Friday, March 5, 2010

Increasing intolerance

The violence erupted over a translated article of exiled Bangladeshi novelist Taslima Nasreen in a prestigeous Cannada language daily in Simoga and other towns of Karnataka because the article criticised burqua. The growing religious intolerance in secular India has become a great threat to society. Two persons lost their lives in the ongoing violence and crores of property was burnt. The office of the daily was also set on fire. It is nothing but the act madness. Taslima has been living in exile since her novel Lajja was published, which purprtedly hurt the religious sentiment of Muslim community. The fundamentalists started baying for her blood. She was forced to live in exile.The celebrated and world famous Indian painter M F Hussain had to leave the country and reportedly accepted the Quatari citizenship reluctantly only because of the intolerant Hindu chauvinists. They slammed hundreds of cases against him and threatened to hurt him physically because they accused him deliberately painting Hindu Goddess in such a way as to hurt their religious sentiments. At a number of times, it has been seen that the political class deliberately keep mum over the eruption of violence to stand profited. They move in the given situation keeping in mind vote bank politics uppermost. That is why religious chavinists go on rampage over even a trivial happening. Our Constitution has given us right to expression and the government has to protect this constitutionally valid right at all cost. The Karnataka language daily reproduced the article which had already been in publised long ago. In the age of openness, all sorts of orthodoxies whether they are religious or social are being discarded by the majority of the population all over the world. After France, there has been stiff opposition to Burqa wearing by Muslim women. Though every religion must be respected, it does not mean there should be no initiative in reforming religious values with the changing of the time. The women irrespective of religion they belong to must be given full opportunity to develop themselves. First of all, the government must deal with religious fundamentalism with firm hand and it must not let the vote bank politics to come in its action. The people irrespective of religion must oppose whenever their religious sentiments are hurt through arguments, debates and discussion and should not resort to violence . Every problem has a solution but through non-violent process. Violence has no place in secular democratic Indian society. Spurt in religious intolerance is a grave threat to unity and integrity of the nation.

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