Beef to beep: Spectre of unmoored nihilism

Indian censor board’s directive to bleep out words from a documentary on Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen reveals misplaced social guardianship and conformism to a majoritarian cult

henever I try to take this rather grand view of India, which is not the banal Hindutva [hegemony over a Hindu way of life] view of India, whenever I make a statement, I know the next morning I will get 800 attacks on social media ... I can see there is an organised attack ... Now the main thing is not to be deterred by it.”

When a Nobel laureate economist has such a comment to make on his own predicament for being an ardent follower of the value of reason and scepticism in one’s social and intellectual pursuits — and that too in a country that prides itself for having historically accorded the tradition of debate and argument a high moral ground and having recognised it as the very basis of its democratic and secular ethos — then indeed it bears the forebodings of a sclerosis setting in somewhere.

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in India has made it amply clear that it certainly does not conform to Dr Amartya Sen’s “grand view of India” as it ordered to beep out the words “Gujarat”, “Hindu India”, “Cow” and “Hindutva view of India” from the documentary The Argumentative Indian by director Suman Ghosh, based on Sen’s collection of essays by the same name. The CBFC chairperson, Pahlaj Nihalani, has come up with a fig leaf of an excuse that these words will have to be bleeped out from the narrative, lest they hurt the sentiments of certain sections of the community and create socio-political unrest!

The hour-long documentary is structured as a conversation between Sen and one of his former students, Kaushik Basu, professor of Economics at Cornell University. During the course of the film, the narrative spans across Sen’s days as a student and then as a foremost academic — from Santiniketan to Kolkata and then on to the United States and United Kingdom.

In the film, the word “Gujarat” comes up in a lecture that Sen had delivered at Cornell University: “... Why democracy works so well is that the government is not free to have its own stupidities, and in case of Gujarat its own criminalities, without the Opposition being howled down and booted out ...”

When asked by Basu to elaborate upon the context of his book, The Argumentative Indian, Sen said it was “based on my understanding of the country ... (and) the country was now being interpreted sometimes as Hindu India and sometimes as other restricted visions ...”

Later, elaborating on the need for debate and argument in society, Sen says: “... There was a kind of grandness of vision there, and an integrated picture, which hangs together in trying to embrace each other, not through chastising people for having mistreated a cow or some other thing, but dealing with people in terms of argument.”

Even a cursory reading of Sen’s works will make one realise that right through his career as a student and an academic, Sen has voiced his concern for issues that are seminal to a developing economy and an emerging global power that is India. Gender inequality, malnutrition, hunger, illiteracy, need for democracy at the grass-roots level and empowerment of the most impoverished sections of the society in India are among some of the themes that Sen has gone on to painstakingly illustrate with not just an economist’s acumen, but almost with a social reformist’s zeal and earnestness.

Ideological ensemble

And according to some of the luminaries who were invited to a private screening of the documentary in Kolkata week before last, Ghosh’s docu-treat encapsulates the very essence of an argumentative Indian — not just in terms of Sen’s intellectual treatise in the form of a collection of essays, but also in terms of the ideological ensemble that this technocrat comes packed with.

But the Nihalanis in contemporary India also come packed with their own brand of boorishness and a heady concoction of militant nationalism and majority absolutism. Hence, from beef to beep, the attempt at dumbing down of criticism and wiping out even the slightest trace of a debate or argument, that is audacious enough to present an alternative view, is all too obvious.

This is the worst kind of danger that is threatening India’s intellectual capital in the most definitive terms for the moment: Leave no space for any strand of thought or idea that does not conform to the monochrome of an unmoored nihilism. Smash to the core any possibility of a seed germinating from a soil that’s rich in plurality of thought and diversity of opinion — be it in the form of a film or the menu card at the street-corner eatery. Let everything bear the indelible mark of conformism to a majoritarian cult.

The Nihalanis in contemporary India have also taken it upon themselves to voice their concern for any perceived sense of social angst and agony among a certain section of the community. They believe that the very usage of words such as “cow” and “Hindutva” is pregnant with the possibility of triggering a riot or large-scale social commotion. But one wonders who has given this clique the right to be moral guardians on behalf of a 1.3 billion-strong population? Who has given them the authority to play monitors in a country that still takes a lot of pride in its time-tested traditions of peaceful coexistence and cohabitation of communities of diverse shades and opinions?

It is indeed ironical that a celluloid offering that extols the virtues of debate and argument has been targeted for being argumentative! But this irony will not be restricted to just a film or a book or one’s choice at the dining table. It has enough poison in its spleen to spread its roots deeper — unless society shows its steadfast resolve to stay committed to its conscientious self and moorings of reasoning and reject the banality that promotes itself in the name of cohesion.

The Nihalanis in contemporary India, take note: Any attempt to paint the country in a dull monochrome will only steel the resolve among its billions to burst out in the many-splendoured hue of a multichrome. And rest assured — there won’t be any argument on that count at least!

You can follow Sanjib Kumar Das on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@moumiayush