Reichstag Fire in the fight for free speech
Hindus have now become the targets of the publishing industry which is responsible for a Reichstag Fire in the arena of free-speech rights. These Hindu-baiters have indulged in self-censorship of a book but are busy spreading the untruthful claim that the book was actually banned by Hindus. Just as Hitler blamed his political opponents for an act of arson in 1933, the anti-Hindu forces are now going after Hindus by blaming them in a similar fashion. Consider the following headlines that appeared in the American media.
Chicago Tribune: India bans ‘vulgar’ book by University of Chicago scholar
Christian Science Monitor: Book ‘banning’ shows rising Hindu nationalism in India’s election year
Slate.com: Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus banned in India
These dishonest claims about an alleged ban seem to be confined to the American press and do not seem to appear in the Arab, African or East Asian Press. To be fair, the Black and Hispanic press in the US too have not carried out any anti-Hindu propaganda until now. This is consistent with the experience of Blacks in the US in the 1960s which led Mohammad Ali to say, ‘No Vietcong ever called me nigger.’
The headline by Christian Science Monitor is interesting for another reason: it carefully suppresses the fact that the complaint against the book that was pulled by Penguin Books is nearly four years old and it makes the dishonest claim that the “ban” took place because it is an election year.
There is a precedent to banning one’s own book and accusing Hindus for it. In 1995, when Salman Rushdie wrote the Moor’s Last Sigh, the press tried to get Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray to issue a threat. He did not take the bait and instead refused to comment on the book, so the publishers (Rupa and Co.) decided on a self-ban, perhaps in the hope that they could generate a controversy and boost the sales of the book. However, things moved faster than they anticipated and the Central government promptly banned the book when they found that it had a dog named Jawaharlal.
As the Independent reported:
Gossip sweeping New Delhi had it that Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Rajiv, read the first few chapters of Rushdie’s novel and was so incensed by the dog Jawaharlal that she is demanding the book is banned across India by the Congress government. The Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, is smarting from the widow Gandhi’s accusations that the government has not done enough to track her husband’s assassins, and he might want to pacify her over Rushdie’s novel.
As soon as the government ordered the ban, the publishing house which had indulged in the self-ban changed their minds about banning the book and appealed to the court asking that the ban be removed!
Even today, Hindu-baiters continue to blame Hindus for this episode. They are ably supported by the Gunga Dins who carry water for them. Among those currently pontificating to the Hindus on the virtues of free-speech are two writers named Sadanand Dhume and Salil Tripathi. Their smug suggestions today are contradictory to their position a few years ago.
In an article jointly authored by the two of them when the government banned the Marathi play, ‘Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoi,’ this is what they wrote in the Far Eastern Economic Review.
The banning of a play in Bombay… has sparked a bitter debate and raised critical questions about the kind of nation India wants to be – secular, democratic and liberal, or nationalist and Hindu.
So free speech is “nationalist and Hindu” while banning plays is “secular, democratic and liberal.” That much all of us can agree upon! The authors elaborate on this position and go on to endorse the concept of banning any speech that runs counter to their beliefs. At the same time, they also praise “leftists, centrists and socialists” for being on the side of the ban.
The controversy over the play reflects a greater drama being played out on the nation’s political stage. On one side are those who believe in the 50-year-old liberal democratic model, represented by the leftists, the centrists and the socialists. On the other are those who seek a nationalist, Hindu model, championed by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and other pro-Hindu nationalist parties like the Shiv Sena.
Their article also mentions MF Husain, but there is no mention of the fact that MF Husain, during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency era, was a thug who acted as Indira Gandhi’s Goebbels and supported her censorship and totalitarianism.
In another article entitled “Shadowy Second Self” that appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1998, Sadanand Dhume complained that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was influencing the views of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is truly a wonder that Dhume now claims to be an advocate of free-speech rights even though he wanted the Indian government to block out the views of a legitimate entity.
