IT was a case of political asylum. The government of India bungled it because of the fear of fundamentalists. It could not take the stand that a democratic, secular country would, not bow before their demand to oust Taslima Nasreen, an intrepid author of Bangladesh.

She was living in Kolkata with a visa till Feb 17, 2008. She wanted a permanent residence or citizenship. (The government has moved her to some place beyond the public gaze.)

In fact, all political parties, except the BJP, have more or less rejected an asylum for her. Even the Left has not supported her case. The BJP has done it to exploit the situation. Put M.F. Hussain, the world famous painter, in place of Taslima, the party’s stand stays exposed. Its foot soldiers have threatened to kill him if he returns to India. His paintings of Hindu goddesses irritate the fanatics who have filed dozens of cases against him.

Both instances when boiled down relate to freedom of expression which has been threatened. That it should happen in India which is proud of its ethos of pluralism is a point of concern. Fundamentalists in every religion want to open the door for communalism.

Yet, once they find it ajar, they would even beak it. India faces the same dilemma. It should not compromise on principles. But the erosion is already visible.

Great Britain, with all its racial prejudice, has proved to be far more liberal than India. Hussain is living in London which has become a Mecca for dissenters and conscientious objectors. I had imagined that India would one day be a rendezvous of revolutionaries and others who raised the standard of revolt against their autocratic regimes.

I even thought that leaders from Pakistan and Bangladesh would come to Delhi instead of going to London, Dubai or New York.

One other instance which has dismayed me is the centre’s attitude towards a leading editor who was harassed by Bangladesh. I tried my best to fix his interview with officials in key positions in the government. He wanted to stay in Delhi. But none met him.

The government was afraid of Dhaka’s reaction. India, under Jawaharlal Nehru, was a different country. He had a vision and could see the country becoming a meeting point of different ideologies and people from different climes. He welcomed the Dalai Lama at a time when he required the best of relations with China.

Yet he preferred Indian values to Beijing’s threats. In contrast, the Manmohan Singh government led by the same party, the Congress, issued instructions to its ministers not to attend the felicitation ceremony of the Dalai Lama.

Therefore, it was not surprising to see the centre quibbling over the status of Taslima. It was just scared lest the asylum should annoy Indian Muslims.

This is unfair to them because they are not a community of obscurantists. Nor is Islam against a liberal approach. But my great disappointment is over the reaction of leading Muslim organisations in the country.

The All India Milli Council which often holds seminars on pluralism says that she had “not behaved as a gentle lady of an international dimension”.

The Jamiat-i-Islami which supports a secular front expressed its regret that the violence in Kolkata was not a sudden outpouring of anger but the demand by several Muslim organisations for revocation of Taslima’s visa for many months. Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, very close to the Congress, says: “Let her not stay in any part of the country. Send her back. You cannot put the entire country at stake for her sake.”

I wish these organisations, honourable as they are, would tell me what she said against Islam. Her first book, Lajja (shame) was no piece of literature but described vividly the anti-Hindu riots in Bangladesh after the demolition of the Babri masjid.

The 1993 writing is still haunting her. The protesters against Taslima in Kolkata do not realise that they have communalised the whole issue of Nandigram.

Already, the BJP is pointing out at its poll meetings in Gujarat how “intolerant and fanatic” Muslims have turned out to be in their reaction to Taslima.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been most disappointing. It has taken an anti-Taslima stand. I have always heard Brinda Karat, the politburo member, taking up the cause of women. But when it came to Taslima she was just silent, not even seen anywhere.

Her party’s key functionary, Sitaram Yechuri, said that the West Bengal government did not force Taslima to go from Kolkata while the fact was that two officials of the state government put her in a flight to Jaipur despite per protests.

It has come to light that the administration was badgering her for a long time to leave Kolkata. The CPM which claims to protect democratic and secular forces has surrendered before fundamentalists for the sake of votes.

The emerging third alternative, swearing by secularism, has said that Taslima must apologise. What is her fault? Is it because she has written in favour of the afflicted women in Bangladesh?

In fact, what is visible is minority communalism. The recent blasts at Varanasi, Azamgarh and Lucknow have pointed a finger at it.

Two years ago, I would say that Muslims in India did not go to Afghanistan when there was a call for jihad. They did not go to Kashmir to fight because they were aware of the country’s sensitivities.

I cannot say that now because it is clear to me that a soft kind of parochialism has infected Indian Muslims.

Whether the Al Qaeda or the Taliban have infiltrated the country is not as relevant as the fact that terrorists get logistic support from within India and are given shelter here.

The justification given for this are the riots in Gujarat and the destruction of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya which are like a millstone of guilt around the nation’s neck.

Yet, there have been vehement criticism of the happenings and till today there is no slac kening of the anger in the media.

Responsible for the two tragedies, BJP lost the government at the centre because of them. The common man is tolerant and believes in the tradition which is secular in content. But what should he do? His life revolves around daily living and he mixes with different communities in the process.

He has been conscious of Hindu fundamentalism for some time because of the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal. Now he also has to reckon with Muslim fundamentalism which he suspected to be there but has not seen it in concrete form. He is insecure. Yet his antenna tells him that the country’s soul is intact, although many Hindus and many Muslims have got contaminated.

The writer is a leading journalist based in New Delhi.

