These are the foot soldiers of the moral police of the Nineties -- an ersatz reincarnation of Ashoka's dharma maharakshaks. But unlike the second century BC savants, they function not in the framework of the Indian legal system, but in their notoriously narrowperception of "Indian culture". They do not get their sanction from the scriptures or their own rectitude but from carefully whipped up indignation, from fear of norms being upturned, and indirectly from a silent majority that may squirm and squeak but will eventually and inevitably look the other way.

There is no `profile' of this entity: it is not gender-specific, but may be motivated by sexual politics; it may be literate, but not necessarily educated; it may have conviction but not always commitment.

The foot soldiers are just free custodians of free India's morality, freelancers in a crusade of effect rather than cause; led by "generals" who believe in the philosophy of opportunism, who bank on irrational responses and who are protean, always: appearing in different identities in different states.

Dr Padma Vilaskar, head of Sociology at the Tata Institute of Social Science in Mumbai, attributes their rise to a new phenomenon which she terms as `resocialisation.'

"In the last 50 years there hasbeen a complete breakdown of the integrated interaction of economics, politics and culture -- the backbone of any mature society," she says. "This has created a New Angry Indian who will any how protect his `turf' regardless of the law, disregarding what is politically correct."

Or may be, lumpenisation is the new form of political correctness. How else is it possible to explain the vandalisation of the Babri Masjid and the subsequent emergence of the party responsible for it, to a position of eminence. How else can one understand the phenomenon of the chief minister of a state -- the custodian of law and order -- patronising those who disrupted the screening of Fire in Mumbai theatres?

In a decade during which the OBCs and minorities have flipped and flopped, the Hindutva tide has risen and ebbed, the politician has been left floundering for a foothold, leading to the pre-eminence of the rhetorician who seduces with his simplistic black and white notions.

Vineet Kanchan is an earnest, pimply23-year-old, and an unlikely celebrity in glamour-driven Mumbai. Last year he hit the headlines when he appointed himself as the head of the morality brigade to "check the behaviour of wayward youth." Kanchan and his cohorts decided to patrol the audience during the concert by Savage Garden and actively demanded scrutiny of the lyrics of all songs to be played by the Aussie band by the Script Scrutiny Committee under the Ministry of Culture. Earlier this year, Kanchan petitioned the All India Radio (AIR) for playing Eric Clapton's classic, Cocaine. AIR, without ado, banned the song and sidelined the hapless Radio Jockey. No one questioned Kanchan's locus standi.

Around the same time as the Savage Garden incident, cops raided Fashion Bistro, a downtown nightclub in Mumbai and confiscated chairs the backs of which were fashioned like the female autonomy. Considerately, they left untouched chairs shaped like the male torso. This was done at the behest of Pramod Navalkar, minister for culture inMaharashtra.

A Kanchan would never flourish if he did not have political varadhasta.

Or for that matter a Pradeep Bhavnani. He is the 42-year-old chairperson of Bombay Youth Association and a NSE broker who is petitioning for a ban on Fire. Bhavnani, who has been an active member of the Bharatiya Janata Party for several years, virulently objects to, among other things, Shabana Azmi's character in the film being called Radha and is convinced that the film is a result of an "Islamic conspiracy". It is futile trying to convince him that the film has been written and directed by a Hindu. In fact if there is a singular trait that is common to all these Quick Gun Murugans, it is the facility to reduct rather than deduct. An Alka Pandey of Agni Shikhar Manch will never pause to understand that it is possible to morph nude pictures without an actress's complicity.

For this reason alone, such activists have a short lifespan in the limelight. After his 15 minutes of fame he discovers the "general"has marched onward to another battle with new comrades, leaving the foot soldier to grapple alone with less theatrical but more bitter problems of real life.

Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

Net Express

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