Commentary / Vir Sanghvi

The Husain controversy is a campaign that demeans every Hindu

This has been a matter of lasting regret for the BJP. As a Hindu party it should always be in power in a country where Hindus are in a majority. But Hindus vote as Indians, not as Hindus. Some of us may vote for the BJP, others may not; it is not, in any sense, the natural party of government.

As politically incorrect as this may sound, there is no doubt that many Hindus reacted to The Satanic Verses agitation by saying, 'Oh god! Those fanatical Muslims are at it again.' The patronising response was occasioned by the certainty that Hindus would never behave in this manner.

Similarly, when Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie or when Taslima Nasreen had to flee Bangladesh, Hindus clucked their tongues superiorly. In India, they said, Hindus would never use the power of the state to impose religious judgement on other people.

Well, think again!

The single-biggest miscalculation by the BJP over the last decade has been its belief that everybody who regarded the Babri Masjid as a symbol of pseudo-secularism or minority appeasement would rejoice when it was pulled down.

In fact, Hindus reacted with revulsion, shame and horror. The destruction of other people's idols or places of worship has never been part of the Hindu tradition. There are no crusades in our history; no kings who want to be known as Mahmud the Idol Breaker. By demolishing the Babri Masjid, the BJP demonstrated how removed its understanding of Hinduism was from the reality. And it has taken the party years to recover.

The Shiv Sena and the Sangh Parivar are now repeating that mistake. First of all, Hindus are not offended by the nation that their gods and goddesses might sometimes be portrayed nude and there are centuries of temple art to prove it.

Secondly, it is against every principle of religious tolerance to persecute a man for a work of artistic merit that he has produced in response to a creative impulse. Muslims used as justification, Rushdie's statement that he was trying to shock. Husain has never tried to give religious offence.

Thirdly, the Rushdie and Nasreen affairs were seen by Muslims as intra-Islam matters. It wasn't much of a defence but the persecutors did nevertheless claim that they were acting within their own community. They were not forcing Hindus to accept some standard of Islamic correctness.

Even this defence is not available to the Shiv Sena. They are using an alleged offence to Hindu sensibilities to persecute a Muslim. What could be more medieval?

And finally, the confusion between religion and the state is something that all Hindus are unhappy about. When we opted for a secular polity in 1947, we did not desire a situation in which some khaki-knickered buffoon misused the power of the state to persecute non-Hindus in the name of our religion.

So, forget about all the liberal arguments. Of course, the campaign against Husain goes against the principles of freedom of expression, etc. But that's self-evident.

The real problem is that it also goes against the principles of Hinduism. It is a campaign that tramples over thousands of years of tradition. And it is a campaign that makes every Hindu feel small and demeaned.