Sanal Edamaruku - Kalburgi murder: ‘What if Dayananda Saraswati lived in our times?’ // Shuddhabrata Sengupta - On keeping Open the Door that was Opened by Dr. Malleshappa Kalburgi
There is a striking similarity in the murders of Narendra
Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M M Kalburgi. All of them were active
rationalists; they wrote and spoke openly against age-old traditions and
beliefs and tried to promote scientific temper, spirit of inquiry and reform.
Though these are officially the national ethos of modern India and enshrined as
Fundamental Duties of citizens in Indian Constitution, they were brutally
murdered for practicing and promoting them.
Unidentified motorcycle borne
killers shot them dead, point blank. Malleshappa Madivalappa Kalburgi, a
scholar, writer and academic, has authored books and was respected widely for
his fearless opinions based on scholarly studies. He was former vice chancellor
of Kannada University in Hampi; received national sahitya akademi award in 2006
for a collection of his research articles on Kannada folklore, religion and
culture.
In the new wave of intolerance in India, Kalburgi’s
criticism against idolatry in Hinduism was enough for some groups to hate him.
The same people who used venomous language against him also attacked another
famous Kannada writer U R Ananthamurthy too who was a co-traveller of Kalburgi
in the same campaign for rational thought. Ananthamuthy and Kalburgi wrote and
campaigned hand in hand. Idolatry was heavily criticised by many Hindu
reformers during the past centuries.
Are we fast losing the tolerant stream of Hinduism that took
pride of multiple streams of thought including that of the Charvakas and the
Lokayats who denounced Vedas and stood for critical inquiry of old beliefs?
Though Charvakas were silenced, a new Hinduism seemed emerging in the last
century that took pride of different world-views co-existing. That is pushed
back and intolerance has taken the front seat now.
Those critics who could not be answered with logic are now
silenced with guns. Imagine if Dayananda Saraswati (1824 – 1883, founder of
Arya Samaj), who raised harsh criticism against idolatry and ritualistic
worship, was living in our times! Will these motorcycle borne criminals spare a
reformer like him? We are yet to come out from the shock of the assassinations
of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare in 2013 and 2014.
The wave of intolerance against rationalist positions is not
limited to violent groups of any single region. The enemies of reason are
afraid of word, pen and keyboard. They try to stop the flow of free thought by
guns. In 2012 when I found the source of the “miracle” of dripping Jesus statue
in a Mumbai Catholic church as toilet drainage clogging, professional teamsters
were employed to attack me outside the TV studio. I escaped. But the church
leaders got their front groups filing blasphemy complaints against me and the
cardinal demanded my apology. Upon my refusal to apologise, extremist Catholic
groups on internet discussed my assassination.
I had to leave India for my safety and to continue work for
a tolerant sane world free from blinding beliefs and superstitions. Two years
ago Narendra Dabholkar called me and encouraged me to return to India to
continue my fights from the Indian base. He even offered to protect me. Four
days later I heard his death.
The wave of violence against rationalist bloggers in
neighbouring Bangladesh is not different from India. Avijith Roy, moderator of
the internationally renowned rationalist portal Mukto-Mona (Free Mind), was
murdered this year. And Washiqur Rahman, who condemned the killers of Avijit in
his blog, was killed weeks later. Ananta Bijoy Das, a 30 year old banker and
editor of a journal namely jukti (Reason) who used to blog vigorously against
religious bigotry was murdered recently. When religious groups take to violence
because they can’t face opposing views, governments have to assure Free Speech
to protect the right of those who stand for science and progress.
If opinions and rational point of view can’t be expressed
freely, especially in a country where religion holds much sway, many major
achievements civilization will be at stake. I am deeply shocked and grieved
about the tragic end of my rationalist colleagues. Bigots afraid of honest
dialogue try to silence us with guns. Despite the alarming situation,
rationalists are not so easily scared away. There are more and more thinking
people coming out and jointly try to create an atmosphere of dialogue. We can’t
afford to give up.
http://indianexpress.com/article/blogs/mm-kalburgi-murder-what-if-dayananda-saraswati-lived-in-our-times/
On keeping Open the Door that was Opened by Dr. Malleshappa Kalburgi
On keeping Open the Door that was Opened by Dr. Malleshappa Kalburgi
The destinies of Dabhokar, Pansare and Kalburgi, felled by
Hindu fanatics, in India, are mirrored by what happened to Niloy Chakrabarti,
Ananta Bijoy Das, Washiqur Rahman and Avijit Roy, all four of whom were
free-thinking (‘mukto-mona’, in Bengali) bloggers assassinated by Islamists in
Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, the so called ‘secular’ Awami League government,
while it promised punishment to the killers, also called on bloggers and
intellectuals to not write anything that could be considered offensive to religious
believers. Some bloggers, who managed to survive attacks, were in fact arrested
on the charge of ‘offending religious sentiments’. A few bloggers have managed
to escape by leaving Bangladesh, for good.
In India, Muslim fundamentalist outfits (ranging from the
MIM in Hyderabad to groups patronized by the Samajwadi Party in UP and the
Trinamool Congress and the CPI(M) in West Bengal) have repeatedly
threatened the exiled writer Tasleema Nasreen. Muslim fundamentalist outfits in
different parts of the country (often under the protection of ‘secular’
politicians) have consistently conducted witch hunts of anyone,
especially women, who have questioned misogynist community mores.
In Pakistan, the last few years have witnessed the killing
of Sabeen Mahmood and the attack on Raza Rumi, again by shadowy actors linked
to Islamist groups, or the intelligence apparatus, or to both. In Sri Lanka, dissident Buddhist monks such as Watarkea
Vijitha Thero, who refused to tow the line of anti-muslim hatred dictated by
Buddhist chauvinist groups such as the BBS (Buddhist Power Force) have had the
experience of being stripped, beaten and left for dead on the street. The role
of the Buddhist clergy in inciting hatred against the Rohingya Muslim minority
in Myanmar (Burma) is by now well known.
In Indian Punjab, Sikh Extremists have a track record of
killing and threatening anyone opposed to their sectarian agendas. The
harassment of Sikh scholars like Dr. Pashaura Singh and Dr. Harjot Oberoi by
the ‘gatekeepers’ of Sikh tradition, and the assassinations of poets and
activists Avtar Singh Pash and Jaimal Singh Padda, is still within living
memory.
Instances of intolerance towards dissenting views mark even
the different Christian communities in South Asia. The harassment and legal
troubles that the rationalist Sanal Edamaruku faced at the hands of Christian
zealots in India eventually forced him into exile in far away Finland. It is time for us to call out the nonsense that declares
that all religions are peace loving, and that those who threaten harm in the
name of religious faith are in fact inauthentic...
