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>From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 50, Dated Dec 29, 2007 ENGAGED CIRCLE dalit window Aaja Sochle The Dalit protest against Aaja Nachle was an enlightened secular act, not religious, say NAGESWARA RAO THAMANAM & CHITTIBABU PADAVALA Media representations and intellectual responses to the controversy around a line in the title track of the movie Aaja Nachle have been short-sighted and narrow-minded. The haste with which the media hushed up the matter, and precluded a possible and necessary discussion, was partly due to its inability to differentiate this particular dispute from the generalised atmosphere of intolerance ever since Hindutva turned mainstream in Indian politics. The media chose to consider the matter closed as soon as the filmmakers apologised and offered to remove the objectionable stanza, and the Uttar Pradesh government lifted the ban on the movie. Few mainstream English dailies deemed it necessary to publish editorials or op-ed analyses on this issue. Curiously enough, the usual arguments we are accustomed to hearing and reading whenever claims are made about the hurt feelings, sentiments or sensibilities of a section or a community appeared either in print or visual media. None defended the freedom of artistic expression of the lyricist nor did anybody denounce the objectionable lines. Apologies by the filmmakers and the Censor Board -- that they did not mean to hurt anybody and if anybody's feelings had been hurt they would apologise for the same --were vague to say the least. They were apologising for somebody else getting hurt, and not because they were in anyway responsible. They were apologising for Piyush Mishra's lines being objected to not because they agreed that they were indeed objectionable. It was an absurd gesture. Anyway, everybody including Mayawati appeared to be in a hurry to silence the matter. What is surprising is the complete lack of interest on everybody's part in the content and meaning of the disputed lines, except, of course, among agitating Dalit organisations. Not even the Mayawati's government, and the state governments that followed her example, said anything about the meaning of the disputed lines. The lyric says there was anarchy because even a person of cobbler caste origin was claiming that he was from the goldsmith caste. The insult is obvious enough. You don't have to be a mochi to see the indecency or at least the bad taste in this attempted native humour. We all have seen how television channels thoughtlessly showed the paintings by Chandramohan and earlier MF Husain and how such presentation of "facts" or "causes" actually strengthened the case of the Hindutva goons rather than exposing them. Inexplicably, in this case, the media behaved differently. The immediate precedents to the controversy around Aaja Nachle -- the repeated attacks and persecution of Taslima Nasreen and Hindutva's attacks on various forms of free speech and expression -- are neither similar nor connected to the objection Dalit organisations raised against a line in this song. Whereas the other cases of "wounded feelings" were claims based on religion, the Dalit objection is self-evidently secular, and in fact, anti-religious. What Mishra wrote is well within the framework of Hinduism. In fact, he mildly and humorously echoes what the Gita and other religious texts insist on much more blatantly. In protesting the lyric, Dalits are fighting against the dogmas of both religion and caste. What should have been seen as a great opportunity for enlightenment was suppressed by media and intelligentsia as an embarrassment. The Dalit objection does not constitute a danger to free thought and expression. In fact, this controversy opens up a new potential and possibility for permanently silencing some of the successful techniques of Hindutva and greatly enriches the unfinished project of Indian enlightenment. One of them is the seemingly invincible Hindutva strategy (and other communalist) of effecting a collapse of fields. They expose a secluded sphere like the art world to the public gaze, generate shock and mobilise public opinion. Whenever they argue against an artwork (avant-garde art or some passages from a novel) they are bound to win the sympathy of the people. The state not only accepts such arguments but in fact makes similar claims -- like Narendra Modi and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee have done recently. Imagine a situation, where Dalits agitate against the public celebration of Rama on the grounds that he is the killer of the shudra Shambuka, or oppose any act of veneration of the Gita because it humiliates the "lower" castes. Such agitations would surely increase tensions and conflicts. It is only when Dalits talk about the injustices they have suffered that Hindutva would be forced to shun its other standard technique of collapsing the past and the present. If the media had unilaterally and unanimously not suppressed the debate on the disputed song, it would have started a veritable cultural revolution in our public sphere. It would have encouraged Dalits and other victims of Hinduism to point many more insults and exclusions naturalised in our language, symbols, traditions and even our ideals. It would have forced the rest of society to unlearn prejudices and build a new public language. This might at first glance appear like a recipe for multiplication of violence rather than a way to mitigate the "competing intolerances". But is there a better alternative to defeat the potential formation of a "Hindutva majority"? This death warrant to dialogue amounts to a refusal to listen to the hitherto-silenced suffering and grievances in the initial phase of their assertion of empowerment. In this case, the media communalised the idea of Dalit, suppressed the nascent cultural criticism, and viewed their objections as the problem and not as a potential solution. They particularised and subjectivised the very issue of dignity. A deeper malady that made all these omissions or diversions possible is the dominant Left-sponsored conception of the "communal" in India. It typically sees both religion and caste as essentially similar. To be sure, they have identical features. Religion and caste could both turn fascist. But Hindu religion alone could be mobilised to establish a fascist system in India, as Nehru clearly saw it. So far the most recalcitrant hurdles to Hindutva have been the so-called casteist forces. Both forms of social bonding -- caste and religion -- are essentially irrational and therefore similar. But only religion could forge a majority in our polity while caste is inherently immune from that danger. The reality of caste is to be honestly recognised, acknowledged and squarely confronted rather than continuing with hypocritical denial or naively believing in its "disappearance" by refusing to see it. It is likely that the media and film industry would draw the wrong conclusion from this controversy -- that there should be no mention of caste at all. What is needed is a sensitisation towards caste not the sanitisation of it from popular culture. Unwillingness to take the risk of talking about caste, and being open to criticism and correction amounts to cowardice at best and arrogance at worst. We further argue that we should blunt the deadly force of caste by trivializing it through overuse. So far, the attitude towards Dalit expression on the part of the state, media and intelligentsia is one which could be characterised as a "stigmatising concession". If at all the dominant cultural and political forces are willing to accept Dalit expressions, they do so by naming and framing it in a demeaning way. Again, when Dalits -- shamefully, only Dalits -- object to an insult such as this, it is reduced to a concession in the face of threats of violence. Here is a curious reversal: the very act of conceding, of appeasement, as has happened with Aaja Nachle, simultaneously constitutes an act of degradation. The Dalits once again are deprived of dignity. Listening to Dalit organizations is effectively reduced to appeasing claimed hurt over a perceived insult. With these double disclaimers, the possibility of opposing an act of insult without being hurt is criminally lost. You can oppose an act of public insult without being hurt because you believe that there is certain decorum to public discourse. Not many actions and expressions are worthy of our emotional responses. We deem it beneath our dignity to feel insulted by them but still we must oppose them. Nearly every atheist was outraged when the Babri Masjid was brought down and argues for restoring it, not because her religious sentiments were hurt. We do so not on the grounds of our wounded feelings or sentiments but to reestablish the decency of the public sphere. This is why Dalits and the Left should take up the critique of the scandalous lines in this film lyric as part of a larger cultural agenda. Otherwise, it would look odd that in a country where an atrocity against Dalits is perpetrated every 18 minutes and where three Dalit women are raped every day, a line deleted from a film song could assuage Dalit sensibilities. . WRITER'S E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 50, Dated Dec 29, 2007
