Comic stripped

Parliament is now a body of fragile selves. They won't draw a sword for liberty

Is the controversy over the Ambedkar cartoon in the NCERT textbook a sign of a deeper intellectual and cultural malaise? The plot line is eerily familiar. One set of politicians raises, in this case falsely, the apprehension that a cartoon is offensive. There is a high-pitched debate. Members of an offended community accuse others of insensitivity and impunity. Others respond by variously denying that the image in question is offensive, or more generally that even if it is at the margins, it should be protected. The rest of the political class, ever mindful of the sentiments of the public, quickly caves in, without real thought or debate. So we have a public culture in which the definition of what counts as offensive rapidly expands, more pretexts are found to increase the chasm between different groups, more fetters are put on thought, more intimidation is used to send a warning to intellectuals and more excuses found to exercise control. And all this is done under false pretexts and a contrived political consensus. It reflects the ultimate triumph of sullenness over humour, cowardice over liberty, conformism over individuality.

In this case, the demand was not to ban but to remove the cartoon from a textbook. But its impact on intellectual inquiry is chilling. Frankly, it is not clear how much public outrage there is against this suffocating conformism. Part of the problem is that we become defenders of free intellectual inquiry only when someone else's sentiments are outraged. The list of groups that claim to be outraged keeps expanding. Variously, expression has been curbed on demands from Muslims, Marathas, Hindus, Lingayats, Sikhs, etc, and now Dalits. In each case there is little point in arguing about the objective facts about the relevant work, whether it is indeed offensive or not. The lines of perception are reversed. The object is a pretext to express offence. It is not the cause. Why do these layers of resentment so easily find expression? And why is there so little resistance to them?

... contd.

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