Without the body

Sufferings are as universe as the happiness in the human life. It's not just that I discovered from the book "Does he know a mother's heart How suffering Refutes Religions" by Arun Shourie.  But the fact that if any one try to understand his/her actions of at least past few years, one can surely get the answers nearly for the sufferings. but always questions remain questions.

Refuting the sufferings of gods child

“The secret to writing 26 books is to be unemployed from time to time,” quipped Arun Shourie, author, journalist, scholar and politician, releasing Does He Know a Mother’s Heart? - his 26th book."


It only sounds modest when Arun himself says" “I am not a creative writer. I am lawyer, and all my books are arguments for the prosecution, whether it is on Ambedkar or on suffering.” 


I just received the copy of this book, was curious to read this book as I read his other book worshiping false god.

Men at work, Don’t disturb Economists!!

A veteran liberal politician Jaswant Singh wrote on Arun Shourie in the Indian Express-Financial Express which has published a collection views focusing last 20 years and next 20 years of Indian economy.

The following lines are greatest among I read on economists of this sunny world in policy making. Singh wrote:

• The policy I took in the Finance Ministry was that we must put money in the hands of the citizen and give him the encouragement to save and also spend. I am extremely suspicious of economists. I toyed with the idea of putting up outside my office a placard saying ‘Men at work, economists please stay away’. My officers persuaded me not to. But I did persuade my colleagues in the Finance Ministry of getting out of the habit of saying no. We, I told them, are not a new version of Dr No made famous in a James Bond movie. Instead, we are in the business of improving the general mood of the country through our policies and actions. During my time, we worked out a resolution of the L&T issue from Grasim. The process worked beautifully. There were so many of those (p.23).

He is writing a book on our greatest liberal Rajaji, I can't wait for long!!!

Land debate: Patel and Nehru

According to Arun Shourie (read his book on Worshipping False Gods) Mr.Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel argued, if the government acquires land from farmer, adequate compensation should be given at market price along with additional 15 percent of the price of the land cost. Contrary to this, Nehru said there should be no compensation, which need to be given if government acquires land from farmer !!

The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ms. Mayawati seems to be learned a right lesson from Mr.Patel than Mr.Nehru.  

Manmohan Singh has more shades of the devious politics of Narasimha Rao than we realise

Please read the title of this post keeping in mind what Mr Shouri said during the MPS meeting about Mr.Narasimha Rao!!

Prof Mehta writes: 

• The PM’s responses were artful in many respects. But the timing and content of these responses are likely to leave the country more rather than less confused. 

• The lollipop character of the questions asked by the distinguished journalists suggests buying into the line that the government as a whole does not have much to account for. Not one probing question was asked about this government’s rampant decimation of institutions. Even the one thing the PM directly signed, the controversial appointment of the CVC, was conveniently forgotten. Unless there are fresh revelations, Raja, Kalmadi and maybe Ashok Chavan will be history in a few months, sacrificial goats that will have expatiated our longing that someone pays. The interaction was not designed to clear the air about what happened. It was designed to say: “Calm down, Raja is out, I am an honest guy and guess what, I am an economist too.”

MPS Asia Regional Meeting-Two

Let me give you some sort of mixed picture from what I have noted from the various talks given by economists and experts in the MPS meeting on the opening dinner (Feb 10th, 2011).

Dr.Parth J Shah gave introduction with few facts about the CCS’s success stories such as its campaign (BAMBOO IS NOT A TREE!) against bamboo as a tree instead a grass, school choice campaign (education voucher or 25 percent reimbursement by Government) etc. He also mentioned that this is the second meeting organized in India.

He also mentioned that the amendments in the Shop and Establishment Act by the Government of Haryana paved a major window of opportunity to open call centres in India. Haryana was the first State in India to reform the above Act.

Professor Deepak Lal, who was immediate past President of MPS, gave Welcome Address. What was interesting from his address was that unfortunately the MPS society is divided when it comes to the debate of foreign polices!! He also said that this Society is not addressing the issues raised in the context of foreign polices.

The present President of MPS is Professor Kenneth Robert Minogu and he gave President Address. Few points from his address: (i) one point we should not be too taken by media that India, the global power, it is dangerous to think this and the State, (ii) he talked about the Prof F A Hayek’s works on the false government aims , promotion of welfare with debts, and (iii) the universal orders or spontaneous orders.

