HVK Archives: The fire within
The fire within - Mid-Day
Pritish Nandy
()
December 8, 1998
Title: The fire within
Author: Pritish Nandy
Publication: Mid-Day
Date: December 8, 1998
Last week, the media went for me because I was seen to defend in
Parliament, those who protested against the screening of Fire.
The burning refrain was: How can you allow the Shiv Sena to get
away with this? Are you defending the attack on the film? Are you
against freedom of expression?
Let me, therefore, start at the beginning, repeating what I said
in Parliament. My argument was simple: There's nothing called
selective freedom. You choose democracy or you don't. You choose
freedom or you don't. !here's nothing in between. It is like
being pregnant. You cannot be partly pregnant or almost pregnant
or pregnant to some extent. You are pregnant or not pregnant.
Similarly, freedom of expression cannot be selective or partial.
You have it or you don't.
That is exactly why I was so dismayed when, during the last
session of Parliament, the Opposition MPs jumped up and without
even having seen or read the work, clamoured for banning Pradeep
Dalvi's play on Nathuram Godse. Their argument was: We cannot
allow the of the Mahatma to be heard. Whatever his reasons may
have been to murder Gandhi, he cannot be given the right to voice
them m public because that would be sacrilege. It will hurt the
sentiments of millions of patriotic Indians. There will be
violence on the streets, they insisted, if this play is allowed
to be staged.
Actually the play had been staged m Gujarati for months, and had
gone largely unnoticed, till this hoopla began when the censors
cleared the Marathi version. For the Congress and others, this
was the perfect opportunity to associate with the legacy of
Gandhi and claim that the Sena was trying to glorify his
assassin. Hence, all the shouting and screaming. But this worried
the Union Government so much that the Prime Minister had to issue
an immediate statement of concern and the Home Minister
instructed the Maharashtra Government to ban the play. Which it
did. Not because it wanted to, but because this appeared to he
the only way to defuse the crisis in Parliament.
I tried to argue against the ban, but the plea was rejected. The
House, I was told, would be agitated for days if the issue was
raised again and no work would get done. So please forget your
arguments against the ban, shut up, and let Parliament go on.
Everyone was unanimous on this. No one was worried about freedom
of expression. No one said: How can you ban a play just because
it voices the point of view of an assassin? Don't you want to
know why he did what he did? Don't you want to know why he risked
his life to kill Gandhi? After all, he was not just a petty thug.
He knew perfectly well what he was doing and he gave his life for
his convictions, misguided as they may have been.
My other argument went also ignored. That when you prevent the
voice of a political assassin from being heard, you drive it
underground. This eventually makes him a hero. For, history
changes sides over time and what is politically correct today may
look entirely wrong tomorrow. That is why, in any society, the
voice of the rebel who expresses a radical and what sounds like a
deviant point of view must be listened to. Who knows? It may turn
out to be correct later!
That's why no one protested when the Gujarati version was staged
for months. The moment the Marathi version was passed by the
censors and was about to be staged, it became a huge issue.
Suppression always evokes curiosity. Repression breeds resistance
and protest. The voice of the radical minority always emerges as
an alternative to mainstream beliefs when it is forcefully
silenced.
That is why the biggest disservice we can do to the memory of the
Mahatma is to silence his critics. His ideas are strong enough to
stand on their own. By banning the play, we are keeping Godse's
point of view alive. We are likely to make him the unheard hero
of the saga.
Interestingly, the very people who made such a scene over the
Godse play and insisted it be banned are those who are now
protesting you say! How same equally radical point of view be
shown name of freedom of expression? How can you demand
censorship in one case and criticise it in another? How can you
ban a deviant point of view in politics and yet insist, at the
same time, that a deviant point of view in sex must be upheld?
What is the difference between the play and the film? In one, an
assassin explains the purpose behind his crime. In the other, a
lesbian explains why she prefers another women to her husband.
How can a government ban one and allow the other?
Both walk the wild side. Both articulate a radical, non-
mainstream point of view that a small minority is perhaps ready
to sympathise with. Why is one more acceptable than the other?
Why is one more poetically correct? How can a government support
one deviant minority view and ostracise the other? Instead,
wouldn't it be better to stay out of all such controversy and let
the people decide what they want?
Bans are a silly idea. Let those who want to see something, see
it. Let those who don't, not. Let those who want to stop it, stop
it. Let those who want to burn the cinema halts bum them and face
the consequences of their crime. Let the people decide. Let us
all make our own choices, political or sexual. Keep Parliament
out of it. When prices are going through the roof, when farmers
are losing crop after crop, when corruption and crime are
rampant, jobs are vanishing and the despairing spectre of
recession haunts the nation, do we really have the time to worry
about what we should ban and what we should not?
It is time we went back to basics. It is time we asked ourselves
some real questions instead of fooling around with issues that do
not concern 99 per cent of India. Who apart from a small minority
among us gives a damn whether lesbianism exists or not? Who is
concerned any longer about the legacy of Gandhi?
Most people are worried today about their jobs, their families,
their security, their future. Their savings are under threat.
Their livelihood is uncertain. They do not know how to face the
bruising inflation. Who cares amidst all this whether some women
prefer women for sex or some men are happier buggering each
other!
Let us not make mountains out of molehills. Let us not waste our
time on fear. If we want freedom, we must remember that it comes
for a price. You cannot get it on a selective basis. You cannot
join one pressure group to silence your opponents and then join
another to demand freedom for your friends.
You must learn to live with choice or stop whining and cope with
slavery. It is your option. You must exercise it wisely. At 51,
we are an adult nation. No playwright, no film maker, no
novelist, no politician, however deviant, can corrupt us. go why
be afraid of free choice? Why wear shackles when you can run
free?
(Pritish Nandy, poet, editor, journalist and now Rajya Sabha
member, writes this column in his personal capacity)
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