[Reader-list] The Fear of Ideas: Is India a Paranoid State? (fwd)

[Patrice Riemens]

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Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 15:38:04 +0530
Subject: [goa-research-net] LINK: The fear of Ideas: Is India a paranoid state?



Daily Star (Dhaka)
1 August 2001
Op-Ed.

The fear of Ideas: Is India a paranoid state?

Praful Bidwai
Indira Gandhi gave India a bad name in the 1970s by policing 
scholars' visas. Academics like Paul Brass paid heavily for this--as 
did good scholarship. The NDA is doing the same--even more 
hypocritically. Today, on the one hand, it endorses "globalisation" 
at the expense of national sovereignty...On the other, it is 
xenophobic about ideas.

NOW everyone knows the Indian government grossly mishandled the media 
at Agra and lost the "information battle" to Pakistan. This is 
fashionably attributed to a tactical "failure" to practise 
"media-based diplomacy."

This criticism is largely valid. But the deeper failure isn't 
tactical. It lies in the culture of excessive secrecy. The government 
doesn't share what it knows with its own people, even after it 
becomes public knowledge.

Mr Vajpayee first disclosed the 1998 nuclear tests' rationale not to 
the Indian people, but to the President of the United States. Many 
are the disasters, including Indira Gandhi's assassination, about 
which our public learns first through the BBC. In line with this is 
the babu's mortal fear of new or heterodox ideas.

Take Mr M.L. Sondhi's dismissal from the Indian Council of Social 
Science Research (ICSSR). This happened two days after the Agra 
Summit, to welcome which he had organised an India-Pakistan social 
scientists' conference. The dismissal's grounds-- "loss of 
confidence"; non-submission of accounts;-- and complaints of 
"irregularities"smack of a vendetta.

In reality, Mr Sondhi-- a self-confessed sangh parivar member--was 
sacked because he had antagonised powerful people, especially Human 
Resources Development (HRD) Minister M.M. Joshi.

Mr Sondhi is complex "saffron liberal". One can't credit him with 
academic excellence-- he can claim little recent work-- or tolerance. 
A Jana Sangh MP in 1967, he is a political maverick and a bull in the 
academic china-shop. He is known for his imperious style-- and his 
contradictions.

Mr Sondhi advocates India-Pakistan reconciliation and underscores 
India's "soft" face. Yet, he worships the Bomb.

He advocates free exchange of ideas, but opposes critics of 
nuclearisation to the point of censoring them. (As earlier reported, 
I was the target of his heckling in 1998--my sole experience of its 
kind in two decades.)

Mr Sondhi's stewardship of the ICSSR was partisan. He ignored its 
ill-funded 27 affiliate-institutes but started new projects. He blew 
up money on grandiose seminars at five-star hotels even though many 
ICSSR institutes can barely pay their wage bills.

If the HRD ministry was genuinely concerned about "irregularities", 
it could have asked for an explanation-- and no more; for the ICSSR 
is an "autonomous" body. But it was happy because Mr Sondhi's 
"five-star" conferences were "Shyama Prasad Mukherjee seminars".

The ministry was complicit in Mr Sondhi's creation of a new Deen 
Dayal Upadhyaya Institute of Social Justice, Manali, against the 
Council's rules.

Mr Sondhi, for his part, went along with the Ministry's equally 
partisan actions, including appointment of third-rate academics and 
pamphleteers to the Council.

This mutual indulgence vanished when Mr Sondhi stopped playing Dr 
Joshi's game. Matters came to a head as RSS appointees unfolded their 
agenda: "proving" India's "Aryan" "greatness", and negating its 
multi-cultural, multi-religious character.

This was academically embarrassing. Mr Sondhi got into an ugly scrape 
with the "RSS cabal".

This was thus an intra-parivar fight over ICSSR spoils. Finally, the 
HRD ministry, which had blatantly politicised the Indian Council of 
Historical Research and inflicted Hindutva even on the natural 
sciences, did a hatchet-job on Mr Sondhi.

One must condemn the rationale and manner of his sacking. This blow 
to academic freedom expresses official intolerance of even mildly 
liberal ideas.

The government fears free communication between India and the world. 
Take its two recent orders: one requiring citizens to report all 
foreign guests to the police, and the other demanding advance 
"security clearance" for international conferences of "a political, 
semi-political, communal or religious nature" or related to human 
rights.

The first order would even make President Narayanan guilty of not 
reporting Gen Musharraf as his guest! And the second obnoxiously 
violates academic freedom.

There has been a big uproar over the first order. But the Supreme 
Court has upheld the second.

Therefore, all organisers of international seminars must obtain Home 
and External Affairs ministry clearances for inviting participants 
from Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. Invitees 
from elsewhere need prior Home Ministry approval. This can take 
months and dozens of visits/letters.

This makes a mockery of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution 
guaranteeing free expression. It is also incompatible with the spirit 
of academic debate. Such debate is international in character, as is 
scientific scholarship itself.

Indira Gandhi gave India a bad name in the 1970s by policing 
scholars' visas. Academics like Paul Brass paid heavily for this-- as 
did good scholarship. The NDA is doing the same-- even more 
hypocritically.

Today, on the one hand, it endorses "globalisation" at the expense of 
national sovereignty; it cannot even conceive of growth without 
foreign capital. On the other, it is xenophobic about ideas. The 
government fears free thought-- particularly when that defends the 
popular interest.

Exclusivist attitudes come naturally when our post-colonial rulers 
deal with progressive foreigners, as distinct from business people. 
(Those applying for a "business" visa get it instantly!)

Take Ms Ali Sauer, a Canadian who has praised the Narmada Bachao 
Andolan in Economic and Political Weekly; and US citizen Ann 
Leonard-- formerly of Greenpeace, who has long campaigned against the 
dirty global trade in toxic wastes.

Ms Sauer is being deported. Ms Leonard has been put on the "adverse" list.

Unless such mindsets change, we will become a backwater of 
chauvinism. Enlightened intellectuals must reject such insularity and 
support freedom of thought to the point of not just tolerating, but 
sincerely respecting, heterodoxy. Conformism is bad for free 
debate--and democracy.

So the recent judgment on Sahmat's Ayodhya exhibition, banned in 
1993, is welcome. The Delhi High Court has pronounced that 
"everything" about the ban was "indefensible". The exhibition 
authentically depicted plural Ramayana traditions, including a 
Dasaratha Jataka version which portrayed Sita as Rama's sister.

Much of the "outrage" against the exhibition's spirit of tolerance 
was feigned. The silence of some intellectuals on the ban only 
encouraged Hindutva. They should have spoken out. They always should

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist

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