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Jan 15 2015 : The Times of India (Delhi)
France After The TerrorAttacks
Dileep Padgaonkar
Upholding republican values in a world traumatised by
religious bigotry
The French have been such a fractious lot throughout their
history
that on the all too rare occasions when they do come together to
speak
in one voice as they did last Sunday in response to the jihadi
terror
attacks on the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and a
Jewishsupermarket they are the first to be taken by surprise.
Close to four million people a million and a half in Paris
and
another two and a half million in provincial towns and cities
took part
in the `republican march' to assert the values that unite
them,
especially freedom of speech and the need to keep religion out
of the
public sphere.
The commitment to these values is deeply embedded in French
culture and in France's national life thanks to her thinkers
ranging
from Rabelais, Pascal, Voltaire and Molire in centuries past to
Sartre,Camus, Malraux and Andr Breton in our own times, not to
mention
those that were in the forefront of the anti-clerical movement
along
the way.
State intervention that began with the 1789 revolution's motto
of
liberty , equality and fraternity , continued with a 1905 law
that firmly
relegated religion to the private sphere and was then finessed
in
subsequent legislations under successive republics reinforced
the
commitment.
The dastardly terror attacks in Paris on 7 January thus
shookFrance to her very roots as nothing else has done after she
capitulated
to Nazi Germany in 1940.Barely four days later however millions
of her
people assembled in the main arteries of Paris and other towns
and
cities in a show of unity that more than matched the one that
followed
the liberation of the capital on 25 August 1944.
One leading commentator, Jean Daniel, described Sunday's
`republican march' as a `miracle' given the mood in the country
in the
weeks and months preceding the terror attack. The mood has
been
one of despondency , cynicism and intolerance generated by a
weak
Read114 Time(s)
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economy , an incompetent and venal political class and the
growing
incidence of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic
outbursts.
It has been reflected in the popularity of two recently
published
books ric Zemmour's The French Suicide, a vicious attack on
the
liberal establishment and Michel Houellebecq's novel Submission,
that
evokes what life would be in France under an elected Muslim
president
with remarkable, if hugely disturbing, candour. Add to this the
success
of the far right-wing, xenophobic National Front Party in
municipalelections and elections to the European Parliament held
over the past
few months.
No one has been at the avant-garde of this renewed discovery
of
French `exceptionalism' more than the journalists of the
satirical
weekly Charlie Hebdo who survived the murderous jihadi attack
in
their newsroom. Four of its senior-most cartoonists, including
its chief
editor, lost their lives. Since the police had sealed their
office, the
survivors were provided space in the premises of Le Nouvel
Observateur, a leftwing weekly , and computers lent by Le Monde,
the
country's influential newspaper, to ensure that the publication
of thejournal would continue to appear without a break.
The lean editorial team not only met its deadline a feat in
itself -
but the issue it produced was true to form. It carries no
obituaries of
its dead colleagues Cabu, Woliniski, Charb, Tignous but pays
its
tributes to them by reproducing their cartoons. The rest of
the
contents continue, as before, to mock politicians, rabid
defenders of all
religious faiths, sundry busybodies and, not the least,
themselves.
And in what will surely be regarded as an act of exemplary
courage
by some and as a puerile and dangerous provocation by others,
thefront page of the issue shows a caricature of Prophet
Muhammad
holding a sign that reads `Je suis Charlie' while the heading
above
says `All is Forgiven'.
What explains such utterly bizarre, indeed suicidal,
insouciance?
According to Richard Malka, the lawyer of the satirical journal,
Charlie
Hebdo is not violent but irreverent, it aims at provoking
laughter and
laughter can be corrosive but never hateful and never
violent...when
one carries a `Je suis Charlie' sign what one means to say is
this: You
have the right to engage in blasphemy , you have a right to
criticise
my religion quite simply because none of this is serious.
Clearly the staff of the journal is determined to pay any price
to
safeguard its independence. What the consequences of this
determination will be is hard to say. Influential columnists
fear more
terror attacks, greater polarisation along religious lines that
would
further alienate the country's Muslim minority, more
complications for
France's pursuit of her diplomatic, strategic and commercial
interests
in West Asia, a boost for the National Front and much else
besides.
This includes, above all, a real apprehension that the
government
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might impose certain restrictions on its citizens for security
reasons.
And how would this rhyme with the latest expression of the
national resolve to uphold republican values? That is the grim
question
staring the French republic in the face. To the chagrin of
France, and
to the chagrin of those who cherish her republican values that
mock at
the conceits of every religion to be superior to another, the
answer,
alas, isn't blowing in the wind.
For diverse views on the subject, read the following articles
by
Sagarika Ghose (http:bit.ly1wc9zZi) and Santosh Desai
(http:bit.ly1ybGjsU)
