Fascism in India: An Unneeded Calling

The buzz for the Indian election has been for last two years. The disenchantment and disillusion with United Progressive Alliance’s policy had made people impatient in welcoming new government, which will drive this country towards prudent economic policies, better governance, enactment of entitlement based rights and robust foreign policies. The name which comes in the thought simultaneously with Election 2014 is the name of the Poster boy of Bhartiya Janta Party Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi has been the member of famous Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and chosen as the Chief Minister of Indian State Gujarat in 2001 after Bhuj earthquake. During his regime, Gujarat witnessed a massive riot in 2002 after the burning of a train in Godhara.  Narendra Modi is named in multiple cases for alleged involvement in Post-Godhra riots. Some of the officers of Gujarat government also alleged Modi for not allowing state machineries to suppress or control rioters of majority community. But, Modi got clean chit from Special investigation Tribunal and other courts of Gujarat. Despite having blot of arranging riots in Gujarat, he was chosen for the third term as the chief minister of Gujarat in 2013.

I am not interested in Modi’s credentials or his failures as the chief minister of Gujarat but about the narratives posed against Modi and Bhartiya Janta Party in media and books. The party, Bhartiya Janta Party to which Modi belongs is termed as ‘fascist’ by most of the writers. This term fascism has long history in the politics of India but at most of the places this term is unjustified in essence and the concept. This term was first applied to Mussolini’s regime and later it was applied to other regimes such as Hitler, Franco (Spain), Salazar (Portugal) and Peron (Argentina) which were quite different from the Italian version of fascism. The ideology of fascism never produced any great theoretical writer who could explain the philosophies enshrined in this ideology. So, fascism never produced something which can tell that these are the certain basic principles of this system. The historical research on the Mussolini’s regime tells us certain basic principles of fascism like extreme nationalism, a totalitarian system of government, one-party state, autarchy, military strength and use of violence. The use of violence can be seen from the poem of Martin Niemoller written in the period of Jewish holocaust

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Mussolini once remarked, ‘Peace is absurd: fascism does not believe in it’. So, when Mussolini introduced fascist state in Italy, he suppressed all the parties except fascist, brought changes in the local government, imposed censorship, supervised education, changed employment policies etc to control over state affairs. The government aided to promote co-operation between employers and workers to end class warfare in what is known as “corporate state”. Trade unions controlled by fascists had the sole right to negotiate for the workers. Strikes and lockouts were banned. To compensate worker’s loss of freedom, they were incentivised as free Sundays, annual holidays with pay, social security, sports and theatre facilities etc. Mussolini murdered or exiled all his opponents. Constitution was amended to grant Mussolini unlimited power and now he was only accountable to king, not to the parliament. Elected town councils and mayors were abolished and town were run by fascist officials. In education, the main messages were total obedience and submission to the authority and indoctrination of youth with the brilliance of the Duce and glories of war. Through Latern Treaty (1929), the state of Italy reached an understanding with the pope and accepted Vatican City as sovereign state, paid large sum of money to pope for his losses and Catholic faith as the official state religion. Mussolini tried to establish a totalitarian system however he was not as successful as Hitler was in Germany.

The policies of Italian fascist regime were not anti-jew until 1938. From 1938, Mussolini started imitating Hitler and started adopting Nazi practices and the distinction between Nazism and Fascism became blurred. 

Mussolini in his book The Doctrine of Fascism (1941) writes

“Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of the people.

The concept of freedom is not absolute because nothing is ever absolute in life. Freedom is not a right, it is a duty. It is not a gift, it is a conquest; it is not equality, it is a privilege. The concept of freedom changes with the passing of time. There is a freedom in times of peace which is not the freedom of times of war. There is a freedom in times of prosperity which is not a freedom to be allowed in times of poverty.”

