The volley of tasteless comments and threats to Naseeruddin Shah is outrageous.Actor Naseeruddin Shah has been under attack from Hindu right-wingers ever since he said last week that the UP government gives more importance to the death of a cow than the murder of a police officer. In a reference to the incidents of mob lynchings, the actor said he felt anxious for his children “because tomorrow if a mob surrounds them and asks ‘are you a Hindu or a Muslim’, they will have no answer”. Last week, organisers of the Ajmer Literature Festival cancelled his programmes after members of the BJP Yuva Morcha threatened protests against his participation. Hindutva trolls and BJP supporters like Anupam Kher, Shah’s colleague in the film fraternity, have criticised Shah for his comments; the UP BJP chief Mahendranath Pandey said Shah, a good actor, has begun to resemble the character of a Pakistani agent he played in the film, Sarfarosh. This volley of tasteless comments and threats is outrageous. Shah is a national treasure. Moreover, what he said is not exceptional: Many others have echoed the same sentiment about cow vigilantism in UP and the government’s refusal to act against the vigilantes.
That a literature festival in Ajmer, a great centre of Indic spiritual syncretism, hastened to cancel Shah’s talk and the launch of his book, is a reflection of the polarised climate, especially in Rajasthan. In the past few years, the state has seen several communal mobilisations against religious minorities and liberals. There have been at least three incidents of lynching in Alwar alone — the first was Pehlu Khan’s murder by a mob that accused him of being a cow smuggler in 2017. Mob sentiment was whipped up during the making and release of the Sanjay Leela Bhansali film, Padmaavat, and the government played along. Instead of upholding the law and the constitutional right to free speech, the Vasundhara Raje government tried to stall the release of the film. The vigilantes did not spare even contemporary art — the 2015 Jaipur Art Summit had to take down the installation of a plastic cow following protests. In all these incidents, the administration, including the police, was seen to stand more with the vigilante groups rather than their victims. The government’s own initiatives to sponsor the rewriting of textbooks according to majoritarian notions of the past only helped illiberal voices to gain influence.
One of the new government’s foremost challenges is to reset the norms of public discourse and protect the space for dissent in Rajasthan. Immediately after the Ajmer incident, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot tweeted that his “administration was fully prepared to hold the festival peacefully” and that it respects the rights and liberties of all citizens. Clearly, Gehlot’s administration needs to do more to convince people that it will not let thugs and mobs dictate the terms of debate. India was once a favoured destination for artists who felt stifled or discriminated in their home country — legendary classical musician Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, for instance, left his home in Pakistan for India to pursue his art. It cannot allow the mob to run roughshod over artistic freedoms now.
