We have always been intolerant. Then the new media empowered us to
flaunt our prejudices
I WAS in Class
VIII, or was it IX, when late Rajiv Gandhi was expected to campaign in Kolkata
with his family. The convoy was to pass through a road close to my school. Most
students in my class were keen to catch a glimpse of Priyanka Gandhi, who they
all fell in love with that torrid October of 1984 when Doordarshan beamed the
image of a sad, young girl, standing quietly next to her deceased grandmother,
for days together.
But a few
senior students coming from political families had a strong anti-Congress
(therefore anti-Rajiv) bias and would have none of it. We were told not to join
the cheering crowd waiting at the roadside barricades unless we carried black
flags along. Warned that we might report them, the bullies turned the tables
and accused us of having “obscene discussions about a sister”. As voices rose,
a bemused teacher reminded us that nobody was going anywhere during school
hours.
The bullies
were worked up but there was no way they could contact their comrades outside
to “teach the dirty, infatuated lot a good lesson”. As we cautiously picked our
way back from school, we realised that Rajiv was suitably late. We waited and
soon enough those very seniors sheepishly joined the crowd. With the convoy due
any minute, they conceded, it would be stupid to miss the young lady wave by,
flags or no flags.
A decade
later, a few months into my first job at a Calcutta newspaper in 1995, I was
borrowed by the edit page for a week. The new boss was scowling. Having typed
out highlighted portions from all five letters he had given me for the Letters
to the Editor column, I had ventured to pick a postcard on my own to fill it
up.
“You don’t
put just anyone there. Unless it is a rare special letter, always stick to the
regulars,” the assistant editor grunted. I learnt that there were about 20
regulars responsible for nearly half the letters the newspaper received. Most
of them were erudite, retired men given to sober pontificating. I also realised
why, despite posting numerous enthusiastic letters to three newspapers through
high school, not a single one was published.
Three years
on, I was handling slightly more meaningful editorial responsibilities in New
Delhi. My indulgent editor put me in a team of three assigned to bring out a
bulky I-Day special edition full of government ads. A number of stalwarts
contributed to what was basically a PR exercise for the Vajpayee government.
There was not much editing involved but our cartoonist Asit Bagchi had his
hands full.
I remember
one particular cartoon that accompanied Julio Ribeiro’s piece on corruption.
The three lions in the national emblem were replaced by a politician, a cop and
a criminal. We did not think twice before putting it on page. The edition was
distributed widely in Parliament and within the government. Nobody — except the
group’s super editor BN Uniyal who briefly admonished us for not consulting him
“before touching the emblem” — said a word about sedition.
Times have
changed. Today, mobile phones are common in schools. Millions blog and many
more copiously comment every day on every interactive website. Nobody in this
connected world is voiceless; and nothing goes unnoticed. Cartoonist Aseem
Trivedi is as much a creation as a victim of this new order.
WE HAVE always been
intolerant. Our history and literature are replete with instances of ostracism
and exile for breaking away from religious traditions and socio-political
decorum. In modern times, Henry Derozio’s Young Bengal movement got the bhadrolok all
riled up in Calcutta during the early years of the 19th century. Reverend James
Long was sentenced for libel after publishing Nil Darpan, an
account of the 1859 Indigo Revolt. Sajjad Zaheer’s radical collection of short
stories (Angaray) was banned in 1932.
Post-Independence,
the secular, democratic State fared no better. Soon after the disastrous 1962
war, India clamped down on Bertrand Russell’s Unarmed Victory. Ram
Swarup’s Understanding Islam Through Hadis, a critique of political
Islam, was banned in 1982. Two years later, Sunanda Datta-Ray’s Smash
and Grab: Annexation of Sikkimfaced the axe. In 1989, Soft
Target: How the Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada by
Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew proved too hard to swallow.
Sixteen
years before and after Gulzar’s Aandhi was not allowed a full
release in 1975, Mrinal Sen’s Neel Akasher Neechey, on the plight
of migrant Chinese labourers, and RK Selvamani’s Kutrapathirikkai, on
Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, faced political embargo. In between, Mark Robson’s
cinematic interpretation of Stanley Wolpert’s already banned novel on Mahatma
Gandhi’s assassination (Nine Hours to Rama) and Amrit Nahata’s
political satire (Kissa Kursi Ka) suffered the same fate.
Between
Salman Rushdie and MF Husain, India’s secularism was defined not by rejection
of all religious considerations but by appeasement of bigotry of all shades.
Even the Church successfully lobbied a ban on Christ Illusion, an
album by heavy metal band Slayer, in 2006. Things actually took a turn for worse
in the mid-1990s. As in the past, potentially controversial films such as Mira
Nair’s Kamasutra, Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Water and
Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen or books like James Laine’s Shivaji,Jaswant
Singh’s Jinnah and Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja faced
harsh scrutiny. But it did not necessarily require sensitive issues or big
names anymore to attract intolerant attention.
Actress
Khushboo advocated safe pre-marital sex in an interview and it took her five
years to get a battery of criminal cases against her quashed. The Shiv Sena
blocked My Name Is Khan because the lead actor, while
promoting the film, spoke about cultural integration between Indians and
Pakistanis. Songs in Aaja Nachle and Kaminey were
edited and the film title Billu Barber was trimmed to Billu because
the mochis (shoemakers), sunars (goldsmiths) and telis (oil seed crushers) and
nais (hairdressers) decided to take offence.