 So, patriotism was replaced by nationalism or nationalistic jingoism and Italy was looking for a small reason to fight a war like the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (October 1935) etc. Broadly there are two interpretations of the fascist era. First interpretation finds that it was a temporary aberration in Italian history and Historian A. Cassels calls it ‘a gigantic confidence trick perpetrated on the Italian nation by Benito Mussolini- an artificial creation of Mussolini’ and the second, now accepted account finds it grew naturally from Italian history, the environment and the circumstances shaped the rise and success of it and not the vice versa. The Italian historian Renzo de Felice (1977) argues “the fascist movement was mainly one of an emerging middle class eager to challenge the traditional, liberal political class for power. The spirit of this middle class was optimistic, vital and creative; it was, in fact, a revolutionary phenomenon”. However, British Historian Martin Blinkhorn does not accept this thesis and alleges de Felice of not seeing the negative and brutal sides of fascism. But, it was the effect of disenchantment of middle class from the activities of ruling class to modernize economy and Mussolini tried it to convert into autocratic and totalitarian system.  

 If we analyse the rule of Bhartiya Janta Party (NDA coalition) especially between 1998 and2004 then we will not be able to find all the essentials elements of fascism. The NDA rule was not an autocratic rule; it was a democratically elected government and its economic policies were revolutionary in nature like privatisation of Public Sector Companies, opening up of economy, social sector spending and efficiency of social security schemes. This regime started Special export processing zone, industrial parks, information parks, National Highway Authority of India etc to boost economic growth. NDA government started Pravasi Bhartiya Samman to boost investment in India by Non-Resident Indians and initiated the process of Overseas Citizen of India. The economic policy showed economic growth in the Vajpayee time and also in UPA-I regime. UPA- I regime because neoliberal adjustments take some time to convert into output. There was no such enactment of labour law to curtail the freedom of the workers or trade unions. India won the Kargil War of 1999 which was the result of Musharaff’s expansionary and anti-India thinking. But, before Kargil war, Vajpayee government started a new paradigm in Indo-Pak relationship through the visit of Indian Prime Minister to Pakistan and started Delhi-Lahore bus service and Track II diplomacy between India and Pakistan became stronger after this. There was no such nationalistic Jingoism as expected by any fascist government.

In 2002, the Indian state of Gujarat ruled by Bhartiya Janta Party experienced tragic communal riots which perturbed the entire nation. The government at Delhi strongly condemned it but it did not invoked Article 356 of Indian constitution or proclamation of emergency in the state. There was some delay in sending and deploying the army to Gujarat. This was really distressing for most of the people of this country to experience this medieval act of barbarism by majority groups over minority groups. The dormant state of the state created an environment of free ride for majority community in Gujarat. The plurality of India was questioned or the ‘idea of India’ was disturbed. But, communal riots and inactivity of state during communal riots in India was not novel. 1948 Hyderabad massacre, 1969 Gujarat riots, Moradabad riots 1980, Mandai Massacre 1980, Nellie Massacre 1983, anti-Sikh riots 1985, Bhagalpur riots 1989, Kashmir riots of 1990s, Bombay riots 1992-93, 2002 Gujarat violence, 2013 Mujaffarnagar riots and so on show us the inactivity of state during communal riots. If we will look before Independence then it will add some more cases in this category.

There had been some changes in the education system but it was not a change which can be compared with fascist regime. The BJP led government did not try to censor the media houses rather the boom in private media industry came in its regime. One can see other areas and their performances. In a lecture delivered in Aligadh Muslim University Arundhati Roy characterised BJP government as ‘fascist’. She used the term ‘fascist’ eleven times in a paragraph to talk about BJP government in New Delhi. However, her credentials as a Marxist is highly doubtful and some people even named her brand of Marxism ‘Sharia Bolshevism’. But simple Google search can tell us about the popularity of the use of term ‘fascist’ for BJP. Most of the authors and media person says that BJP is the political wing of the fascist organisation RSS and it is responsible for the politics of Hindutva. It is responsible for the demolition of Babri Mosque in 1991, which led to nationwide communal riots in the aftermath of demolition. The core ideology of BJP is the creation of ‘Hindu rashtra’. So, it is being run by fascist ideologies. The ideology of BJP is towards ‘right’ but it did not try to break the fabric of this country in the time of its rule. Terming BJP government as fascist will be severe underestimation of the democratic ethos of the people of this country and overestimation of the power of any political party.

