VOICES OF REASON
ON THE MORNING OF 9 AUGUST 2019 , a group of police constables sat on plastic chairs outside the Mahakavi Kalidas auditorium in Mulund, a suburb in northern Mumbai. The rainless morning had given a sudden reprieve to the flood-hit city. With their guns, lathis and lunch bags next to their chairs, the policemen kept a close watch on every person entering and exiting the venue.
The security seemed tight for an event that had been billed as a “birthday celebration.” Metal detectors were installed at the entrance. Men, women, children and bags, were all scanned for weapons. At a desk set up opposite the auditorium, a few men and women carefully took down the contact details of every visitor, checked their identification cards and assigned each of them a badge attached to a long blue lanyard.
Inside the auditorium, a harmonium and a dholak were being tuned somewhere in the wings. Finally, three men took the microphone and began singing in Hindi: “Na goliyon se darte hain, na goliyon se, dharam ki toliyon se darte hain, na toliyon se. Ladenge jaat paat, ling bhed aur dharmvaad se, qayamat, kismat, jannat, karishma ki takaton se”—We are neither scared of bullets, nor religious hordes. We will fight against casteism, gender discrimination and communalism, and against the powers of heaven, fate and doom. The packed auditorium cheered, and the applause only grew in volume when, towards the end, the song pledged to fulfil the dreams of four specific people: the activists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, the scholar MM Kalburgi and the journalist Gauri Lankesh. All of them had been murdered in the last six years.
It was the thirtieth-anniversary celebration of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, an organisation founded by Dabholkar, in 1989, to combat superstition and to promote rationalism. There has been a long tradition in Maharashtra, and a few adjoining states, of rationalists fighting superstition and its advocates in Indian society—babas, astrologers and politicians who use religion for political mobilisation—through lectures, workshops, cultural events, articles and books. Hindu fundamentalist groups have long detested rationalists from this region, whom they see as critics of Hindu customs and rituals. Dabholkar and Pansare were allegedly killed for their work as rationalists. Kalburgi and Lankesh were also sympathisers of the movement. While investigations are ongoing, the name of the Hindutva organisation Sanatan Sanstha has come up in relation to all four murders. Its members have also been charge-sheeted in cases of several bomb blasts.
The four murders sent shockwaves through the communities of rationalists, progressive thinkers, activists and intellectuals across the country. Over the past six years, several rationalists have decided to back down and retreat into silence in the fear that they could be the next target. And yet, the threats and intimidation have failed to kill the movement. A section of rationalists has become even more vocal.
In the auditorium, a young MANS volunteer took the microphone and invited a man he described as the “machoman of rationalism” and a “one-man institution” to address the gathering. Narendra Nayak, a 68-year-old rationalist from Mangaluru, slowly walked up to the podium. A biochemist, consumer-rights activist and president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, Nayak was a close friend of Dabholkar’s and has been at the forefront of the movement in Karnataka since the 1970s. After Gauri Lankesh’s murder, the Karnataka police discovered a plot to murder Nayak and has since assigned two gunmen to protect him.
“The police have discovered hit lists that have the names of many of us present here in this room,” Nayak told the audience. “I, for one, am proud to be on that list, because they won’t make a list of people who are ineffective in their work, right? In fact, I told the writer KS Bhagwan that it seems you are the first name on this hit list while I’m Number 7. So they’ll get you first before they come to me. Bhagwan replied, ‘Do you think they’ll follow the list in an order or in a fair-and-square manner?’” The audience giggled.
“By the way, I’ve already donated my body to the medical hospital,” Nayak added. “That is, if I’m allowed to die a natural death. It would be difficult to donate my
