Rushdie affair returns to puncture its ‘tolerance’
The Congress has tied itself up in knots over former Union Minister and party leader P Chidambaram's statement that the Rajiv Gandhi Government had done the wrong thing by banning Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in India. Taken completely by surprise, party spokespersons have been at pains to differentiate between ‘banning' the book and ‘stopping its import' into India. In a ridiculous attempt at semantics, they have claimed that the Congress regime had never banned the book but merely blocked its import into India.
What was the purpose of stopping the import if it was not to ban the author's book in IndiaIJ India was the first country to impose the ban, even before Islamic nations got into the act 27 years ago. The Rajiv Gandhi Government was clearly on the path of appeasement of the minority community, something the country had earlier seen with the regime bending before fundamentalist elements in the community and negating the Supreme Court's Shah Bano verdict by amending the Constitution. Congress leaders today are still unable to credibly explain what led to the ban on the import of the book. At the point when the decision was taken, there was no large-scale protest against the book, and only murmurs were heard by sections of the people, none of whom had read The Satanic Verses. The only explanation the Congressmen offer is that the publishers had decided that the ‘situation' in the country was not conducive to the book being available in India. We have had Congress-led Governments after 1988, but none found the ‘situation’ changed to lift the ban. Mr Rushdie is right in having wondered how many more years would it take for the ‘mistake' that Mr Chidambaram has admitted to, to be corrected. Of course, besides the Congress, there had been other parties in the Government too, but none bit the bullet. Meanwhile, realising that the ‘import ban' spin was not working, Congress spokespersons have been now taking the line that Mr Chidambaram's comments were in his individual capacity and did not reflect the Congress's position. To endorse the former Minister's remarks is to admit the error Rajiv Gandhi made. Equally worse, such an endorsement could wreck the Congress's ‘secular' image.
Of course, it must be asked of Mr Chidambaram as to why it took him nearly three decades to acknowledge the error. He was a Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi Government when the import ban was imposed. If he had reservations, he ought to have expressed them then. Perhaps he did, in internal meetings — we don't know. But what we do know is that he never went public with them until a few days ago. From the Congress's point of view, the remark could not have come at a worse time. The party, which has been shouting hoarse over ‘growing intolerance', is suddenly finding the glare on itself for the same intolerance. The Rushdie affair was the beginning of a culture of bans in the country. Many authors faced hostility thereafter on the same pretext that critics of The Satanic Verses had given — hurting people’s sentiments. At one level, certain Congress leaders believe that Mr Chidambaram's bombshell could help project a more modern image of the party in which its leaders speak out in liberal tones. That's true optimism!