Your Voice | Why the truth wasn't told

I have been a resident of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for about 20 years and had been watching with keen interest, the unfolding of events subsequent to the “Wharton snub” and the explications of various viewpoints around the “Freedom of Speech” debate.

One such piece is an article by Penn professor Saswati Sarkar that was published on NitiCentral on April 27, 2013. I went over her views with interest and want to share with you why I think her claim of “Truth was told” is not true.

First of all, it is not an issue of freedom of speech. The question of jurisdiction — if the lenient U.S. laws regarding free speech need to be applied to Modi, an Indian citizen — is notwithstanding. Nor is it an abrogation of the students’ right to hear him speak simply because there is a preponderance of other media outlets “to drink that Kool Aid”. And certainly Penn is under no obligation to provide a platform to Modi and is well within its “Right to Bad Manners,” as written by Vivek Dehejia and Karuna Nundy in Business Standard on March 9, 2013.

Then there is a precedent, by another U.S. and Ivy League institution, of denying such a platform.

Students and academics at Harvard had Subramanian Swamy booted out because of a reprehensible Hindu supremacist op-ed he published in DNA, an Indian magazine. In an editorial entitled “So Long Swamy” and published in the Harvard Crimson on Dec. 12, 2011, they had this to say:

“For better or for worse, the Harvard name has the ability to lend authority, legitimacy, and gravitas to anyone wielding it. Indeed, Swamy has been known to invoke his status as a Harvard professor to bolster his image in India. Considering that Swamy uses whatever prominence he has as a platform to malign the world’s Muslims, trumpeting a thickheaded and violent brand of Hindu hyper-nationalism, Harvard must not continue to add legitimacy to his name.”

Is this not what the Ivy League institution in my state, Penn, has done? To refuse to lend legitimacy to a man who is denied a visa by my country, the United States of America? Penn authorities put an end to what some students at the Wharton India Economic Forum had quietly tried to do, bypassing my own government by summoning up Modi via a video link.

Anyone who doesn’t think Modi represents an even more virulent brand of Hindu hyper-nationalism need only to pull her head out of the sand and see where Modi stands in his own country today. Alone, ostracized — a pariah. Political allies of Modi’s party, BJP, make it clear that they would rather desert than be led by him, politicians refuse to share the dais with Modi in Kerala and Hindus in Karnataka protest that Modi should not enter their state.

It is national and international approbation that Penn invited upon itself with that disinvite, not opprobrium, as Sarkar calls it.

Secondly, I was struck by the discordant notes in the article with regards to the ideal of free speech. For someone seeking to whitewash Modi under the aegis of that ideal, Sarkar seems to afford none to the others. The dragging of professors Ania Loomba and Toorjo Ghose into a debate to flog the proverbial dead horse in what essentially is a decision by the University notwithstanding — professor Sarkar bemoans granting of “liberal airtime to Mani Shankar Aiyar” and seeks to characterize him as the abuser! It is common knowledge that the likes of Aiyar are routinely interrupted, berated, ridiculed and verbally abused by the Hindu right-wing spokeswomen, with the BJP national spokesperson, Nirmala Sitharaman as his “designated abuser”.

I will say a bit more about what happens on those TV debates on Indian channels.

“As seen on TV,” the debates with Modi supporters run along familiar lines. First they try to hog the time as much as they can, and second, they interrupt the speech of whoever tries to rebut their claims to sidetrack the issue into one of civility and decorum — never mind that they were the ones who show such callous disregard to the rules of the forum in the first place!

One such act in the theater of the absurd played out in the recorded video of the debate at Penn, the very incident that Sarkar sought to portray as silencing of a student with a query, which in the grand design of things is “a campaign of calumny to counter content,” to use Sarkar’s words.

Never mind that the student was interrupting Loomba when it was her turn to speak after Aseem Shukla had spoken. Never mind that in that debate about free speech, Loomba’s right of speech was being trampled upon. If it isn’t the “sublime of academic discourse” to teach the students to be polite enough to let the debators speak when it is their turn to do so and to wait for their own turn, I wonder what is?

Thirdly, there are several logical inconsistencies due to Sarkar’s “selective attention.”

1. Case of guilt by academic association that she tried to attribute to Loomba
Following Sarkar’s rules of logical inference but applying them to herself, I arrive at a humorous and absurd conclusion!

Fact – Prof Sarkar is affiliated with Americans for Free Speech
Fact – Americans for Free Speech is affiliated with overseas friends of BJP
Fact – BJP is affiliated with RSS/VHP/SanghParivar
Fact – AGP (Aatma Ghatak Phatak, the Hindu right-wing suicide bombers) is affiliated to RSS
Conclusion: My apologies a priori for this — Sarkar is the new saffron suicide bomber on the block!

2. Sarkar writes that the “tale of Gujarat riots is of subterfuge/misrepresentation/half-truths.”

Indian courts convicted many perpetrators of Gujarat riots, based on that very tale. Therefore Indian courts are not competent.
Indian courts gave a clean chit to Modi. But the Indian courts are not competent as established above. Therefore Modi is guilty.
Deductive logic (modus tollens).

3. Prof Sarkar writes that speaking in support of Modi is not supporting Hindu supremacists. But it is. Here’s why.

Fact – VHP/RSS/BJP are Hindu supremacists with Guruji Golwalker as the fountainhead of their “Hindutva” ideology
Fact – Modi was a RSS pracharak, is in BJP and is being hoisted by VHP.
Conclusion – Supporting Modi IS supporting Hindu supremacists.
Deductive logic (modus ponens).

For those not familiar with Golwalker – an excerpt from his “We, Our Nationhood Defined”:

“The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture … In a word they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizens’ rights.”

Incidentally, these are the same views of “disenfranchisement of Indian citizens,” among other things expressed by Swamy in his op-ed that led to his becoming a persona non grata at Harvard.

4. Sarkar’s claims of hostility directed towards her.
It was she who shared the platform with the Hindu supremacists and gave a speech at the protest rally outside Penn deriding her own colleagues. One can perhaps believe her claims to naivete because one can see in that video clip of the speech, there were people holding placards caricaturing her colleagues hardly 10 feet away and Sarkar says that she was unaware!

Also, from that video of the debate at Penn, it can be seen that it was she who churlishly and defiantly refused to address Loomba properly, despite being repeatedly requested to not do so.

Sam Shaik’s email address is sam.shaik@gmail.com.

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