A ‘unity of purpose’ has been witnessed between Hindu and Muslim supremacists, who consider themselves the sole spokespersons of ‘their community’.

There are rare occasions when literary academies associated with governments wilt under mob pressure.

Rarer are occasions when they even cancel the very programme they had organised with much fanfare.

It has been more than 10 days that West Bengal witnessed such a spectacle, when the West Bengal Urdu Academy suddenly postponed a programme where it intended to discuss ‘Urdu in Indian Cinema’ for four consecutive. Javed Akhtar — one of the foremost living Urdu poets — was also invited as a key speaker in the programme.

Two prominent Islamist organisations in Kolkata, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and the Wahyahin Foundation, had protested the invitation, as they considered Akhtar’s views on religion problematic, labelling him as someone who “speaks against religion and God”.

Akhtar is a declared atheist and openly talks about it on public fora, and that had irked these people.

The organisations even threatened to launch a state wide agitation — much on the lines of their agitation against Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen which as everyone knows had forced her to leave the state (2007) — if the government did not heed their demand.

Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal Chief Minister, did not want to take any risk as elections to the state Assembly are not too far.

( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/rightwing-rightwing-bhai-bhai-who-fears-javed-akhtar)