Liberal spaces for Romila Thapar

Historian Romila Thapar, while delivering the 3rd Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture organised by The Book Review Literary Trust in New Delhi, this November talked about the hesitation of free thinking Indians to question the authority. See Swapan Dasgupta's response to this speech here.

During this speech, she expressed concern on the narrowing of liberal spaces in the last couple of decades. Though it was fought back, she laments that it is upon us again.

She does not specifically name the events that led her to this conclusion, but indicates the types of events.  To quote a summary of the speech from Rediff: “This is evident from the ease with which books are banned and pulped, or demands made that they be burned, and syllabuses changed under religious and political pressure, or the intervention of the state.”

Let us inspect each of these cases.

Subramanyan Swamy recently called for burning Romila Thapar’s history books. It appears a gross exaggeration to pronounce a change of dimensions of liberal space based on this twitter comment, but we will let it go as Thapar is understandably upset about this direct attack her work.

The pulping of books must refer to Penguin’s decision to pulp Wendy Doniger’s book. It is disappointing that Penguin gave in so easily on this. But is Thapar implying that free thinkers hesitated to respond because they were afraid of getting into bad books of Penguin?

Point taken on changes to the syllabus, but I would be more worried about what the changes are rather than why it is being changed. In the liberal space, religious and political entities will have opportunity to voice their views and influence decisions. Instead of narrowing the liberal space by denouncing these influences as pressures, a free thinker should support or oppose these changes on their individual merit.

Moving on, according to The Hindu:  Tracing the lineage of the modern public intellectual to Shamanic philosophers of ancient India, Prof. Thapar said the non-Brahminical thinkers of ancient India were branded as Nastikas or non-believers. “I am reminded of the present day where if you don’t accept what Hindutva teaches, you’re all branded together as Marxists,” she added.

Assuming that Thapar is referring to Buddhist and Jain philosophers by the term Shamanic, I am not sure if usage of “branded” is appropriate. Nastikas are those who don’t believe in a particular god or deity. Buddhism and Jainism are Nastika religions in this sense. In the ancient Indian context, there is no lack of respect in this term. Translating Nastika as non-believer in this context is inaccurate as well. Buddhists and Jains are believers as they believe in the path, though they don’t necessarily accept or deny existence of god. A Nastika in Indian context did not mean the same as a heathen elsewhere.

Having said this, I agree with her comment on the present day situation. There is a tendency to brand anyone who disagrees with you into the identified enemy camp. The “Hindutva” team uses “Marxist” camp to park all their enemies, whereas the “liberal” team uses Hindutva camp for the same. The simple assumption here is that once you identify a person as part of the enemy camp, it automatically discredits all views held by that person.

Hindu report continues: Prof. Thapar stressed that intellectuals were especially needed to speak out against the denial of civil rights and the events of genocide. “The combination of drawing upon wide professional respect, together with concern for society can sometimes establish the moral authority of a person and ensure public support.”

No disagreement on that. Intellectuals are needed to speak out against denial of civil rights, events of genocide, slavery, and every other evil in the society. Intellectuals, who must be shaping public opinion, surrendering their integrity to power, ideology or establishment is worst kind of nightmare for a democracy.

On a very different note, I am reminded of a panel discussion on freedom of speech in Bangalore literary festival 2014. Some of the panelists felt that their freedom of expression was curtailed by the personal attacks and hateful comments on the social media. The discourse seems to have move out of civilized meeting rooms and moderated letters to editors onto free for all social media. The privileged groups of yesteryears had attention of the audience. Now anyone can make herself heard through the new media. Since there is no moderation or censorship, one can be as loud or rude as one chooses to be. This could discourage those who prefer a very ‘civilized’ discussion from expressing their views. I am not sure if this can be called a narrowing of liberal space.  Is this affecting Romila Thapar?