All strangely quiet on the secular, liberal front

The launch of Dusshohobash, a tele serial based on stories by Taslima Nasreen, was cancelled by a privately-run Bengali channel, following objections raised by Muslim groups in Kolkata. The series promised to feature tales of women’s struggle for rights and their protests against issues like dowry and rape, condemnation of which is non-controversial in the current socio-political milieu. Muslim groups in Kolkata are in favour of banning writings by the Bangladeshi exiled author Nasreen who, on numerous occasions in the past, had drawn the ire of religious leaders for her alleged criticism of Islam.

The silence of West Bengal’s ruling TMC and the opposition is politically motivated and hardly surprising. But what is baffling is that our liberal intellectuals are miraculously numb — the same people who would burst into outrage unfailingly, on issues like SAR Geelani’s (Delhi University professor and Kashmiri Muslim) prolonged persecution in the hands of the Indian State in the Parliament attack case.

The provocative criticisms of the failings of Indian democracy and the weaknesses of the country’s institutionalised secularism that emerge from pockets of our public sphere are justified in the face of rampant persecution of religious and ethnic minorities. However, the moral righteousness falls short when Islamic clerics — as self-proclaimed representatives of a community — provoked by a woman writer’s voice, threaten public disorder and the political class and law enforcement agencies meekly give in.

In 2007 Nasreen was ousted from Kolkata. The then-CPI(M)-led government feared unrest over enraged Muslim religious groups’ demands of her expulsion from the country. The concern that ordinary Muslims in West Bengal continually feel hurt by Nasreen’s writings seems a bit strange — the majority of the Muslim population, at least in Kolkata, are predominantly Hindi-speaking and cannot be said to be readers of the Bengali author’s works.

Intellectuals in India face a kind of moral dilemma on the issue of Islamic extremists’ contention with women’s emancipation. The infringement of Muslim women’s rights is often confused with the minority’s cultural rights. Thus radical Left activists who stand in unison with Islamic groups in Kolkata to denounce violence on the Rohingyas are mum when leaders of those groups implicate women for sexual crimes.

This misplaced secularism is not without a history. A xenophobia against Islam has intensified over the past decade under the patronage of an American military state. The only counter-force to the latter has come in the form of Islamic insurgency. The Left liberals make a common cause with Islamic radicals on anti-America/ anti-imperialism sentiments.

In the subcontinent the growing political might of the Hindu Right has emerged as a discomforting political reality. Post-independent India has been no stranger to large-scale massacre of minorities — such as the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. But pograms against Muslims in Bombay and Gujarat, conducted at the behest of a communal ideology, are interpreted as threats to India’s secular democratic fabric.

Defending Muslims seems only understandable under such political and cultural urgencies. But being lenient towards fundamentalists who pronounce death on those seen as heretic, dictate women’s clothing, stifle free speech or prescribe sex-segregated seating arrangements in political rallies and universities makes for political correctness in present times. This, when stretched a little too far, translates into a new orthodoxy, and any criticism of Islamic fanaticism is labelled as intolerance.

Our liberal, progressive elite vociferously hit “likes” and “shares” on Facebook when Stephen Hawking announces a decision to boycott an academic conference hosted by Israel’s president.

But our selective silence and outrage is unflattering, especially if a politically-conscious citizenry is seen as something that democratic societies must aspire for.

The author is a doctoral candidate at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore