Because we shouldn't be so smug in Ireland. "The Irish government should pay attention to Sanal's case and realise they must get rid of this absurd and dangerous law. Or in Sanal's case facing a jail sentence for his work exposing bogus miracles. But on the other hand these type of laws are used in Islamic countries to jail people or sentence them to death.
They are very silly because you are talking about crying statues and moving statues or Virgin Marys appearing in tree stumps in Co Limerick.
"Blasphemy laws are very strange because they can be both very silly and also very sinister. Mick Nugent, from Atheist Ireland, the organisation hosting the Indian's visit to the republic and Northern Ireland next week, said Edamaruku's plight also underlined the need for Dublin's Fine Gael-Labour government to repeal Ireland's blasphemy law. Delhi had the power to halt the prosecution before a court case, citing a lack of evidence to pursue it, he said. But what would happen to the common man or woman if they were accused of blasphemy? They would be sent straight to jail without any chance of bail," he said.Įdamaruku asked for "mounting international pressure", particularly from Ireland and other EU nations, on the Indian government. I am well known in India and have the telephone numbers of at least five Indian cabinet ministers. "In a way I am lucky because I have friends and supporters in Europe. This shows that he has influence in the situation but he will not use it unless I apologise, which I will not do as I have done nothing wrong," he said. "The Catholic archbishop of Bombay, Oswald, Cardinal Gracias, has said that if I apologise for the 'offence' I have caused he will see to it that the charges are dropped. He has spurned an offer from a senior Indian Catholic bishop to apologise for the exposure of the "miracle". I would be in jail now if I had been at my apartment in Delhi," he said. "I felt really upset because under the blasphemy law you cannot get bail until the court case begins. He was in Europe on a lecture tour in July when his partner rang to say the police had arrived at his flat. He has been living in Finland since the summer. "It posed a health risk to people who were fooled into believing it was a miracle." "This was sewage water seeping through a wall due to faulty plumbing," he said. It also allows people who are in dispute with you to make up false accusations of blasphemy."Įdamaruku said his exposure of the weeping statue was also a contribution to public health in Mumbai as some believers were drinking the water hoping it could cure ailments.
"It is an absurd law but also extremely dangerous because it gives fanatics, whether they are Hindus, Catholics or Muslims, a licence to be offended. "India cannot criticise Pakistan for arresting young girls for blaspheming against Islam while it arrests and locks up its own citizens for breaking our country's blasphemy laws," he said.
#Made of miracles dublin code#
His revelation provoked death threats from religious zealots and ultimately charges of blasphemy under the Indian penal code in the Mumbai high court. When the state "miracle" was pronounced, he went to Mumbai and found that the dripping water was due to clogged drainage pipes behind the wall where it stood. She was prosecuted under the blasphemy law and another girl who 'liked' her comment on Facebook was also arrested and then charged with blasphemy."Įdamaruku, who has the support of rationalists and atheists such as Richard Dawkins, is well known in India for debunking religious myths, and was already unpopular among Indian Catholics for publicly criticising Mother Teresa's legacy in Kolkata. "This blasphemy law can affect anyone in India – even a girl recently who wrote on Facebook against closing down a city because of the death of a famous local politician. "There is a huge contradiction in the content of the Indian constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and the blasphemy law from 1860 under then colonial rule," Edamaruku told the Guardian in an interview in Dublin. And on the first leg of a tour around EU capitals on Friday, he warned that India was sacrificing freedom of expression for outdated, colonial-era rules about blasphemy. Now he is calling for European governments to press Delhi into dropping the case.
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