissed by justice B.C. Basak in May
1985. A central point in the verdict was, that Courts
cannot interfere with religious beliefs like the sacred
and divine character of the Quran (in marked contrast to
the secularist line on Ram Janmabhoomi, where Hindus are
asked to allow Courts to overrule their religious
beliefs). In 1986, a book was published containing the
court documents, with a scholarly introduction by Sita
Ram Goel.204 The introduction says that of course
no ban
on the Quran was ever intended (since Scriptures and
Classics are kept out of the purview of censorship
legislation, there was no chance of obtaining such a
ban), but that attention had to be drawn on the fact
that, while some allegedly provocative books are being
banned, a book is widely circulated and studied
intensively in thousands of state-subsidized
institutions, which makes far more explicit calls to
communal strife than any banned book so far has done.
They solution is not to ban the Quran, but on the
contrary to honestly read it and judge it for yourself in
the light of reason.
For this book, the Calcutta police arrested Mr. Chandmal
Chopra on August 31, 1987, accusing him of entering into
a criminal conspiracy with Mr. Sita Ram Goel for
publishing the book with the deliberate intention of
provoking communal strife in Calcutta and West Bengal.
His bail application was opposed vehemently by the
public prosecutor. He was kept in police custody till
September 8, so that the conspiracy could be
"investigated without his coming in the way". Mr. Goel,
"a co-accused still at large", applied for anticipatory
bail. This was first postponed and then rejected. Mr.
Goel had to abscond for a while to avoid being dragged to
the Calcutta jail.
While the verdict on the Quran petition had overstepped
secular limits by declaring the Quran a revealed
scripture (which is a claim beyond secular proof), and by
taking great pains to prove that Islam is a religion of
peace, now the police charge-sheet distorted the facts by
calling the book's academic language malicious and
provocative. At any rate, Mr. Chopra and Mr. Goel got
caught in a long-drawn-out legal battle, though the book
itself was not banned.
Perhaps the most revealing story of a book banning
concerns Ram Swarup's Understanding Islam through Hadis.
This is an annotated topic-wise summary of the Sahih
Muslim, one of the two most authoritative traditions
concerning the words and deeds of the Prophet. The book
was first published in the U.S., a secular and multi-
religious country. In India also, the English original
circulated for some time without inviting any
governmental attention. But when the Hindi translation
was nearing publication, something went wrong.
The book was at the binders' workshop, which was situated
in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood. A neighbour
must have spread the word that a book scrutinizing the
Prophet was about to be offered for sale in the
bookstores. The one chance for preventing the book from
reaching any readers, was now. Suddenly, a crowd of
people gathered around the binders' shop. They demanded
the entire stock of the objectionable book to be handed
over for burning, otherwise they would set the place
itself on fire.
The police was called. They made no attempt to disperse
the crowd. Instead they summoned and arrested the
printer and the publisher, and they made sure that
everyone got an eyeful of the arrest show. They also
confiscated the stock of the contentious book. Having
thus placated the crowd, they released the printer and
the publisher after 18 hours, but the copies of the book
were not returned. They have not been heard of since,
even though the book was not officially banned.
In deference to a plaint by the Muslim neighbour, the
Delhi administration has had two meetings in 1988-89, to
consider whether the book was objectionable. Twice it
was cleared. But the pressure for banning it was kept
up.
The Jama'at-i Islami paper Radiance, on the front page of
its June 17, 1990 issue, carried a big caption : "Is this
book not objectionable ?" Presenting some excerpts from
Ram Swarup's book, it warned its readers :"Most parts of
the book are concoctions and distortions as well as
defamatory and derogatory to the Holy Prophet Mohammed
(peace be upon him)". What concoctions and distortions ?
The same front page quotes four of these objectionable
distortions. Among them :"Mohammed saw Zaynab in half-
naked condition and he fell in love with her."205 Well,
maybe this is objectionable. But it is not Ram Swarup's
concoction or distortion. The source is the Sahih
Muslim, one of the two most authoritative Hadis
collections. Ram Swarup has here and there added some
sober and factual comment, but at no point does he come
in the way of the Hadis text speaking for itself.
