OUTRAGED defenders of free speech are suggesting that a planned amendment to the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, would put India on par with Pakistan, notorious for its draconian blasphemy laws.
According to this report, the amendment to the Act would make it an offence, punishable with a jail sentence, to “disrespect” Mahatma Gandhi – the “Father of Nation”.
Confirming that his ministry was examining the need to amend the Act, Law Minister M Veerappa Moily told The Indian Express:
Mahatma Gandhi is revered by millions not just in India but across the world. We can’t allow anybody to draw adverse inferences about historical figures and denigrate them. Otherwise history will not forgive us. That is why the need is being felt to amend he Act.
News of the planned amendment came shortly after the Gujarat government banned a book about Mahatma Gandhi by Joseph Lelyveld which alleges that Gandhi was a bisexual and a racist.
Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India quotes letters which suggest Gandhi had an affair with German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach, for whom he supposedly left his wife Kasturba in 1908. The book also indicates the Mahatma had a racial bias towards Black Africans.
People commenting on the India Express report were less than enthusiastic over the planned amendment to the Act.
Said one:
Any rational would like to debate and analyse the personality and actions of historic figures. These inferences would be of both academic and social values. Democracy permits freedom of expression. Nothing but freedom is divine in a democracy. How do we claim democratic by preventing and evading views and debates? How do we differentiate from Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Aren’t we barbaric in preventing alternate views.
Another said:
I respect Gandhi, still I don’t think this should be done. It would go against his own ethos. We are living in a world where GOD is criticized in the name of Democracy; Gandhi is not greater than GOD!!!
And a third asked:
Are we living in a banana republic or what? How can criticism of a “person” be compared to insulting the national flag or national constitution?Besides,deliberately humiliating or denigrating a person is not correct,but having a difference of opinion or differing viewpoint about a person especially someone who was in national politics, can’t be termed as insult.We can surely have different perceptions about the role of an individual,who cannot be termed as GOD, can’t we?