'The issue isn't Taslima, the issue is freedom'

GUEST CODE: The Centre wants Taslima to "refrain" from hurting people.

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SD: How do you see the role of Congress in this whole issue? It claims to be a secular party.

Sagarika Ghose: The Congress is hardly secular, it only believes it is. A party that masterminded the killing of 2,700 Sikhs cannot be secular. It was the Congress that encouraged the Muslim fundamentalists on the Shah Bano judgment; it was Rajiv Gandhi who allowed Shilanyas at Ayodhya. The Congress is a past master at encouraging the worst elements in a community and using them for votes. It’s a shame that the government or the UPA has not made any statement on the Taslima issue.

Suman Sengupta: Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his government find it convenient to keep Taslima out of Kolkata and protect their Muslim vote bank. Such people have no right to call themselves secular and communal.

Sagarika Ghose: Sure, the Taslima issue has certainly destroyed some of the CPM’s proud ‘secularism’.

M F HUSAIN AND TASLIMA NASREEN

Swaminathan: Should we not draw a line to keep amity in the society? People supporting Taslima denounced M F Husain’s paintings. Why should we at all allow our country to be a potboiler for such damaging events?

Sagarika Ghose: Protests against artists are all politically organised. If you went to an exhibition and saw a painting of a nude Saraswati, what would you do? Immediately lead a morcha against the artist and start screaming for his murder? No, right? Instead, you would look at the painting and simply move on, if it was not to your taste. Those who have the time and energy to protest and scream and shout are nothing but politicians.

S Sundararaman: Do you think the comparison between Taslima and M F Husain is tenable? Husain fled India to avoid the legal process while Taslima is on the run to save herself from violence?

Sagarika Ghose: Husain and Taslima are very similar. Both face attacks from fundamentalists from the Hindu and the Muslim community for being artists. Husain does not just face legal cases: many groups have issued death threats on him, said they want to gouge out his eyes and behead him. I wish such anger was reserved for the corrupt and the criminal, not directed at those who harmlessly paint pictures or write books.

Gaurav: Bal Thackeray is allowed to spit venom in public? He is facing trial for his writings in Saamna after the Babri Masjid demolition. Then how can freedom be absolute?

Sagarika Ghose: Bal Thackeray is a politician not an artist or writer. As an artist or cartoonist (which he is) he has the right to say whatever he wants from my point of view. But as a politician, he has to abide by the rules of democratic behaviour, which means recognising that fundamental rights exist only because we have fundamental duties not to cause damage to the democratic structure in which we live.