The NDTV reports:

This time it is not the Marxists but the UPA government that has decided that controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen cannot return to her adopted city of Kolkata. Moreover, Nasreen has been told that if she wants to live in Delhi, she will not be allowed to take part in any public functions. the decision had been communicated officially to her by a senior official of the Ministry of External Affairs

This is shameful admission by the Indian Government that it is incapable of upholding the rule of law.

This is also an admission by the Indian Government that it is incapable of being unequivocal in bringing down the full force of the State to bear on those who take it upon themselves to flout the rule of law on the pretext of being offended.

Offstumped had penned a short piece in verse on why India was a soft nation back in 2002 in the aftermath of the Gujarat Riots. The Taslima Nasreen episode is yet another reminder of how soft a nation we are when the Government washes its hands off its commitment to guarantee that the rule of law will be upheld at all costs.

Where Newton’s Law sanctifies public molestations,

Where Respect for the rule of law is an aberration

secular pretensions overrule factual considerations

dubious sentiments justify violent reactions

No tears if you are right wing,  You deserve mob fury and immolation

Behave if you are minority,  We will slaughter and  inflict humiliation

Where populism overrides public interest

Where judiciary co-opts execution functions

The capital’s combat against pollution is sustained by legal  oxygen

Beware of the ingenuity of these discredited  parliamentarians

legislate they will,  noxious ordinances, to subvert judicial action

a mute polity tarries along, unmindful of environmental implications

Where an aborted attack paralyses legislative transactions

Where V.I.P. accidents trigger outrage on the lapses of transportation

Commissions and retribution for endangered politicians

Inadvertence and paltry compensations for hapless citizens

A few dead or alive in a billion., what’s the difference

The politician’s death!  that calls for indignation and consequence

 

  

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high”

“Where words come out from the depth of truth”

Tagore was dreaming and so are his stupefied countrymen

Gujarat or Delhi, they are unlikely to awaken              

Neither the lack of “hot pursuit” nor the concern for “human rights”

But it is this permissiveness and insouciance that makes us a Soft Nation

 

Originally posted here

http://offstumped.nationalinterest.in/2007/12/20/soft-nation-how-india-caved-in/ 

 

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