Fahad Zuberi, an Architectural Historian and Theorist in the making, is passionate about human rights causes, politics, arts, and music. He studies and teaches History and Humanities at Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad.
Fahad Zuberi, an Architectural Historian and Theorist in the making, is passionate about human rights causes, politics, arts, and music. He studies and teaches History and Humanities at Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad.
What cannot be ignored is that we are also fighting a war of ideas. Love towards one’s nation cannot be regulated; it cannot be manufactured or policed. By silencing individuals using laws of sedition, institutional action, and intimidation, and by denying these citizens of the Indian republic their right to free expression, we merely brush the most hostile and destructive ideas under the carpet instead of tackling them in the public sphere.
All eyes are on the Supreme Court to hold the ideals of the Constitution up and declare FGM an offence. It is about time that India joins the international movement against FGM and that the law protects its citizens from such heinous violation of human rights and bodily integrity.
Already, religious lobbies use Section 295A and insist on the importance of its existence is representative of their intentions to attack free speech and silence criticism. IPC 295 AA, as it is called in Punjab, now proposes to punish ‘whoever causes injury, damage or sacrilege to Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Srimad Bhagwad Gita, Holy Quran and Holy Bible with the intention to hurt the religious feelings of the people’ with imprisonment for life.
One of the most fierce and vociferous opposition to LGBTQ+ rights has come from religious lobbies — be it the evangelical Christians in the USA running gay conversion therapy camps, or Baba Ramdev claiming that he can “cure” homosexuality through yoga, or the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. But the premise of human rights and liberty cannot be somebody else’s right to religion.