Niloy Chattaraj

In 2000, I was supposed to attend the launch of my book in Mumbai, translated into Marathi. At that time, Muslim fundamentalists in Mumbai declared that if I set foot in the city, the airport would be burned down. To avoid trouble, I didn’t want to go to Mumbai. But Javed Akhtar convinced me otherwise. He insisted that I must go — otherwise, the extremist fundamentalist groups in Mumbai would claim victory. They would take my absence as proof of their power and might not allow many others to enter Mumbai in the future. We had to prove that we would not bow to their threats against freedom of expression. I landed at Mumbai airport, where I was welcomed by Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Mahesh Bhatt, Marathi publisher Ashok Sahanie, and several others. The book launch took place that afternoon. Javed Akhtar delivered a powerful speech against fundamentalism. He was the one who urged the government to arrange heavy security for me. Section 144 was in force that day. The fundamentalists who tried to cause havoc were arrested. That day, they realized that in a democratic country, religious violence against free expression cannot prevail. Today, twenty-five years later, that same Javed Akhtar faces the same kind of threat in Kolkata that I once faced. Back then, by declaring the threat against me illegitimate, his challenge was to bring me to Mumbai and defeat the fundamentalists. Today, however, there is no Javed Akhtar to bring Javed Akhtar to Kolkata and defeat the fundamentalists. In Kolkata today, there is no one to speak out loudly for freedom of expression, secularism, and democracy. Just as their lips were sealed when I was forced out of Kolkata, their lips remain sealed now when Javed Akhtar is being barred from entering the city.