THE latest news is that Nawaz Sharif is back in Pakistan. He finally succeeded in returning after two botched attempts — one by him and the other by his brother Shahbaz. And so are we about to turn into a more tolerant country where democratic rule will prosper and all shades of opinion co-exist?

It is certainly comical if nothing else that President Musharraf has said that he believes in the freedom of the media. According to the power-brokers we will soon have no reason to complain — democracy will be restored, elections held and the share of the electoral pie will be distributed amongst all parties so that no one disturbs the consensus of the power troika.

However, I found another piece of news a more telling commentary on the state of Pakistan’s socio-politics. The ex-premier’s Model Town Lahore house had been handed over to the social welfare department to be turned into an old people’s home. The inmates have now been thrown out.

Now, that Nawaz Sharif has managed to prevail upon Musharraf through the King of Saudi Arabia or some other benefactor not to victimise him the government has returned his properties to him. It is no longer important that the government spent millions of the tax-payer’s money to persecute him.

One can certainly appreciate and applaud the Saudi King who after eight years decided to put his foot down and force Musharraf to take the former prime minister back. We won’t even ask why he didn’t do it earlier. All of this adds spice to the Pakistani story.

It will be interesting to find out who gave the house to the old and homeless. Did someone think that Sharif will not return? Did someone dare think that major political leaders could be wished away, especially by generals who are as much part of the ruling elite as Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Nawaz Sharif, and many others?

Surely, the homeless must have been told that this would be their house for ever since Sharif would never be forgiven and allowed to return. I was immediately reminded of another story which a doctor friend of mine had once told me about a ministerial visit to a government hospital. A couple of years ago the federal health minister was scheduled to visit Bahawal Victoria Hospital. The morning of his arrival the hospital staff changed the bed sheets of the patients, gave them new and clean hospital clothes to wear, washed the faces of old patients and combed their hair. The broken beds were replaced by new ones and the hospital was thoroughly cleaned up.

In short, the hospital and its patients were made presentable to receive a VIP. Unfortunately, the hospital administration was informed in the afternoon that the minister had cancelled his visit upon which the hospital immediately took remedial action. All clean bed sheets were taken away from under the patients and clean clothes removed. Life turned to normal in wait of the next ministerial visit.

Can anyone imagine the disappointment of the old and homeless for whom the prime minister’s plush Model Town residence might have become a home? Just imagine all the destitute people staring in the air thinking about where they would go next. Could someone find out if any other minister is being shunted out of the country?

Perhaps, these people could move there. The important question is that why make these poor people suffer when things will not change and all that we will have is a change of faces?

Is it pure cynicism to think that there was no real encounter between Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf? And if there is no major issue between the two then why put the country through such a crisis as one saw during the past eight years? The military rule and the ease with which the formerly condemned leaders have returned to the country depict the nature of elite politics.

Ultimately, there is no major battle between the elites except that some new elements are trying to be included as elite, a move which is resisted by the old guard. Of course, there is also the issue of who will sit on the throne — a man on horseback or someone in civvies?

Pakistani politics reminds one of the interesting stories one heard in one’s childhood about the snake changing its skin. In one of those stories of yore, the land around the snake would be beset with turmoil whenever the snake shed its old skin. What has happened in Pakistan is nothing extraordinary.

The crisis and tremor which have been witnessed during the past six to eight months are not unusual. Authoritarian polities are prone to political turmoil during the replacement phase of the faces of the ruling elite. When the old members are about to be replaced by new ones there is bound to be some excitement.

It is not surprising that what is missing in the civil society movement are the masses who are not inclined to risk their neck for any form of elite or transfer of power from the old to the new guard. After all, who is sloganeering for the rights of the poor?

The fact of the matter is that over the past decade or so there has been new induction in the ruling elite with new groups joining in. For instance, segments of the media are also now part of the ruling elite.

Then there is the relatively small but aggressively ambitious middle class which has been empowered, especially due to the flow of funds from outside channelled through foreign missions, multinationals and NGOs, who are eagerly waiting to join the upper-middle class.

These people suddenly have access to money, new technology and material goods without power which is still with an older generation. Then there are the civil and military bureaucrats who have enriched themselves through the legal and illegal use of organisational power. In some cases, as we know quite well, the usurpation of national resources is carefully legalised.

These people do not have patience for the man on the street. For the new moneyed class, it is important to ensure that they themselves never return to their erstwhile condition.

The struggle involved in transferring power from one hand to the other is what creates the crisis. Otherwise, it is difficult to see any pro-poor or populist agenda. Surely, the freedom of the media and the judiciary is important, but this is also the time for someone to bring back the politics of changing socioeconomic relationships in the country.

It is ages since anyone spoke about correcting the economic disparities through changing labour laws or bringing in genuine land reforms. Every military or civil government tends to distribute some land to buy votes and not to change the fate of the poor. They are never provided other facilities such as the farm-to-market road or access to water and other facilities which will bring a real change in their lives. There is no party or group which has bothered to provide a clearly-spelt out agenda on privatisation. While reducing the size of the public sector is good, an aimless privatisation which only benefits the rich at the cost of the poor can only add to the turmoil.

So then what does one do with those who gave away the Sharif residence to the social welfare department? They should probably be punished for trying to challenge the system and providing temporary space to the old and the homeless. Elite Pakistan cannot afford metamorphosis or such gestures.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com