HVK Archives: Who's afraid of Shourie? Let's have more blasphemy & fewer
Who's afraid of Shourie? Let's have more blasphemy & fewer - The Indian Express
Editorial
()
4 August 1997
Title: Who's afraid of Shourie? Let's have more blasphemy & fewer Khomeinis
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 4, 1997
No, it is not from Bradford or Teheran, this image of wise men
ceremoniously burning the book of blasphemy. It comes from the sacred
precincts of Indian democracy, this flame of intolerance. The charred
remains of Arun Shourie's Worshipping False Gods carry within them the
legacy of banished questions, of silenced dissent. They remind you of the
politician's false patriotism, his electorally rewarding definition of
history. And what is Shourie's blasphemy? In this 50th year of
independence, he has written a politically incorrect book on Ambedkar.
Shourie's defiance celebrates the freedom of the mind, his demythicised
Ambedkar brings out the redeeming irreverence of scholarship. In open
societies, ideas are challenged by ideas alone. In closed societies, in
those republics of paranoia, where the ruler claims to have the copyright
over the conscience of the ruled, the writer who rejects the received truth
is exiled or executed. But India is not a stonewalled nation of fear where
the past is a manufactured memory that allows no human intervention. And
the Indian state is not fragile enough to collapse under the weight of a
book or a painting. If there is a national threat, it is certainly not
Shourie but those politicians who are burning an uncomfortable book in a
bonfire of inanities, who are today giving an extra-human dimension to
Ambedkar. A book is not divisive; but the book-burner is capable of the
emotional balkanisation of a country.
A mature and confident nation is not scared of its past. History is not a
no-man's land; it continues to be renewed by reinterpretation. And no icon
is immortal. Look around, and you see democratic societies permanently
quarreling with their own legacies. Their sense of guilt, their buried
remorse, are never expressed through medieval gestures. Daniel Gold-hagen
may call all Germans 'Willing Executioners', but Helmut Kohl will not
respond like Khomeini. In America, where pop mythology is the alternative
to history, a book on Jefferson's black mistress in Paris or another
product from the overgrowing JFK industry or a movie on the 'humanisation'
of Nixon generates acres of media verbiage and a series of chat shows, but
never a Senators-led show of 'Ban the Blasphemy'. There may be prejudiced
scholarship and revisionist histories. They can very well be sorted out in
the marketplace of ideas.
True, they can be sorted out in the streets as well. Remember Farag Fauda,
an Egyptian scholar-journalist murdered for his ideas? In Iran and
Algeria, in China and Iraq, the punishment is official and cruel. India
will do well without a membership in this club of paranoid states. India
requires more Shouries and more counter-Shouries, and politicians who don't
need a Rushdie or a Shourie to mobilise the gullible. "India's project of
nationhood confronts realities that seem invincible, and it contains a deep
contradiction: it views the past as an obstacle even as it exalts and hopes
to salvage it," writes Octavio Paz in his new book In Light of India. The
writer makes sense of that contradiction. The politician sees no
contradiction, he sees only slogan-friendly truths and voter-friendly gods.
His wisdom can only Khomeinify Indian democracy.
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