Our lumpen nationalists don’t seem to understand that the more they insist on this hollow sloganeering, the more they force people to say “Bharat Mata ki Jai!” and to declare that “Kashmir is an integral part of India,” the less sure of themselves they sound. The nationalism that is being rammed down our throats is more about hating another country—Pakistan—than loving our own. It’s more about securing territory than loving the land and its people. Paradoxically, those who are branded antinational are the ones who speak about the deaths of rivers and the desecration of forests. They are the ones who worry about the poisoning of the land and the falling of water tables. The “nationalists,” on the other hand, go about speaking of mining, damming, clear-felling, blasting, and selling. In their rule book, hawking minerals to multinational companies is patriotic activity. They have privatized the flag and wrested the microphone.
The three JNU students who were arrested are all out on interim bail. In Kanhaiya Kumar’s case, the bail order by a high court judge caused more apprehension than relief: “Whenever some infection is spread in a limb, effort is made to cure the same by giving antibiotics orally and if that does not work, by following second line of treatment. Sometimes it may require surgical intervention also. However, if the infection results in infecting the limb to the extent that it becomes gangrene, amputation is the only treatment.”10 Amputation? What could she mean?
As soon as he was released, Kanhaiya appeared on the JNU campus and gave his now famous speech to a crowd of thousands of students. It doesn’t matter whether or not you agree with every single thing he said. I didn’t. But it’s the spirit with which he said it that was so enchanting. It dissipated the pall of fear and gloom that had dropped on us like a fog. Overnight, Kanhaiya and his cheeky audience became beloved of millions. The same thing happened with the other two students, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. Now, people from all over the world have heard the slogan the BJP wanted to silence: “Jai Bhim! Lal salaam!” (Salute Bhimrao Ambedkar! Red salute!).
And with that call, the spirit of Rohith Vemula and the spirit of JNU have come together in solidarity. It’s a fragile, tenuous coming together, that will most likely—if it hasn’t already— come to an unhappy end, exhausted by mainstream political parties, NGOs, and its own inherent contradictions. Obviously, neither “the left” nor the “Ambedkarites” nor “OBCs” are remotely homogenous categories in themselves. However, even broadly speaking, the present left is, for the most part, doctrinally opaque to caste, and, by unseeing it, perpetuates it. (The outstanding exception to this, it must be said, are the writings of the late Anuradha Ghandy.) This has meant that many Dalits and OBCs who do lean toward the left have had bitter experiences, and are now determined to isolate themselves, thereby inadvertently deepening caste divisions and strengthening a system that sustains itself by precluding all forms of solidarity.
All these old wounds will act up, we’ll tear each other to shreds, arguments and accusations will fly around in maddening ways. But even after this moment has passed, the radical ideas that have emerged from this confrontation with the agents of Hindutva are unlikely to ever go away. They will stay around, and will continue to be built upon. They must, because they are our only hope.
Already the real meanings, the real politics behind the refrain of “Azadi” are being debated. Did Kanhaiya pinch the slogan from the Kashmiris? He did. (And where did the Kashmiris get it? From the feminists or the French Revolution, maybe.) Is the slogan being diluted? Most definitely, as far as those who chant it in Kashmir are concerned. Is it being deepened? Yes, that too. Because fighting for azadi from patriarchy, from capitalism, and from Brahminvaad is as radical as any struggle for national self-determination.
Perhaps while we debate the true, deep meanings of freedom, those who have been so shocked by what is happening in the mainland over the last few months will be moved to ask themselves why, when far worse things happen in other places, it leaves them so untroubled? Why is it all right for us to ask for azadi in our university campuses while the daily lives of ordinary people in Kashmir, Nagaland, and Manipur are overseen by the army, and their traffic jams managed by uniformed men waving AK 47s? Why is it easy for most Indians to accept the killing of 112 young people on the streets of Kashmir in the course of a single summer?
