Maharashtra and Shivaji Again

by Cliopatria

How nice. They're at it again in Maharashtra - the Indian state that brought us the BORI attack a couple of months ago. Now the state itself is trying to arrest the author of the book that has everyone so worked up. James Laine, who wrote Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, is a wanted man as far as Mahrashtra is concerned. The India Times has a story on the matter, and there are more links at Butterflies and Wheels' News section. The state wants Interpol to help, and they want to extradite the man. For what. Saying something people don't like about Shivaji. And the Congress Party is joining in! It's all rather disgusting.

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Ophelia Benson - 3/24/2004

The closest thing I can find to a statement of what crime he's actually committed is from the Deepak Lokhande article - "Technically, Laine can be tried for hurting the sentiments of Indians on the issue of national heroes, if the state proves in court that Laine’s writings are indeed defamatory." Interesting, isn't it; apparently there's a law against hurting people's sentiments by defaming a national hero. That sounds a tad limiting!

Boy, Thomas Friedman - he's so good at blathering on about things without ever mentioning important other things, isn't he. That's kind of his specialty.

Jonathan Dresner - 3/24/2004

I'm reading the articles, and reading the articles, and I can't for the life of me figure out what crime he's actually committed. Writing a book that got banned?

You know, I just yesterday was reading an article in Z (Subscription required: http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/Mar2004/albert0304.html) which reminded me of the Hindutva fascists, and it struck me: Thomas Friedman has been blathering on about globalization and democracy in India in the NY Times for what seems like two weeks now without ever mentioning the fact that the country is on the verge of, well, fascism. I mean, Mussolini and Hitler were both great for business development, right? Japan was one of the first countries to recover from the 1929 crash.....