Unfunny, literally

By Swapan Dasgupta

Am I alone in imagining that the outrage over the Government’s cowardly decision to delete the contentious Nehru-Ambedkar cartoon from future NCERT textbooks has been relatively muted and overwhelmed by squeamishness?  

True, many intellectuals have been vocal in the op-ed pages of newspapers and on TV channels. But imagine if some so-called ‘right-wing’ loonies had descended on the office of a professor and ransacked it, would the country not have seen the usual suspects furiously signing petition after petition and hosting seminars denouncing fascist forces?

When in an act of churlish impulsiveness, Mamata Banerjee’s Government arrested a Jadavpur University lecturer for circulating a cartoon that lampooned the Chief Minister and the Union Railways Minister, the biddyajan—loosely translated as people of intellectual substance—went apoplectic. Pillars of academia took to the streets and gave media interviews to explain why they were marching: “any normal, innocent activity may invite retribution.” By contrast, Kapil Sibal’s pusillanimity has merely provoked sniggering despair over India’s inability to laugh at itself.

One explanation is that intellectuals with links to academia are loath to be too critical of the HRD Ministry, even when the issue is inextricably linked to pedagogy. But this is being needlessly cynical about honourable men and women truly attached to their versions of enlightenment.

My sense is that the professional petition writers were confronted with an awkward dilemma. They had to weigh their instinctive commitment to a liberal ethos and historical maturity against the weight of political correctness. For a long time, enlightened voices have sought to distinguish between reactionary and progressive assertions of identity. All grievances, they have held, are not equal; some are more equal than others. In short, there are no uniform standards: judgment is always dependant on the context.

The Dalit activists who flagged the cartoon controversy were not remotely concerned by the use of a Shankar cartoon as an imaginative relief from the drudgery of high school lessons on the Constitution. What agitated them was the depiction of Babasaheb Ambedkar as a mortal, a mere political player. In their agitprop-inspired imagination, Ambedkar was an icon and had to be depicted with the reverence associated with calendar art.

Just as many crude Hindutva-types couldn’t countenance departures from Raja Ravi Varma’s portrayal of the sacred and went after M.F. Husain, the upholders of Dalit identity were outraged that Ambedkar could be presented as a caricature—and that too in an officially-approved textbook.

This mindless attachment to literalism should, ideally, have been debunked, if only for the pursuit of enlightened education. However, when it comes to Dalit issues, or for that matter any issue centred on the self-expression of communities that are in need of empowerment, liberal principles are expediently set aside. Doing otherwise would invite charges of hegemonic conduct—and that’s just not on in a world infected by political correctness.

Last month, for example, a clutch of Dalit activists in Hyderabad’s Osmania University organised a beef festival on the campus. It was an act of provocation and defied every rule governing “common decencies”—philosopher Roger Scruton’s telling description of an unwritten social consensus. Yet, this grandstanding, which could so easily have triggered a major disturbance, was stoutly defended by many academics as a protest against “food fascism”.

The point to note is that in the over-enthusiastic bid to nurture Dalit empowerment and atone for centuries of instutionalised discrimination, the normal rules governing civic and political life have often been set aside. Yet, far from persuading disadvantaged communities that the political order is receptive to their material well-being and political empowerment, the double standards have often served to encourage a fringe. These social entrepreneurs have grasped the possibilities of high returns from unreasonableness. The international seminar circuit is saturated with ‘oppressed voices’ that have turned guilt tripping into a fine art. They have learnt valuable lessons from the West’s only growth industry—multiculturalism.

The Constitution accorded a special status for the victims of social oppression to facilitate the eventual creation of a level playing field. Turning the world upside down and creating new hierarchies were never the goals. Yet, India is sleep-walking its way in that direction, unmindful that equality as an ideal is still worth fighting for.


Sunday Times of India, May 20, 2012

A mouthful of controversies

By Swapan Dasgupta

The inclination to be wilfully outrageous and even iconoclastic in a bid to challenge orthodoxies is a part of growing up. To that extent, it is possible to avoid getting too worked up at the so-called Beef Festival that was recently organised by some students and politically-inclined staff in Hyderabad’s Osmania University. Although the move was calculated to be provocative, it is fortuitous that the carnivorous festival passed off with only a localised tremor. Puerile expressions of bravado often have the potential of triggering large-scale disturbances. Many of the vicious communal riots in post-Independence India have their origins in seemingly innocuous affronts such as the sprinkling of coloured water during Holi.

