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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
