Dear Shri Bhagwant Mann Ji,

Last Sunday, I took a few books to the church, including The Women's Bible and a book of devotionals, as I had to teach about the equality of the sexes in both the spiritual and secular realms at the Sunday School there. I carried them in a simple cloth bag, the sort we all use these days in place of plastic.

At church, I sat next to my friend from my Patna days and fellow church member, Gautam Chaturvedi. For convenience, I placed the bag on the floor next to me. Chaturvedi asked me what the bag contained. When I said it had the Bible, he immediately said, "Don't keep it on the floor, keep it on the stand."

Without hesitation, I took the bag off the floor, pulled out the Bible, and placed it carefully in the slot for books. It was a minor incident, a reminder of reverence. But do you know, Shri Mann Ji, that Chaturvedi could, under the law you propose, have gone to the police and accused me of sacrilege? I could have been arrested on the spot and condemned to life imprisonment. That is, if the incident happened in Punjab!

There would be no scope for me to argue that it was an unintentional act, nor would I have a chance to claim that it was merely a convenience that led me to put the bag on the floor. The very act of having placed the sacred book on the ground, even temporarily, could be construed as sacrilege under your proposed Bill.

At the moment, what I describe is only a hypothetical possibility. But if your government manages to get the Punjab Prevention of Offences Against Holy Scripture(s) Bill, 2025, approved and given Presidential assent, such outcomes will become a frightening reality.

I grew up in a household where respect for books was ingrained. My parents taught me that if I accidentally stepped on a book, not necessarily a holy one like the Quran or the Bible, I should touch it reverently and make the sign of the cross as atonement. Even if I accidentally stepped on another person's feet, I was expected to express my apology in the same spirit.

But under your proposed law, intention makes no difference. Whether an act is accidental or deliberate, it is considered sacrilege and is punishable by life imprisonment.

And here lies the absurdity. If a book slips from one's hand while boarding a bus, if a child in a classroom accidentally tears a page of a sacred book, or if termites in a neglected village library eat through the pages of a religious text — all these could be construed as offences. Do you genuinely intend to criminalise accidents, negligence, or acts beyond human control?

You lead the Aam Aadmi Party, a party that calls itself the representative of the common man. The aam aadmi in Punjab and across India already bears the burden of inflation, unemployment, and an uncertain future. Why then impose on him the additional burden of a law so draconian that it makes even unintentional acts criminal?

I am glad that, for now, the Bill has been referred to a Select Committee, and that stakeholders will be given an opportunity to speak. Otherwise, I would not have troubled you with this long letter. But when a lawyer friend of mine — a tireless champion of secularism — brought it to my notice, I realised how dangerous this Bill is.

A single reading of the draft convinced me that if enacted, it would set India back by centuries. It would strike at the heart of free thought and expression, the very things that the Constitution of India guarantees. Worse, it would create a precedent for other states to follow. Imagine India in such a scenario: a patchwork of blasphemy laws, a place where every citizen lives in fear that his words, gestures, or even accidents might be construed as sacrilege.

I confess, Shri Mann Ji, that I am shocked. Shocked that you, a popular leader who rose to power promising change and freedom from fear, should be the first to champion a law so regressive — and that, too, just seventeen years before India celebrates its centenary of Independence.
Let me ask, what is sacrilege?

According to the dictionary, "sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object, site, or person. This can take the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things. When the sacrilegious offence is verbal, it is called blasphemy; when physical, it is often called desecration."

But this definition itself leaves much open to interpretation. Who decides what constitutes sacrilege? Who decides whether irreverence is intentional or accidental? Who polices thought, word, and gesture?
Before I answer that, let me remind you of something that happened in Punjab ten years ago.

The Shiromani Akali Dal was in power then. A series of incidents of desecration shook the state. Torn pages of the Guru Granth Sahib were found near gurdwaras. For Sikhs, who revere the scripture as the embodiment of the living Guru, this was an unspeakable offence.

The Indian Penal Code already had provisions to punish desecration and blasphemy. Investigations were ordered. In a few cases, culprits were caught. Shockingly, one of the offenders was a Sikh priest who was supposed to guard the scripture. Instead, in collusion with his wife, he desecrated it. His wife tried to mislead the police and conceal the truth.

Desecrations spread from village to village, shaking the faith of ordinary people. Communal tensions rose. The Akali Dal, which prided itself on being the eternal guardian of the faith, stood exposed as unable to stem the tide of organised desecrations.

Nobody with a conscience supports desecration. It is vile and hurtful. But nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies human lives being lost in its name.

It was in this context that the Punjab Assembly passed a Bill making desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib a cognisable offence, punishable with life imprisonment. But since lawmaking in this area falls under the Concurrent List, the President's assent was required. The President returned the Bill, noting that India is a secular country and no single religious text can be given primacy.

