Let me state at the
outset that I have a great deal of respect and admiration for
writer Nayantara Sahgal who I have had the privilege of knowing
for the past 37 years. I have also had very convivial conversations with
Ashok Vajpeyi, poet and culture apparatchik, during various literary
festivals over the years. I may not have shared all their political likes
and dislikes — and Sahgal has occasionally teased me about my “wrong
politics”— but there is more to life than common voting intentions, or so I
hope.
Therefore,
when Sahgal takes it upon herself to publicly disavow
her Sahitya Akademi award, a gesture that Vajpeyi and
some others have emulated, the least I can do is to seriously examine the
rationale of their protest. Regardless of whether they were right or were
guilty of over-reaction bordering on grandstanding, it is unworthy to attach
base motives to their symbolic assault on
the Narendra Modi government.
I will, therefore,
desist from echoing the charge in the social media that Sahgal is
guilty of selective indignation: she received her award barely two years after
the massacre of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. As a
public-spirited writer, Sahgal has been known to take stands. She had
the courage to publicly oppose the Emergency imposed by her cousin at a time
when other ‘liberals’ either willingly acquiesced or went into hibernation.
Whatever else Sahgal may or may not be, she has a mind of her
own.
Nor will I
insult Vajpeyi’s undeniable credentials as a Hindi poet
by alluding to his close association with the
late Arjun Singh or pointing to the fact that all the public offices
he has held—Chairman of Bharat Bhavan (Bhopal), trustee Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts, member ICCR and Chairman Lalit Kala Akademi—have
been courtesy Congress governments.
Frankly, the
political inclinations of individuals are irrelevant—unless, of course, they
choose to make it relevant.
Returning a state
award—to be distinguished from those who refuse the award in the first place—is
not a casual gesture. Rabindranath Tagore returned his Knighthood after
the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 and a further clutch of
notables returned honours conferred on them during the Non Cooperation
movement and Civil Disobedience movements launched by Mahatma Gandhi. In
more recent times, the writer Khushwant Singh returned his
Padma Bhushan in 1984, protesting against Operation Bluestar,
but accepted a Padma Vibhushan in 2007. Apart from Singh’s
understandable emotional outburst at the storming of the Golden Temple, the
other protests, not even Tagore’s, weren’t necessarily centred on an
event, although that may have been a trigger. In returning the honour conferred
on them by the British Raj, they were questioning and challenging the legitimacy
of the state that had honoured them. They were suggesting that British rule in
India was illegitimate—a symbolic act of rebellion.
Sahgal, Vajpeyi and
the others who returned their awards in the wake of the murder of two
‘rationalists’ and the beef lynching in Dadri were entirely
right to be outraged. It is a sad day for India if individuals are
targeted for their views, their faith or lifestyle. But the grim reality is
that these things happens, and often despite the best efforts of the state.
Last week, in an incident that was reminiscent of the Taliban attack
on MalalaYusafzai Maoists in Chhattisgarh killed a teenage girl for
daring to attend school; in Delhi, an extremely brutal rape brought forth
street protests; and in West Bengal, political murders have become routine
since the mid-1960s. These incidents can be multiplied and they bring no credit
to the country.
However, if we were
to react to each ugly incident by questioning the legitimacy of the state,
India would descend into a state of emotional civil war. To protest
against wrong is legitimate; but to extend that outrage into challenging
the legitimacy of a state is to carry things a bit too far. There is a
fundamental difference between the Indian state and the government of the day.
We can oppose a government and even campaign to ensure it is voted out in due
course. Sadly, we can’t build and rebuild an entire state apparatus because of
seasonal shifts in the mood.
Sahgal and the
others hate Narendra Modi, and in likelihood hated him ever since the
day he entered public life. The reason may well be aesthetic. In the words of
one of their intemperate advocates: “As our Prime Minister we have a man who
can’t even be dignified by being called ‘uncultured’, but an ignorant egomaniac
who has deliberately made a successful political career of being an enemy of
culture wherever and whenever he suspects he may have found it.”
In normal
circumstances, such vitriol would never have passed editorial muster in a
mainstream newspaper. But these are exceptional times. So intense is the hatred
of Modi—Sahgal called him a ‘fascist’—that the government’s alleged
sins of omission have been merged into a disavowal of the Union of
India.
In 1961, in protest
against India’s takeover of Portugese-held Goa, a gifted poet by the name
of Dom Moraes, then living in London, tore up his Indian passport before a
TV camera. It was an act of puerile bravado characteristic of a man with an
inflated sense of self-importance. But India forgave him and he flourished
as a pickled socialite in Mumbai for the rest of his life.
I think, maybe quite
unwittingly and in a fit of rage that comes naturally to writers and poets,
there is a tendency to emulate Moraes. Modi may not be
everyone’s cup of tea but he is an elected Prime Minister. Under him, there has
been no institutional shift in democratic function—as Sahgal must
have realised when she denounced Modi quite spiritedly at a
function in Teen Murti House last August. Had India become ‘fascist’
under Modi, Sahgal would have met the fate that Nehru’s daughter
reserved for her political opponents during the Emergency.
It is known that some
people believe that protest is the dharma of the writer and poet. They may be
right but that also makes these rarefied protests seem a matter of habit,
cloaked in intemperate language.
Sunday Pioneer,
October 11, 2015
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