Sure, I was expecting an editorial from The Hindu on the Taslima Nasreen episode for long- it had been brewing for sometime in the Commy State, that The Hindu chose to ignore, till it can find some illogical logic to justify or rather gloss over the state of affairs there- Here comes an editorial true to the colours of Hindu- The RED- written all over it.

Let us go through the points raised by Hindu.

For all but the most fanatical, Bangladesh writer Taslima Nasreen’s announcement that she would remove from her book Dwikhandita the portions critical of Islam that were regarded as objectionable should bring to a close the controversy that sparked violent protests in Kolkata and earlier in Hyderabad. [ The Hindu, Dt. 12/05/2007]

There is no word on how appeasing to a mob demanding extradition would be a "Pragmatic Concession" as it claims in the next sentence. I fail to see any point in removing those lines-In the first place, I hadn't read the book- so, I really can't say if there are any offending remarks about Islam in that or not. The Hindu goes out of the way to say, that removal was a concession for fundamentalists, who "seem" to be beyond reason- look at the choice of words- Hindu says, the fundamentalists "seem" to be beyond reason- it is not simply beyond reason- if you were suitably powered and inclined, it might be beyond reason- but Hindu doesn't know if it is beyond reason.

However, the same editorial has these words-

Similar protests followed Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi’s disputing the existence of an ancient bridge between India and Sri Lanka across the Palk Straits as described in the Ramayana......

Note, here too the twisting of facts- the groups were not protesting doubts on the existence of the Bridge- they were protesting MK's venous doubts on the existence of Ram and his famous remarks about Rama being a "Drunkard". Such fun comes reading the editorials of The Hindu.

There is no word yet on Biman Bose's statement that Taslima should leave Bengal if her words would disturb peace or to the statements that there are many other books of Taslima that are offending[I am unable to get the link where I read this piece of news].

Such is the state of The Hindu!

But The Hindu does get one thing right-

The increasing use of Section 295A in the recent period has underlined the dangers of competitive intolerance curtailing the space available for freedom of expression. The section is clearly not in consonance with democratic and constitutional values and it is time it was removed from the statute book.

It might also help us ask how we ended up with this competitive intolerance- when we started appeasing one group over other- this is not restricted to religion alone- right from language, region, caste- the list goes on....

May be Democracy is all about factions and group interests!