If the Jama'at-i Islami wants to ban such information
from being circulated in India, it should seek a ban on
the Hadis as well as the Quran. If the Quran and the
Hadis are allowed to be read and sold, we should all
have the right to read them, shouldn't we ? And since
there is no copyright problem, we can even publish
scholarly selections from them. The Jama'at-i Islami
has, in all the years that the book has been available in
bookstores, not sought a ban on Vinoba Bhave's The
Essence of the Quran, a syrupy selection of all the nice
and harmless verses from the Quran.
But no, the Jama'at as well as other Muslim groups, and
personalities close to the Janata Dal (either faction),
have sought a ban on Ram Swarup's book. In September
1990, a court ruled that the book was unobjectionable.
But the pressure continued. And come December 1990, a
third meeting of Delhi administration officials revoked
the two earlier decisions, and issued a ban on the book.
It forfeited all the copies published or to be published
in the future, on the ground that the book deliberately
and maliciously outrage "the religious feelings of the
Muslims by insulting their religion and their religious
beliefs". For the semblance of even-handedness, it also
banned a non-descript book on Ramayana and Mahabharata,
and took care to put the latter ban first in its official
notification. No one is fooled, though.
Arun Shourie has commented : "The forfeiture is exactly
the sort of thing which has landed us where we are :
where intellectual inquiry is shut out ; where our
tradition are not examined and reassessed ; and where as
a consequence there is no dialogue."206
An interesting fact about the Muslim reaction against Ram
Swarup's book, is that Muslim leaders like the Radiance
editor expect to get away with the lie that the
embarrassing but faithful quotations from Scripture are
really concoctions and distortions. It seems that the
common Muslims do not know the Quran and Hadis from A to
Z. Many of them readily believe their leaders'
contention that Mohammed was above the behaviour ascribed
to him by the Hadis and the orthodox biographies. Their
reverence is directed towards a mythical Mohammed, who is
different in character from the historical Mohammed as he
appears through the Islamic Scriptures. And this
mythical Mohammed of popular Muslim belief is slandered
when the Scriptural testimonies about the historical
Mohammed are quoted.
The same discrepancy between the orthodox historical
Mohammed, and the mythical Mohammed of popular belief was
at the core of an earlier book-banning episode, dating
back to the fifties. Muslims had staged a riot against
the book Muhammad, by Thomas and Thomas, published by the
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay. The Nehru government
rewarded them for their agitation by banning the
book.207 According to the rioters, or their leaders,
the
book had defamed the Prophet.
The book narrated how Mohammed had become frightened when
the angel Gabriel came with the first revelation from
Allah. He wanted to know whether he had been visited by
an angel or a devil. He told Khadija what had happened,
and she asked him to tell her as soon as Gabriel would
visit him next. He did so. Khadija bared her right and
her left thigh turn by turn, and asked Mohammed to sit on
each and see if the visitor stayed. Next Khadija bared
her bosom and asked Mohammed to sit in her lap. Finally,
she asked him to have sexual intercourse with her. Now
the visitor disappeared. Khadija congratulated Mohammed
that his visitor was an angel and not a devil.
This story was by no means concoction and distortion.
One can read it in the orthodox biographies of Mohammed.
Ibn Ishaq, his first biographer, relates :
Ismail b. Ibn Hakim, a freedman of the family of al-
Zubayr, told me on Khadija's authority that she said to
the apostle of God : O son of my uncle, are you able to
tell me about your visitant, when he comes to you? He
replied that he could, and she asked him to tell her when
he came. So when Gabriel came to him, as he was wont,
the apostle said to Khadija : "This is Gabriel who has
just come to me". Get up, O son of my uncle, she said,
and sit by my left thigh. The apostle did so, and she
said :"Then turn around and sit on my right thigh". He
did so, and she said :'Can you see him ?' And he replied
:No. She said :'O son of my uncle, rejoice, and be of
good heart, by God he is an angel and not a satan.'
"I told Abdullah b. Hasan this story and he said :'I
heard my mother Fatima, daughter of Husayn, talking about
this tradition from Khadija, but as I heard it, she made
the apostle of God come inside her shift, and thereupon
Gabriel departed, and she said tot he apostle of God
:'This is verily an angel and not a satan.'"
These two paragraphs can be read by anyone on p.107 of
The Life of Muhammad, published by the prestigious Oxford
University Press, Karachi (first time in 1955, reprinted
seven times till 1987). The book is an English
translation by A. Guillaume of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul
Allah (Biography of Allah's Prophet). The authors of the
banned book had not distorted or concocted anything.