Those familiar with history may be inclined to draw an analogy between what one writer has described as the challenge to “hegemonic cultural formation” in Osmania University and the defiance of taboos by, say, the foot soldiers of the Young Bengal movement in early 19^th century. Inspired by the European Enlightenment, a minority of impetuous students from upper-caste families in Calcutta embraced Christianity and took to beef-eating with gusto. In their enthusiasm to proselytise, they often took to confronting orthodox Hindus with slabs of beef, thereby hoping that the resulting social stigma would force the defiled to embrace Christianity in despair.

The outcome was not exactly as the young converts had hoped for. Social ostracism and the threat of violent retribution actually forced the upper-caste Christians to leave Bengal. Far from being perceived as points of inspiration, the rebelliousness of Young Bengal was mercilessly mocked by mainstream Bengali society. “And what shall I say”, asked the Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, “of that weakest of human beings, the half-educated Anglicised and brutalised Bengali babu who congratulates himself on his capacity to dine off a plate of beef as if this act of gluttony constituted in itself unimpeachable evidence of a perfectly cultivated intellect?”

It took the uprising of 1857, triggered, among other things, by the revulsion of the East India Company’s sepoys to bite cartridges smeared in lard, to firmly convince the authorities that dietary taboos cannot be dismissed as issues of personal choice: they had a bearing on public policy as well.

In the aftermath of the kerfuffle in Osmania—seen by the latter-day versions of the Young Bengal activists as an act of Dalit self-assertion—it has been suggested by a writer in a weekly magazine that “There is no point getting offended if someone enjoys beef in all its juicy glory. Since nobody is being force-fed, tolerance means digesting the idea that just as cows are meant to be milked, cows are also meant to be meat.” Underneath the needlessly hurtful language is the importance accorded to the principle of personal choice.

That an individual has every right to enjoy a dietary regime of his/her own preference is not in any doubt. The problem arises in the public flaunting of these preferences to score a larger political point. That many Dalit communities in India have no problems with either beef or pork isn’t in any serious doubt. Ironically, in their disdain for religion-based dietary taboos, the subaltern classes may actually have a great deal in common with a section of the well-travelled cosmopolitan classes who look down on those who prefer a “Hindu vegetarian” meal on international flights because they are unsure of either the meat or the cooking medium.

Whether out of religiosity or upbringing, most Indians tend to be simultaneously both liberal and conservative in their food habits. Their liberalism lies in not giving a damn about what their friends or colleagues eat at home and being experimental when eating out.  We are all familiar with people who maintain a vegetarian kitchen at home but are willing to devour an occasional meat dish at restaurants. I personally know many people who identify themselves as believing Hindus who eat chicken and mutton at home but are willing to devour a beef steak overseas.  

Indians are inclined to be very accommodative when it comes to other people’s preferences. This is because they are aware of the many taboos that govern communities. They may not necessarily agree with these but they are forever willing to respect them. More to the point, in public functions where food is served, there is an unwritten rule that non-vegetarian means mutton or chicken, and never beef or pork. To the ultra-radical, this may seem as a needless genuflection to food fascism and a deliberate attempt to stamp down on the preferences of disadvantaged communities. To the pragmatic, it means respecting what the philosopher Roger Scruton called ‘ordinary decencies’ and taking care to not wilfully offend those who view the cow as sacred and the pig as unclean.

The organisers of the Beef Festival in Osmania lost sight of the fact that accommodation is a virtue. It is not that anyone objects to them enjoying beef kebabs but that they take umbrage to them flaunting it and wilfully trampling on the sensitivities of others. In pressing for the radicals to avoid such public displays, what is being advocated is not food fascism but good civic sense.

India has survived as a plural society because exceptional care has been taken to combine liberty with restraint. When a consensually arrived, unwritten Lakshman rekha is violated, social harmony is threatened. This is why care must be taken to ensure that the Osmania experiment isn’t repeated.


Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, May 4, 2012