Salman Rushdie aka Joseph Anton
Recently finished reading the autobiography of
Salman Rushdie its a nice book which details his starting as writer his success
and then the publication of SATANIC VERVES which led to the FATWA
and how he lived through that ordeal. It’s heartening to read that despite whatever
happened to him he kept his nerve found new love and tried to live a normal
life in the constant shadow of death.
What I came
to think after reading the book was how politics shapes up the thought process of
a nation ,India was the first country to ban SATANIC VERSES and none of the
people who banned it had ever red it they just decided to ban it because some Muslim
religious leader had issued dire warning about it and the Rajiv Gandhi government
and particularly Rajiv Gandhi himself, the novice that he was in the realm of India
and its politics immediately allowed it to happen because his sycophants warned
him that it could appease large section of Muslims and the SHAH BANO case happened just because he had brute
majority in parliament he upturned a judgment of the supreme court and allowed millions
of Muslim women to languish in clutches
of the Muslim religious leaders
How strange
is that so called religious leaders who threatened writers, poets and other artists
by invoking god and doing anything illegal in the name of god because they want
everybody to believe that they represent the true voice of god?
Through the
entire book you get the feeling that one man who may be wrote something that
was not palatable to the religious leaders was made a scapegoat for a larger agenda
of superimposing your ill on the people and becoming their voice when you are
not.
For more
than a decade the writer lived in shadow of death and many people were killed
his translator in Japan and his publishers were attacked because Iran gave
fatwa and their soldiers were ready to carry it out.
Till how
long this would go on, this hooliganism has now spilled to Hinduism also where
we find writers and poets being attacked where no one can utter a word even his
views on the religious scriptures where women are being attacked because they
are not living in the way of Indian culture we should not allow our religion to
become so narrow minded and bigoted, just because Muslim fanatics behave in
certain way we should not copy them.
And look at
where all this has led to now everybody is either a nationalist or he is not either
you are Hindu you are not, if you want
to rise any other voice that is against the nationalist agenda of an
organization you are attacked ,kicked and harassed .
If we don’t
atop this behavior than we would also one day slip into a culture where
religion and their leaders would decide what to wear what to eat even now you
have instances where a particular community wants to ban non veg food
on particular days you have posters
on every well exhorting you to become vegetarian an if this is not stopped one day
you would find Hindu fanatic hitting you because you are eating what you want .
The more I see
what is happening across the Muslim world the more I realize that all this because
you have allowed the Muslim religious leaders to get away with murder, instead of
telling the mullah that his place is just inside the masjid we have allowed him
to be know all who takes all decisions about the life of an ordinary Muslim we
need to free the Muslim youth and population from their clutches, you have
bring law into force and this is true that unless law of the land is supreme and
religious leaders are confined to just religion there is chaos .
if we would
have allowed Hindu religious leaders to take decisions on our personal and professional
life we would have never made the social progress that we have made
The time
has come to make law of the land supreme for the Islamic population also and
someone must undo the mistake made in shah bano case.
It’s high time.
