Religion, why are we so afraid of it?

I've just come home from The Hindu Lit for Life 2015 in Chennai where I enjoyed a slugfest in public about "Reading Religion". I spoke about appreciating its contribution to literature, what words from religion mean to me and the surprising discoveries you make when you actually read across religions. For instance, why was it kept hidden from us in our textbooks that even reformers and iconoclasts like Guru Nanak and Kabir repeated the Upanishadic notion of God word-for-word, comparing "God within us" to oil in a sesame seed and scent in a flower - in those exact words? Is it not our right to know these things in the realm of general knowledge?

So it's curious that Adi Sankara's sensuously prayerful eighth century verses about the Devi and about Shiva as "One Part Woman" are still very much around. Nor has anyone censored the Mahabharata, the Ramayana or the Bhagvat Puran. But while nobody objects to their word-for-word translation, including possibly controversial passages, why are fiction and commentary about religious ideas and practices off-limits in "modern" India? Poetry and its polemics are now just potatoes in the political bazaar. No more "tarkam" (debate) as Indian tradition once allowed, encouraged and celebrated. No more for us the freedom of discourse largely enjoyed in the West despite the creationists who take the poetry of the Bible literally. Not for us a book like The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible by Jonathan Kirsch (Rider 1997). This is one of the most intriguing books to have ever come my way. Kirsch, a publishing lawyer, critic and specialist in Bible studies takes us via storytelling and commentary through difficult aspects of the Old Testament, through its instances of rape, incest, gyno-sadism and worse and ends with a crackling chapter on "Who Really Wrote the Bible?'The Church Times called his work "commendable", The Washington Post found it "interesting and challenging" and The Times said that he "brings out well how, over the centuries, the keepers of the tradition have sought to soften the impact of these stories and sometimes censor them altogether". But the reverse has taken place in "modern" India. What circulated unchecked for millennia and was discussed freely is now taboo. Neither fact nor fiction can be uttered for fear of offending someone, anyone, and always with unpleasant consequences. Some Christians in India object to The Da Vinci Code, some Muslims object to The Satanic Verses and Lajja and some Hindus object to Wendy Doniger and now Perumal Murugan among others.

We object if one of us speaks from within the tradition and we object if someone who has studied our tradition speaks about it from the outside. How on earth did Iravati Karve win the Sahitya Akademi award for best work in Marathi in 1967, for Yuganta (The End of the Epoch), her insider's critique of the Mahabharata? Do read the English translation (Disha Books) before that too is pounced on after all these years.We can split one theoretical hair into a hundred-and-eight about this. But can we deny the root cause of this civilisational tragedy? The rotten thing is our state. Successive governments have shown themselves weak. They have not stood by writers, by genuine freedom of speech, by discourse and debate. The state has yielded each time to pressure groups and betrayed writers. We have helped them in this destruction of our rights by not paying enough attention, by relating mainly to writers who give us extremely easy, pleasant reads. And now we are a nation of mufflemouths in a 'modern' India where we can say nothing about anything.