The MPS Asia Regional Meeting’s Inaugural Address (Full Paper in PDF) was given by Shri. Arun Shouri. Some major points from my noting: (i) India’s economic growth story is taking place despite of the government and not because of government has claimed to be, (ii) the former prime minister of India who initiated the economic reform in 1990s was the “honest crook”!!!, (iii) please do not go by your vision, please do not go with their past record, (iv) the Hayek’s notion of liberalism, (v) all political parties in India run by people who believe in nothing, (vi) the Indian family values for care each other which is actually the driving force for growing economy, (vii) morality is public life, (viii) the welfare polices are being promoted, despite of its weakness, with the blessings of people like Amartya Sen, (ix) natural order of society, virtual foundation of society, (x) a dog with a bone is his mouth cannot park.

Raj Cherubal had asked the important question which people like us ponder: what would the answer of Professor F A Hayek if he is alive in the mid’s of today’s crisis in India and abroad?

Mr Shouri answered rightly that the development and growth is taking place in a particular society not because of government but despite of it. But one can easily argue that Mr.Shouri is biased.

Previous posts: 1  

Why people fear the state?

Pratap Bhanu Mehta review on Arun Shourie book

“why people fear the state. The rhetorical use of victims’ rights cannot obviate the fact that a state is a state only if it has a moral identity. The so-called “weak laws” have become a self-serving alibi for larger institutional failures of the state. There is also considerable comparative evidence of how draconian security laws add little to law-enforcement capability.

……..state is hoist on its own petard because it often overestimates the power of power.”

Arun Shourie, BJP and F A Hayek

I merely site some of the emerging order here, yet political, for the moral order we do not know how much time it will take India! If any one is familiar with Professor Hayek’s ideas know better that Mr Arun had misinterpreted Hayek idea of Rule of Law.

Arun Shourie said during the first Dhirubhai Ambani Memorial Lecture addressed by the then President Kalam “……..and I am just paraphrasing Professor Hayek on how law evolves — by exceeding the limits in which those restrictions sought to impound them, they helped create the case for scrapping those regulations, they helped make the case for Reforms.”

Take for example of ET letters:

• “Mr M K Venu is right in his analysis (ET, July 15) of the effect of Arun Shourie’s remarks at the Dhirubhai Ambani Memorial Lecture and his so-called 180 degree turn (read, “a complete volte face”). He mentions his war, alongside S Gurumurthy, against Ambani, but sanitises it by saying that “Reliance had done something in excess of what it had been permitted to do”. Yet, the charge then was that Reliance had smuggled in its entire Patalganga plant.
• Whether he had been right or not, Shourie is now in a bind: Reliance has survived him as well as Gurumurthy, leaving him to explain his past vis-a-vis the firm even as he conforming to today’s political order.
• That explains why Shourie uses a technique that all demagogues employ: the idea is that a startling confession at the outset can excuse the most outrageous sayings. Reliance, once accused of breaking the law for its own gain, is seen to have laid the foundations of liberalisation, a la Hayek!
• This is a misreading of Hayek. As Venu shows, Hayek argued against arbitrary official action that stultified commerce, or targeted some particular business. He instead argues for greater legal certainty as a foundation for the rule of law. He did not say it is permissible to flout the rule of law. That would not do in any civilised society. That Shourie said it is OK to subvert the law (if you are impelled by a higher purpose, albeit a well concealed one) is worth remembering.”

M K Venu said in his article in the ET

• “Shourie then paraphrased what Austrian economist Freidrich von Hayek, the guru of most believers in free enterprise capitalism, had said: "…by exceeding the limits in which those restrictions sought to impound them, they helped create the case for scrapping those regulations"

What the BJP Volunteers should be familiar with here is the list but to note take one: “Understand party ideology and propagate it. Have you read Pundit Deendayal Upadhyaya's philosophy of Integral Humanism ? Have you read the works of Savarkar, Guruji Golwalkar, Advaniji (My Country My Life), Arun Shourie, Vivekananda, Friedrich Hayek (Road to Serfdom), Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France), Francois Gautier etc.”

