Doninger and the street named Tolerance
Recently Penguin Books decided to scrap Wendy Doninger’s
controversial book about Hindus, bowing to the demand of Hindu activist groups.
The regular p-sec crowd obviously went into an expected paroxysm of faux
anguish and decried the ‘creeping onset of Hindu fundamentalism’. One of my
p-sec friends promptly bestowed the epithet of ‘Hindu Taliban’ on the groups
that made this (IMO eminently desirable and just) denouement possible. Many
people with a peculiar understanding of the concept of ‘free speech’ (most of
these worthies are Indian-Americans. This, I suppose, makes them eminently
eligible to comment on the concept of free speech because they have probably
read about the famous 1st amendment in the US Bill of Rights – at
least in their own exalted opinion of themselves.), glibly declared that ‘Hindu
Taliban’ are trampling on the free speech. Without getting into the specifics
of why this Doninger’s book was found unacceptable by the Hindu groups (I would
happily get into the specifics if the p-sec crowd would get their heads out of
their nether regions and actually went down to the specifics instead of
resorting to slogan-shouting. Fat chance of that ever happening!), this episode
still raises important questions that I wish to address.
First question is on the concept of ‘free speech’ itself. I
freely admit that US is truly a society that has actually implemented the
concept of free speech in its most enlightened form (there are obviously major
issues with that too as evidenced by Citizens United Vs FEC). I bow my head in
respect (and express my eternal gratitude) to the founding fathers of America
that they made it possible for the inheritors of their republic to implement a
really robust, fair and equitable regime of free speech. However, free speech
DOES NOT equate to ‘free of consequence speech’, even in America. And this is a
very important point that most with a shallow understanding of the 1st
amendment do not grasp. In America, you are free to say whatever you want but
you are not free from consequences of whatever you say. Thus when a TV network
finds one of its executives, in her private speech that she negligently allowed
to become public, denigrated certain demographic groups, she was not prosecuted
(because that WOULD be against her 1st amendment rights) but she was
certainly fired. So there can always be consequences to free speech; even in
America.
India does NOT have a free speech guarantee enshrined in its
constitution, at least not the same way it is in US constitution. In India, a
speech/action that can be deemed to hurt the sentiments of any religion, caste
or myriad other demographic groupings is banned by law. Thus in India, a Terry
Jones CANNOT burn a copy of the Holy Koran (Which, incidentally, he is
constitutionally allowed to do under the 1st amendment in USA) –
legally. Do I want an India where a Terry Jones would be LEGALLY allowed to do
that? NO! An emphatic and unequivocal NO! In USA, Dan Brown’s bestseller novel
‘Da Vinci Code’ was celebrated and turned into a movie. In India, the book and
the movie are banned because they hurt the sentiments of various Christian
groups. In India, Taslima Nasreen’s famous novel ‘Lajja’ is banned because it
hurt the sentiments of several Muslim groups. She was hounded out of the
country under the able auspices of the current UPA dispensation. And the most
famous of them all, Salman Rushdi’s ‘Satanic Verses’ is banned in India and
most of the Muslim countries and the author still lives under a threat to his
life.
As against these (and numerous other) examples of Hindus’
commendable sensitivity to the sentiments of the minorities, what do Hindus get
in return? There is the example of an M F Hussein, painting the ‘naked’ picture
of Hindu goddess Saraswati. There is example of the Southern Baptists, the largest
denomination in America (not just some two-bit Terry Jones in some boondocks in
Florida) nonchalantly denigrating 1 billion Hindus, on the occasion of Diwali,
by claiming that (Without Jesus) they are lost in darkness or some such
egregious nonsense. There are numerous examples of images of Hindu deities
being plastered over bikinis, shoes, toilet seats and more, by non-Hindu
provocateurs.
Now my question to my masochistic p-sec friends is, is tolerance
a one-way street? For those Hindus, for whom nothing is sacred, there is no
sacrilege in what Doninger has written. The front cover illustration of her
book depicts Lord Krishna sitting on the buttocks of a naked woman. Doninger
wades into Ramayana and depicts a sexual relationship between Seeta and
Lakshman. She intrepidly ploughs into Mahabharat and claims that Kunti was
raped by Surya (Sun God) and made pregnant with Karna. These are just a couple
of examples of Doninger’s ‘scholarly’ treatise on Hinduism. If this is not a
sacrilege to you, then I suppose you are beyond redemption.
