Communal in Kolkata

Taslima Nasreen has been living quietly in Kolkata, making almost no public appearances since she was attacked by Islamists in Hyderabad a few months ago. Why was her name dragged into the protests against what happened in Nandigram? Liberal, secular journalists report that the Islamist mobs that destroyed public property and stoned policemen in Kolkata were incensed not just over Nandigram but over some article that appeared in an obscure Bengali newspaper. If the Marxist government stood by its own principles it would have told the all-India Muslim troublemaking front that this is not Saudi Arabia but India and we cherish the right of free speech. Shame on you, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

As for me, I am neither secular nor liberal when it comes to religious fanatics of any kind. So in the plainest words, I would like to say that there is no room for Islamists in India. They must be deported to a country like Saudi Arabia where life runs according to the laws of the Shariat, or so the Saudis tell us. Last week a 19-year-old girl, who was gang-raped because she was seen in the company of a man who was not her husband, brother or father, was sentenced to a punishment of 200 lashes. This is the sort of primitive justice that our homegrown Islamists approve of but they must be told firmly that this is not the Indian way. In secular India, secular laws apply and it is the rapist who gets punished and not the victim. In India women can hang about on their own and even with their lovers without being punished. Unlike in Saudi Arabia they are even allowed to drive cars.

On a more serious note, we need to pay close attention to the threat of homegrown, south Asian radical Islam. In the name of 8216;secularism8217; the prime minister has closed his eyes not just to the disturbing number of madrassas that have come up on our borders and in remote villages but also to the increasing number of organisations that shield Islamism. They function openly in our cities, and if they are not openly spreading poison against other religions, they are actively involved in promoting the idea that the only religion worthy of respect is Islam. That these organisations are dangerously influential is evident from the thousands of ordinary Muslims that pour into the streets to protest against whatever they are told is the new Islamist cause.

There is always a hysterical edge to the protests that make the protesters link all sorts of grievances together. What does Taslima Nasreen have to do with Nandigram? What does Nandigram have to do with Islam? What does the All-India Minority Front that led the violence in Kolkata have to do with any of these things?

We need to protect India from this kind of religious hysteria. We have an economy on the verge of a boom, a stock market that goes up steadily, and a huge population of young Indians who seek modernity and prosperity. If there is one thing, in my humble view, that can bring all of our hopes and dreams crashing down, it is radical Islam. It is dangerous for our policymakers to continue to ignore the threat we face from the military-mullah dictatorships in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

It is because they make no distinction between ordinary Indian Muslims and Islamists that no action has been taken so far against the front organisations of radical Islam. It is these organisations that are directly responsible for the kind of meaningless violence we saw in Kolkata last week. They must be stopped.