Pratap Bhanu Mehta - A blasphemous law
NB: The proposed law is a disgrace. It shows how our political leaders' first instinct is to appease the most base features of public mentality; instead of upholding the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Pandering to 'hurt sentiment' is a means of empowering goondas, nothing less. How does one 'injure' a book? Suppose I claim that the contents of such and such holy book are questionable, or not to be taken literally (something Mahatma Gandhi often observed); or that claims to speak divine wisdom are unconvincing, do I therefore deserve to be put to death? In a country where lynchers enjoy impunity, is the avowal of atheism now to become a crime? The Punjab Congress government must be forced to withdraw this poisonous proposal. The Almighty God can look after himself or herself without the assistance of political hypocrites. DS
The Punjab
government’s proposal to amend Article 295 of the Penal Code is deeply
regressive and will have deep ramifications beyond Punjab. The proposed
amendment gives life imprisonment for whoever causes injury, damage or
sacrilege to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bhagwad Gita, the Quran and the Bible.
As we have seen in the case of neighbouring Pakistan, the progressive
strengthening of anti-blasphemy laws during the Seventies was a sign of a toxic
combination of greater intolerance and authoritarianism. Does India want to
traverse the same road?
Holy books like the
Adi Granth are sacred. They are sacred not just for their content. They express
the highest truths about Ultimate Reality. The “Sat” in “Ek Omkar Sat Nam”
brilliantly combines both Truth and Existence. But in the Sikh tradition, the
Book is also treated iconically, with elaborate rituals around its sacred
treatment, often to the point where it is not easily disseminated. But using
state power to enforce the sacred, both defiles the sacred and messes with the secular. The article defiles
the sacredness of the Book, the eternity of the Word because the status of the
Book now becomes an artefact of state power. It is if the song of Krishna, or
the word of Mohammad, or the teaching of the Gurus, now need the imprimatur of
state violence to secure their sacredness.
Rather than being
luminous, potent and transcendent texts, their status is now reduced to a
section of the Indian Penal Code. It also gives defilers of these texts more
power: It is in effect saying these books can, in fact, be defiled by some
rearrangement or even a burning of a copy. So much for the indestructible Word.
The greatest heresy is to think that the word of God needs protection from the
mortal state. The sacrilege to the book is not its burning, it is this law.
But this law also
messes with secularism. A liberal state needs two sensibilities. The first is
that many good things are good and derive their authentic meaning precisely
from the fact that there is no coercion behind them. The second is that my
beliefs and faith, even if entirely sound, do not by themselves provide
sufficient ground for the state using its coercive power to enforce them. The
argument that the state needs to use coercive power in deference to religious
sentiments (however sincere those sentiments might be), is a piece of illiberal
and dangerous nonsense. I may respect something, but it does not give
sufficient warrant for the state to enforce this belief or sentiment on others.
Religious sentiments need not be illiberal; but they become illiberal when they
become the basis for the state enforcing the idea that everyone has to defer to
those sentiments.
In India, we are constantly expanding the circle of deference
to religious sentiment. Contrary to what the Punjab government says, making
religious sentiments the basis for law, is a recipe for competitive political
mobilisation and conflict, not of peace. This law is also deeply authoritarian.
The idea of life imprisonment for acts of injury to the book is neither about
deterrence, nor piety. It is simply about the state making a show of its power
because it can.
The law also messes
with history in bizarre ways. In order to show that the law was not directed at
a particular religion, the act includes texts like the Bhagwad Gita in its
ambit. The law is still sectarian in that it protects four texts, and the state
has decided which texts get protection. But whatever the glories and importance
of the Bhagwad Gita, the idea that the state now creates a new liturgy of
respect around that text in the same way as the Adi Granth or the Koran, is the
state taking over the right to define the significance of these texts in its
own way. It is in effect converting the text to what it has never been.
Defenders of the
amendments say that the text will not lead to the closing of spaces for
criticism, since the act of injury to the text is narrowly defined. But this is
plain nonsense. One of the tragedies of modern Sikhism is simply that the
religion of extraordinary ecumenism and wondrous detachment has become often
seriously internally intolerant. Part of this is political: The SGPC wanting to
maintain as much of its monopoly over the religious organisation as possible.
But if you talk to serious Sikh scholars you will quickly find out just how
difficult it is to do serious critical scholarship in this area: Scholars have
been traumatised by their communities. I have personally known scholars who
will not write critically on intra-Sikh politics for fear of reprisals.
Often the issue is
simply that the scholarship dealing with the character of the text is
considered “injurious” to the text, a defilement. In another context, even our
courts have held rearranging Basava Vachanas in a different order (to give a
more “feminist” reading) was offensive to the Lingayats. Given this context,
any law that empowers the state to give upto life imprisonment for injury to
the book is about nothing but creating a pall of fear. Its effect will not be
the number of prosecutions; its effect will be more palpably felt in people not
even daring to push the boundaries of protest.
When the original IPC
was discussed in the 1920s, our leaders were far more conscious of its possible
infringement on liberty. Now the political class legitimises any infringement
on liberty with the imprimatur of majoritarian sentiment behind it. It is true
that in Punjab there were acts of desecration of several religious texts. But
there are enough existing laws to deal with those who would want to maliciously
generate enmity between communities. Second, the motives of these desecrators
are mixed. But if they have a political purpose, it is to make sure that they
can use religious sentiments to destroy India’s liberal democracy. By caving
into those fears, by treating Indian citizens as infantile creatures of passion
who cannot be educated for liberty, we are unwittingly aiding their political
agenda.
It should also worry a
democracy that no political party has opposed or called out the authoritarian
character of this bill. Congress and AAP are now both legitimising “religious
sentiment” as itself a valid argument (think Ayodhya). For, caving in to some
nebulous argument about religious sentiments does not just make us destroy both
religion and the state, it also produces political cowardice of the highest
order.
see also
Khaled
Ahmed - Pakistan: Sleepwalking to surrender (when fanaticism is entrenched as
state ideology)
Woman
filmmaker in Iran sentenced to 18 months in prison
The religious persecution of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1945-2010)/ Interview: My life fighting intolerance/ Mahmoud Mohammed Taha & the Second Message of Islam
Najam Sethi - Pakistan: Pluralism and tolerance
The religious persecution of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1945-2010)/ Interview: My life fighting intolerance/ Mahmoud Mohammed Taha & the Second Message of Islam
Najam Sethi - Pakistan: Pluralism and tolerance
