Priyadarshi Dutta
While Muslims across the world condemn Nupur Sharma's comments, none has actually corrected her. The black hole protests are the same as in Pak
Television debates are a banality that leaves viewers no more enlightened in the end than in the beginning. The channels in India prefer hosting talk shows because they constitute the most cost-effective format of programme, requiring minimal investment in terms of research, shooting and production. They also suit the psychology of the Indian audience, which takes delight in other people's quarrels. Generally, talk shows are to be watched only to be forgotten, like chewing gums are to be chewed and then spit out. It happens rarely that comments made in the course of talk shows become the main news of the day (or even week).
The comments made by Nupur Sharma, BJP's now-suspended spokesperson, on Islamic belief in general, and the Prophet of Islam in particular, were apparently off the cuff. These were admittedly made in the heat of the moment, for which television debates provide ample opportunities. She was apparently provoked by a co-participant calling Shivalinga at Gyanvapi's mosque a fountain. Her observations were casual rather than premeditated. Listening between the sentences, it appears, she was actually trying to say that Islam (like any other religion) also has its own Achilles' heel.
Her party, the BJP, could have handled the matter more clinically by declaring that an internal committee had been set up to examine the issue for necessary action. However, the law of the land would prevail over precepts of Sharia, in case a conflict arose between the two. But both her party, and the Government of India, went into hiding over the issue. Even the RSS and VHP were found completely missing in action.
The developments since then are singularly unfortunate. Protests, diplomatic hectoring and last Friday's violence have scarred the scenario. However, inadvertently, they have also presented us with a ‘Nupur” moment of history. This moment, if seized upon, can help address the root of communal problems in India (if not also the world). The most interesting observation, in this crisis, is that no Muslim cleric, scholar, nation or organisation has volunteered to dispel the ‘misconception' that Nupur might have had on Islam. Doing so must have been the easiest, quickest and most effective way to disarm the critics of Islam. It is normal for people of other religious backgrounds to have preconceived and unfounded notions about each other's faith. Is it not the moral duty of religious scholars to dispel them? Should a Hindu Pundit demand arrest and punishment of a non-Hindu, who is bewildered at why Hindus worship an elephant-headed deity called Ganesha, for instance? Or will he honestly try to share the spiritual symbolism behind it? Since Hindus have chosen the second alternative, one sees images of Ganesha or Nataraj etc adopted in the West.
Why then, for instance, Mufti Abul Qasim Nomani, the Vice-Chancellor of Darul Uloom of Deoband, with all the intellectual resources of Islam at his command, could not distinguish himself from the rest of the crowd in his approach? He brought no special faculty on the table to enlighten us. Even an average Quyum, halal meat seller of Kanpur, and Harun, cycle repairer of Lucknow, are demanding the arrest and punishment of Nupur Sharma, a demand Nomani merely repeated.
What is scarier is that protestors are trying to push for a blasphemy regime in India similar to that exists in Pakistan. In Pakistan, the punishment for blasphemy is death. Muhammed Ismail Qureshy, senior advocate in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in his book Muhammad: The Messenger of God, and the Law of Blasphemy in Islam and the West (2008), informs that it is “well-established unanimous religious opinion prevalent in different Islamic compendium of law that the punishment of blasphemy of holy Prophet is death” (P.121). While Qureshy traces a history of blasphemy law, he leaves the fundamental and philosophical question unanswered. The fundamental question is why Islam needed capital punishment in the first place to protect its Prophet from criticism?
There have been great savants in India like Buddha, Mahavira, Shankaracharya, Sri Chaitanya, Guru Nanak etc who were founders of respective religious sects. However, their adherents never found it necessary to defend reputation with any kind of blasphemy law. It is not implied that they were never criticised by anyone. However, people's veneration for them at large outweighed occasional acts of criticism, if any. It was their saintliness and superlative disposition that instantly courted people's reverence.
Why the Prophet of Arabia needed a blasphemy law to protect his reputation is a question that Islamic scholars must answer. In the early days of Islam, there might have been the possibility of criticism for political reasons. However, it is intriguing why Pakistan, a country of 98 per cent Muslims, needed a stringent blasphemy law (Pakistan Penal Code- 295 C) in the 1980s? As experience shows, such law is prone to misuse both against Muslims and non-Muslims. It is easy to accuse anybody of blasphemy as the case of Bibi Aasia Noreen (2015) shows. Registered cases of blasphemy spiralled in Pakistan since 1986 due to amendments in the Pakistan Penal Code by insertion of Section 295 to 298-C between 1980 and 1986. The “Pakistanisation” of India should be opposed at all costs.
(The writer is an author and independent researcher based in New Delhi. The views expressed are personal.)
