The great leap backward

A businessman, H Farooq, was killed in Coimbatore on March 16 because he was a vocal atheist. A Facebook photo of his seven-year-old daughter holding a placard denying the existence of god is suspected to be the reason behind his murder. Truth is, I consider myself to be a vocal atheist too and have a daughter, just like him.

While I know that we are ultimately made up of just atoms, and emotions are nothing but electro-chemical reactions, I am yet conditioned to avoid risky situations. I am scared of hurting religious sentiments. My five-year-old daughter understands that a man like her father was killed for doing something like what her father does on Facebook.

We have learnt about his nature of atheism from the reports. Actively involved in promoting the ideals of humanism and atheism among Muslims, he also spoke against blind beliefs and casteism. He used to fearlessly propagate these on social media too. Last year, he was wrongly arrested on charges of attacking a mosque along with a mob that was protesting the murder of a Hindu activist, C Sasikumar. We also know that more than half a dozen Muslims have been arrested for having killed him for religious reasons. All India Students' Association posted on their Facebook page, "Hindu nationalists won't speak up because H Farooq was a left-wing Muslim. Muslims won't speak up because H Farooq was an atheist. And secular democrats, who should speak, won't speak up because they don't want to offend Muslims."

Despite being disadvantaged on multiple grounds, he had commendable courage. He hailed from the Muslim community, which on one hand strongly supports the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy, and on the other hand faces socio-political persecution from the majority population of India.

But I wonder what kind of a person he was. Wasn't he concerned about his family's welfare? Wasn't he aware that atheists are one of the most hated groups all over the world, sometimes even more than Muslims? Didn't he know that Article 25 of our Constitution says "all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion", but doesn't specify a similar freedom for professing, practising and propagating rationalism or atheism? Didn't he know that it is illegal to hurt religious sentiments under Indian Penal Code Sections 153A, 295A, and 298, and that anyone can raise such a complaint by claiming that their religious sentiments were hurt by even harmless actions such as drawing a cartoon? Didn't he know that the 'new normal' defined by the intolerant laws such as standing when the national anthem plays, or, the beef ban, gives primacy to emotions and faith instead of reason and indirectly give sanction to lynch mobs? Didn't he know that scientific temperament and rationalism are fighting a losing battle?

I would have been relieved had Farooq been killed over a personal dispute instead of his ideology. It would have been nice to believe that India isn't aping Bangladesh in getting atheists murdered. But this seems to be just one of the symptoms of a larger global disease. The underlying issue is that irrational and divisive identities are gaining prominence and encroaching on personal liberties. People are willingly sacrificing material interests for the sake of owning some real or imaginary group identity. Hindus who voted for Trump are being persecuted by the American 'sons of soil'. After some decades of inclusive liberalism, the world is currently regressing. When the Islamic rulers tried to further their political objectives by seeking global support in the name of religion, the US has responded by persecuting innocent Muslim immigrants. Even France, the fountainhead of democracy and personal liberty, has exhibited Islamophobic intolerance by banning burqas and burkinis.

Back home, Periyar EV Ramasamy, the social reformist who is celebrated by Farooq's party Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam, rode on the wave of a sectarian, anti- brahmanical Dravidian pride. Although his Dravidar Kazhagam movement endorsed progressive thoughts such as eradication of superstitions and casteism, they also resorted to the sentimental ideals of ethnic and linguistic pride, instead of only recommending a rational, dispassionate way of thinking. Any religious or nationalistic hatred runs on emotions, and it is futile to oppose it with an equally emotional message of brotherhood or compassion.

At an intellectual level, even peaceful candle marches are qualitative equivalents of and hence easily convertible to lynch mobs. Due to their emphasis on emotions, we can see how once 'progressive' DMK and AIADMK have now supported the casteist religious practice of Jalikattu, in the name of traditional ethnic pride. Emotions can be subverted to lead a mob to commit the most heinous crimes, such as the 2015 Dimapur case, where the state took no action when a mob of thousands lynched a Muslim suspected of being a Bangladeshi rapist.

The murders of Farooq, Dabholkar, Pansare, and Kalburgi highlight the fact that progressive ideas are increasingly under attack and intolerance is on the rise. Our only hope of preserving some sanity in society is to stand our ground, without succumbing to any counter-sectarian identity of pride, and without compromising our ideologies in the hope of public support or political advantage. We also need to introspect the reasons for this global 'great leap backward'. Maybe, only then might we be able to change the course of society towards a secular democracy conducive for freethinkers, where reason supersedes faiths. What remains to be seen is how many more Farooqs will get sacrificed before we achieve this goal.

(The author is an MBBS, M Tech and has done Biomedical Engineering from IIT-B. The views and opinions expressed in the article are those of the author)