Frames of low self-esteem

Frames of low self-esteem
Saeed Naqvi

Stopping the filming of Water in Varanasi or campaigning against St. Valentine's Day are complex eruptions demanding a compassionate sociological study.

In some measure these eruptions are rooted in self-disgust, a low self-esteem, possibly even an unnecessary inferiority complex. But these are only partial explanations. How does one explain unseemly agitations, with a touch of violence and the leadership turning the other way? This acquiescence on the part of the leadership is puzzling.

Generally, the Right, having the weaker case, dresses up its arguments with greater elegance. William Safire and George Will have to be elegant to be plausible. If the leadership, its thinking elements included, had an appraisal of the larger trends which breed events like Water and Valentine, it would have articulated it with some sense of decor. But no such anticipation has been in evidence. The result is acquiescence in mob rule.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious. A strong right-wing pressure group which burgeoned into a mass movement in the wake of the Mandir-Masjid agitation has not had time to call back its cadres, retain them, persuade them to unlearn past tactics. L.K. Advani has been talking of the BJP graduating into a party of governance. But the cadres have not yet disengaged themselves from past attitudes.

The BJP government, I am inclined to suspect, is not deliberately allowing these things to happen. It simply has no control on the cadres led by mofussil, homespun ideologues whose appreciation of culture has never exceeded calendar art. My point is not that the purveyors of Valentine or Deepa Mehta are on so-me aesthetic pedestal. To the contrary, they could have been elegantly debunked if the leadership had its mind tidily furnished with concepts of religion, culture and civilisation.

The agitators forgot the famous Urdu dictum: Badnam agar hongey, to kya naam na hoga? (All publicity is good publicity)

Deepa Mehta has had millions of dollars worth of pre-publicity and conversation of Valentine has percolated to the larger villages below the district level. The banning of Salman Rushdie pushed up the sales of Satanic Verses.

Someone asked a strange question: If Satyajit Ray can exhibit Hindu superstition in Devi, why can't Deepa Mehta expose some dark aspect of life on the Ganga in Varanasi? First, you cannot compare apples with oranges. Secondly, you have to establish your credentials as someone who cares, one who contemplates the warts on my face with compassion. Deepa Mehta, al-as, came across to the untutored protectors of Varanasi culture as a purveyor of salacious aspects of life on the ghats disguised as Hindu exotica.

Remember, anyone pretending to create socially relevant art from the unwholesome aspects of our life will have to live here, experience our lives to carry conviction. You will always remain suspect if you fly in from Canada to make a ``socially relevant'' film.

There is another aspect, I remember my first Christmas in London in the '60s. The usual Christmas sales were on, but on TV, I spotted no trace of reverence. In fact, quite the contrary. Suddenly a comedian would appear on the screen carrying a pair of panties. ``Do you know what these have to do with Christmas?'' the comedian would ask and proceed to supply the answer. ``Well, these are carol's'' (canned laughter). It took me a while to spot the humour in this somewhat crude pun on Christmas carols.

What stood out was not so much the poor quality of humour but the enormous room British society had created for outrageous irreverence even about the holiest of days in the Christian calendar. It was a function of self-confidence.

Urdu poetry is replete with instances of the total debunking of the orthodox, formalist clergy. The ``Sheikh'' or the ``Zahid'' (one who abstain from worldly pleasures) is forever the butt of the poet's humour.Pardon my ignorance, but are we, in our Hindu incarnation, short on irreverence in our higher art forms? At the popular level, of course, there have been a whole series of Bollywood blockbusters exposing Godmen and religious hypocrisy. Is there a body of writing in Sanskrit or Hindu which is informed by an elegant irreverence to things we hold dear and sacred? I am asking this question with all humility.

As for St. Valentine's Day, let me tell you another story. In Chennai there is an elite institution called the Madras Club, which admitted its first Indian member only in 1964. And even as late as 1984, Deepawali was celebrated in the club as Guy Fawkes Day! In other words, 100 years of Macaulayism had created an Indian elite which revelled in its western affiliations. And it is this elite, that the burgeoning middle class still fancies as being worthy of emulation. Naturally, commercial interests, riding piggyback on notions of globalisation, exploit this weakness. The marketing of St. Valentine's Day is part of this framework.