In “Faith, fatwas and free speech”(March 30), the author seems to suggest that any upstart can acquire instant “scholar-hood” by denigrating established tenets of a faith or mocking its symbols and extract maximum mileage — essentially a low-risk, high-return endeavour. Risks are further minimised (and returns maximised), when a caucus of other liberals and reformers, a veritable mutual appreciation club, takes up the cause of these “upholders” of truth and rationality.
Will the author kindly enlighten us about how proclaiming Sita the sister of Rama, as D N Jha does, or depicting her as a sex-crazed nymph, as Doniger does, helps in ridding Hinduism of its infirmities? Further, is deriding the opponents by name-calling (fanatics, intellectually inadequate, bigoted etc.) the only way to make them see “reason”? Shouting down opposition may be a great debating strategy but is unlikely to bring about any fundamental shift in the belief system of the opposition which these self-styled “progressives” seek to achieve.
Today’s practitioners of free-speech seek to force their opinion down the gullets of sceptics through a one-way mechanism of shrill rhetoric rather than reasoning it out with them.
Ajay Tyagi, Mumbai
Nilanjana Roy replies:
If Mr Tyagi reads the works of DN Jha or Wendy Doniger with greater care, he might find that his interpretation of their scholarship is at odds with the detailed and nuanced arguments they actually make.
Those who have questioned faith or “mocked its symbols” have certainly not found this a low-risk high-return endeavour; Salman Rushdie spent several years of his life living under the shadow of the fatwa, with almost no freedom of movement until recently, Taslima Nasreen cannot safely return to the country of her birth, and these are just two examples.
Readers should write to:
The Editor, Business Standard,
Nehru House,
4, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg,
New Delhi 110 002,
Fax: (011) 23720201;
letters@bsmail.in