If we see other political parties in this country then we will find the existence of party around one leader and this ‘the leader’ is being worshipped in party forums. The regional parties of India are deeply conservative about the rights and responsibilities of individuals and young men who can threaten violence in the state submit themselves to these regional leaders. These regional parties support the idea of primordial identities and caste consciousness is given more importance in the political spheres. It is easy for criminals to get the patronage of these regional cult personalities and get the nomination for the elections. Most of the regional parties are based on some identity rather on ideology like Bahujan Samaj party and Lok Janshakti Party is based on Dalit identity, Rashtriya Janta Dal and Samajwadi party on Yadav identity, in the south Dravid Munetra Kargham and All India Dravida Munetra Kargham is based on anti-Brahmin identity and so on. All these regional parties are very conservative in their ideologies and engage themselves in moral policing. The rise of “khap panchayat’ is one such phenomenon in Haryana and Rajashthan. They engage in political theatrics and uses extra-constitutional means to assert power in the state. These can also be termed as ‘fascist’ parties in the sense of left leaning media and writers.

We cannot compare the ‘ideological notion’ of these parties with fascist government philosophy rather we will have to compare the practice of these parties with the fascist practices keeping variables like values, ethos, norms etc as changing then only we can find those parties which are fascist in practice. The other way round comparison will give same results for Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and other autocratic leaders. One cannot say BJP as a fascist party in the sense of fascism and use of this term in common parlance will not only defame political parties of this country but also the population of this country as the one who are accepting the rule of ethnic cleanser autocratic regime.


Published on:- Rickshaw

  

Gujarat Model of Development: An Empirical Assessment

The biggest festival of India, parliamentary election, is planned in April and May 2014. This is not a mere number game for Indians but this is the question of their survival and a chance to gain prosperity in the economic, political, and social spheres of their life. In democracy, we do not choose only leaders to represent us but also assert our rights to have freedom, liberty, equality, and justice. These are the basic rights that one should have to live a decent life. In this election, everyone knows which party is going to get highest number of seats. The main problem is the formation of government at the centre in a coalition era asserted by ‘regional parties’ based on ‘primordial identities’. This time, the expectations from the government is very high after seeing the misrule for last five years. Irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies, corruption in government and governance, weak foreign policy and especially diplomacy, inefficient administration and insufficient results in social sectors are the important signifier of United Progressive Alliance II. We need robust economic policies, restructured and reengineered administration, and better social sectors result to return to path of economic-social-political prosperity.

The party hoping to attain power on 18^th May 2014 has right wing credentials and especially the prime ministerial nominee was alleged to have role in the infamous Gujarat massacre of 2002. A large number of intelligentsia is expressing discomfort over this and comparing the election campaign with Mussolini’s famous march on Rome. These are the same intelligentsia, who talked about the growing unemployment, decreasing growth of national economy, rising law and order problems, corruption and so on about the UPA government but they are resistant to see a person, based on some prior records, who wants to be the Prime Minister of this country and show the path of development and good governance in coming years than the candidate who does not want to be named Prime Ministerial candidate and talks about Right to Information and Right to Education in all his rallies . I do not say that past records are not important but I want to relativize the credentials and records. Narendra Modi has established a new paradigm of development in Gujarat famously known as Gujarat model of development. The social and economic sectors growth in Gujarat has been very high in recent years.

