The gunning down of rationalist Kannada scholar M.M. Kalburgi is a blot on our society. The behaviour of these fringe religious zealot groups, who have assassinated three such eminent thinkers and elderly scholars in the last two years in Maharashtra and Karnataka, is no less than that of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A country boasting of such huge numbers of people of so many different faiths should also show tolerance for those who subscribe to atheism and are opposed to superstition and idolatry. Kalburgi’s views may have been extreme, but the same could be said of many professing faith in God.
The fact that such murderous extremists have been emboldened to the extent of knocking on a man’s door and shooting him in cold blood points to how much leeway has been given by the lack of eagerness to solve such cases and bring the perpetrators to book. We know that for a while now extreme rightist elements have been playing up in certain areas of Karnataka, behaving quite like the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Kalburgi may have contributed somewhat by calling off the security provided to him. It is, however, not a matter of how much security a state can provide as it is of where our society is headed if people are allowed to get away with wanton destruction of the principles of life. A country that once boasted of one of mankind’s most ancient civilisations has to show that these values have not been extinguished by intolerance.