Why do we care so much about Kanhaiya and Rohith Vemula, but so little about students like Shaista Hameed and Danish Farooq, who were shot dead in Kashmir the day before the smear campaign against JNU was launched? “Azadi” is an immense word, and a beautiful one, too. We need to wrap our minds around it, not just play with it. This is not to suggest some sort of high-mindedness in which we all fight each other’s battles side by side and feel each other’s pain with equal intensity. Only to say that if we do not acknowledge each other’s yearning for azadi, if we do not acknowledge injustice when it is looking us straight in the eye, we will all go down together in the quicksand of moral turpitude.
The end result of the BJP’s labors is that students, intellectuals, and even sections of the mainstream media, have seen how we are being torn apart by its manifesto of hate. Little by little, people have begun to stand up to it. Afzal’s ghost has begun to travel to other university campuses.
As often happens after episodes like this, everybody who has been involved can, and usually does, claim victory. The BJP’s assessment seems to be that the polarization of the electorate into “nationalists” and “antinationals” has been successful, and brought it substantial political gain. Far from showing signs of contrition, it has moved to turn all the knobs to high.
Kanhaiya, Umar, and Anirban’s lives are in real danger from rogue assassins seeking approbation from the Sangh Parivar’s high command. Thirty-five students of the FTII (one in every five) have had criminal cases filed against them. They’re out on bail, but are required to report regularly to the police. Appa Rao Podile, the much-hated vice chancellor of UOH, who went on leave in January and had a case filed against him, laying responsibility at his door for the circumstances that led to Rohith Vemula’s suicide, has reappeared on the campus, enraging students. When they protested, police invaded the campus, brutally beat them, arrested twenty-five students and two faculty members, and held them for days. The campus has been cordoned off by police— ironically, the police of the state of Telangana, which so many of the students on the campus fought so long and so hard to create. The arrested UOH students too have serious cases filed against them now. They need lawyers, and money to pay them with. Even if they are eventually acquitted, their lives can be destroyed by the sheer harassment involved.
It isn’t just students. All over the country, lawyers, activists, writers, and filmmakers—any who criticize the government—are being arrested, imprisoned, or entangled in spurious legal cases. We can expect serious trouble, all sorts of trouble, as we head toward state elections—in particular the 2017 contest in Uttar Pradesh—and the general election in 2019. We must anticipate false-flag terrorist strikes, and perhaps even what is being optimistically called a “limited war” with Pakistan. At a public meeting in Agra, on February 29, Muslims were warned of a “final battle.” A fired-up, five-thousand-strong crowd chanted: “Jis Hindu ka khoon na khaule, khoon nahin woh pani hai” (Any Hindu whose blood isn’t boiling has water in the veins, not blood).
Regardless of who wins elections in the years to come, can this sort of venom be counteracted once it has entered the blood stream? Can any society mend itself after having its fabric slashed and rent apart in this way?
What is happening right now is actually a systematic effort to create chaos, an attempt to arrive at a situation in which the civil rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution can be suspended. The RSS has never accepted the constitution. It has now, finally, manoeuvered itself into a position where it has the power to subvert it. It is waiting for an opportunity. We might well be witnessing preparations for a coup—not a military coup, but a coup nevertheless. It could be only a matter of time b
efore India will officially cease to be a secular, democratic republic. We may find ourselves looking back fondly on the era of doctored videos and parody Twitter handles.
Our forests are full of soldiers and our universities full of police. The University Grants Commission’s new guidelines for higher educational institutions suggest that campuses have high boundary walls topped by concertina wire, armed guards at entrances, police stations, biometric tests, and security cameras. Smriti Irani has ordered that all public universities must fly the national flag from 207-foot-high flagpoles for students to “worship.” (Who’ll get the contracts?) She has also announced plans to rope in the army to instill patriotism in the minds of students.
In Kashmir, the presence of an estimated half a million troops ensures that, whatever its people may or may not want today, Kashmir has been made an integral part of India. But now, with soldiers and barbed wire and enforced flag-worshipping in the mainland, it looks more and more as though India is becoming an integral part of Kashmir.