I am using the Planning Commission’s data for comparing Gujarat and other states. Some health surveys are old and since annual survey does not talk about all the states. So, some data are not actual but estimates but for our purpose it will not have any such error. The Infant Mortality Rate of Gujarat was 48 in 2009, 44 in 2010, 41 in 2011 and 38 in 2012 and all India estimates for this is 50 in 2009, 47 in 2010, 44 in 2011 and 42 in 2012. So, it performed better than all India in these years. However, the performance of Kerala, Goa, Maharashtra and Tamilnadu are better than Gujarat. So, it can better on this front. Since, Infant Mortality Rate is a better indicator than Maternal Mortality Rate, so I will not compare MMR rates. In the percentage of live births, where mother got medical facility, I have divided it into urban and rural categories.  In Rural categories, 36.7% in 2006, 42.3% in 2007, 60.8% in 2008, 63.1% in 2009, 72.1% in 2010 and 78.6% in 2011 mothers got medical facilities. The all-India estimates are 24.9% in 2006, 28.7% in 2007, 38.3% in 2008, 49.2% in 2009, 53.9% in 2010 and 60.7% in 2011. So, Gujarat did better than all-India and as good as Tamilnadu and Maharashtra.  All other indicators can be compared and it will prove the same theory that Gujarat performed better than all-India average. But, despite having high trajectory of economic and social sectors growth, instances of malnutrition, farmers suicides and status of displaced riot victims show that there is a lot to do in Gujarat and asserts the fact that trickle down of economic prosperity has excluded some portions of population.

Gujarat model of development is not about the imitations of some alien development paradigms; it is about the diverse set of policies suitable for the development and growth of the population of Gujarat. It is about devising the right policies to have sustainable development. The use of renewable energy resources, watershed management in Saurashtra, and a greater reliance on market principles in Gujarat have provided this state robust growth. The human development indicators of some states are high but they are based on offshore economy, which cannot be sustainable in changing geo-strategic environment of the world. The unfair criticism of Narendra Modi government will lead to a paradigm which will compare governance on the basis of mere ‘dead’ ideologies. The Gujarat’s story in tackling terrorism, law and order problems is laudable.

  

CRIMINALISATION OF POLITICS, DOMINANT CASTE AND REPRESENTATION OF PEOPLE’S ACT 1951

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Democracy means popular government and the Parliamentary form of democratic system was adopted in India by the nationalist leaders of Indian freedom struggle. The parliamentary or representative form of democracy is best defined by John Stuart Mill in his classic, Consideration on Representative Government. It is a government wherein

“the whole people or some numerous portion of them exercise through deputies periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power which in every constitution must reside somewhere… this ultimate power they must possess in all its completeness” ¹

Parliamentary democracy allows a form of government in which the people of the nation-state rule through elected representatives in the parliament, chosen by free and fair elections and adult suffrage. There should be existence of two or more political part is necessary, fundamental rights are guaranteed and there must be coordination between the legislature and the executive. The Indian constitution stipulates different articles for these provisions like Article 79 to 123 deals with provision relating to parliament.

Although the parliament today comprises a fair mix of people from different backgrounds like professionals politicians, retired civil servants, business and former princes and other professionals but there has been steady decline in the quality of the members of parliament in terms of “integrity, knowledge and experience.” ² This decline can be visualised in the regular functioning of the parliament in comparison to the behaviour of the early politicians of independent India. Having different causes for the pathological behaviour of parliamentarians, criminalisation of politics and politicisation of criminals is one among them.

The political nature of crime has different connotation in the social setting. However at the level of phenomenon itself ‘politicization’ means “a historically change from normatively deviant to self-consciously political narratives while the opposite” and criminalisation means “the use of traditional criminal tactics and styles in various forms of political marginality”(Cohen 1996).  The main problem of this trend has effect on the system of free and fair elections. The criminal candidates of any constituency can use illegal means to stop other candidates from contesting elections, use the weapon of intimidation to stop supporter of other candidate to cast vote and use of money power to get vote in his favour.