Are these
instances of intolerance or people acting recklessly just because they can and
know that they will get away with it?
WHEN WE published
that cartoon in 1998, the newspaper did not have a website, the number of
Internet connections in India was less than 1,50,000, mobile connections did
not even touch the 1-million mark and Zee and Star were the only private news
channels. Information, and opinion, was not so much of a right but a privilege.
Till the
mid-1990s, a relatively small tribe of journalists and experts generated news
and views for a sizeable but limited audience and feedback was restricted to
snail mail. Information remained locked in files and paper cuttings. Barring
few truly national houses, media was restricted regionally and nobody in Pune
knew what was being published in Guwahati. Television news was just that, news.
Today, India
has 140 million Internet users, more than 200 million computer literates and
950 million mobile owners. Facebook alone has 46 million members here. More
than 120 regional channels and a dozenplus English channels beam dramatised
news and breathless views into 150 million TV homes. Then, there are news
websites and blogs.
The result
is mind-blowing. TV viewers are flooded with an option of over 2,300 hours of
news and views daily. Every media output is available on the web to be accessed
from anywhere. Almost all websites allow instant feedback. Any trivia published
or aired anywhere can be potentially magnified by billions of texts, tweets and
social media chains in a matter of hours. Most significantly, anyone with an
Internet connection and a computer can add her voice to this infinite matrix.
The information flood may reduce an expression’s chances of getting noticed but
the perpetuity of its presence in the public space more than compensates for
that.
This
technology boom has ensured that nobody or nothing can be really suppressed
anymore. But like all miracles in life, this is a double-edged sword. At its
best, this opportunity hastened the Arab spring. At its worst, the rumour mill
triggered a mini exodus of Northeast people from the rest of the country.
This new order
is doubly unpredictable due to its vulnerability to the impulses of the youth
who dominate it. When public opinion was the realm of a handful of qualified
and politically correct grown-ups, it was usually staid, banal and even, at
times, dishonest. But it was responsible more often than not. Today, with
experience and expertise no bar, many online forums and blogs are refreshingly
candid while others utterly provocative for provocation sake.
Since talent
is relatively sparse, this flood of expression has not unearthed too many. But
scores of not-so-gifted have declared themselves part of the larger media
which, in turn, is scouted by self-styled custodians of honour and ethics for
perceived breaches.
Like most
Indians, Aseem Trivedi feels strongly about corruption. At 25, his craft does
not compare to any I have come across in the professional media. But for his
blog and involvement with Anna’s movement, he probably would not be considered
much of a cartoonist.
Amit
Katarnayea, 27, is a follower of Babasaheb Ambedkar and a member of the
Republican Party of India. A student of law, he could have moved court on a
hundred issues more relevant to social justice. But Katarnayea was probably in
a hurry to pass the test as a nationalist.
End of the
day, it was a 27-year-old aspiring lawyer taking on a 25-year-old aspiring
cartoonist. The cops messed up and the nation has been debating it over
hundreds of TV hours, tonnes of newsprint and millions of mobile and social
media messages.
INTOLERANCE IS not
restricted to freedom of opinion either. Our choice of lifestyle is also under
attack. Young couples are routinely heckled in pubs simply because they are
there and women are targeted for daring to dress or behave “differently”.
Till the
1980s, social classes in India lived in mostly watertight compartments. No
Delhi bureaucrat’s (or Bombay businessman’s) daughter was ever taunted for
wearing skirts by his driver’s son or a village bumpkin outside the movies. If
they had opinions (which they usually did), it remained within their circle.
Liberalisation
and technology suddenly broke the barriers for some. Cities expanded with a
burgeoning urban middle class and land deals put unforeseen cash in the hands
of a section of peasantry. A larger number of subaltern youth was absorbed as
security guards or salespersons in housing apartments and malls. That story is
still unfolding.
As the two
worlds first overlapped in the suburbs, the subaltern got his land deals and
jobs but no education or cultural preparation was possible overnight. The first
decade of liberalisation was also the period when right-wing sentiments were
gaining strength across the country. Moral policing soon became a
pseudo-legitimate means for sexual, monetary or political extortion.
Meanwhile,
money and exposure to a fast-flourishing media made a sizeable plebeian
population aspire to what they saw as modern lifestyles. On Valentine’s Day,
the moral brigade found it was easier to target their own. While opportunistic
attacks on the elite continue, case studies from across India show that
perpetrators of sexual offences usually seek out low-risk targets.
This
quasi-ideological front of religion, politics and morality emboldened the
growing ranks of the intolerant to target film sets, book releases, and
celebrities. While they got away with simple detention, the financial and
psychological damage their attacks caused has converted India into a no-go
location for many. Mehta shot Midnight’s Children in Sri Lanka
and will not release the film here. Those who must do business at home now go
weak in the knees at the first sign of protest and concede to even the most
absurd of demands.
Genuine
intolerance was bad enough and we were never short of it. But thanks to a
hungry, indulgent media, now any show of intolerance — more inconvenienced the
people are the better — even by pretenders, has become the easiest route to
securing attention. It is a dangerous leverage with so many willing to test the
fine lines of public discourse and conduct. We applaud every time the boundaries
are stretched. But more often, it will cause overstepping.
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