I first encountered Salil Tripathi on the mailing list of South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA). He introduced himself as a civil rights advocate, and in particular, a supporter of the American First Amendment rights. Not long after, it turned out that free-speech for Salil was merely a stick with which he could beat Hindus whenever it suited him while advocating the trampling of such rights at other times. During one of the discussions on the mailing list, he announced that Laloo Prasad Yadav deserved to be considered a hero for the single act of arresting LK Advani who was responsible for giving speeches around the country.
Anyone who has debated a Communist or anyone belonging to one of the hundreds of varieties of socialists will soon realize that they skirt the issue on every topic and hurl a few choice cliches at their opponents. “Nothing is in black and white, everything has shades of gray,” they will assert. “It is complex” is another refrain meaning that they have no idea of how to analyze an issue and form a firm opinion. Then there is that single word – nuance. In commie-speak, ‘nuance’ means they just deviated from the truth. Scroll back up and read the first quote from the article by Salil and Dhume. You will see that they claim the ban sparked a debate in the country. ‘Sparked a debate’ in commie-speak means they just committed a huge crime and hope to cover it up with words or hope to get a consensus from all their friends, which, in some unexplained perverse way, will wash off their guilt.
Salil has a history of hypocritical positions on free-speech rights. He ignored the ban by Congress-run state governments on the movie Da Vinci Code even though he wrote on the topic of free-speech at that time and was called out on it. He also took every opportunity to blame Hindus and injected the idea of intolerant Sikhs and Hindus into his arguments when he wrote an article on the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark.
Many of his recent pieces have been thinly disguised articles pretending to defend free-speech rights but they are really attacks on the victims whose rights were violated. The ban on Geert Wilders’ Fitna was a chance for him to write a negative review of the movie.
There is another angle to the selective application of free-speech rights. Sadanand Dhume once lived in Indonesia but found it prudent to zip up and not write about the lack of free-speech rights in that country when he lived there. No matter what their position on the topic of freedom of expression, there has been one constant: they have always been on the side of people with immense political strength and who are entrenched in institutions that share power no matter which political party runs the government. It would have meant something if they had defended powerless people who were real victims instead of chasing titles, prizes and positions with international institutions. Joining the ruling class elites in various countries and enriching oneself by keeping one’s principles flexible is not free-speech advocacy but sheer opportunism.
Among the groups Salil has worked for and whose views he has aggressively pushed is Amnesty International. He has also written for the publication ‘Index of Censorship.’ This is a Marxist publication which routinely accuses others of censorship but is itself guilty of indulging in censorship in order to appease Muslims.
On his part, Sadanand Dhume works for the American Enterprise Institute which operates in the area of advocating certain policy prescriptions. When people get paid to articulate political agendas that serve the interests of institutions operated by the ruling class in Western countries, such people, in essence, become Gunga Dins who carry water for their paymasters. This is especially true as these institutions exist solely to belittle countries outside the Western civilization.
The so-called “think-tanks” in the West do not seek to enrich their worldviews or shape their policies when they hire Indians. Instead, these organizations represent the interest of certain political entities with firm political opinions and they hire Indians only as viceroys of these opinions. These viceroys have the specific task of indulging in propaganda on behalf of their employers. Even when not specifically tasked to do so, the employees continue with the propaganda in order to prove their credentials and endear themselves to their paymasters. In this context, it should be kept in mind that both Salil and Dhume have written against Muslims after the Islamic terrorist attacks occurred in New York City and London.
If the two authors have the honesty and intellectual ability to discern between real violations of free-speech rights and false flag attacks, they should not target Hindus, but make a few honest admissions. First, they should admit that the current controversy in which they have blamed Hindus is a wholly manufactured one and that it is wrong to blame Hindus for it. Secondly, they must admit that they were wrong when they supported bans on plays in India. Finally, they should also admit that all over the world, laws against free-speech rights are created by groups they support. Apart from Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, such groups include those who label themselves “leftists, centrists and socialists” or “secular, democratic and liberal,” that is, people Salil and Dhume endorsed in an article jointly authored by them.