Indian elections have been in the centre stage of media production houses and academic works. The change in the political environments after change in the party in power has various socio-political effects. But, increasing politicians- criminal nexus in India has assumed alarming situations in contemporary time. One fourth of the members of Lok Sabha face criminal charges roughly and the situations of state assemblies is even worse. These charges are from political offences to serious crimes (Dutta and Gupta 2009). However, the situation of criminalisation of politics can be seen in the different developing nations of the world but in India, it has transformed from politicisation of criminals to criminalisation of politics. The problems of governance, accountability, clean political environment, fair competition and other things are cited as the result of increasing criminalisation of politics. This phenomenon is persistent with all “ideological” circles of Indian democracy like “left”, “Right”, and ‘Centrist’ parties.

The Representation of People’s Act 1951 is the only mechanism through which the influx of criminals in the polity of country can be stopped. The law says that one cannot contest election after conviction in any crime and this moratorium is for 6 years from the date of conviction or after the release from the prison depending on the severity of crime. Earlier section 8(4) used to give 45 days for appeal in the higher courts but after the recent decision of Supreme Court no candidate can contest the election or ceased to be the member of legislature after conviction from any court of law. However in 2004, Election Commission of India proposed an amendment to debar any candidate from contesting election if the charges are framed by court against the candidate in any case having punishment of 5 years or more.

Bhaskar Dutta and Poonam Gupta looked at various hypotheses which suggested explaining about advantage-disadvantage curve of criminal candidates. They attached stigma to criminal candidates and assumed negative effects on voting process of people towards criminal candidates. They also said that “vote-share” of the criminal candidates decreases if other candidates are of clean background. So, candidates with criminal background uses “money power” to increase their vote share by winning over ‘marginal’ voters. Also, they can use campaign process to show their innocence in the cases filed against them which will help in reducing negative effects of ‘stigma’. For this, he looked through Nash Equilibrium of ‘game’ in which only strategic variable is the amount of the expenditure in campaigning process and they find out that Voters do penalise candidates with criminal charges. However Aidt. et al assumes that criminal candidates have some electoral advantages, although parties have to incur some reputational cost in the social world generally and in the media especially. They further find that voting turnout is inversely proportional to number of criminal candidates in the constituencies. In this research, also, they refuted the earlier research that criminalisation of politics is the attribute of constituency having large number of voters (Banarjee and Pandey 2004). So, rise in low caste and ethnic voting has given rise in criminalisation of politics.

The views of Aidt. et al (2011) has been refuted by Dutta and Gupta(2012), who say that voter turnout has no such effect of nominations of criminal politicians and the ‘negative correlation’ between voter turnout and criminal politicians was not found in 2004 and 2009 elections. But, Aidt. et al views on incumbency factor after the decline of Indian national Congress in assembly and parliamentary elections found empirical effectiveness in all the research done after it. Also, the money factor postulated by this research found proof in the subsequent researches of Vaishnav (2010), who found it one of the main factors for choosing criminal candidates by the political parties. Vaishnav (2010) also attaches concept of “dominant caste” (Srinivas 1962) with chances of winning of criminal candidates.  So, self-financing and dominant caste are two main reasons for increasing criminalisation of politics in India (Vaishnav 2010, Aidt. et al 2011).

Sometimes, Parties face “trade-off” between reputational costs and electoral advantages and when part fills that competition is very severe in some constituency then party generally files criminal candidates to have electoral advantage in the form of money and the candidate’s ability to resort to pre-poll violence (Vaishnav 2010).Also, criminality can serve as a signal of their credibility to protect the interest of the “in-groups” and their allies (Harriot 2003; Witsoe 2005; Smith 2008). A candidate’s credibility is evaluated according to how he protects the status or honour of his group using all the means available at his disposal in the social cleavage of his society. The people of caste groups vote those candidates who can serve the interest of their groups and the allies. That is the reason why several kinds of caste alliances are seen in the elections. As in the 2008 assembly election of Uttar Pradesh the slogan of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was Pandit sankh bajayeja; Hathi aage aage jayega meaning Brahmins of Uttar Pradesh will support in the victory of BSP.

