The most striking commonality among the murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar (in Pune, August 2013), Govind Pansare (in Kolhapur, February 2015) and M.M. Kalburgi (in Dharwad, August 2015) is not the modus operandi — motorcycle-borne men shooting to kill and speeding away — but the intolerance and hatred toward their strong views on religion and superstition that the acts reflect. Though investigators have found no substantive leads in any of these cases yet, and the killers’ motives remain unclear, there is little doubt that the three rationalists had provoked religious fanatics and sectarian elements in a deeply conservative society. What is particularly worrying is that the killings have been meant as a warning to other writers and intellectuals who may dare to question established belief systems. Activist-writer Bharat Patankar recently received hate letters asking him not to go the ‘Dabholkar-Pansare way’, and holding out a warning that it would be his turn next. Pansare himself had received threats after the killing of Dabholkar for opposing superstitious beliefs. Kalburgi too had come under pressure for his writings against religious beliefs. Often the threat of physical violence is held out against writers and intellectuals by casteist and communal groups, which are quick to take offence at anything that criticises matters of faith.
Article 25 of the Constitution not only allows the free profession, practice and propagation of a religion of one’s choice, but also an individual’s freedom of conscience. Atheists, agnostics and rationalists have the right to propagate their views on religion as much as believers have the right to spread theirs. What Article 25 guarantees is not a collective religious right but an individual’s freedom of choice. However, communal and casteist groups have often asserted they have a right not to be offended by any writing or work. In effect, they seek a right to thwart or force the withdrawal of the publication of anything that they imagine gives them cause to take offence. Also, political mobilisation along caste and communal lines gives such groups an enormous veto power, that strikes at the very root of freedom of speech and expression. Sadly, whenever freedom of speech is thus threatened, the state, supposedly in the interest of maintaining law and order, takes the side of the collective mob against the writer/ artist/intellectual. Surely, the lack of any progress in identifying and nabbing Dabholkar’s killers must have emboldened the assailants of Pansare and Kalburgi. Whether or not there is a common thread connecting the three murders, it is imperative that the killers are tracked down. Otherwise, irrespective of the motives, the killings would have had the effect of silencing other voices of dissent and reason as well.
