[Reader-list] On ignoring Taslima

[mahmood farooqui]

It is said that after he announced his Prophethood Hazrat Mohammed
suffered severe persecution in Mecca. The vitriol and calumny extended
from the verbal to the physical. There was one woman who would always
throw filth on him whenever he passed by her house. He would
unfailingly take the same route everyday and she would equally
invariably throw filth on her. He never protested. One day as he
passed her house, she was missing. He inquired after her and learning
that she was sick he went up to her room, and finding her bed-ridden,
tended to her. I grew up listening to a lot of stories from my
grandmother about the Prophet Mohammed. Told in an anecdotal form, the
stories largely avoided his image as a conqueror and concentrated
instead on his personality, specially his grace under hardship. I
narrate this story especially to remind my compatriots about what they
might do when faced with hostility, or criticism.

I write this particularly in the context of Taslima Nasrin, whose vise
expires this week and she still does not know whether it will be
extended or not. Taslima Nasrin must be given an opportunity to stay
on in India, and must be provided that opportunity not as a grace or
favor but because she is, as a South Asian, as a fellow human, fully
entitled to it. My appeal rests not merely on a liberal idea of
freedom of expression, or on making this a litmus test for India's
pluralism. India's pluralism, where it exists in practice, is not
dependent on appeals or testimonials from intellectuals. Our pluralism
does not, and has not, precluded violent confrontations between
different social groups. However, we also have countervailing
traditions of coming to a working adjustment with each other, which,
as an aside, partly explains why the word 'adjust' is so popular in
all Indian languages.

Denying her asylum is not, suddenly, going to make India less
pluralistic or more intolerant than it currently is. It would not,
anyway, be unprecedented. We have banned books enough, books which
continue to circulate anyway, and have gagged and arrested authors and
artists too. It is also not, for me, a case for harking back to the
first principles of freedom of expression. I could question the value
of freedom of expression in a society where large minorities do not
have the freedom to be, but I will let that pass for the moment. We
all know what Voltaire said about difference of opinions, and of
course we know much less about how much he himself deviated from that
maxim, but it is more important for us to find ways of understanding
that maxim which make sense to our traditions of treating certain
matters with reverence, and veneration.

I can't say whether Taslima Nasrin erred in writing what she did,
which we of course do not know much about. She grew up in a society
dominated by an Islam which, unlike in India, is, in many ways, an
establishment religion. In such circumstances, questioning authority
can easily lead to questioning traditions that are sanctified in the
name of religion and in patriarchal societies, authority needs to be
questioned. There are, of course, ways of questioning patriarchal
religions and we may find some ways less appealing than ours, in fact
some ways may arouse our just wrath. But in civilized societies, the
sort of society the Islamic prophet wanted to build, wrath should not,
cannot lead to mob judgments about a person's right to live.

It would be easy to dismiss demonstrations against Taslima Nasrin, at
Calcutta and elsewhere, because, especially after the recent events in
Bombay, we know how easily demonstrations can be mounted and how,
transient, passions can be manufactured. The thousands of young men
roaming the streets of Calcutta were probably good Muslims, in some
ways, but who would, perhaps, flout, many Islamic injunctions, and
taboos, in their everyday lives. Like watching films, at one time
regarded, at least in my family, as an absolute kufr, (an act of
infidelity), or ogling at women. Nevertheless, they have the right, as
Muslims, to be upset about somebody's attitude. However, I also know
that feelings about Taslima Nasrin run wider than the Calcuttan
community. Not all that strong feeling, however, will translate into
stone throwing or demanding death and banishment.

To those who are upset about what Taslima Nasrin has said and done, I
would say that she has already suffered enough. She has spent twelve
years in Europe in exile and had she simply hated Bangladesh and loved
the west, as some believe to be the case, she cold have gone on living
there. She has been buffeted around from Calcutta to Jaipur to Delhi,
where she lives almost as a pariah, unable to move, unable to do
things she would like to do, to go to places she would like to go to.
She is deprived, currently, of normal human freedoms. But even if she
hadn't suffered, even if she was merrily partying every night with the
swish set of Delhi, she still has the right to demand and receive
asylum in this country. Besides she has already been gagged, she will
dare not say the things she has already said, she has already agreed
to delete pages from her forthcoming books, she has already lost, and
so have we.

I understand an emasculated community's need for symbolic sops such as
exiling Taslima or banning Rushdie. But, to the community, or (it not
being a monolith), those among them who feel passionately about this,
and to our political class, I would urge the avoidance of false
pursuits. Freedom of expression is not an absolute, when free from
coercion of our rulers we may become victims of ideological fetters.
But Taslima is a dissenter, and in spite of Voltaire, we must protect
dissenters. She must stay in India because we must be free to
criticize and not unfree to maim in return. In the name of Islamic
values, we must protect her and listen to her, specially.

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