June 16, 2008 Why is Prof Ashis Nandy under attack in Gujarat ?
Why Narendra Modi Is Afraid Of Prof. Ashish Nandy ?
by Subhash Gatade
http://communalism. blogspot. com/2008/ 06/why-is- prof-ashis- nandy-under-
attack-in. html
( The Milli Gazette, 30 th June 2008)
Prof. Ashish Nandy, India's leading intellectual acknowledged as the founding
fathers of postcolonial studies has recently got a new 'identity'. According to
the Gujarat Police he is now an accused in a criminal case supposedly for
'promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place
of birth and language.' Definitely neither Prof Nandy nor many of his admirers
would have ever imagined in their wildest dreams that a day would arrive when
he will face prosecution for his writings. But as they rightly say it, in
Gujarat things happen bit differently.
According to media reports the Ahmedabad police have admitted a petition
filed by an advocate belonging to National Council for Civil Liberties over
Professor Nandy's leader page article in the Times of India ( 8 th January)
'Blame The Middle Class'. It need be added that this is the same council which
had filed a few petitions against social activist and leader of Naramda Bachao
Aandolan Medha Patekar on some frivolous charges which were later dismissed by
the court.
To put it straight, the particular article had tried to analyse the election
results for the Gujarat assembly held in December 2007 which had once again
given a mandate to Mr Narendra Modi. The article in question revolved around
basically three points : One, it had tried to delineate the plight of the
Muslims who were condemned to live a second class existence in the post 2002
phase. It had clearly stated that
Gujarati Muslims too are “adjusting” to their new station. Denied justice
and proper compensation, and as second-class citizens in their home state, they
have to depend on voluntary efforts and donor agencies. The state’s refusal to
provide relief has been partly met by voluntary groups having fundamentalist
sympathies. They supply aid but insist that the beneficiaries give up Gujarati
and take to Urdu, adopt veil, and send their children to madrassas.
Secondly, apart from the plight of Muslims it had also explained the
situation in which the political formations who espouse the cause of secularism
find themselves today. And he was unsparing in his criticism of these
formations/individu als.For him
The secularist dogma of many fighting the sangh parivar has not helped
matters. Even those who have benefited from secular lawyers and activists
relate to secular ideologies instrumentally. They neither understand them nor
respect them. The victims still derive solace from their religions and, when
under attack, they cling more passionately to faith. Indeed, shallow ideologies
of secularism have simultaneously broken the back of Gandhism and discouraged
the emergence of figures like Ali Shariatis, Desmond Tutus and the Dalai Lama —
persons who can give suffering a new voice audible to the poor and the
powerless and make a creative intervention possible from within worldviews
accessible to the people.
Of course the focus of its attention was on the 'state's urbane middle class'
which has remained 'mired in its inane versions of communalism and
parochialism' .
The article had concluded with the observation that :
Recovering Gujarat from its urban middle class will not be easy. The class
has found in militant religious nationalism a new self- respect and a new
virtual identity as a martial community, the way Bengali babus, Maharashtrian
Brahmins and Kashmiri Muslims at different times have sought salvation in
violence. In Gujarat this class has smelt blood, for it does not have to do the
killings but can plan, finance and coordinate them with impunity. The actual
killers are the lowest of the low, mostly tribals and Dalits. The middle class
controls the media and education, which have become hate factories in recent
times. And they receive spirited support from most non-resident Indians who, at
a safe distance from India, can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty,
and irresponsible.
While one may agree to differ with Professor Nandy's observations on various
counts, still any concerned reader can see that it did not engage itself in any
rhetoric and tried to delineate the challenges which lie ahead. Question
naturally arises why did the state government felt pertrubed over this article
and decided to give a green signal to its police department to admit the said
petition by the council and file a a criminal case against him ?
At a general level one can say that targetting of individuals and
stigmatising them in very many ways is part of the modus operandi of the
Hindutva brigade. And this particular case does not seem to be different. In
fact it is a politics that seeks to silence critique, and battles for a notion
of the past that is homogeneously Hindu.
Last six year history of Gujarat is replete with many such examples where
they tried to silence all those voices who did not fall in line with their
agenda based on hate and exclusion. We have before us the examples of the
dansescue Sarabhai or for that matter social activist Nafisa Ali or
scholar-activist G.N. Devy who were targeted on different occasions.
In Prof Nandy's case perhaps the powers that be did not like the manner in
which he tried to delineate the future prognosis of a movement like RSS.
Events like the desecration of Wali Gujarati’s grave have pushed one of
India’s culturally richest, most diverse, vernacular Islamic traditions to the
wall. Future generations will as gratefully acknowledge the sangh parivar’s
contribution to the growth of radical Islam in India as this generation
remembers with gratitude the handsome contribution of Rajiv Gandhi and his
cohorts to Sikh militancy.
The criminal case filed against Prof Ashish Nandy reminds one of the
villification campaigns which were organised during BJP led regime at centre.In
fact with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) assumption of power at the centre
in 1998 and its ongoing attempts to remake the educational curriculum in its
own chauvinistic image gaining momentum, intellectuals and academic positions
at odds with the Sangh Parivar’s view of history came under attack under
various pretexts. The BJP has pursued a concerted effort to malign and
delegitimise scholars and intellectuals at odds with its view of India’s past.
After the stalling of the Indian Council of Historical Research-sponsored
‘Towards Freedom’ project edited by professors Sumit Sarkar of University of
Delhi (DU) and KN Panikkar of JNU, the National Council of Educational Research
and Training (NCERT) went all-out to weed out the influence of, in the words of
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief KS
Sudarshan, “anti-Hindu
Euro-Indians” from the curriculum. In 2001, when the moves by NCERT were
underway to delete passages from school textbooks that allegedly ‘hurt’ the
sentiments of this religious sect or the other, a delegation of Arya Samajis
met Murli Manohar Joshi, the human resource development minister, and demanded
that Romila Thapar, the legendary historian along with historians RS Sharma of
DU and Arjun Dev of NCERT, be arrested. Not to be outdone, Joshi had also
reiterated time and again his pet thesis that ‘academic terrorists’ are more
dangerous than armed ones.
To read the article, 'Blame The Middle Class'
Click:http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/articleshow/ msid-2681517,
prtpage-1. cms
With Regards
Abi
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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