The Freethought Party of India (FPI) has strongly condemned the unsavoury remarks on former UP Chief Minister and BSP chief Mayawati and thrashing and stripping of Dalit youths by high caste Hindus in Gujarat, besides honour killings of lovers.
The FPI said literature of free thinking and human dignity should be widely read in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh where the vast majority of the people are still steeped in all kinds of blind beliefs and primitive ideas of caste and colour.
The party suggested that college going students in India must compulsorily read the selected writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Bradlaugh, (who championed the cause of family planning, birth control, one-child family in those days), JS Mill and Bertrand Russell.
Notably, BJP’s Dayashankar Singh called Mayawati as worse than a sex worker. On July 11 last at Una in Gujarat, high caste Hindus, under the banner of the Gau Surakhya Samiti, stripped and thrashed mercilessly four Dalit youths in broad-day light.
Meanwhile, FPI vice-president Harish Chandra Kar has left for Britain to study free thinkers Charles Bradlaugh, JS Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft and Bertrand Russell. Kar will come back on August 23.
Bradlaugh as Member of British Parliament raised his voice in 1889 for the grant of full Independene to India. Bradlaugh also opposed monarchical and imperialistic republicanism and the divine right of kingship. Mary Wollstonecraft is the mother of feminist movement who said that all female children would study like the boys and they would occupy positions according to their talent and aptitude. JS Mill is the greatest advocate of freedom of speech and expression.