The laws related to hate-speech in India were legal weapons for such people in their zeal to suppress the freedom of expression of Hindus. This time, one of their own allies was made to trip on the legal hurdle by a smart litigant. Just as a bomb in Iraq recently blew up killing a suicide attack trainer and his class, a creation of the intellectual Al-Qaeda has blown up in their faces injuring one of their own people. If the two authors do not correct themselves and admit to these facts, in the interest of basic decency, no media outlet should allow them to pontificate about free-speech rights.
[The author can be reached at [email protected].]
Wonder who this guy David is. Makes rambling, convoluted and nonsensensicsl claims like a typical libtard! Seems to be an old English gasbag!
Wonderful article! Points out the ways of the left leaning, so-called liberal and English speaking elite in India on the payroll of their white masters blaming Hindus for everything! They carry a permanent contempt for their fellow citizens who do not have the problem of self hatred arising from self-alienation from the Indian traditions.
Blistering barnacles! You tore them to pieces Mr Arvind. Kudos.
“In an article jointly authored by the two of them when the government banned the Marathi play, ‘Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoi,’ this is what they wrote in the Far Eastern Economic Review.
The banning of a play in Bombay… has sparked a bitter debate and raised critical questions about the kind of nation India wants to be – secular, democratic and liberal, or nationalist and Hindu.
”
Here’s the link to the article referenced by Mr Arvind.
http://saliltripathi.com/articlesReview/6August98FarEasternEconomicReview.html
For the life of me, I can’t see anything in there that is contradictory with their current positions.
Is that why you failed to provide a link to the full article, Mr. Arvind ?
I couldn’t be bothered reading beyond that point in your article, Mr. Arvind. What’s the point, I ask, if it begins virtually on a falsehood.
@menon, the only falsehood that I see is your deliberate attempt to be obtuse. Tripathi clearly frames the ban on the play as one of two stark choices in his article:
“On one side are those who believe in the 50-year-old liberal democratic model, represented by the leftists, the centrists and the socialists. On the other are those who seek a nationalist, Hindu model, championed by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and other pro-Hindu nationalist parties like the Shiv Sena.”
This is exactly the hypocrisy that Arvind Kumar calls out Tripathi and Dhume in this superb post. They (and others like Pankaj Mishra and Manu Joseph) serve their White masters exceedingly well, and are amply rewarded monetarily and with easy access to Western media outlets, while the native voices get denied.
S. Menon,
Thanks for linking to the original article — which is well-written and a perfectly thoughtful and measured report about the controversy surrounding the play staged in 1998, as well as reflecting on some implications of that controversy.
The blogger here, Arvind Kumar, jumps to a completely nonsensical and unreasonable conclusion which has no apparent basis in what the writers of that article wrote. Arvind Kumar first quotes the passage you site above, viz. “The banning of a play in Bombay… has sparked a bitter debate and raised critical questions about the kind of nation India wants to be – secular, democratic and liberal, or nationalist and Hindu.”
Arvind Kumar then strangely jumps to this absurd and unexpected conclusion:
[QUOTE] So free speech is “nationalist and Hindu” while banning plays is “secular, democratic and liberal.” That much all of us can agree upon!” [UNQUOTE]
How did he achieve that unlikely leap? The conclusion he reaches seems diametrically opposed to any obvious and reasonable reading of the authors’ meaning. I’m scratching my head, perplexed. It doesn’t add up. Is he writing this with tongue-in-cheek ironically, intending we should assume he means the opposite of what he writes? I can’t figure this guy out at all. That ironic itent might be the only half-plausible way to make some sense of his words — but then, that doesn’t seem to follow through with various other leaps spangled throughout this diatribe filled with sound and fury and signifying rather little.
