Sandeep B
The current political creed ruling India wears the secular tag like a talisman. Yet, it drugs itself asleep during incidents that actually threaten true secularism Yatha raja tatha praja (As the king so are the people) is a timeless Sanskrit proverb. With her clarion ‘pub bharo’ battle-cry, Ms Renuka Choudhury has become an overnight role model of sorts for thousands of urban Indian youth. Not merely content with force-crowding pubs, our urban youth decided to launch a love-battle against Pramod Muthalik by gathering a nationwide arsenal of dirty pink underwear. But the average urban youngster’s profile forbids us to expect that he/she knows Ms Choudhury’s antecedents as a staunch crusader against liquor during her TDP days. But then, the quality of Ms Choudhury’s leadership can only beget such behaviour.If anything, the mindless youth-hysteria is actually an overwhelming tribute to her sheer genius. The ‘underwear campaign’ swiftly exposed the yawning intellectual vacuum of our youth, bereft of independent thought. It showed how they willingly mortgaged their brains to become puppets of a political scheme behind a seemingly-frivolous remark made by a seemingly-ignorant politician. They don’t ask this: Would Renuka Choudhury react with similar courage had the pub attack occurred in a Congress-ruled State, and the attack would have been perpetrated by Congress party workers?The Consortium of Loose and Forward Women’s Facebook group is a barometer of what a majority of youth think are earth-shattering issues. It took one pub attack and a ‘Talibanisation’ remark to erase the memories of 26/11. If only this enthusiasm and mass mobilisation in organising ‘underwear protests’ were put to effective use the first time there was a terror attack on India, our politicians would have fallen in line. While our urban youth wait expectantly on the threshold of pub-crowding, an incident of real ‘Talibanisation’ has quietly occurred. Editor Ravindra Kumar and publisher Anand Sinha of Calcutta-based The Statesman were detained in police custody for the singular offence of reproducing Johann Hari’s article, critical of Prophet Muhammad. As expected, angry Muslims egged on by their mullahs demonstrated so peaceably that the police had to use batons to break the demonstrators several times this week. The poor duo had to lick their wounds by apologising. Mr Hari’s article is a powerful argument against a dangerous trend that has already made rapid and vast inroads in the democratic world. It conclusively shows how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been compromised by the rabid Islamic world: “Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia… issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within ‘the limits set by the shari’ah.’ It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate something which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community.” Mr Hari details the dangers posed by this trend of prohibiting criticism of religions. Understandably, this enraged our Muslims against the hapless newspaper, which was fully within its democratic right to publish opinion pieces backed by historical evidence. But the larger issue is the threat of violence, which has since Mahatma Gandhi’s time worked like magic. Behind this threat lies the exact intolerance that Mr Hari describes. Left unchecked and taken to its logical end, it results in comprehensive ‘Talibanisation’. The current political creed ruling India wears the secular tag like a hoarding. Yet, it drugs itself asleep during such incidents, which actually threaten secularism. Nobody can demand privileged treatment in a secular country. ‘Underwear champions’ and misguided advocates of free speech need to actually note the ‘Statesman incident’. Instead, they are busy giving national publicity at their own cost to Pramod Muthalik and his goons. But the Statesman incident won’t bother them for two reasons. The secular media, a handmaid of the ultra-secular political class is busy obfuscating such pesky, inconvenient news items. Not one prominent media house gave the coverage this outrageous act deserved. The sad and dangerous fallout of this incident is that the Statesman won’t publish such pieces for a long time, at least. Second, such incidents don’t directly threaten the applecart lifestyles of the pub-goers. When it does, it’ll be too late to protest. (AA)
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