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Bin it or ban it-Charmy Harikrishnan

The cartoon controversy shows the enthusiasm of our political class to create a quiescent, question-less environment

The year was 1967. Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer had published a story — in Malayalam, of course — called Oru Bhagavad Gitayum Kure Mulakalum (A Bhagavad Gita and a Few Breasts). This Muslim was having good fun, writing about getting hold of a new edition of the Gita and watching a procession of half-naked nubile Nair girls. Don’t ask what possible connection could be between the two incidents. This is Basheer. And he is the master of meanderings and benign mockery. In 2012, Basheer would have had to look for another title; the very conjunction would be considered blasphemous. And perhaps write another story as well. Our censoring reflexes have become so fine-tuned, and our sense of satire so pitiable, that we would have blacklisted Basheer.

Ours is the golden age of communication. There are more books published than ever before. There are more Facebook posts, blogs and tweets creating corridors of instant discourse. But there is a greater fear too — of ideas, of books, paintings, websites and now, cartoons. And the call to bury them, which has come from fringe elements, seems to be increasingly echoed by politicians. This is dangerous, because while our intellectuals tend to talk among themselves in intellectual-ese, it is the enlightened representatives of people who should publicly stand as the defenders of democracy.

When censorship is imposed under the cloak of political correctness — precluding dissent and debate, interring ridicule and irreverence — and tolerated, it shows the inanity of our age as well. Between retweeting and clicking the Like button, we seem to be collectively losing the tools of argument — a sense of history and a handle on multiple narratives. In our First Amendment-less country, the “right to free speech and expression” is no longer effective enough. And our liberal sinew to protect intellectual independence is slacking outside and inside the House.

We saw it earlier when M.F. Husain’s naked Saraswati became offensive. Someone should have loudly read out Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahiri, where the high priest of Hinduism gloriously describes a goddess in graphic detail, which Basheer, for one, would have widely grinned at. Now, before Shankar’s cartoon is hastily bundled away by Kapil Sibal, Pranab Mukherjee and the rest of our parliamentarians, there is no debate on cartoon as art in the House. Instead, there is a bewildering consensus to delete what they believe is irreverent. They don’t find the need to appreciate it or argue with it — that would indeed be trying. It is far easier to bin it or ban it.

We bleep “offensive” words, clothe our gods as though there is a textile factory in the heavens and bring out a beef-less menu. A nation that yanks out all offence — real and perceived — is a limited democracy.

But has our daily political cartoon too become mellow with time, lost its instinct to shock, shake us by the shoulders? Has the tactile fury left the pen — the one you could immediately sense in the stork-like nose of Abu Abraham’s Indira Gandhi or even O.V. Vijayan’s porcine Indira — leading West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to conclude that all art should be like hers or the soothing Rabindra Sangeet that she insists should blare out of every street corner in Kolkata these days? She should take a look at Vijayan’s cartoon — where Mrs Gandhi with a snout, following the fall of the Morarji Desai government, sits with a piggish Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram — before crying murder at a cartoon that is a redux of a Satyajit Ray shot. Rest assured, if Congress stalwarts “discover” Vijayan’s cartoon now, there could be a retrospective ban on it as well.

This is the enthusiasm of our political class to elide narratives other than the ones they have whetted and approved, much like the stamp of the censor’s seal and signature during the Emergency. It was there when Abhishek Singhvi worked overtime to ensure that the English translation of Javier Moro’s biography of Sonia Gandhi never got published in India. It is there in the stone gardens of Mayawati — a narcissistic love for monologues and monoliths that has taken the shape of statues that she got built of herself, B.R. Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram — and in her intolerance for a few laugh lines for which Shankar did not evidently seek her permission. The intense coddling of the self, to control the narrative, no questions asked, is there even in Rahul Gandhi’s refusal to engage with the media.

We are all turning into a collective that not only clicks but also seeks Facebook’s Like sign to every comment. We are all guilty of creating a quiescent, question-less environment.

Here is a mediocre poem. “Teachers have space/ and years to sculpt/ to mould, to carve/ to paint with ease. Give vision to/ blindfolded minds/ contour new paths/ for curious eyes.” It is published without controversy. It is safe. It is staid. It is like a Class VII essay on Teacher’s Day cut evenly to wear the look of verse. It is Kapil Sibal’s. Thankfully for him, and Mamata Banerjee, that pedestrian painter of swirling flowers and wide eyes, our ministers and chief ministers are not expected to be great artists. But they are expected to let ideas be, let the arts be — even such things as satire that they seem to have some trouble understanding.