The Goenka- Shourie duo and F A Hayek

Shoma Chaudhury profile unfolds a hard fire in The Tehelka

• “Shourie confessed to a “180 degree turn” on Ambani. For five years, as Indian Express editor, he and S Gurumurthy, an accountantturned- Goenka-confidante and an RSS man, had scorched Ambani for his corruptions. It wasn’t merely that Dhirubhai Ambani had imported an entire textile plant without paying customs, or that he was producing more than his permit, they tracked how the government was favouring him; how he owned shell companies; how he had both banks and politicians in his pocket; how, in short; he was subverting society.
• Shourie sloughed off all those years of platinum outrage with cynical ease. As Disinvestment Minister in the Vajpayee government, he had already sold controlling shares of the giant government-controlled petrochemical company, IPCL to the Ambanis — creating a massive private monopoly. (Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta argues that this itself was an intellectual dishonesty, coming from a man who had championed fair and free markets all his life.) Now at the lecture, taking refuge in economist Frederick Hayek’s argument that when rules ossify and become outdated, society starts violating those rules until conditions evolve where new rules come into play, Shourie claimed he had come to revise his view of the Ambanis.
• (In an uncharacteristic and revealing moment of self-irony though, he confesses his friend Gurumurthy had once challenged him: “If Hayek is right, everyone can become a violator and say they are breaking laws for a better future. Who will judge which laws should be broken?” Shourie says only half-laughingly, “I told him, I’ll be the judge of that.”)

Cause be realised…….

Bite the politics from Mukul Kesavan words:

• “Shourie is an interesting figure: an ideologue whose persona fuses intemperate polemic with mincing rectitude. He’s unique: There isn’t a person I can think of in contemporary politics who has been a crusading editor, a civil rights activist, a votary of the “hard” state, a forceful minister, a majoritarian demagogue and an inexhaustible compiler of albums of quotations glazed with rage and published as books.
• ……Shourie carries so much published baggage. His book-length attempt to exhume Ambedkar the better to shred his reputation would be a liability in a political world where Ambedkar counts for more than Gandhi or Nehru.”

The above description is right or wrong is altogether different question but it will confirm you on the first paragraph that he is a leader in ‘civility’. Read “Civility makes a champ, on and off the court” but never attempt to take this Court to The State, it will surly burry you a lot!!

Shourie’s recent long piece article published in the Indian Express certainly shows his credibility of being civility especially in society like ours. There is also a lot quote in his article which also unfolds itself.

There is something great civility in his first article where it begun by a quote:

• “Arun Shourie has attacked the Chief Minister, A.R. Antulay because the latter has opposed America’s decision to give arms to Pakistan... Arun Shourie’s well-known connections with the American CIA... He was got a job at the World Bank... Since his return to India, he has been using the pretext of his son’s illness to regularly visit his bosses abroad. . .”

The answer is below:

• “… only once after our child had been reduced to a handkerchief by the sedatives he was fed by doctors here and we were told to urgently take him to London.

Pretext? PRETEXT? My head screamed. Our son could not walk: thirty-four now, he still cannot. He could not stand: he still cannot. He could not use his right hand and arm: he still cannot. He could see only as if through a tunnel: that is still the limit of his vision today. He could barely speak: he still speaks syllable by syllable. And here were some swine who said his illness was a pretext that I was using.”

Read the full articles

A few lessons

Turning a deaf ear

• “….the number of cases, inquiries, raids, prosecutions, actions of various kinds that Rajiv Gandhi’s government instituted against The Indian Express exceeded three hundred and twenty — our conduct must be, it must for decades have been, immaculate. And the reason is not just that the Empire will strike back.”

We must have no price...

A goal they cannot disrupt

• “At all times, persons who fight for a cause are impatient to see the cause prevail. That impatience in a sense testifies to their commitment — that is the one thing they want, that their cause be realised; that it be realised here and now. But every change takes time — the deeper the change we want to affect, the longer it will take. For a long while, it seems as if all the effort that is being put in is having no effect at all. But, as Vinoba says, “The work that appears unsuccessful, after all only appears unsuccessful. The first few strikes for breaking a stone do seem to be useless and ineffective. But they do have their effect.”
• When you seem to have lost everything, look for a toehold; when you think you have won a great victory, look deep inside it for the tiniest virus you are sure to find in it, that, if left alive, will fell you in time...”

Bharatiya Private Property!

As for as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is concerned there is very interesting trend if happening as we all know after the Jaswant Singh book release. The week just gone was filled with Mr. Singh’s book bites! I read a few long essays by Arun Shourie some are extremely important some are just published because there is unlimited space to publish!