Political parties also give tickets to those criminal candidates those who are associated with the caste politics in the state and can fetch the caste vote in the state or can be the caste face of the party in the state (Vaishnav 2012). As Babu Singh kushwaha was embraced in Bhartiya Janta Party even after having tainted background of corrupt practices so that BJP can show him as the “backward” face of the party in state assembly election. His criminal background can strenghthen party’s vote bank rather hurting it. Some regional parties are accepted in the regions based on their loyalty to some caste (Witsoe 2009). Rashtriya Janta Dal is seen as the main factor in the politics of Bihar which did not allow having communal riots in the state in 1990s. So, Muslims forms a crucial part of RJD vote bank and this logic of credibility founds support in the nomination of criminal candidate in the election (Witsoe 2009).

However, after transformation in the existence and ideology (Desai and Dubey 2012) of “caste in 21^st Century”, new groups are formed on the basis of identity and this identity plays a very big role in the ongoing criminalisation of politics. Now there is a competition between parties to file criminal candidates in some constituencies to get electoral advantage (Vaishnav 2012; Witsoe 2009; Dutta and Gupta 2012).however, this competition is not providing any incentives for the governance of that area (Glasso and Nannicini 2011). All citizens prefer suitable candidates but differ in their choices due to difference in group identity (Banerjee and Pandey 2009).

The recent success of criminal candidates in the election also provided impetus in choosing candidates of criminal background in the election. Recent survey by Association for Democratic Reforms shows that while only 12% of candidates with a clean background win on average, 23 % of candidates with some kind criminal records win, and more importantly, 23% of all those with serious criminal charges win (Shastry 2012). So, parties see a positive correlation between ‘winnability’ and serious crime. All parties give tickets to candidates having criminal background or record. In the areas reserved for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes, criminalisation in politics is very less as the chances of lower caste being also the dominant caste is very low (Vaishnav 2012) and the wealth power of SC/ST is also seen low at most of the places (Chin and Prakash 2010).

In most of the cited researches, the unit of analysis is constituency and the datas are taken from myneta.info which collects the affidavits of all the candidates contesting in election. The variables are education standard, relative wealth, and dominant caste of that area, percent of vote obtained, incumbent members, status of party, and seriousness of crime, incumbent party, age, gender and caste. Generally twenty states are chosen and North-Eastern states are excluded (Gupta and Panagriya 2012). Categories of education are chosen as education up to High School, up to undergraduate, up to postgraduate degree or technical degrees and also different dummies for all of them. Relative wealth is calculated as the ratio of wealth of the candidate divided by the average wealth of the rest of the candidates of those constituencies excluding independent candidates. Exclusion of independent candidates might have effect on the result because at some places dummy candidates are given ticket from some of the parties in support of independent candidate of criminal background. Criminal charges are defined as charges for serious offences and charges for non-serious offences. The offence is defined as per Code of Criminal Procedure. The dependent variable I is vote share which is defined as Y_i=log (Vote share_i /1-vote share_i).

The Politics of Free Expression

The censorship debates in India are not new and Indian state and Indian citizens have been perpetrator and victims of these debates. Recent debates on Wendy Dongier’s book The Hindus; An Alternative History again tried to show the parochial minds of Indian population towards accepting criticism or we can say an alternate view about the religion and the culture. Despite having Fundamental Right of free expression, Section 295A of Indian Penal Code has power to stop and punish any speech which maliciously insults or attempts to insult any religious belief of any class of people. So, basically section 295 A is secular in its nature.  This section was not present in the original Indian Penal Code of 1860 but later in 1927, IPC was amended to have some sort of anti-blasphemy law after the decision of Lahore Court in Rajpal vs. King Emperor 1927. At that time, eminent lawyers, politicians and others debated it vehemently because it was seen as an obstruction to the historical and anthropological research of religions and protection of scholarly work.

