Even in the days of Mughal Emperor Akbar, leaders of all religious denominations met in his court and mercilessly and fearlessly argued for their various faiths and religious beliefs. The discussions produced heat but nobody plunged a knife into the throat of any non-believer. Emperor Akbar himself was spiritually and intellectually convinced that a fusion of all faiths would produce a perfect syncretic religious doctrine to merge the best elements of the religions of his empire, and reconcile religious differences. Based on this conviction, he had the spiritual courage to found a new faith — the “Din-e-Ilahi” (Divine Faith). Every sensible Indian Hindu, Muslim or Christian recognises that he was the most glorious emperor that Islam produced for India. Though, I am quite certain that Darul Uloom Deoband would consider Aurangzeb to be superior, unmindful of the fact that his bigotry destroyed the Mughal Empire, and paved the way for the British colonisation of India.
I do not regard Darul Uloom Deoband as an honest interpreter of the real Islam of the Prophet. They believe, for example, that the late Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan was a Khoja and not a Muslim. In this century, they still believe that women must wear a full burqa, from top to toe, and cannot be allowed to drive a car or a bicycle. Yet, with our ignominious government they have won the day.
What happened at the Jaipur Literature Festival during the Republic Day week was a black day for freedom of speech and literary expression, completely exposing our pathetic hypocrisy about democracy in front of the world. The sequence of events lends credence to the claim that there was “match fixing” between the Congress, the Rajasthan government and the extremist groups. The bankrupt Congress election campaign got a flicker of new life when the Darul Uloom Deoband demanded a ban on the visit of Salman Rushdie to the Jaipur Festival. Competitive minority populism, a boom time industry before any election, especially a UP election, has been the main pivot of the Congress election strategy this time, starting with Salman Khurshid’s unconstitutional gaffes on minority reservations in defiance of the Election Code of Conduct and the Constitution. The Jaipur Literature Festival could quite easily be converted into a Muslim minority vote-catching exercise, through a simple strategy said to be masterminded by the election campaign chief, the communal genius Digvijay Singh. The strategy was simple. First allow an invitation to Rushdie, and when the festival starts gushing about his participation, orchestrate a protest by hardliners, and then in connivance with the local police, use every extra legal method and psychological warfare against the organisers to prevent his participation, even on video. Then claim before the Muslim vote banks that they and they alone can protect their interests.
The Establishment could, if it was truly committed to democratic secularism, have provided the event the necessary security and protection to prevent any violence or threats of attack to the participants. Instead, they indulged in needless chicanery with Rushdie and the organisers, and insulted the Muslims of India by treating them as pawns purchasable through cheap gimmickry. They fabricated threats to Rushdie’s life to stop him from attending the festival, in the pathetic hope that this would endear them to Muslim voters and fool them into voting for them; they failed to prevent protests and threats of violence at the venue, which they could very well have, were they inclined; they led a sustained psychological campaign of intimidation against the organisers, who were probably for the first time coming into contact with the notorious law enforcement agencies of India, and spread disinformation and propaganda about their alleged responsibility and culpability in the event of violence or loss of life.
+Truth must learn to collide with error and win its battleRAM JETHMALANI
So Salman Rushdie could not come. When some eminent supporting writers read out harmless lines from The Satanic Verses, they were browbeaten and threatened with arrest for non-existent offences, and hounded out of the country. The possibility of a video link with Rushdie was also not allowed through similar intimidation and arm-twisting about violation of imaginary legal provisions.
ichard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, spoke with his usual mettle. He condemned the cowardly action of the organisers and the state government in keeping Rushdie out of the festival by chicanery and sleight of hand. I recall that Dawkins had been commissioned many years ago by the New Statesman to comment on the sentence of death passed on Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses.
This is what he wrote: “If the advocates of apartheid had their wits about them, they would claim — for all I know truthfully — that allowing mixed races is against their religion. A good part of the opposition would respectfully would tip-toe away. And it is no use claiming that this is an unfair parallel because apartheid has no rational justification. The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe ‘religious liberty’.”
Vikram Seth hit the nail on the head when he stated that the Jaipur Literature Festival imbroglio was “because of power, politics and misuse of religion”, and that it was ironic that this happened just a few days before the Republic Day. He sums it up neatly when he asks, “Where is liberty today? Yes, the liberty of faith and worship is alive and kicking. But what about the liberty of thought, expression and belief? Don’t they equally make up who we are and what constitutes us as a nation?”
It is true that by the Common Law of England blasphemy was once a punishable crime, but it provided no protection to non-Christian religions. In 1985, the Law Commission of England recommended that this be abolished and after 2008 it no longer disgraces the Statue Book. However, since the middle of the 19th century, it was no longer blasphemous to make a sober reasoned attack on any doctrine of Christianity; only scurrilous vilification was punishable. It must be noted that Lord Macaulay did not include it in the Indian Penal Code. Sections 295 and 295 A of the IPC cannot be equated with the “blasphemy” of the English Common Law. They deal with “injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class,” and “deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs”, respectively. Section 153 A was a later Indian addition.
The participants at the Jaipur festival were not doing and neither intended to do anything that attracted Section 295 or 295 A of the IPC. The Rajasthan government enforced them nevertheless by a dishonest ruse. It is sad that even in our democratic, secular structure, the Congress with its lust for minority vote, succeeded in trumping the Constitution of India and the citizens’ right of free speech. However, what it could not succeed in doing was expunging the overshadowing and dominating presence of Salman Rushdie from the Jaipur Literature Festival. He remained the festival VIP throughout.
This is the second of a two-part article on Salman Rushdie and the Jaipur Literature Festival