India has evidently become misled by confused and politically motivated legal codes in the West punishing free speech with its law against promoting "disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will" between religious groups. This kind of law is based on Stalin's criminal code 59-7, as we have stated elsewhere. Rather than suppress intellectual freedom and punish an honest person like author Taslima Nasreen, however [please see "India to charge writer Nasreen with 'hurting Muslim feelings'" -eds], who publishes facts, India should consider another course of action.
Communal riots and pogroms are of course undesirable. At the same time, suppressing unpleasant facts about a community only serves to cover up its injustices and increase their lifespan: They escape the public eye and so can escape discussion, censure, and reform. Rather than punish truth-tellers like Ms. Nasreen and in effect turn a blind eye to legitimate communal issues, however, it is the organizers and participants of communal riots who should be dealt with. Do they have no responsibility for their acts? Are they only robots with no minds of their own obeying impulses supposedly instilled in them by honest intellectuals?
It is time in a case like this to put responsibility where it belongs -- on people with inclinations toward communal violence, not on those who are trying to expose communal injustice. Nor should the public eye be restricted to only Muslims, but extend to the wrongdoings of other communal groups. In addition, rather than blindly follow Western intellectual trends, India should trace the source of laws like these in order to better understand what is at stake and the political agendas that may be intended in Westen thought- and speech-control codes.
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