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My Friend Sancho

My first book, My Friend Sancho, was published in May 2009, and went on to become the biggest selling debut novel released that year in India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and had earlier been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.


If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho


Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.


My posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.


Bastiat Prize 2007 Winner

Recent entries

The Bombzooka Question

I have three hypothetical questions for you guys. Humour me and try and read all the way through. One.…

A Tale of Two Cities

I was on a CNN-IBN show earlier this evening, where the topic under discussion was the arrest of two…

Thodi Si Tu Lift Karade

I suppose I should display some empathy here, but I can’t help but be a little amused by the…

The Gathering Birds

’Before anyone else was interested in the ornithology of terror he saw the gathering birds,’ Salman Rushdie writes about…

‘A Living Room Full of Guys’

Check out this TED Talk by Tony Porter on how men get trapped in a ‘Manbox’—and women bear the…

21 September, 2007

The Rise of Intolerance in Bangladesh

Our Gods are so weak that they cannot defend themselves, so we must do it for them. FP Passport reports that a controversy has erupted in Bangladesh over the publication of a cartoon with the following accompanying text:

A man: What is your name?
Boy: Babu.
Man: You should say “Mohammed Babu”. What’s is your father’s name?
Boy: X.
Man: You should say “Mohammed X”.  What is that in your lap?
Boy: Mohammed cat.

Pretty harmless, I would think—indeed, how can any cartoon be harmful?—but religious conservatives in Bangladesh are up in arms. The cartoonist, a 20-year-old kid, has reportedly been arrested, and the sub-editor of that humour section has been “terminated for carelessness.” (I’m presuming by ‘terminated’ they mean fired from his job, and nothing more sinister!) There are also calls to arrest the editor of the newspaper where the cartoon was published, the much-respected Matiur Rahman.

Commenting on it in that FP post, Blake Hounshell writes:

This story isn’t about hurt feelings; it’s about raw political power. [...] It’s a familiar pattern in Muslim countries ruled by authoritarian governments: Religious conservatives use religion cynically to embarrass the regime and whip up populist sentiment. Over time, they can force the government to make accommodating moves and concede elements of government to the clerics. And the state can’t exactly stand up for the principle of freedom of speech, because it’s usually no great shakes on that score, either.

This is a pattern that goes beyond Bangladesh and, indeed, beyond Muslim countries. In fact, it sounds quite familiar to me. You?

Rezwan of Global Voices has a round-up of the affair here. I got the FP link via email from Gautam John.

Also see: My piece on intolerance in India, “Don’t Insult Pasta.” And also, “God resigns.”

Posted by Amit Varma in Freedom | Politics

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