SAHMAT organised a press conference on September 5 with a view to resist assault on reason and increasing communalisation of society and culture with the conviction that it can be beaten back by the sustained resistance of the community of scholars, artists and activists bolstered by the support of the wider community. Anil Nauriya began by condemning the recent incidents of killing of activists who held views with which the right wing groups are uncomfortable. He said that there is no need to name the people and groups behind such killings as everyone is aware of it even if the investigating agencies are unable to bring the culprits to justice. He gave example of Allah Baksh, a contemporary of Gandhiji, who was killed since he held views with which the reactionary forces were not comfortable with. Since the evidence against the culprits were not strong enough they were not convicted and were let off. Nauriya pointed out that this was the earliest instance in India of a person being murdered in the twentieth century India for his views. This act of intolerance was once again repeated in the killing of Gandhiji. Once again the main planner of the murder Savarkar was let off since there was no strong evidence against him.Today once again the same trend is being witnessed he argued with the intermittent killings of party comrades and scholars in different parts of Maharashtra and Karnataka the latest being that of Kannada scholar Dr MM Kalburgi. Rationalism is just one of the many common factors among those killed. All of them were running campaigns at some level or the other for social justice and equity. Professor Irfan Habib began his short but crisp talk by stressing on the fact that unlike the earlier NDA regime what is new this time is that the country is being governed by an un-constitutional and self-proclaimed socio-cultural organization namely the RSS. It is an organization that from its inception has never hid its fascination and admiration for fascism. Its leader Golwakar had praised Hitler and his treatment of Jews and wanted a similar kind of treatment in India for the Muslims He argued that today we are dealing with perhaps not an actual fascist power but a power that has ambitions of becoming a fascist power. Habib drew attention to the fact that one common feature that the RSS shares with Hitler is the replacement of history that both seek to make with mythology. He said that several of the journalists tend to speak in a way as if the reading of the RSS and its followers of history is different from the reading of history by ordinary historians. This however is not the case. The former he said have no reading of history but only construction of mythology. One need not look far in history but only look at the textbooks of previous NDA regime. We need not look at the myth constructed by them of the Aryans going out of India and civilizing the world. We just need to look at the textbooks especially the parts dealing with the national movement. If we read these books we will get an impression that Gandhiji and Nehru made no contribution to India’s freedom movement. Nehru is all the time censured and surprisingly Gandhiji’s murder is not even mentioned in these books. Gandhiji’s murder is not even an event of any historical importance. He then went to cite the example of the incumbent chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research who lately said that one should go to the Puranas, Ramayana and Mahabharata for our history and therefore one should believe that the uran-khatolas were aeroplanes on which Rama returned from Sri Lanka but unfortunately it was built by Ravana a rakshasa and not by an Indo- Aryan! This he jokingly said was a slight fault in the Ramayana. Further he went on to say that in this context the recent renaming of Aurangzeb Road in Delhi is an ominous development. This renaming effort he said is condemnable effort. In the previous NDA regime there were attempts made to change the names of Allahabad and Lucknow to Prayag and Laxmanpuri respectively. He said that although newspapers say indirectly that before elections communal flare-up is witnessed in places but they do not say who are behind these flare ups. All are well aware of who are responsible for this and unfortunately today such people are in the seats of power at the centre. Drawing a parallel with the Nazi Germany he pointed out that in 1933 Krupps and other capitalists supported Hitler. After 1945 they said they made a mistake. He said that their mistake led to millions of innocent people losing their lives. Around 27 million died in Soviet Union. Seven million Jews were slaughtered. The capitalist class in India has to indeed answer. We have also to see that we should have a democracy where money does not play such an important and powerful role. It is regrettable that the public after our national movement should have seen a day when money swayed such a large number of votes and elected to power a party which throughout the course of the national movement and its organization RSS which has a distinction of not leading a single agitation against the colonial government. All their agitations were against the fellow communities. He concluded by saying that it is a tribute to the government of the time and especially to Pandit Nehru and Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel that they did not allow a single name to be changed. The roads named after Muslims remained as they were. He concluded by saying that when they deserve honour for this what do they deserve who now wish to rename roads in order to be subservient to communal feelings. Teesta Setalvad re-emphasised the complete paradigm shift in what we are witnessing in our education and cultural policies. This has not come over night. She reminded of the first minority NDA regime in 1999 when first attempts were made to bring value education policies at which point state education ministers walked out of the meeting with the HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi. Most of the things we are seeing today is a take-off from that point. It is surprising that even though investigation agencies of Mumbai get to the root of almost all the crimes are unable to catch the culprits of the recent murders of Dabholkar, Panasre and Kalburgi. She reiterated the point made earlier that we are today being governed by an organization that is un- constitutional and has never believed the basic foundations of Indian state. We are unfortunately not being able to react as strongly as we should. In the context of Aurangzeb she talked about Shivaji and the book that Comrade Pansare brought out in Marathi to bring to light the real Shivaji and not the one that has been constructed by the right wing groups. She argued that the ‘good’ Muslim and the ‘bad’ Muslim politics so clearly visible in the renaming of Aurangzeb Road which is being played so blatantly today is something that is a huge challenge and needs to be stopped and countered aggressively. She said that India’s democracy is a very valuable asset that was born despite and in spite of the partition of 1947. The preamble to the constitution shows that there was a complete consensus from all corners that our constitution and preamble should be what it is today. It was not just a matter of principle but a matter of deep pragmatism that made us all resolve that this country would be a secular and democratic republic and will not, despite the pains of partition, become a religion based nation. Prabhat Patnaik said that all these incidents of murders and communalisation should not surprise us. We have at this moment in the country a group of fascistic elements in power even though mercifully we do not have a fascist State. If we have fascistic elements in power it is not surprising that they would like to proceed towards the construction of fascist State. A part of this process is the destruction of reason. One very important symptom of this destruction of reason is the objectification of the distinction between history and mythology. In this context he cited the example of Prime Minister Narendra Modi making the statement in the recent session of Indian Science Congress that Ganesha is an example of plastic surgery being present since ancient times. This fascification runs completely contrary to the last century of struggle and progress that this country has witnessed including social emancipation of Phule, Ambedkar and others as well as anti-colonial movement which were complementing each other in a process of progress towards the notion of equality. The Constitution that comes out is one that defines as it were a telling of equal citizens and a fraternity of citizens all of whom are equal. It is that defines the democratic, secular and republic character of the Indian state. Anything that privileges one group or community over another is something that is destructive of this notion of citizenship. He said that this is completely contrary to the progress witnessed and takes back our country almost a hundred years. Prabhat Patnaik noted that Germany became Nazified mainly because of acute economic crisis that had gripped it. Unfortunately the Indian economy too is slipping into an economic crisis. The phase that we are in right now and the groups which are in power today will make use of this crisis condition. Patnaik concluded by saying that today under the present regime the importance of academic institutions is being systematically destroyed and the these groups are trying to destroy such institutions and attempts are being made to scuttle any sort of rational research by picking up second hand mediocre scholars to head such institutions.