Cordially,
David
“How did he achieve that unlikely leap? The conclusion he reaches seems diametrically opposed to any obvious and reasonable reading of the authors’ meaning.”
Let us quote the original article so there are pretensions of being “confounded by logical leaps”
“But the play’s critics charge its producers with just such an aim,
and angry parliamentarians forced the ruling Hindu nationalist coalition
to ban the play in mid-July. ”
If freedom of expression is the central point of contention, then the play critics were the ones stifling freedom of expression, and then
“The controversy over the play reflects a greater drama being played
out on the nation’s political stage. On one side are those who believe
in the 50-year-old liberal democratic model, represented by the
leftists, the centrists and the socialists.”
Presumably the critics of the play were “liberal centrists and socialists”, the ones Salil Tripathi thinks are pushing a “democratic model”. Does that explain things or does this need to be spelt out even more slowly, David. Perhaps you can explain your “logic” that fails to see Salil’s duplicitous writing proclaiming to support free expression and then speak against those whose right to free expression was stifled.
Srikanth,
Thanks for joining this discussion and stepping in to attempt to clarify what I view as a highly muddled assertion by Arvind, as noted in my comment. Your explanation makes a few assumptions and presumptions that might be worth examining. First, you assume that it is “liberal centrists and socialists” who were offended by the play, next you assume that, if so, other members of such a broad presumed faction could not also include those who would oppose the banning of the play. It seems obvious to me that — assuming the authors of the article might be lumped in that broad general spectrum — they were inclined to support the free expression exemplified by the play, rather than supporting its ban. In point of fact their general tone is fairly neutral — they are reporting about a controversy, not at first taking sides. But to the degree they do then take sides, they appear to take the side of those among the liberal faction who recognize the value of free expression EVEN in such a case as this controversial play.
Now in terms of subtext, I would suggest one can draw the reasonable conclusion that if some subset of “liberal centrists” here had agitated for banning of this play, that (possibly influential in the instance but by no means typical in terms of numbers) splinter subset was ironically agitating in an opposite direction to the main and prevailing “liberal centrist” aim and outlook, namely (as they note) a view supporting freedom of expression.
Namaskar,
David
“First, you assume that it is “liberal centrists and socialists” who were offended by the play ”
David,
No, I am not assuming anything – I am just applying the pigeon hole principle. Without loss of generality, let us just divide the world into, liberal left, centrists, and the nationalists. None of these groups are monolithic is the crux of your response — that is some of the “liberal centrist, socialists, communists, marxists” are reasonable and others are not. Perhaps you can explain why you don’t seem to think that the same applies to the right wing nationalists too, and neither does salil tripathi. The article pretty clearly tars all “hindu nationalists” as regressive and violent people as a monolithic group. The point is that any logical hair splitting done to defend the actions of some in the “liberal socialist” crowd (however justified) can and must be applied without prejudice to the other groups too.
-spasiba
srikanth
ps — further to amplify my point:
The authors of the report about the controversy regarding the play Mi Nathuram Godse Boltoy and its banning rightly observe, “The controversy over the play has produced some strange bedfellows. Gandhians who back freedom of expression are uncomfortably perched with unruly Congress Party workers who sought the ban. And incongruously ranged against them are artists and writers committed to free speech — and the Shiv Sena party, which has become a free-speech champion overnight.”
So the authors here note the incongruities on both sides. As one winds one’s way through their report, one finds them lending voice to those among the “secular, democratic and liberal” spectrum (namely, the noted “artists and writers committed to free speech”) who viewed the ban as unsettling and inappropriate.
I’m sufficiently acquainted with the work of Salil Tripathy to recognize his view as completely consistent over the years. Never but never has he supported the banning of works of literature or art. And there is certainly no support of any such ban evident in this 1998 report here quoted that he co-authored.
LOL. Salil Tripathi now stands naked. Amnesty International? Really? Many of his articles now make sense in the light of this expose. A pro-establishment kind of free-speech advocacy! That was a good one.