As symbols of countries, flags are powerful objects, worthy of contemplation. But what of those like Rohith Vemula, who have imaginations that predate the idea of countries by hundreds of thousands of years? The earth is 4.5 billion years old. Human beings appeared on it about 200,000 years ago. What we call “human civilization” is just a few thousand years old. India as a country with its present borders is less than 80 years old. Clearly, we could do with a little perspective.
Worship a flag? My soul is either too modern or too ancient for that.
I’m not sure which.
Maybe both.
First published as the foreword to Arundhati Roy, The End of Imagination (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016) and in Caravan, April 30, 2016.
APPENDIX
THE GREAT INDIAN RAPE-TRICK I
At the premiere screening of Bandit Queen in Delhi, Shekhar Kapur introduced the film with these words: “I had a choice between Truth and Aesthetics. I chose Truth, because Truth is Pure.”
To insist that the film tells the Truth is of the utmost commercial (and critical) importance to him. Again and again, we are assured, in interviews, in reviews, and eventually in writing on the screen before the film begins: “This is a True Story.”
If it weren’t the “Truth,” what would redeem it from being just a classy version of your run-of-the-mill Rape n’ Retribution theme that our film industry churns out every now and then? What would save it from the familiar accusation that it doesn’t show India in a Proper Light? Exactly nothing.
It’s the “Truth” that saves it. Every time. It dives about like Superman with a Swiss knife and snatches the film straight from the jaws of unsavory ignominy. It has bought headlines. Blunted argument. Drowned criticism.
If you say you found the film distasteful, you’re told—well, that’s what truth is—distasteful. Manipulative? That’s Life—manipulative.
Go on. Now you try. Try … Exploitative. Or … Gross. Try Gross.
It’s a little like having a dialogue with the backs of trucks. God is Love. Life is Hard. Truth is Pure. Sound Horn.
Whether or not it is the Truth is no longer relevant. The point is that it will (if it hasn’t already) become the Truth.
Phoolan Devi the woman has ceased to be important. (Yes, of course she exists. She has eyes, ears, limbs, hair, etc. Even an address now.) But she is suffering from a case of Legenditis. She’s only a version of herself. There are other versions of her that are jostling for attention. Particularly Shekhar Kapur’s “Truthful” one, which we are currently being bludgeoned into believing.
“It has the kind of story, which, if it were a piece of fiction, would be difficult to credit. In fact, it is the true story of Phoolan Devi, the Indian child bride ….” Derek Malcolm writes in the Guardian.
But is it? The True Story? How does one decide? Who decides?
Shekhar Kapur says that the film is based on Mala Sen’s book—India’s Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi. The book reconstructs the story, using interviews, newspaper reports, meetings with Phoolan Devi, and extracts from Phoolan’s written account, smuggled out of prison by her visitors, a few pages at a time.
Sometimes various versions of the same event—versions that totally conflict with each other, that is, Phoolan’s version, a journalist’s version, or an eyewitness’s version—are all presented to the reader in the book. What emerges is a complex, intelligent, and human book. Full of ambiguity, full of concern, full of curiosity about who this woman called Phoolan Devi really is.
Shekhar Kapur wasn’t curious.
He has openly admitted that he didn’t feel that he needed to meet Phoolan. His producer Bobby Bedi supports this decision: “Shekhar would have met her if he had felt a need to do so.”
It didn’t matter to Shekhar Kapur who Phoolan Devi really was. What kind of person she was. She was a woman, wasn’t she? She was raped, wasn’t she? So what did that make her? A Raped Woman! You’ve seen one, you’ve seen’em all.
He was in business. What the hell would he need to meet her for?
Did he not stop to think that there must have been something very special about her? That if this was the normal career graph of a low-caste village woman who was raped, our landscapes would be teeming with female gangsters?
If there is another biographer anywhere in the world who has not done a living subject the courtesy of meeting her even once—will you please stand up and say your name? And having done that, will you (and your work) kindly take a running jump?