The following are few important excerpts from Jaswant Singh interview and Arun Shourie’s essays.

From Jaswant Singh interview:

“Shekhar Gupta: Also interesting because the ban has come from somebody I am sure you and Mr Vajpayee has had a lot of discussion about. Intolerance has to reside some place and it’s the same whether it is to a religion, or an idea, or a book.

Jaswant Singh: I am saddened, you know this irony, that the book has been banned in Gujarat. Tell you the irony of it is there are four very prominent personalities who played a very great role in the freedom struggle and independence and the partition of the country. Three out of the four were from Gujarat. Two of them were katyavadi, the third was a gujarati.

Shekhar Gupta: Right

Jaswant Singh: They accommodated dissent, they disagreed, argued. You should read in this book the correspondents I have cited on the question of dominion status between Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi. And Gandhi is advocating, this is 1920s, it was a time when India could have got Dominion staus, independence in that day. Belford declared it. Gandhiji was all for dominion status because he had the experience of dominion status in south Africa. The entire organs, the instruments of governance, the courts of law, house of commons, al that were the dealings. Jawaharlal Nehru had just come back from a European tour, he was full of the fire of socialism, new found socialism. Madhulimay also writes about it

Shekhar Gupta: And sovereignty…full sovereignty

Jaswant Singh: Full sovereignty. Poorna Swaraj. There were only minor dissentions. But that series of letters is marvelous to read now. I wrote a letter and I am found fault with. Gandhi and Jinnah sat together for three weeks in Bombay. And yet, discussing throughout the day, in the evening they might exchange a note or a letter.”

Arun Shourie’s essay titled “A few extracts from the book”. In this essay he has raised some of important questions that the Indian liberal should always remember.

“To assess the anger that the Gujarat government has worked up, ask three questions:

Is it just this book alone that asserts that mistakes by Congress leaders contributed to the outcome? Was that fact not acknowledged by the Congress leaders themselves?

When the book speaks of the vacillations, mistakes and compromises of the Congress leaders does it mean, “the vacillations, mistakes and compromises of the Congress leaders - excluding Sardar Patel”?

Manifestly not. So, is the author guilty of insulting Sardar Patel or not? Should the Gujarat government not, therefore, ban the book? And so, the final question:

Whose book are we talking about?

The book is The Tragedy of Partition by one of the longest-serving and most revered pillars of the RSS, H.V. Seshadri. It is the standard text of the RSS on the Partition. It is sold at every RSS bookshop, and read, its message is internalised, by every RSS swayam sevak.

Now that the Gujarat government knows the name of the author, two further questions:

Is there one passage in Jaswant Singh’s book, even one passage that casts the Sardar’s role into graver doubt than Seshadri’s book?

Is the Sardar’s reputation, in the view of those prancing about to shield it, so fragile that such references as there are in Jaswant Singh’s book or Seshadri’s will undermine it?

Nor is Seshadri’s book alone in documenting the lapses of the Congress leaders. Professor R.C. Majumdar nailed the lapses extensively in lectures that the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan published. He nailed them in his three-volume study, History of the Freedom Movement in India. The lapses are nailed even more firmly in Struggle for Freedom, which forms Volume XI of the great series, The History and Culture of the People of India, ‘prepared under the direction of’, as the cover of each volume says, that other distinguished son of Gujarat, K.M. Munshi — one of the closest associates of the Sardar himself. And they are nailed — not as lapses, but as inexcusable blunders — in the work on the Partition of India of the greatest constitutional scholar we have had since Independence, H.M. Seervai.”

The most important essay is “The ban and the law” in which Arun Shourie discusses who the book is banned without specific reasons.

“The Indian Express (August 23, 2009) reported a senior official of the state’s home department as saying, “The legal department must have gone through the book. I have not read it.” “When contacted, state law secretary M.H. Shah also expressed ignorance about the reason for the ban,” the paper reported. But a ban nonetheless — The moving finger having writ…

But, lo and behold! In the notification banning the book, there is no reference to the Sardar at all! The notification declares, “the contents of the book are highly objectionable and against the national interest... the contents of the book are misleading to the public and are against the tranquility of the public and against the interests of the state” — hence the book is to be forfeited and its publication, display, sale and distribution “and any kind of its use” are prohibited.

