HVK Archives: A broad look at debate over 'Fire'
A broad look at debate over 'Fire' - India Abroad
Dipak Basu, Montreal, Canada
()
February 5, 1999
Title: A broad look at debate over 'Fire'
Author: Dipak Basu, Montreal, Canada
Publication: India Abroad
Date: February 5, 1999
I agree only partly with Satish Yadav's comments on the 'Fire'
controversy. (I.A., Jan 1)
It is not true that Western societies, which pride themselves as
proponents of freedom of art and speech, honestly practice what they
preach. In the United States, for example, it is not the authorities or
the regulatory bodies, but vocal fringe protesters, mostly political or
religious zealots, who will disrupt a public display of such freedom.
However, the government agencies authorized to implement laws try to
draw lines between art life, impropriety, indecency, hate-mongering,
pornography and such. I don't think the purpose of such laws is to
"dictate" public morals, which is impossible. It is only to exercise
some control over the extent to which private moral values can or should
be indiscriminately displayed.
When North Americans talk about freedom in the performing arts, film,
fine arts and literature, it is not that the proponents of such freedom
are in favor of what even they consider indecent billboard
advertisements. In recent months, Calvin Klein billboards have had to
be pulled down, but because of protests.
While a Playboy center spread is okay, the same picture on a billboard
is not Why ? It is mainly a question of choice, and secondly of numbers.
Why is there a sudden vigilance against hate literature, both published
and cyber-posted ? All it means is that at some point even the
freedom-loving public will say: "No. Enough is enough."
What many of us, steeped in the North American sense of values created
by a "free-market" society, have been saying is yes, there is good art
and bad art yes, the line between the acceptable and the indecent is so
fine and hopelessly subjective that it is for the general public to
detect it. That is the main reason, and the wrong reason, that
regulatory bodies have sprung up everywhere to guide public morals.
"Fire' is no doubt a controversial work at several levels. Being
acclaimed in the West should not automatically give it a ticket of
public approval in India. True, it has been cleared by the censor
board, which for better or worse is India's arbiter of what the public
should or should not see.
With stricter censoring in the past India did not have to face the
specter of the Shiv Sena's donning the mantle of a supercensor and
dealing "justice" with firebombs. India is a functioning (although
imperfect) democracy, and I presume the majority of the population would
want to maintain such an institution to control what is delivered to the
public. Some say what is true of food and medicine, emissions and
effluents, safe and unsafe speeds, is not applicable to "art." There
hangs the potent seed of discontent and controversy. On one hands we
are observing a flood of self-righteousness uncalibrated in its range
between extreme right and the ultra-modern.
On the other, more positive hand, the elusive definition of "culture"
struggles to make itself audible and visible. There is Western culture
and Eastern culture. There is perhaps an orthodox culture and a modern
culture. There may even be a public culture and a private culture with
all their contrapuntal edicts meant to continually confuse the
population. Anti-"Fire" protesters have repeatedly proclaimed that the
movie has violated the values of "Indian culture," which presumably has
a distinct code of ethics.
As we discover every day, culture is endowed with a bewildering
assortment of ingredients -- language, customs, celebrations, performing
arts, literary and artistic expressions from books to billboards, even
how we deal with life and death. It is a kind of abstract property of
civilization that propels it at one instant and arrests it at another.
So far, I have basically agreed with Yadav in principle, but have tried
to provide my own questions and answers (not rationalization) to a
phenomenon. To me, the Shiv Sena and other such movements are periodic
but natural blights that disrupt progress, much like floods, cyclones,
earthquakes and epidemics. Throughout civilized history, such glitches
have repeatedly invaded our consciousness, and in the long run have left
us richer in a perverse sense.
In, conclusion, I must unabashedly confess to being an incorrigible
optimist. In the long term, our India shall overcome, as she has done
so many times in the past. For all her ills, India has always offered
one fundamental excuse: Our problems are too complex for an easy and
quick fix, which the world, including India's own diaspora, repeatedly
vituperates.
But even her severest critics will admit that India's quandaries are
real and intractable, puzzling and tortuous, some inflicted by history,
some her own handiwork.
What I would like to postulate is that the zealot's flaming torch is but
one more Herculean labor in India's arduous journey to the ideal
society.
We are all trying our best, unwittingly perhaps but as unobtrusively as
we can with valor and forbearance, to hold India's hand through the
journey.
But please remember, every day that we are disgraced by one more torched
theater, church or mosque, the vast silent majority marches with heavy
steps in shame, holding its flame of hope high. We have no choice but
to go on, else we shall perish.
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