" **Where the mind is without Fear ...
And the head is held high
where knowledge is free
into that heaven of freedom
my Father .. let my country awake** "
This poem of Tagore is taught to children worldwide as a part of their prescribed syllabus. This teaches the children the importance of freedom right from a tender age in the faint hope that they will grow up actually believing this idea.
I would like to bring this to the readers’ attention that I am not here writing about how good or bad the book is. I am here to write about the idea of shifting Tasleema to different undisclosed locations in India under house arrest in the name of security till she herself decided to leave the country.
Her harrasment didn’t stop at cutting her off from those she wantd to see, in the name of security, but as I read she might have also been denied of proper medical aid going by the complaints coming from her and backed by international PEN, the global writer’s organisation.
Information and Broadcasting minister Priyaranjan Dashmunshi, even asked her to bow down and apologize to those she had offended. He had obviously forgotten that India is a secular democracy rather than a theocracy.
The UPA govt and the leftist supporters claim to be the champions of secularism. West Bengal’s left front government got her to leave Kolkata where she had been staying and wanted to stay. Forcing Taslima out of the country however was a sad day for Secularism.
Secularism of this variety amounts to a game of competitive fundamentalism. Somehow someone claims to be offended on behalf of his community and issues threats. The government in the name of security bans the book, the movie or maybe the writer.
It is equivalent to handing over fundamentalists a remote control for the country’s occurings. They could then press whatever buttons they would like and turn the tide in their favour all the time.
I am glad Tagore isn’t alive to see any of this happening to the country he declined the knighthood for. But atleast it would work for the running Govt in its short term goal of keeping its votebanks in place.