The 669-page book was released in Delhi late in the evening on August 17. The ban was announced on the 18th by sojourners in Shimla. The notification by an undersecretary in Gandhinagar is dated August 19. Talk of speed-reading!

Apart from the fact that the ban was manifestly announced before the book was read, the question that arises is: Does a government in India have the right to ban a book because it finds its contents

“highly objectionable” — obviously in the present case in regard to facts, for no one is alleging that the contents are pornographic;

• “against the national interest”;
• “misleading to the public”;
• “against the tranquility of the public”; and
• “against the interests of the state.”

And can a government ban a book on these grounds without giving any particulars at all?

Most of the grounds that have been listed are so ridiculous that, even a moment’s consideration will show them up. The government of Gujarat thinks that the contents are ‘misleading to the public’? Were that to be a valid ground, the government of Gujarat would have had license to ban almost all newspapers since the post-Godhra riots as it has been deeply convinced that their contents have been grossly ‘misleading to the public’.

‘Against the interests of the state’? Consider a report that calls into question the claims on which a state government has attracted foreign investors. Were it to be circulated, investors would pack up and leave. The report, howsoever well researched, would be ‘against the interests of the state’, would it not? Hence, ban and prohibit and forfeit!

‘Against the national interest’? The lie to this is given by the fact that chief ministers of other states that are under the BJP itself have stated categorically that they are not going to ban the book. Are they oblivious of the national interest?

Gopal Vinayak Godse, the brother of Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, wrote a book. The theme of the book was that Gandhiji had been assassinated for his policy of appeasing the Muslims, which in turn had led to the Partition of India. The Delhi administration passed an order banning and forfeiting the book. The case came before the Bombay High Court. The judgement of the Court shows that it had no doubt at all about the import of the book: citing the book’s arguments and narrative, the Court noted that through these, the assassination had not just been explained, it had in a sense been ‘extolled’. Yet, the Court held in favour of Godse’s brother and, not only held the forfeiture to have been wholly unjustified, it decreed that the administration shall pay the costs of litigation to Godse.

These passages include Godse’s assertion to the effect that Pakistan had been given cash balances at Mahatma Gandhi’s instance, that men and women had been moved by Nathuram Godse’s deed, that they had offered great and spontaneous support to him and his relatives after the assassination, that Sardar Patel had opposed Gandhiji on the payment of cash balances and so on.

• “Pyarelal’s book bears out the petitioner in a large measure and in any event no charge can be made against him that in regard to the events surrounding the fact history has been distorted by him. It is also necessary to remember that if the claim of an author that he is an historian is not fully borne out, one cannot infer from that alone that the author had an oblique intention in straying from the strict path of history. Much less can one infer that such an oblique intention was of the nature mentioned in Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code.”

It repeatedly dismisses the pleas of the prosecution regarding several passages by affirming that sentences and passages cannot be torn out of context to make a fanciful charge stick. As the Court puts it: “A passage here or a passage there, a sentence here or a sentence there, a word similarly, may, if strained and torn out of context, supply inflammatory matter to a willing mind. But such a process is impermissible. We must read the book as a whole, we must not ignore the context of a passage and we must try and see what, reasonably, would be the reaction of the common reader?”

Another well-known case, M/s Varsha Publication Pvt. Ltd. vs State of Maharashtra, provides an even more exact. What the Court said in this case has a direct bearing on a book such as that of Jaswant Singh, a book that advances a thesis that is at variance with much of what we have been brought up to believe. The Court held,

• “We have already observed that the very purpose of writing the article is a sort of historical research and it is based on a number of reference books and other material. It is true that sometimes in a given case even a truthful account may come within the mischief of S. 153A. But this will be too broad a proposition. Different considerations will prevail when we are to consider a scholarly article on history and religion based upon research with the help of a number of reference books. It will be very difficult for the state to contend that a narration of history would promote violence, enmity or hatred. If such a convention is accepted, a day will come when that part of history which is unpalatable to a particular religion will have to be kept in cold storage on the pretext that the publication of such history would constitute an offence punishable under S. 153A of the IPC. We do not think that the scope of S. 153A can be enlarged to such an extent with a view to thwart history. For obvious reasons, history and historical events cannot be allowed to be looked upon as a secret on a specious plea that if the history is made known to a person who is interested to know the history, there is likelihood of someone else being hurt. Similarly, an article containing a historical research cannot be allowed to be thwarted on such a plea that the publication of such a material would be hit by S. 153A. Otherwise, the position will be very precarious. A nation will have to forget its own history and in due course the nation will have no history at all.”