Moreover, they bore no malice towards Mohammed. On the
contrary, they were endorsing, after the orthodox Muslim
fashion, that this episode proved the divine source of
Mohammed's revelations.
The average Muslim does not know what is written in the
Islamic Scriptures. He shares the normal moral notions
of his Hindu neighbours, and assumes that the Holy
Prophet must have excelled in those virtues which he
himself values. The Muslim politicians and theologians
exploit his ignorance and mobilize him for street riots
by ascribing to enemies of Islam what is in fact
contained in their own Scriptures. And all this is
being condoned by the secularists, who turn a blind eye
to this deception and misguidance of the common Muslim,
and to the attacks of Muslim politicians and theologians
against out freedom of inquiry.
12.3 Secularism and book-banning
When Ram Swarup's book on the Hadis was banned under
pressure from Muslim fanatics, there was of course not a
word of protest from the secularists. If in secular
Europe, the pope speaks out against the Scorsese film on
Jesus' temptations, without even trying to pressure
governments to ban it, the European secularist press, as
if to pre-empt any suggestion of a ban, makes it quite
clear that there can be no question of anyhow restricting
the public's access to the film.208 If people don't
want
to see it, let them not go see it. That is their
freedom, like it is other people's freedom to go see it,
unimpeded by papal or governmental bans.
While secularism is a European import into India, I just
don't recognize the secularism practiced in India. It
so happens that I have grown up in one of the first
countries ever to adopt a fully secular Constitution,
Belgium. In my country, we think that secularism implies
the freedom to learn, teach and practice a religion, and
also the freedom to reject, abandon and criticize a
religion. But in India, those who call themselves
secular, combine a Stalinist propensity to ban
religious education in (non-minority) schools, or to ban
religious TV serials, with a bigoted propensity to ban
books that take a critical look at religions. In both
cases, they arrogate the right to decide for others what
they can see and read, and what not.
We think that secularism means : let a hundred flowers
bloom, let a hundred ideas compete. But in India, the
favourite slogan of secularists is : Ban it ! Listen
here, friends : banning for secularism is like f...ing
for virginity.
We think we have a right to know about every aspect of
life, including religion ; whether we want to practice it
or to reject it, we have a right to full access to
information. But in India, secularists are not satisfied
with the freedom for themselves to know and find out :
they support demands for the freedom to limit others'
freedom of access to books and films. And their
justification is that these books and films might hurt
feelings and thus disturb communal harmony. Indian
secularists declare that a critical or blasphemous book
should be banned, because it may offend someone's
feelings. Genuine secularists oppose bans because a ban
offends our intelligence. And offended it is, by these
inflated book-banners who claim the right to decide for
us what we can read and what not.
In Europe, we have come to protect our constitutional
freedoms, and hardly any bigot will even think of either
seriously campaigning for a ban or using violence to
punish people who show interest in the material to which
he objects. All right, there was a bomb attack on a movie
theater showing the Temptation film. But the culprit was
simply caught and put in jail. Nobody has suggested that
we should ban the film in order to avert violence. If
at all there is a threat of violence, then there are no
two opinions about the duty of the state to uphold the
constitutional freedoms, and to prevent terror-mongers
from dictating who can see what.209
In India, by contrast, the secularists are systematically
on the side of the terror-mongers. They wee the first to
support the latter's demand for banning The Satanic
Verses. Terror-threatening bigots said :Ban this book,
or else... And secularists echoed :"We must ban this
book, or else..."
But Indian secularists not only side with armed bigots ;
there is also the Stalinist streak in them (incidentally,
Stalin was an ex-seminarian). They not only want to ban
what is objectionable and hurting to followers of some
religions : they also want to ban what is sacred or at
least valuable and uplifting to members of another
religion.
A great many secularists have blamed the Ramayana and
Mahabharata TV serials for the "rise of Hindu
communalism" and for the Ram hysteria.210 Of course,
Ram was never that far away from the ordinary Hindu's
consciousness, that the TV serials could have made much
of a difference. Through Tulsidas' Hindi Ramayana, the
common people in North India are thoroughly familiar with
Ram, Sita and Hanuman, and they don't need TV serials to
remind them. For the urban elites, it may have been a
reminder of the culture they are in danger of forgetting.
But for those secularists who have been completely
alienated from their culture, these TV serials were
anathema, and so, of course, they wanted them to be
banned.
