‘Thin-skinned’ politicians impose glut of bans on books, beef, TV
‘Don’t eat it, read it, see it, feel it”, sings the Michael Jackson impersonator as she raps her way through a list of pleasures banned by India’s conservative government before chorusing: “Just beep it!”
As the world’s largest democracy, India has long been proud of its tradition of artistic, cultural and religious freedom.
But a series of bans, ranging from eating beef to watching Fifty Shades of Grey, have sparked accusations of a growing climate of intolerance under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Critics say the bans show how “thinskinned” their politicians have become in an internet age where attempts to put a lid on “offensive” material are likely to backfire.
The spoof of Mr Jackson’s classic “Beat It”, which was made by the Indian comedy trio Enna Da Rascalas, has gone viral since being uploaded on YouTube last week, reflecting the backlash against blacklists.
Announcing a ban earlier this month on a UK-made documentary about the infamous 2012 gang-rape in Delhi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the ban was invoked out of fear that comments by one of the rapists would fuel public anger.
Days later, a government-appointed board of censors blocked the release of the erotic movie Fifty Shades of Grey in cinemas, despite the toned-down version.
A comedy roast show featuring several Bollywood stars has also fallen foul with authorities after it was uploaded on the internet and became the target of a government-ordered obscenity investigation over some of its sexually explicit jokes.
“For this government, it seems a ban becomes the quickest way to eliminate a problem,” said Shiv Visvanathan, a sociologist based in Haryana state.
“Bans do not tolerate disorder but without debate and disorder, you can’t have a free democracy. It is just making life complex.”
Historians say the centre-left Congress party— which has ruled India for most of the post-independence period— has its own track record of bans, particularly during the 1975-77 “Emergency” under Indira Gandhi.
For example, British author Salman Rushdie’s 1988 book, The Satanic Verses, was banned for allegedly insulting Islam.
But the last two decades has seen a general relaxation on the part of the watchdogs with TV channels airing shows such as “Sex and the City”, which once would have been been considered too racy for public viewing.
Even Mr Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children — a scathing critique of the Emergency— was released in Indian cinemas in 2013, albeit without the nudity.
Shashi Tharoor, a best-selling author and Congress lawmaker, says the cultural climate has definitely changed since Mr Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party came to power last May.
“Our mounting concern is that there is a climate of i ntolerance that has unfortunately been given free rein,” said Mr Tharoor.
“Positions which always struck the Indian mainstream as fringe positions have suddenly become acceptable to the powers that lead.”
The former diplomat made his name with The Great Indian Novel, a satire published in 1989 and based on the epic Sanskrit poem “Mahabharata”. If it were published today, Mr Tharoor suspects it would be banned.
Acclaimed Tamil-language author Perumal Murugan quit writing altogether in January following protests by Hindu and caste groups who felt insulted by one of his books.
Pressure from Hindu activist groups was also instrumental in the ban on beef earlier this month in the western state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located. Cows are sacred to Hindus.
The move is interpreted in some corners as another sign of growing intolerance in an overwhelmingly Hindu country with sizeable Muslim, Christian and Buddhist minorities.
But Pavan Verma, who has written extensively about cultural and religious history in India, said a certain amount of censorship is understandable to avoid causing offence in such a diverse country.
“India is a country of wide social discrepancies... that try to coexist with each other and it’s not an easy job to keep everyone happy all the time,” Mr Verma, a former head of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, said.
There was widespread condemnation in India of January’s murderous attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris which printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. But when the editor of a Mumbai-based Urdu magazine reprinted one of the cartoons as a gesture of solidarity, she was arrested under laws prohibiting insult to religion.
Tanmay Bhat, a member of Indian comedy collective All India Bakchod — which is at the centre of the obscenity row — said the wave of bans made little logical sense but did reflect general intolerance.
“We tend to have ... an ostrich kind of mentality,” he said at a New Delhi event last week.
“We want to put our heads into the ground and be like, if I don’t like something then it’s got to go away.”
There is a climate of intolerance that has unfortunately been given free rein.