David, your spin is not going to fly here. In the article, Salil Tripathi claims that BANNING the play was consistent with a “liberal democratic model, represented by the leftists, the centrists and the socialists.” Hindus were on the side of not banning the play. Salil Tripathi and Sadanand Dhume admit that free speech was the “Hindu model.”
Whether or not free speech is the Hindu model is not something I can comment on, but the two authors certainly make that point. We all know why they said this. Leftists love to oppose what they call “hate speech” (if you don’t agree with their political views, you are a racist and all your speech is hate speech).
I also see you have ignored the point on Fitna the author raised. And if Salil Tripathi really worked for Index of Censorship as claimed, that is problematic as well as it makes him a representative of the radical left and shows his bias.
David, thanks a lot! Your replies are an excellent example of the ‘nuanced’ responses that Arvind talks about in his article. Good job.
I’m responding here to Victoria’s response (of Feb. 21) — the interface doesn’t give an option to “reply” direct, so am tacking on the reply here . . .
Victoria, when you assert this:
<>
I’m sorry, but you are simply misreading the plain words of the original 1998 article. The authors, Salil Tripathi and Sadanand Dhume, correctly report that the controversy created “strange bedfellows” where SOME leftists surprisingly supported banning, and SOME RSS members surprisingly became champions of free speech overnight. just because the authors report that SOME leftists took that improper and untenable view, does NOT mean that the authors themselves took or supported that untenable view. I challenge you to show me any sentence where they support banning. They do not, and to assert that they are supporting the banning of the play in this article, is to completely misread the intent of the authors and the plain meaning of their words.
I did not read Arvind Kumar’s blogged screed beyond the passage now in contention, as (like S. Menon) it was obviously not worth the bother.
cheers,
David
ps — THIS is the passage from Victoria’s reply that I had intended to quote:
[QUOTE]
David, your spin is not going to fly here. In the article, Salil Tripathi claims that BANNING the play was consistent with a “liberal democratic model, represented by the leftists, the centrists and the socialists.” Hindus were on the side of not banning the play. Salil Tripathi and Sadanand Dhume admit that free speech was the “Hindu model.” [UNQUOTE]
This is a preposterous misreading, in my humble opinion.
David, Gandhians are hardly vanguards of freedom of expression as Salil Tripathi would have us believe.
Quote”Gandhians who back freedom of expression are uncomfortably perched ”
Gandhi wanted books banned in his day, one of those books is called “rangeela rasool” if I recall correctly. And more recently these same alleged Gandhians demanded the ban of Joseph Leyveld’s book on Gandhi in 2011. Salil Tripathi goes around making random proclamations that do not stand scrutiny at least in the above essay. I have not read his other works to see if this same sloppiness to detail is pervasive.
regards,
srikanth
Hi David,
The original article by Salil fails when it reduces the debate to one between liberal democrats and hindu nationalists. The accepted conventions automatically make the people asking for a ban here ‘liberal democrats’ whereas those opposing the ban are hindu natuonalists. Further, again under these accepted conventions, Hindu nationalists are automatically conjured up as unruly mobs who do not understand the importance of freedom of speech or art. An argument that the author did not mean that is facile and disingenuous since decades of tarring a certain view point with that brush has associated such a meaning with those words. It is important that these fallacies long imposed upon the Indian people be corrected.
One more funny thing in that Far East Ecomonic Review piece is they quote Kushwant Singh. Kushwant is the one who advocated the ban on Satanic Verses.
Below is the quote from Kushwant
—————————————————————————————————-
But as Delhi-based author Khushwant Singh notes: “The main threat
doesn’t come from the government, but from the intolerant public, which
seems to get more thin-skinned by the day. We have too many sacred cows.”
—————————————————————————————————–
Now this is thoughtful writing! Well done, Mr. Arvind!