Not that a ban would have been in the interest of peace
and communal harmony. While most Hindus had no need of
this TV serial in order to keep up their devotion for
Ram, once it was there they avidly watched it. And they
would have been very angry if its showing had been
suspended. It might have led to some outbursts, who
knows. At any rate, if you ban books in order to pre-
empt Muslim riots, you should take the possibility of
Hindus starting riots also into account (or do our
secularists subscribe to the received wisdom that Hindus
are less riot-prone?). But that consideration for Hindus
taking to the streets was not too prominent in the pleas
for a ban on the TV serials. And they could have argued,
of course, that such a Hindu reaction would have been the
lesser evil, as the showing of the serials has been
instrumental in the Ram Mandir campaign, which has
encountered (triggered) enough violence. But I think
it is time the secularists come out and admit that a ban
on Hindu TV serials is dear to them not because of the
law and order situation, but because of the fact that
these serials remind Hindus of Hindu culture.
The basic objection of the secularists against the
Ramayana and Mahabharata, both in their written and in
their film versions, is that they are religious
Scriptures of one community, and therefore their reading
or showing should be limited to places and channels of
Hindus only ; no state-owned TV station should be open
for such communal stories.
Having attended some press conferences in Delhi, and
having talked to some press people here, as well as to
other classes of intellectuals, I am amazed to see the
crudeness in these secularists' understanding of
religious and cultural matters. Most of them are nice
and well-meaning people, but they are completely
illiterate. They just don't have the education, or the
power of discrimination, to distinguish between cultural
epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana, and religious
Scriptures.
If at all you want a point of comparison in other
cultures, perhaps Homer's epics Ilias and Odyssea might
do : that was a common heritage of the Greek people, but
not a revealed Scripture containing dogmas. Or, for a
more provocative but quite accurate comparison, a good
equivalent of the role of the Ramayana in Hindu culture
is the role of the same Ramayana in Indonesian culture.
The question has been put to the secularists several
times, but they have not come up with any trace of an
answer : if Indonesian Muslims can venerate Ram, why
can't Indian Muslims, as well as Indian secularists, do
the same ? The well-informed Indonesians don't object to
Ram as a communal character, as a god of one religion
and therefore anathema to others.
Another non-Hindu tribe that has given a warm reception
to the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, are the European
film and theater audiences. Between 1985 and 1990, these
epics have found their way to the public in Europe. They
have been top of the bill at the Avignon theater
festival. Peter Brooke's Mahabharata, though perhaps not
sufficiently true to the original for Indian purists, has
been applauded by the viewers, and has been shown on many
TV stations also. The BBC has even broadcast the Hindi
TV serials. While the comments on certain artistic
aspects of these realisations may vary, the reviewers
were unanimously impressed by the contents of these
epics.
The secularists in India like to portray themselves as
the bringers of civilisation from the West to
obscurantist India. Well, let them not fool anybody. In
Europe, not one single critic has come up with the idea
that these epics could somehow be communal. On the
contrary, they have all stressed that these stories are
about universal human values. Of course, with that quite
proper assessment of these epics, any kind of a call for
a ban on these film versions of the epics was totally
unthinkable.
Incidentally, it is time for me to reply to those
indignated readers who might ask : who is this foreigner
to comment on our affairs ? Well, since secularism was
imported into India from Europe, and is now held up as
India's only salvation by an Indian-born colonial elite,
I do think I am competent to comment on what these West-
oriented civilizers are making of our precious heritage
of secularism. They are making a mess of it.
As I have pointed out in chapter 10.4, there can be no
correct understanding of secularism without a correct
understanding of religion. If people are so illiterate
as to treat the Ramayana as a religious Scripture (by
which they imply dogma, authoritarian claims of
infallibility, non-humanism) then their understanding of
both religion and secularism cannot but be defective. It
is this conceptual confusion that keeps their conscience
undisturbed when they shield fanatics in the name of
tolerance and defend book-banning in the name of
secularism.
12.4. Banning religion from school
Apart from the subtle point that the Indian secularists
lack the conceptual subtlety to do justice to either
religion or secularism, there is a far more crude way in
which they mess up the precious doctrine of secularism.
It is this : they themselves are communalists. The
secularists do not hesitate to support policies of
discrimination on the basis of religion.
One of these is the discrimination against Hinduism in
the matter of educational institutions. This is ban of
far greater weight than all the bans on books, films and
Verses together.
