SANSAD
On September 14, 2010, the Bhartiya Vidyarthi Sena, the student wing of the Shiv Sena, which is notorious for its violent Hindu-national-and-regional chauvinism in Maharashtra, burnt copies of Rohintan Mistry’s Booker-nominated novel, Such A Long Journey in front of the gates of Mumbai University and demanded that the book be withdrawn from the syllabus within 24 hours. They also threatened to burn Mistry himself if he came from Canada to Mumbai. The demand was spearheaded by Aditya Thackeray, the 20-year-old grandson of Bal Thackeray, the founder of Shiv Sena.
Bowing to this outrageous demand the Vice-Chancellor of the Universiy, Dr. Rajan Welukar promptly used the emergency powers under Section 14 (7) of the Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994, to withdraw the book from second-year BA (English) syllabus, where it had been prescribed as an optional text since 2007-2008. The Vice Chancellor also expressed sympathy with the claim of the Shiv Sena youth that the book made derogatory references to Maharashtrians.
Although many academics and secular democratic people in Mubai and India have condemned these act of intolerance and terror by the Shiv Sena and the cowardly complicity of the Vice Chancellor in abandoning academic freedom, the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan of the supposedly secular Congress party has not only refused to intervene but has expressed agreement with the Sena claims without having read the book.
South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), based in the Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada deplores this yet-another attack on writing and art by the religious-nationalist-regionalist fanatics in India and condemns the University authorities in Mumbai and the Government of Maharashtra for their complicity in violence and intolerance. We urge all academics in Canada and all institutions and organizations that uphold secular-democratic principles to express their outrage in solidarity with academics and secular-democratic people in India.