The term ‘free expression’ came from the cliché-ridden history of liberalism’s rise from 17^th century Europe's religious war, when secularism was allegedly pitted in a metaphysical battle against theological obscurantism and based on these terms ‘metaphysical battle’ and ‘theological obscurantism’, Faisal Devji tried to write a very balanced essay named Changing Contours of Censorship, published on Monday, February 24, 2014 in The Hindu. But, this is an exaggerated attempt to see everything opposing liberal's view through the lens of ‘religion’. The whole debate has given so much intellectual angles that the original meaning of free expression for a common man has lost somewhere in the midst. Certainly, people have right to have opinions and also they can have platform to show their opinions without any obstruction from state or any other authority or groups. But, also this notion of free expression gives others a right to form different opinion and right to go to court if they feel any speech is hurting their sentiments. One cannot deliberately abjure their right by defining these rights as given by colonial rulers and so draconian in nature. This law has some importance in keeping religious fundamentalist at bay as we have seen in case of Mujaffarnagar riots.

Free expression has wide meanings ranging from right to speech to right to information. Free expressions include the right for people to be exposed to differing points of view and so responses to literature shall be a ‘new’ literature. But these things work in an ‘ideal’ sense. Everyone has the right to free expression but do they have platform to exhibit these ‘expressions’? Obviously not, N. ram can publish his views daily in his newspaper but some other Ram’s view will be termed as archaic, conservative, uneducated, uninformed and not having the potential to get published. So, basically this is a hollow term and this hollowness is also seen in the supporters of the book. Most of the supporters of the book have not read the Hindu scriptures and they are giving people only choice of having sentiments that should not be offended by any writings because one has right to publish her opinion. But, then the demarcation between ‘public opinion’ and ‘private opinion’ will merge. The book also does not seem to be an informed narrative of Hindu Dharma as one will expect from a professor of Sanskrit. But, somehow this book and the debates around it have potential to start a debate about 'true' view of Hinduism.

Most of the self proclaimed liberals in a melodrama felt after this incident that the fundamentalism is rising and fascist groups are regaining power in the polity of India. We cannot have such a bad example of hermeneutics in the recent history of this country. However, Indian written History is somehow a product of such hermeneutics. The tendency of intelligentsia to see everything having an ingredient of religion as religious can jeopardize the whole movement of secularization. This is a debate in the domain of secularization and not in the domain of ‘religion’. Liberals interpolate it in the wrong place and try to reach the conclusion through Freudian techniques. ‘Freudian interpretation’ has to be withdrawn from dealing with such issues. Anything against ‘westernisation’ is not fundamentalism. The different labels should been seen differently. Only then the covariance can be established to reach a fair conclusion. Johnanthan Shainin of The New Yorker rightly pointed the problems expressed by Dinanath Batra.

The plurality of India can only sustain  through the weapon of ‘free expression’ but this expression should be informed and articulate.  Being analytic is not criticized but becoming random in the desire of producing abstraction is criticized. The debate should happen in the label of ‘for’ and ‘against’ but who is ‘for’ and who is ‘against’ should be properly defined. Otherwise, these notions of free expression have capacity to reframe boundaries of fragments and out of the court settlement shall not be seen in the sense of Arundhati Roy. Because she finds every act of Bhartiya Janta Party and Hindu organisations fascist in nature. Her schizophrenia is not going to help anyone in this country. The left liberals first need to define the meanings of these terms so that they will be able to use these terms more prudently and withdraw love for jargon. These debates are educating masses and broadening the term free expressions for common people but different views in these types of debate should be published so that readers will have choice to form their consciousness rather than having consciousness formed by the opinions of others. The dialectics of ideas is the only answer to this kind of problem, where readership is increasing and people are becoming informed.

Also, the publisher's attempt to ban the release of books in the apprehension of any violence questions constitutionalism of nation. The state should ensure safety of writers and publishers to promote critical views in the society. This will lead the nation and its people in becoming more informed. Any civilisation which propounds to be civil will welcome any such debates. Democracy could become  burden for the people of any nation if the democratic spirits will be missing from its act.