Opinion | Culture Of Intolerance Is Hurting India's Tradition Of Debate And Discussion

Voltaire defined tolerance as “the consequence of humanity” and described the ind­ividual who persecu­ted another person because of differing opinion as a “monster”. If we look around, we would find that India in the third decade of the 21st century looks woefully short on hum­anity. Although it is doubtful if Voltaire ever used these exact words— “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to death your right to say it”—it is beyond doubt they faithfully express what he stood for, and tru­thfully enc­­­apsulates the spirit of liberty so essential to democracy. These words also res­o­­­n­a­te with Kant’s famous argument that Enlightenment stems from free and public use of critical reason, and from the liberty that allows such critical deb­ate to take place without any restrictions. Accor­ding to Kant, “Have courage to use your own reason” is the motto of the Enlightenment.

It’s a matter of concern that India, with its glorious tradition of rational thinking and reason-­based public debates, finds its­elf in a situation where prejudice prevails and coercion is used to stifle dissent. Ideas are not countered by alternative and better ideas, but forcibly suppressed by coercive State apparatus or raw vigilante muscle power. Ideological hegemony is freely utilised to promote certain ideas and to suppress others. Free, fair and public deba­tes and discussions of contentious iss­ues have become almost impossible, naturally impinging on literary and art­istic creativity. The recent incidents at Kan­nur Univ­ersity in Kerala are a case in point. They also bri­ng to fore another imp­or­tant issue—autonomy of insti­tutions of higher learning and research.

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Brennen College of Kannur University deci­ded to include extracts from the works of V.D. Savar­kar, M.S. Golwalkar, Deendayal Upadhyay and Balraj Madhok in the syllabus for MA in politics and governance, which is taught in this institution alone. Savarkar is widely regarded as the pro­ge­ni­tor of the idea of Hindutva, which he def­i­­­ned and elaborated in his 1923 book Hindu­tva: Who is a Hindu. Drawing inspiration from it, Dr K.B. Hed­gewar founded the Rashtriya Swayam­sevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925. In 1938, RSS gen­­e­ral secretary Golwalkar, who was to succeed Hedge­war as the Sangh’s supreme leader after the latter’s death in 1940, further fine-tuned Savar­kar’s ideological position in We or Our Nation­hood Defined. Ame­ri­can scholar Jean A. Curran, who published the first study on the RSS in 1950, desc­ribed this 77-page book as the RSS’s Bible. Upadh­yaya, an RSS pracharak who in 1951 was sent to assist S.P. Moo­ker­jee in the formation of the Bharatiya Jana San­­gh, evolved the concept of ‘Integral Human­ism’. Mad­hok too came from the RSS ranks and became Jana Sangh president, bef­ore he was exp­elled over differences with A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. He gave a controversial call for ‘Ind­ia­nisation’ of Mus­lims and Chris­tians, exhorting them to join the national, i.e., Hindu mainstream.  The importance of studying the works of these thi­nkers, to understand the political implications of Hindutva, cannot be overestima­ted. At the Mas­ters level, students are mature enough to dec­ide which philosophy and ideology they lean towards, and must be exposed to the writings of all imp­ortant thinkers. Thus, the decision of Brennen College to include texts of Hindutva ideolog­ues can’t be faulted.

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The Congress and IUML thought otherwise, and their youth and student wings vociferously opposed the decision, staging protests alleging “saffronisation” of higher education by Kannur University. Sachin Dev, SFI state president, dec­lared the texts sho­­uld be withdrawn. The state’s higher education minister, R. Bindhu, sought an exp­lanation from vice-chancellor Gop­i­nath Ravi­ndran, a historian. He set up an expert com­mi­ttee which dec­i­ded these texts should not be taught. Even CM Pinarayi Vijayan came out against the inc­lusion of these texts in the cur­riculum.

It’s ironical that Hindutva ideologues are rec­ei­ving the same treatment their followers have been meting out to those they do not like. They harassed India’s best known painter M.F. Husain so much that he was forced to leave the country, and died abr­o­ad, a deeply sad man. In 2011, the Delhi Univ­ersity succumbed to their pres­­sure and removed A.K. Ram­a­nujan’s celebrated essay 300 Ramayanas—that too during the UPA reign. In February 2014, Pen­guin decided to withdraw and destroy historian Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History, as it had got tired of battling court cases slapped by Hindutva groups alleging the book hurt their “religious sentiments”. Recently, DU dropped works of celebrated aut­hor Mahasweta Devi and Dalit wom­en writers Bama and Sukirtharani, under pre­s­s­ure from the same elements that have been filing police complaints all over the country against those whose writings they do not like.

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Non-Hindutva forces too have not behaved any differently in the past. The way Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress government banned Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is illustrative of this. In May 2012, almost all parties ganged up in Parliament against a cartoon published in an NCERT textbook, and demanded strict acti­on—BSP supre­­mo Mayawati went to the extent of dem­a­n­ding criminal proce­edings—against the editors. The cart­oon, showing Nehru and Ambedkar, was drawn by the doy­­en of Indian cartoonists Shankar Pillai in 1949. Neither Nehru nor Ambedkar had any pro­b­lems with it. But in 2012, it hurt “sentime­nts” of those who had come to worship Amb­e­dkar. The edi­tors—Suhas Palshikar and Yog­en­dra Yadav—immediately resigned, and the cart­o­on was withdrawn. A culture of intolerance has been created by almost all political for­ces. Not only does it militate against the essence of demo­cracy, but also against the age-old Indian tradit­ion of debate, discussion and argumentation.

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In an interview to this writer in early 2014, Prof Romila Thapar explained the prese­nce of dissidence within different religious trad­itions and the manner in which it was resolved: “First the opponent’s view is presented fully and disp­assionately; then the pro­po­nent’s contradiction is given at length; subsequently there is agreement or disagreement. The point is, dissent is recognised and debated…. As in all good scholarship, if you want to condemn something, you must first understand it, otherwise your criticism is deemed superficial. This is the essence of good scholarship and it obviously existed then.”

Renowned Sanskrit scholar Prof Radhavall­a­bh Tripathi tells us the original word for intellect­ual debate was brahmodya, which later came to be known as vada or shastrartha. He has written a treatise titled Vada in Theory and Practice, con­cluding that traditional knowledge systems thrived in India only because of vada. This continued till the 19th century, when Swami Dayan­anda Saraswati, who founded Arya Samaj, str­o­­n­gly opposed idol worship and propagated his views by challenging his opponents to a public debate (shastrarth). Similarly, on the question of widow remarriage, great Sanskrit scholar Rajaram Shastri and his supporters wrote books and pamphlets to oppose the idea. Their views were successfully countered by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who also wrote a book in favour of widow remarriage, and quoted scriptures and books of law in his support. Even in the last century, Sharda Act, which raised the minimum age for a girl’s marriage in 1930, gave rise to a fierce public debate between conformists and reformists.

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One wonders why in democratic India, we have been distancing ourselves from our ancient tradition of thrashing out contentious matters through intellectual debates and discussions, and how suppression and erasure of dissent has become the norm of the day. The way syllabi have been changed in several universities due to political pressure, also indicates that autonomy of an institution of higher learning exists only in name. If ideas cannot be studied and debated in a university, where else can they be? The question that begs an unambiguous answer is: will India remain a rainbow civilisation, or will it become monochromatic?

(This appeared in the print edition as "Silence! Nation-building in Progress")

(Views expressed are personal)

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Kuldeep Kumar is a bilingual journalist and a Hindi poet who writes on politics and culture.