What does Shekhar Kapur mean when he says the film is based on Mala Sen’s book? How has he decided which version of which event is “True”? On what basis has he made these choices? There’s a sort of loutish arrogance at work here. A dunce’s courage. Unafraid of what it doesn’t know. What he has done is to rampage through the book, picking up what suits him, ignoring and even altering what doesn’t.
I am not suggesting that a film should include every fact that’s in the book.
I am suggesting that if you take a long hard look at the choices he has made—at his inclusions, his omissions, and his blatant alterations—a truly dreadful pattern emerges.
Phoolan Devi (in the film version) has been kept on a tight leash. Each time she strays toward the shadowy marshlands that lie between Victimhood and Brutishness, she has been reined in. Brought to heel.
It is of consummate importance to the Emotional Graph of the film that you never, ever stop pitying her. That she never threatens the Power Balance.
I would have thought that this was anathema to the whole point of the Phoolan Devi story. That it went way beyond the You-Rape-Me, I’ll-Kill-You equation. That the whole point of it was that she got a little out of control. That the Brutalized became the Brute.
The film wants no part of this. Because of what it would do to the Emotional Graph. To understand this, you must try and put Rape into its correct perspective. The Rape of a nice Woman (saucy, headstrong, foul-mouthed perhaps, but basically moral, sexually moral)—is one thing. The rape of a nasty/perceived-to-be-im-moral woman is quite another. It wouldn’t be quite so bad. You wouldn’t feel quite so sorry. Perhaps you wouldn’t feel sorry at all.
Any policeman will tell you that. Whenever the police are accused of custodial rape, they immediately set to work. Not to prove that she wasn’t raped. But to prove that she wasn’t nice. To prove that she was a loose woman. A prostitute. A divorcee. Or an Elopee—i.e.: she asked for it. Same difference.
Bandit Queen, the film, does not make a case against rape. It makes its case against the rape of nice (read moral) women. (Never mind the rest of us who aren’t “nice.”)
It’s on the lookout, like a worried hen, saving Phoolan Devi from herself. Meanwhile we, the audience, are herded along, like so much trusting cattle. We cannot argue (because Truth is Pure—and you can’t mess with that).
Every time the director has been faced with something that could disrupt the simple, prefabricated calculations of his c
loying morality play, it has been tampered with and forced to fit. I’m not accusing him of having planned this. I believe that it comes from a vision that has been distorted by his own middle-class outrage, which he has then turned on his audience like a firefighter’s hose.
According to Shekhar Kapur’s film, every landmark—every decision, every turning point in Phoolan Devi’s life, starting with how she became a dacoit in the first place, has to do with having been raped or avenging rape.
He has just blundered through her life like a Rape-diviner. You cannot but sense his horrified fascination at the havoc that a wee willie can wreak. It’s a sort of reversed male self-absorption.
Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in.
The film opens with a pre-credit sequence of Phoolan Devi the child being married off to an older man who takes her away to his village where he rapes her, and she eventually runs away. We see her next as a young girl being sexually abused by Thakur louts in her village. When she protests, she is publicly humiliated, externed from the village, and when she returns to the village, ends up in prison. Here too she is raped and beaten and eventually released on bail. Soon after her release, she is carried away by dacoits.
She has in effect become a criminal who has jumped bail. And so has little choice but to embark on a life in the ravines.
He has the caste-business and the rape-business neatly intertwined to kickstart that “swift, dense, dramatic narrative.”
Mala’s book tells a different story.
Phoolan Devi stages her first protest against injustice at the age of ten. Before she is married off. In fact, it’s the reason that she’s married off so early. To keep her out of trouble. She didn’t need to be raped to protest. Some of us don’t. She had heard from her mother the story of how her father’s brother Biharilal and his son Maiyadeen falsified the land records and drove her father and mother out of the family house, forcing them to live in a little hut on the outskirts of the village.
My Seditious Heart Page 87