Time to come out strongly in defence of secularism and freedom of expression

From: The Times of India

Comment

Take a stand

January 19, 2012

Freedom of expression is simply the flip side of the coin of freedom of religion. And the Indian political establishment, constitutionally bound to be secular, needs to uphold both. But the creation of a controversy over Salman Rushdie's participation in the Jaipur literary festival once again gives us cause to ponder the robustness of our secular polity. Seemingly with an eye on UP elections next month, political parties have been leveraging the Darul Uloom Deoband's emotive call to prevent Rushdie from attending the Jaipur festival, because of a book he wrote a quarter of a century ago. Rather than dismissing it as an inconsequential fiat, parties have manufactured a full-blown controversy around the issue. The hue and cry is inexplicable, given that Rushdie`s previous visits to India had gone off peacefully.

Aimed at extracting political capital on assembly-election eve, the present manoeuvrings qualify as a perversion of secularism. Consider the response of Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, on whose watch the high-profile literary event is taking place. A chief minister's job is to uphold law and order, not to make it more fragile than it really is. But Gehlot chose the occasion to publicly air his apprehensions about a possible law and order breakdown in case Rushdie attended the festival. Simultaneously, his government leaned on the organisers of the festival to persuade Rushdie to call off his visit. As if there were no more pressing issues of governance in his state, Gehlot even apprised Union home minister P Chidambaram of his nebulous anxieties on the matter.

It's worth mentioning here that this is not the first time that political parties, regardless of ideology, have raised the law and order bogey for reasons of identity politics. The issue goes much beyond Rushdie. If Hindutva forces impelled M F Husain to breathe his last in exile, West Bengal's erstwhile Left Front government detected in Taslima Nasreen a sinister threat to law and order and bundled her out of the state. By catering to such intolerance, the Congress has further contributed to creating an increasingly illiberal atmosphere in the country. Constantly harping on the possibility of disturbances creates space for communal tensions even where there has been none.

Let's also remember that the politics of appeasement, leveraged once too often, is subject to a law of diminishing returns. Wiser from decades of experience voters are now less prone to political manipulation of their emotions, with no bearing on their daily lives. It`s time political parties came out strongly in defence of secularism and freedom of expression. Without these handmaidens, democracy itself is stillborn.