I assumed then that the Bill had been permanently buried. But now, nearly a decade later, you have exhumed it, dusted it off like an old manuscript, and presented it anew — dressed up as something modern by incorporating the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, and the Bible.

However, let me remind you: inclusivity is not as simple as compiling a list of four or five holy books.

For instance, among Sikhs themselves, Ravidasis — many of whom are Dalits — follow their own sacred texts, which contain portions of the Guru Granth Sahib. By elevating one scripture over another, you immediately create grounds for sectarian conflict. In this contest, I would suggest that you read my friend Santosh K. Singh's latest book, The Deras (Penguin).

Take Hinduism. The Bhagavad Gita is indeed revered, but it is only a fraction of Vyasa's Mahabharata. The Vedas and the Upanishads are held in even higher regard by many. My friend Joy Vazhayil, who rendered the Upanishads into Malayalam verse, referred to them as "the highest expression of human thought." Prime Minister Modi himself praised them at the book's release. Should they not be protected?

What about the Ramayana? The very text that fuelled LK Advani's Rath Yatra and later the temple movement at Ayodhya. If sacrilege laws are extended, will criticism of Valmiki's epic also invite life imprisonment? All those who have retold the Ramayana can be accused of committing sacrilege. In fact, Rama Retold by Aubrey Menen was the first book to be banned in independent India.

And then there are the hundreds of other religious communities: Buddhists with their Tripitaka, Jains with the Agamas, Parsis with the Avesta, Jews with the Torah, Bahá?ís with the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Nirankaris and Ahmadiyya with their own scriptures. Do they not deserve protection under your law? Or are they invisible in your scheme of things?

Let me share a personal anecdote here. While I was working with The Tribune in Chandigarh, a Catholic priest from Patiala telephoned me in alarm. He had just read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and wanted to know whether it was blasphemous. The novel suggested that Jesus may have been married, interpreting Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper as evidence.

I had read the book myself. To me, it was simply a thriller. My friend feared it might weaken people's faith. But the truth is this: faith is not destroyed by a novel. If anything, his fear showed how easily people can be rattled. If your law existed then, Dan Brown would have been banned, his readers hounded, and even my priest friend might have been prosecuted for daring to read it.

No book in history has faced as much criticism and hostility as the Bible. It has been banned, burnt, and ridiculed. Yet it continues to inspire millions. My late friend John K. John once showed me Bibles in Russian at his bookshop, Good Books, in Ranchi. Russian visitors bought them eagerly because they were not available in their own country. A book's power lies not in how well it is policed, but in how deeply it is loved.
But your Bill, Shri Mann, reminds me not of India's secular traditions but of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

Consider the case of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian farm labourer accused of blasphemy. Illiterate and unable to distinguish between one holy book and another, she was condemned to death. Years of her life were wasted in prison. When Punjab Governor Salman Taseer defended her, he was assassinated by his own bodyguard in 2011. And when the assassin was brought to trial, lawyers showered him with rose petals. That is the danger of blasphemy.

The victims of blasphemy laws in Pakistan are disproportionately minorities — Christians, Ahmadiyyas, and Hindus. Often, the accusations are not about faith at all but about personal vendettas. A Christian beautician who left her employer to start her own salon was accused of desecrating the Quran. She had to flee to Canada, where she now lives in hiding.

Is this the kind of Punjab you want to create?

Let us also be clear: sacred texts themselves contain passages that are deeply troubling. In one scripture, Shudras and women are forbidden from hearing the Vedas; if they do, molten lead is to be poured into their ears. If I, as a writer and a free citizen, criticise such a passage, under your law I could be charged with sacrilege and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Do you realise the absurdity of this? By enacting such a law, you silence not just malice but also scholarship, criticism, and reform. You criminalise the act of questioning, the very process by which religions themselves have evolved.

Shri Mann Ji, I appeal to you in all sincerity. Withdraw this Bill, lock, stock, and barrel. Do not make Punjab a testing ground for blasphemy laws. Do not reduce India to a mirror image of Pakistan. Do not let your name go down in history as the leader who sought to chain free thought.

Books are resilient. They do not need police stations or prison terms for protection. They survive fire, exile, and even ridicule. What they cannot survive is the suffocating silence of a people too afraid to touch them, read them, or criticise them.

Your duty as Chief Minister is not to protect faith by law, but to protect freedom by law. Leave faith to the faithful. Guard the Constitution, not the canon.

Twenty-two years from now, in 2047, when India marks a hundred years of Independence, let future generations remember that Shri Bhagwant Mann Ji stood for freedom, not fear; for reason, not repression.

Yours etc.,