Circle of unreason

It has been some years since India rehabilitated Salman Rushdie. And vice versa. The midnight’s child who in 1999 bid farewell to the c...

It has been some years since India rehabilitated Salman Rushdie. And vice versa. The midnight’s child who in 1999 bid farewell to the country, in his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, has in subsequent years become a frequent traveller to the land of his birth, commenting on its politics and people and reclaiming family landmarks. Closure on the violence — on the streets and in attitudes — of The Satanic Verses episode has, however, been slower for others. Twelve years ago historian Mushirul Hasan became the target of a shrill campus protest for merely suggesting that banning books, in this

case Verses, is unwise. Then pro-vice chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia, he was even forced to flee the campus for a while. His appointment this month as vice chancellor of Jamia, thus, formally ends an unfortunate chapter in intolerance.

The anger against Rushdie’s book is now spent. Unfortunately, the search for texts and creative work to rally vast segments of the population into passionate indignation continues. Whether it be a Saraswati painting by M.F. Husain, a polemic by Arun Shourie or a novel by Taslima Nasreen, street protests in years past have been common. In any case, there was something curiously manufactured about the beginnings of the campaign against Hasan’s opinion on the banning of books. All these years later, passions are being whipped up in Maharashtra over historical works concerning Shivaji. The plunder at Pune’s Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute is a case in point. It is shocking that James Laine’s book on Shivaji stands banned, and that the legal case against him is alive. There are also reports about other books on Shivaji being scrutinised by self-appointed censors.

The hatred and violence over The Satanic Verses was, in retrospect, so unnecessary and so very harmful. No one won any debating points on that issue. Yet, the censorship roadshow carries on, moving to different sites, carrying different protagonists, waging different political battles. A true beginning would be made in fighting this dangerous trend if the state kept away from these bursts of intolerance and desisted from banning books.