This is the first time in my life that I am sitting down to write an article while a commando sits in myliving room to protect me from possible assailants. This provision has been made by the home minister of mystate - Maharashtra - to protect me from other Maharashtrians, who were earlier incited by their"leaders" to attack the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), a world-renowned centre ofresearch in Indology at Pune.
This is an honour I had never expected. I have been a poet, a writer, and a translator for the last 50years. Although I have done other things, such as making films, my principal identity is literary. I was muchless surprised when, in the past, I received literary awards and even an international award for a film. Beingawarded police protection without even asking for it, is an awesome honour and, indeed, I am awed.
But let me tell the story as it dramatically unfolded last week. It began without any warning on January 5,with an attack on the BORI at about 11 am when the institute begins its day. I was in Delhi to attend acultural festival and was stunned when, on January 6, some participants told me about the attack. That night,my wife called me from Pune to inform me that the 'organisation' that took responsibility for the attack hadnamed me among the people they would target as those whose assistance was acknowledged by Professor JamesLaine, an American academic and author of a recently published, now withdrawn, book on Shivaji. She also toldme that many of those who were so acknowledged by Laine had "condemned" him and, in a manner ofspeaking, had apologised to the "public" for having "helped" him in any way. This left meaghast.
On the morning of December 8, before leaving for the airport to board the flight back to Pune, my wife calledand told me not to be surprised if she received me at the Pune airport with an armed escort provided by theMaharashtra government. That bodyguard has been with me since and he carries a weapon. He is a nice,unobtrusive person, but his presence is as reassuring as it is profoundly disturbing.
I know that the BORI is not the World Trade Center and that September 11 makes more sinister sense to morepeople than January 5. No human life was lost when the BORI was attacked. What was damaged irretrievably, inmaterial terms, were rare books that few people outside the world of scholarship know about and therefore carefor - manuscripts, inscriptions of value to historians, information and records on which our present andfuture understanding of Indian traditions depends. This is not a mere material loss and it does not take ahigh degree of education to understand that.
But in a way the trauma and the signals it continues to generate, the questions it raises, undermine twothings that most of us naively take for granted: that we are a civil society with a will not only to survivebut to thrive without fear, and that our democratic republic is real after 54 years of existence as a printedbook. The printed book that represents our unconfirmed belief and hope in democracy has been destroyed-thoughnot physically-by the attack on the BORI. But the government of Maharashtra, the Union government, the SupremeCourt, the Parliament, the president of India and the governor of Maharashtra, seem so far to be unaware thatwhat has been attacked is not merely a centre of learning but the very future of scholarship in India and thecivil liberties that make it possible to lead a civilised life.
This is not an ordinary law and order problem that the Maharashtra home minister can handle and the Union homeminister can ignore. It was not created by a book on Shivaji written by a "foreign" scholar usingIndian sources and resources. Nor can it be solved by the state of Maharashtra suing Professor Laine or hispublisher, banning the book and providing police protection to all whose help Professor Laine hasacknowledged. It is a case of domestic terrorism that has been tolerated by our union and state governmentsfor far too long; and, ironically, this happens to be a year of general elections. It is an arrogant anddefiant signal sent by another extra-constitutional "sena" to whatever constitutional authority webelieve in and those who govern us in its name.
The media have not pondered over this. Even intellectuals, writers and researchers in Maharashtra do not seemto have understood the true nature of the damage and its implications. They have all readily condemned Laine'sbook (most of them also admit that they have not read it!); noted the fact that he is a foreign scholar andnot Maharashtrian or Indian; and have appealed for the restoration of the BORI in view of the immense materialdamage done to its archive and library. They do not perceive it as an attack that defies the Constitution bypeople who hold press conferences after the act and have the gumption to say that not only do they not regretwhat they have done but would do it again. Those extraordinary assertions made by leaders of the "SambhajiSena" have been reported by the Marathi and the English press in Pune. The government of Maharashtra doesnot seem to have the will to respond to this threat.
Luckily for Laine, he is in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. But we who have to live and work in a TalibanisedMaharashtra continue to face a form of domestic terrorism that announces the rise of neo-fascism in India.
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Dilip Chitre, a Sahitya Akademi awardee is a poet, writer, translator of Bhakti poetry, painter andfilmmaker. He lives in Pune. This piece also appears in today's The Indian Express
