The NDTV reports:
This time it is not the Marxists but the UPA government that has decided that controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen cannot return to her adopted city of Kolkata. Moreover, Nasreen has been told that if she wants to live in Delhi, she will not be allowed to take part in any public functions. the decision had been communicated officially to her by a senior official of the Ministry of External Affairs
This is?shameful admission by the Indian Government that it is incapable of upholding the rule of law.
This is also an admission by the Indian Government that it is incapable of being unequivocal in bringing down the full force of the State to bear on those who take it upon themselves to flout the rule of law on the pretext of being offended.
Offstumped had penned a short piece in verse on why India was a soft nation back in 2002 in the aftermath of the Gujarat Riots. The Taslima Nasreen episode is yet another reminder of how soft a nation we are when the Government washes its hands off its commitment to guarantee that the rule of law will be upheld at all costs.
Where Newton?s Law sanctifies public molestations,
Where Respect for the rule of law is an aberration
secular pretensions overrule factual considerations
dubious sentiments justify violent reactions
No tears if you are right wing,? You deserve mob fury and immolation
Behave if you are minority,? We will slaughter and? inflict humiliation
Where populism overrides public interest
Where judiciary co-opts execution functions
The capital?s combat against pollution is sustained by legal? oxygen
Beware of the ingenuity of these discredited? parliamentarians
legislate they will,? noxious ordinances, to subvert judicial action
a mute polity tarries along, unmindful of environmental implications
Where an aborted attack paralyses legislative transactions
Where V.I.P. accidents trigger outrage on the lapses of transportation
Commissions and retribution for endangered politicians
Inadvertence and paltry compensations for hapless citizens
A few dead or alive in a billion., what?s the difference
The politician?s death!? that calls for indignation and consequence
??
?Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high?
?Where words come out from the depth of truth?
Tagore was dreaming and so are his stupefied countrymen
Gujarat or Delhi, they are unlikely to awaken??????????????
Neither the lack of ?hot pursuit? nor the concern for ?human rights?
But it is this permissiveness and insouciance that makes us a Soft Nation
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[...] http://offstumped.nationalinterest.in/2007/12/20/soft-nation-how-india-caved-in/ [...]
UPA government is a motley crowd of motley people,[ to borrow the phrase, Jawaharlal Nehru once used for Rajaji and his Swatantra Party, in parliament and later had to withdraw with his apologies], and the Govt. is without guts and spine. Tasleema’s future is jeopardised by this Govt.
Well written…..
Thanks Sharat
[...] to acts of Terrorism, reluctance of the State to enforce the rule of law against those who seek to threaten violence as in the Taslima Nasreen case and attempts to justify State sponsored violence as in Nandigram are also [...]
[...] secualrism pales into hypocrisy while they persecute ordinary Muslims in Nandigram while they make common cause with radical Islamists in Kolkota over Taslima [...]