On the Saturday before Christmas 2004, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in Britain\u2019s East Midlands was in a state of siege. Children who had come with their parents for a pantomime were bewildered at the sight of 400 enraged protestors threatening to storm the theatre.\n<\/p>\n
\nLater that afternoon, the mob attacked the building, shattered glass, destroyed backstage equipment and injured several police officers.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe protesters were Sikhs, mainly men. Their ire was directed at the play Behzti<\/i> (Dishonour) by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, who is herself a Sikh. And so we return to the ongoing saga of intolerance and free expression; censorship and multiculturalism.\n<\/p>\n
\nNearly two decades ago, in another UK city, Bradford, Muslim men burned copies of Salman Rushdie\u2019s novel, The Satanic Verses<\/i>. Iran\u2019s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini had declared a fatwa against Rushdie and British Muslims, many of them from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, wanted the novel banned in the UK.\n<\/p>\n
\nI was in Bombay at that time; on Mohammed Ali Road, I saw angry Muslim protesters trying to march towards the British Council a few miles away, which they wanted to burn down. They fought pitched battles with the city\u2019s police, who wanted to stop them. They hurled glass bottles filled with acid; the police fired in response. By the end of the afternoon, nearly a dozen men lay dead. The Indian government had already banned the novel.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt was different in Britain. The Conservative Thatcher and Major governments, initially forcefully but later with decreasing enthusiasm, supported Rushdie\u2019s right to free speech, even though Rushdie had often criticised Conservative rule. In the intervening years \u2013 which Rushdie called his plague years \u2013 and after many exhausting dialogues between communities, many in Britain thought they had mastered the art of multicultural management.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe British could afford to snigger at the French for imposing laws that ban Muslim schoolgirls from wearing the veil at state-funded schools. They could say, “Never in Britain” when in Amsterdam an irate Dutch Muslim murdered Theo Van Gogh, the film-maker who liked to outrage everybody; who had most recently made a film that criticised Islamic societies for condoning violence against women.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt was supposed to be different in Britain. But for how long?\n<\/p>\n
\nBirmingham is Britain\u2019s second-largest city with a population of two million, and it takes pride in its multicultural mix. Its Asian community is large and is an important part of the city\u2019s mainstream. Sikhs are fully integrated here; their men have won the right to wear their turban instead of the helmets required in various uniforms. Many Sikhs proudly recount their community\u2019s sterling contribution to the British Army during two world wars.\n<\/p>\n
\nAs with many immigrant communities, younger Sikhs are becoming more cosmopolitan. They are not committed to the outward symbols of their faith. Many marry outside their community, many men are clean-shaven. They question their elders and their practices, and it is this troubles the more orthodox elements. The elders complain about the disintegration of the community; the younger ones feel stifled by the previous generation, most of whom are first-generation immigrants.\n<\/p>\n
\nBehzti raises uncomfortable questions about the moral corruption within the faith. In its most controversial scene, a young Sikh woman is taken to a gurdwara (Sikh temple) where she is raped by a man who claims he had a homosexual relationship with her father. When she emerges from the experience, confused, embarrassed and angry, she is beaten by other women, including her own mother, who don\u2019t want to believe her.\n<\/p>\n
\nSuch things, devout Sikhs insist, simply do not happen in a gurdwara.\n<\/p>\n
\nSewa Singh Mandha, chairman of the Council of Sikh Gurdwaras in Birmingham told BBC radio: \u2018In a Sikh temple, sexual abuse does not take place, kissing and dancing don\u2019t take place, rape doesn\u2019t take place, homosexual activity doesn\u2019t take place, murders do not take place.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\nConcerned about accurate portrayal of their faith and at the invitation of the theatre director Sikh elders, claiming to represent Britain\u2019s 336,000 Sikhs, had long negotiations with the theatre before the play was staged, requesting that the setting be changed from a gurdwara to a community centre. But the Rep did not budge. With hindsight, the Rep\u2019s fateful mistake perhaps lay precisely in encouraging the impression that it would change the script, by entering into such a dialogue in the first place.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe situation turned ugly and the play closed; Bhatti\u2019s life was threatened and she was forced into hiding. Sikh organisations, to their credit, immediately condemned the threats, but nonetheless praised the play\u2019s closure. Welcoming the cancellation, Mohan Singh, a community leader in Birmingham, asked: \u2018Will it happen again when people think peaceful protest is not going to work?\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\nGurdwara means the gate to the Guru, and Sikh temples are remarkably open. As a faith that does not profess to separate its laity from the clergy, anyone familiar with the scriptures can lead prayers there, but it also means controls may be lax. Bhatti\u2019s question is: \u2018What if the men and women who manage the gurdwara are not up to the task?\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\nIn her foreword, she says: “Clearly the fallibility of human nature means that simple Sikh principles of equality, compassion and modesty are sometimes discarded in favour of outward appearance, wealth and the quest for power. I feel that distortion in practice must be confronted and our great ideals must be restored. I believe that drama should be provocative and relevant. I wrote Behzti because I passionately oppose injustice and hypocrisy.”\n<\/p>\n
\nBut by bringing these issues into the open, Bhatti was effectively washing the community\u2019s dirty linen in public. In the eyes of the militants, Bhatti\u2019s play Dishonour brought dishonour on the community; shamed it in public.\n<\/p>\n
