BY JAVED ANAND
Sceptics and critics (such as poor me), yet to be
convinced that Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is the tallest
Gandhian of our day, have at last to contend with compelling proof of
the man’s love for and devotion to the apostle of ahimsa.
Aa juo tamhe (see here), I, Narendrabhai am the
first Gujarati, the first from Gujarat, first in India, first in the
world, to order a ban on Joseph Lelyveld’s book, Great Soul,
which maligns our Mahatma. Em jaani lejo (so realise this), as
five crore Gujaratis – Gujarat na paanch karod nagriko – know
only too well, I, Narendrabhai the lionhearted, with my chhappan ni
chhati, will never tolerate such an attack on Gujarat ni
asmita, our self-pride.
Look how promptly, I, Narendrabhai, have rushed to
Gandhiji’s rescue when even his own progeny, Gandhiji ki aulad,
have let him down.
“Don’t ban the book,” says the Mahatma’s grandson,
Rajmohan Gandhi. “To think of banning the book would be wrong from every
point of view, and doubly so in the light of Gandhi’s commitment to
freedom of speech. In fact, extreme scepticism too should be welcomed,
especially in the case of Gandhi, who wanted to live and die for the
truth and wanted his life to be an open book.” “Gandhi, least interested
in self-protection, is best protected by the strength of his own words
and the wordlessness of his own strength,” says his other grandson,
Gopalkrishna Gandhi. “[Banning the book] is the most un-Gandhian thing
to do,” opines Gandhi’s great-grandson, Tushar.
Aa juo tamhe, what kind of parivar is this?
These are the same Gandhiji ki aulad who denounce me for what
happened in Gujarat in 2002. Arre bhai, how to explain that what
happened then had nothing to do with Gandhian morality? It was
about Newton’s action-reaction law of physics: kriya-pratikriya.
Even as we critics of book bans await the fate of
Lelyveld’s book on Gandhi, Bihar’s Muslims are up in arms, demanding a
ban on a book in Hindi, Aadhunik Bharat Mein Samajik Parivartan (Social
Change in Modern India), authored by JP Singh, a lecturer at Patna
University. Muslims are agitated because the book allegedly damns two of
their icons, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University,
and poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, as being communal and separatist.
The Bihar assembly has seen uproarious scenes, memorandums have been
submitted to the governor and dharnas staged.
Why should Singh’s book be banned just because it
describes Sir Syed and Iqbal as communal and separatist? Singh is by no
means the first person to say so about either or both of them. By this
logic why not demand a ban on MJ Akbar’s latest book, Tinderbox: The
Past and Future of Pakistan, which implicates both these men
as well as many others in pursuing a politics flowing out of a
subcontinental Muslim ‘theory of distance’?
And though I’m not sure where Iqbal stood on the ban on
books business, one thing is certain: the demand for such bans is as un-Syed
as it is un-Gandhian. One can do no better here than to quote from
Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali’s highly acclaimed biography of Sir Syed,
Hayat-e-Javed:
“Some Muslims believe that it is a matter of great piety
to not cast even a passing glance at the objections that Christians
raise against Islam, or the things they say about Prophet Muhammad in
their books, while some feel such anger and outrage that they burn these
books and still others appeal to the government… to order the seizure of
all copies and ban any further publication of the same.
“Such an attitude suggests that we have no answer to the
arguments of our opponents except to close our ears and eyes or appeal
to the government to confiscate such books and prohibit their future
publication. Contrary to this, Sir Syed was of the view that… concern
for upholding the dignity of Islam demands that we should reflect on the
objections raised with calmness, patience and a clear mind. Having done
so, we should respond to those writings that are worthy of a reply. As
for those books which contain nothing but malice and bad taste, we
should leave it to the public to judge for themselves instead of asking
the government to sit in judgement or seeking the protection of
governments in religious debates” (pp. 790-791, Hayat-e-Javed).
If Sir Syed had no problems with problematic texts
concerning Islam or its prophet, it is unlikely he would have supported
a book ban for self-protection. Had they been alive in the 1920s, even
though the highly incendiary book, Rangeela Rasool, was
apparently intended to inflame Muslim sentiments, Sir Syed and Maulana
Hali would not have supported any demand for its ban, much less approved
the murder of its author. However, for political reasons Mohammad Ali
Jinnah did so.
So, on the subject of book bans, it should not be
difficult for us to draw a line: Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Hali, Sir Syed,
Gandhi ki aulad, on one side; Jinnah and Modi on the other.
