No one should be louder in their condemnation than the BJP, RSS and Shiv Sena all of whom are being widely seen as the intellectual parents of this idiotic play. All the dithering in Mumbai and Delhi is creating a bad odour. The impression is that the feelings and attitudes expressed in the play and in other such material are not restricted to the lunatic fringe of saffron organisations. Now that the Opposition is out in full cry, the government may well be compelled to look for some way of snuffing out the play. Certainly grounds could be found in censorship rules or law and order provisions. But that would only brush the problem under the carpet. The way to deal with vicious propaganda is to counter it by asserting the norms decent society lives by. There is no better use for the government's vast propaganda resources than for the defeat of all the purveyors of violence and hate and theenlightenment of the ignorant.

What armour does an open society have against the abuse of the freedom of speech? Some of those who enjoy artistic freedom have no respect for it themselves. The playwright who has Godse say assassination is a ``national need'' and goes to court to keep his play on stage but is happy to have Thackeray censor his next play on Thackeray, deserves nothing more than contempt. The Marathi literary community has fought many famous battles against censorship and rightly so. It has also had to suffer the onslaughts of the Shiv Sena once it came to power. Few will forget the widespread outrage over the way P. L. Deshpande, one of the most highly respected literary figures, was treated. The challenge to liberalism has grown and one must hope that Maharashtra's writers and artists will rise to its defence.They will undoubtedly be joined by civil libertarians and a wide cross section of society. People's voices need to be heard in defence of the values Gandhiji worked for.