Transpose these observations to Jaswant Singh’s book — the endnotes of which alone, listing sources and explanations for each observation and event, traverse sixty-seven pages. The Court continued,

• “This result cannot be said to have been intended by the Legislature when S. 153A of the IPC and S. 95 of the Cr. P.C. were enacted [exactly the two sections invoked in the Gujarat government’s notification!]. If anybody intends to extinguish the history (by prohibiting its publication) of the nation on the pretext of taking action under the above Section his act will have to be treated as a mala fide one.”

The Customs confiscated them, and banned their distribution, etc. The Supreme Court came down heavily on the Customs and its notification. It observed,

• “It would be seen immediately that the confiscation orders are totally bald and devoid of any findings in terms of Notification No. 77. The order does not say which of the books fall within the mischief of which clause of the notification. It is not as if the notification proscribes these books by name, i.e., by title. It only says that import of books containing matter of the nature mentioned therein is prohibited. The books imported are writings, speeches and works of Mao, besides the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. If they were proposed to be confiscated, it was obligatory upon the authority to say which book contained words of the nature mentioned in the notification.”

How does the Gujarat government’s notification banning Jaswant Singh’s book stand against this requirement?

In Jaswant Singh’s case the notification banning the book has come without any inquiry, to say nothing of even the semblance of a show cause notice. In the case we are considering, a show cause had been issued. The Court came down on it for the same reason — it had nothing specific in it. The Supreme Court held,

The show-cause notices themselves are bald and drawn up in a casual manner. It must be remembered that the order of confiscation affects not only the fundamental right of the petitioner to carry on his occupation and business but also his fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression (including his freedom to propagate the thoughts and ideas which he thinks are in the best interest of this nation). In such a case, it was required of the officer to point out which book contains words, signs or visible representations which are likely to incite or encourage any person to resort to violence or sabotage for the purpose of overthrowing or undermining the Government established by law in India or in any State thereof or its authority in any area or that they attract any of the other clauses in Notification No. 77. Absence of such specification both in the show-cause notices and the final orders must be held to vitiate the action taken.”

And when, far from the show cause notice not recording any particulars, the notice itself has not been issued at all?

Nor was that all. What the Supreme Court went on to say has an even more direct bearing on what the Gujarat government has done. It held,

• “Before parting with this case, we must express our unhappiness with attempts at thought control in a democratic society like ours. Human history is witness to the fact that all evolution and all progress is because of power of thought and that every attempt at thought control is doomed to failure. An idea can never be killed. Suppression can never be a successful permanent policy. Any surface serenity it creates is a false one. It will erupt one day. Our Constitution permits a free trade, if we can use the expression, in ideas and ideologies. It guarantees freedom of thought and expression - the only limitation being a law in terms of clause (2) of Article 19 of the Constitution. Thought control is alien to our constitutional scheme?”

The court declared, “It is our firm belief, nay, a conviction which constitutes one of the basic values of a free society to which we are wedded under our Constitution that there must be freedom not only for the thought that we cherish, but also for the thought that we hate.” And this is not to be an abstract commitment. The Court held that the danger which is alleged to be liable to follow the dissemination of an idea must not be remote, conjectural or far-fetched; it must be proximate and it must have a direct nexus with what is being said or exhibited. To warrant restriction by the state, “The expression of thought should be intrinsically dangerous to the public interests. In other words, the expression should be inseparably locked up with the action contemplated like the equivalent of a ‘spark in a powder keg.’”

The Court concluded its judgment with words which apply in particular to the sort of circumstances which we are considering. It said:

• “Freedom of expression which is legitimate and constitutionally protected, cannot be held to ransom by an intolerant group of people. The fundamental freedom under Article 19(1)(a) can be reasonably restricted only for the purposes mentioned in Article 19(2) and the restriction must be justified on the anvil of necessity and not the quicksand of convenience or expediency. Open criticism of government policies and operations is not a ground for restricting expression. We must practice tolerance to the views of others. Intolerance is as much dangerous to democracy as to the person himself.”