Isn’t it something self contradictory?

Chairman PCI, Justice Markandey Katju has recently commented that ‘it was mystery why Rushdie got Booker Prize?’
Firstly, a comment like this from a person holding so high a position would have been avoided at a time when the whole issue against Salman Rushdie has taken a political twist and that too during an election time. One can express his/her views, as that is one’s fundamental right. But, to make such scathing statement, so open, and thereby attacking some one’s personal prestige, it turns something debilitating.
Earlier, the PCI Chairman termed Rushdie as a “substandard and poor writer”. That too would have been avoided at this critical juncture.  Already, a letter written by Salman Rushdie to the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, when his Book “Satanic Verses” was banned in India (perhaps India was the first country to ban it even without reading its content to please the Muslims) was in circulation through the Internet. This letter was published by the New York Times. The contents of that letter itself was self-explanatory and Rushdie has even elongated not to submit to a few class of Indian Muslim politicians of the likes of Syed Sahabuddin and Arif Mohammed Khan, thereby subvert the Indian secular polity and the core values of its time-tested democracy.
Coming back to the latest statement of the Chairman PCI that  while on one had he articulates the view that in western countries, because of industrial revolution and modernity, religion has lost the grip over people and they behave differently, but  on the other, he argues that ‘since an over-whelming number of Indians are  deeply religious, unlike in the west’  and again ‘since India is presently passing through a transitional period in its history from feudalism to a modern industrial society, therefore, freedom of speech should be used in India to spread rational and scientific ideas while avoiding insult to any religion’. In fact, what is happening in India now is exactly a precursor of the same disease that  had afflicted  the west because of the same transitional phase, consequent to the industrial revolution and modernity. Very soon, in our country too, the same kind of ‘losing of grip of religion over people’ will occur, if one examine the kind of cocktail of politics mixed with religion evolving so actively  in our electoral politics and  its democratic pathway. Here, Gandhian or Nehruvian values/principles are fast turning  biggest casualties, day by day.
One would have appreciated suggestions for some kind of restrictions in speech or articulation of views by men engaged in dirty politics in India, as is being aimed at or intended/applied or expected of from writers, artists or literary figures.  Then, perhaps, the views of the Chairman PCI would have been of some credence. By singling out and targeting only the intellectuals, writers  or artists, for presenting their views, that always emanate  against the expressions, actions or deeds of the political class, such scathing or sweeping attacks may end up in loss of face of the very statutory bodies/institutions like the PCI, created or catered for public interest.