South Asia Citizens Web

More than five years have passed since the world’s largest employment programme was launched in India. The scale of employment generated was not the only reason that this is a path breaking legislation.

WHAT kind of rights should those accused of having committed international crimes during Bangladesh’s war of Independence be entitled to? Should the seven men now detained by the International Crimes Tribunal have fewer rights than those available to the men and woman accused of crimes prosecuted in the ordinary courts or the same rights as them?

It is also wrong to assume that all upper caste Hindus are anti-Muslim. It is extremists among dalits who maintain that all Brahmins are against Muslims and they conspire to establish a Hindu Rashtra. Some may be of such views and indeed are. But a sweeping generalization in this respect would be a fatal mistake. There are several Brahmin politicians and officers who are quite secular and sympathise with the plight of Muslims. On the other hand, there are several dalit and OBC politicians who do not hesitate for a moment to join hands with communal forces to serve their own interests casting away Ambedkar’s ideology.

Governments are not elected to dictate religious doctrine to its people. We elect our legislators to run the state. We elect legislators to make the decisions we cannot. What they are not expected to do is to propagate and literally shove down everybody’s throats, religious doctrine. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa is doing just that with an intensity which is not only overbearing but plain dogmatic and stupid.

The BBC marked the death of MF Husain last Thursday by giving a Mayfair gallery curator a 30-second soundbite to describe one of the best artists of our time. The best tribute Britain could give Husain would be for the Royal Academy to organise a major retrospective of his art and include in the exhibition the supposedly offensive works, so viewers can realise how confected the charges of his accusers were. For that to happen, the police would need to break with precedent and promise to protect freedom of expression from its enemies. Politicians and cultural commentators would need to go further and find the courage to spit out a commitment to a simple principle: in free societies, artists have the right to paint what they damn well want and citizens have the right to look at what they damn well want.