The politics of fatwas

The last of the 15 PILs filed against the south Indian actress Khushboo was finally stayed last Wednesday. But the issue is a timely warning of how dangerous political opportunists and religious fundamentalists can be when they make common obscurantist cause. It also raises the larger question — rarely debated in polite society — of why prominent Muslims, ranging from Shabana Azmi to Shah Rukh Khan, such voluble critics of Hindutva-inspired communalism (and rightly so), do not equally vociferously and publicly condemn fundamentalist Islamic communalism of the rabid sort that was directed against Sania Mirza when she first defended Khushboo's views on pre-marital sex.

Khushboo's initial comments on safe sex were made in response to a survey on evolving sexual mores in Indian society published by India Today. The focus of the survey was sex and the single Indian woman. Despite its huge mass readership, the India Today survey created few ripples. But the moment Khushboo said in a subsequent interview (with the Tamil edition of the magazine) that Indian men could not expect their brides to be virgins and went on to sensibly suggest safe pre-marital sex, political opportunism and religious fundamentalism took over.

The Pattali Makal Katchi (PMK) and the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) launched a vicious attack on the hapless actress and on those (like Suhasini Mani Ratnam) who dared to support her views. Unknown mullahs then crept out of various crevices to force Sania to hastily retract her views on pre-marital sex (made in the context of Khushboo's remarks) and declare publicly that as a ‘Muslim girl’ she thought pre-marital sex was wrong.

The power of political and religious leaders to impose their social and moral values on ordinary citizens is unacceptable in any mature democracy. The fact that in India such politico-religious fatwas are issued with apparent impunity and their authors not punished is an indictment of the quality of our political governance.

The issue is simple: the absolute democratic right of every Indian citizen to express his or her views freely without fear of persecution. Of course, such freedom does not come without riders. Freedom of expression is not freedom to offend or slander. But every mature democracy, including India's, has sensible libel laws and other legal provisions to check such abuse.

Governments are elected to serve us, protect our rights and punish those who seek to deny us those rights. So what did the Union health minister and PMK MP, Anubumani Ramadoss, do in response to the disgraceful attack by his co-PMK party members on Khushboo? Did he condemn his thuggish PMK co-workers? No. Did he defend Khushboo's democratic right to express her views in public? No.

Ramadoss did the exact opposite. He blamed the victim. Here's what the UPA coalition cabinet minister, who is meant to protect our democratic rights and promote safe sex in an AIDS-ravaged society, said: "You cannot propagate sex outside or prior to marriage. It is not that we in India don't have sex. It's just that we don't talk about it."

Well, Ramadoss's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, doesn't agree. On World AIDS day last Thursday, Singh said bluntly: "India must shed its inhibitions about sex." Ramadoss's tirade, however, had a cunning objective hidden within the moral outrage. The PMK is weakening in Tamil Nadu. The state assembly elections are due in May 2006 and political opportunists in the PMK and DPI know that moral outrage can buy free publicity and cheap votes.

And what of the mullahs who forced Sania to retract her statement? Fundamentalists control their flock by keeping them intellectually veiled. It is disgraceful that prominent Muslims did not come out in open support of Sania when various Islamic ‘leaders’ condemned her.

Just as secular Muslims (rightly) condemn Hindu fundamentalists in the VHP for their backward views on women, religion and politics, prominent Muslims must with equal conviction and force condemn those mullahs who seek to circumscribe our freedoms. So far the only well-known Muslim to have done so publicly in the present case is Aamir Khan.

A society is judged by the way it treats its women. The values the PMK, the DPI and Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists seek to impose on us to further their own narrow ends must be fought and defeated by all Indians who place freedom above fear.

minhazmerchant@business-leaders.com