According to Bipan Chandra's classical definition,
communalism is the belief that people who share the same
religion, thereby also have common secular interests.211
An active communalism not only postulates that people who
share a religion, have common secular interests ; it also
grants them (or withholds from them) secular rights on
the basis of their belonging to a given religion.
Therefore, it is certainly a case of active communalism
when we find the secular Constitution of India (which
limits its own authority to secular matters), in its
Article 30, guaranteeing the secular right to set up
educational institutions of their choice exclusively to
minorities, including religious minorities. This case of
discrimination against the majority community is
outright communalism.212 Yet, no secularist raises
his
voice against it. On the contrary, when pressed for an
opinion, they support it.
When Sadhvi Ritambhara, a pro-Janmabhoomi campaigner (a
cassette of a speech of hers was banned), tells an
interviewer: "Politicians appease [the Muslims] at every
step, while the Hindus are taken for granted. We can't
even teach our children our religion in schools", the
interviewer replies : "But this is a secular nation".213
No, in these circumstances it is not a secular nation.
Either secular means anti-religious, and then all
religion teaching should be banned from schools, also
that of the minorities.214 Or secular means
religiously
neutral, and then the state should leave all the
religions the same right to impart religious education in
schools, including the Hindus. Passing off this communal
discrimination as secular, is a very crude lie indeed.
In Belgium, the secular Constitution gives any religious
(or other215) community the right to found its
own
schools, which will be recognized and subsidized if they
satisfy certain legal norms. They can impart religious
education within the regular class hours. In state
schools, the curriculum comprises two hours per week of
religious or moral education, with a choice between non-
religious morality, or Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or
Islamic religion. The secular philosophy behind this, is
that it is not the duty of the state to either promote or
eradicate religion. The state should be neutral and
limit itself to regulating the genuine demand from the
public for a reasonable dosis of the religious education
of its own choice. A religiously neutral state : that is
secularism.
But in India, the secularists intend to put up an all-out
fight the day Hindus take steps to abolish this
constitutional discrimination against them. In my
opinion, if the Hindus want to fruitfully use the energy
which the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign has generated, they
should direct it first of all to restoring justice in the
field of education.
Both the Arya Samaj and the Ramakrishna Mission have been
fighting legal battles for recognition as non-Hindu
sects, in order to safeguard their educational
institutions. Their lawyers have thought up very
specious doctrinal difference between the organization
they represented, and Hinduism. Thus, the Ramakrishna
Mission has been arguing that they have another God
than the Hindus. Their great saint Ramakrishna was
always perfectly satisfied with Kali, like millions of
Hindus. Their founder, Swami Vivekananda, was the
representative of Hinduism in the world parliament of
religions in Chicago 1893. "Say with pride : we are
Hindus", that is what Vivekananda said. Forsaking its
roots, the Ramakrishna Mission goes begging in Court for
a non-Hindu status.216
It may well be that both the Arya Samaj and the
Ramakrishna Mission have been afflicted with the general
shame of and depreciation for everything Hindu. Behind
their Court plea for a non-Hindu status may well be a
theological shift away from Hinduism (although they would
have to make it a very big shift, because very diverse
sects exist within the Hindu fold).
Nevertheless, their official apology to their Hindu
supporters is that minority status is the only way to
escape government take-overs of their schools.
Especially the CPM government in West Bengal has been
ruthlessly using the constitutional discrimination
against Hindu schools for justifying take-overs. But
have these organizations appealed to Hindu society to
come to their rescue? Have they launched, or asked
politicians to launch, a campaign to end this
discrimination ? Apparently they have absolutely no
confidence in the willingness of Hindu politicians to
take up even an impeccably justified Hindu cause.
So, I think Hindu politicians should make this their
number one issue. Article 30 is far more unjust and
harmful than Article 370 which gives a special status to
Kashmir. You can better lose that piece of territory
than to lose your next generations. It is also a good
exercise in separating the genuine secularists from the
Hindu-baiters. The demand for equality between all
religions in education merely seeks the abrogation of an
injustice against the Hindus, so it cannot be construed
as directed against the minorities. It wants to stop
a blatant case of discrimination on the basis of
religion, so everyone who comes out in support of the
present form of Article 30, will stand exposed as a
supporter of communal discrimination. It is truly a
watershed issue.
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