\nAh, that word again: shame. In his novel, Shame Rushdie writes: “Sharam, that\u2019s the word. For which this paltry shame is a wholly inadequate translation. A short word, but one containing encyclopaedias of nuance,\u201d which include \u201cembarrassment, discomfiture, decency, modesty, shyness, the sense of having an ordained place in the world, and other dialects of emotion for which English has no counterparts. No matter how determinedly one flees a country, one is obliged to take along some hand-luggage … (and) what\u2019s the opposite of shame? That\u2019s obvious: shamelessness.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nHow do you define shamelessness? Picture a metro station in Paris. A purdah-clad immigrant woman stands waiting for her train. Behind her, the advertising billboard sells toothpaste, an obligatory naked woman draped around the toothbrush.\n<\/p>\n
\nFor the devout immigrant, that billboard personifies occidental shamelessness. But her seclusion behind the veil, if against her will, is also a matter of shame; all the more so if the naked model is a second-generation immigrant herself. Such are the nuances that platitudes on multiculturalism usually fail to address.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe defiant and deviant will inevitably face the community\u2019s shame and dishonour. When someone from a close-knit community does not respect its sense of honour that\u2019s an act of shamelessness; and shamelessness, as one goes East, implies losing face.\n<\/p>\n
\nAs Ian Buruma shows in Wages of Guilt<\/i>, which explores German and Japanese responses to World War II, German guilt resulted in a response to the Holocaust through a dramatic gesture: its Chancellor, Willy Brandt fell to his knees in December 1970 in front of the Warsaw Ghetto. It allowed Germans the ability to apologise. In contrast, Japanese Prime Ministers, concerned about face, and unable to deal with shame, continue to bow to the Yasukuni Shrine, where World War II war criminals are venerated, causing much anger in East Asian countries that suffered from Japanese occupation during the war.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe Behzti controversy goes beyond the Sikh community. It raises questions about the kind of society modern Britain wants to be. Is it to be a liberal country where free speech is honoured? Or does it want to accommodate minorities and ensure their feelings are not offended by holding its tongue?\n<\/p>\n
\nIn early January this year, evangelical Christians sent 47,000 emails to the BBC protesting its decision to broadcast the West End hit Jerry Springer: The Opera because it offends their religious beliefs. Other Christians were similarly offended when Channel Four TV promoted its Shameless<\/i> Christmas Special with billboards parodying The Last Supper<\/i>, in which Jesus looked merrily drunk. In December, an irate Christian toppled the waxworks models of English soccer hero David Beckham and his glamorous pop star wife Victoria Beckham at Madam Tussaud\u2019s waxworks in London, because the couple was dressed up as Joseph and Mary in a Nativity Scene. The secular also take offence: in 2002, an angry left-leaning activist beheaded a statue of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London\u2019s Guildhall.\n<\/p>\n
\nCoexistence isn\u2019t just about noodle shops, disco bhangra and kebab houses in Europe, but also about the co-existence of different ideas, such as those on freedom of expression. Multiculturalism is based on the premise that all faiths and customs should be tolerated and respected. But that tolerance is the product of liberal enlightenment, an outcome of centuries of churning in the West, and it is not a quality valued highly by devout believers of some of the faiths now practiced in increasingly large numbers in Europe.\n<\/p>\n
\nMulticulturalists have wanted it both ways: they want artistic freedom, and they want to respect the feelings and sensitivities of minorities. Julian Baggini, editor of the Philosophers\u2019 Magazine<\/i>, told the Guardian of the \u2018unsustainability of the liberal multiculturalist orthodoxy that maintained tolerance and respect would be enough to allow people of different beliefs to live together. Europeans had forgotten or ignored the fact that their inclusive values were not universally shared.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\nAt some point, the Scylla and Charybdis of outrageous statements intended to provoke and \u2018right-minded\u2019 censorship have to be confronted. Voltaire may defend the right of people he disagrees with till his death; but will those who oppose Voltaire return the favour?\n<\/p>\n
\nPoliticians prefer what Benjamin Franklin called \u2018temporary safety\u2019 to \u2018essential liberty\u2019. The Behzti<\/i> controversy has coincided with discussion about a proposed new law in the UK that would make incitement to religious hatred a crime.\n<\/p>\n
\nArtists, atheists, secularists, politicians and Christian groups have formed an unusual alliance against the bill. Rowan Atkinson, the comedian who once showed a bunch of Muslims kneeling to pray with a voice-over saying, \u201cAnd the Ayatollah seems to have lost his contact lens,\u201d has led the campaign against the bill.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe legislation is a cynical ploy to placate Britain\u2019s Muslims, who feel estranged from the party they have traditionally backed, because of Prime Minister Tony Blair\u2019s sustained support to the United States in the war on terror. Liberal Democrats engineered the biggest turnaround in recent British electoral history last year when in a by-election they wrested the Brent East constituency, which has a sizable minority population, from Labour\u2019s hands.\n<\/p>\n
\nAfter Birmingham, Fiona Mactaggart, a Home Office minister, spoke like a safe, cultural relativist: \u201cWhen people are moved by theatre to protest \u2026 it is a great thing\u2026 that is a sign of the free speech which is so much a part of the British tradition.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nShe misses the point. As Rushdie says: “It looks like we are going to have to fight and win the Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 battle for freedom of thought all over again. One must never forget that that battle was not against the state, but the Church. (As George Santayana said over a century ago) ‘Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’.”\n<\/p>\n
\nEquating violent protesters with a playwright is wrong. Such pusillanimity will only embolden the intolerant, who will increasingly dictate what the rest of us should read and watch, narrowing the discourse.\n<\/p>\n
\nThat wasn\u2019t part of any British tradition.
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Salil Tripathi<\/b> is a London-based writer and journalist.<\/i>
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