The liberal challenge

A couple of days back I got an email from a friend of mine which spoke about how it is necessary to weed out intolerance and religious fanaticism and saffron ideology from India. I could not help but laugh because the same friend 2 years ago was sending emails on why Da Vinci Code, both movie and the book should be banned in India. And she was happy when the movie was banned in few states. That’s where ‘liberals’ can not win the war against intolerance because of their own biases and intolerance.

Many such examples one can see. While Shiv Sena’s call for banning the book Rama’s Riddles is considered fanaticism, Dalit outcry and violence on Arun Shourie’s book ‘Demystifying False Gods’ does not evict the least of attention in media or liberal circles. Luckily both the books (brilliant books) have not seen the fate which Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses had to see or the writers had to undergo what Taslima Nasreen had to both in her country and in ‘secular’ India.

M F Hussein is painted as the victim of fundamentalism when he is under fire from Hindu right wing but then there is total silence when his movie Meenaxi is brought down from theatres on day 2 of release under pressure from the Muslim groups. And Hussein too was made to apologise for the same. Double standards or poetic justice?

Till the time the liberals don’t close out these cracks in their outcry, the likes of Muttalik, Raj Thackeray, John Dayal, Madani, Imam Bukhari will continue to prosper.

It’s time to leave our own biases aside and throw our own intolerances out. How many of us have not uttered the words ‘this should be banned’ or ‘that should be banned’? Because till the time we don’t do that, the only difference between us and the fanatics would be that they use violence and we can’t go down to those levels.