The Question of Silence: A Para-biography by G N Devy

Author:G N Devy [Devy, G N]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9 Beyond Cultural Aphasia

A Conversation with Rossella Ciocca1

The sudden outburst of anguish from so many writers and artists over the last two weeks has taken the country by complete surprise. It has occupied substantial media space and engaged the curiosity of citizens. Various political parties have commented on it by placing themselves as allies or adversaries. The Union Minister for Culture, too, has responded by way of dealing with what he thinks is ‘culture’. Over the weekend various magazines and literary supplements will have devoted their precious space to this ‘rather strange phenomenon’, analysing the whys and hows of the eruption. A week from now, the meeting of the Sahitya Akademi Council will have already joined the ranks of events past, generating responses and counter-responses. But will the winter of Indian Writers’ Discontent (IWD) be remembered a few months or a few years from now? I would like to place my observations here in the mode of a future historian of the present.

The most important element of the IWD is that it is not an organised movement or a conspiracy. One of the politicians commented that this is an engineered disaffection for the State with backing from a political party. This view has the fatal flaw in understanding the IWD as a social or a political movement. It is neither engineered nor is it planned by any political party, outfit, social organisation or funding agency.

The poet Keki N. Daruwalla made it a point to stress in his open letter (14 October 2015) to the President of the Sahitya Akademi that he is not prompted by any political ideology: ‘I wish to make it clear that I have no party leanings. I was no lover of the corrupt UPA 2. People like the late [Narendra] Dhabolkar were murdered during the previous dispensation.’2 This has been more or less the strain in all of the statements issued by writers who returned their honours.

The writers who responded to the suddenly manifest cultural impulse are not from any single political background or affiliation. The question of political affiliation does not even matter in this unique phenomenon. What matters is their emphasis on the increased intolerance in social life. In my statement sent to the Sahitya Akademi I have described them as ‘writers and thinkers who have come forward to rescue sense, good-will, values, tolerance and mutual respect. Had this not been so, why would we be remembering the great saint poets who made our modern Indian languages what they are today? The great idea of India is based on a profound tolerance for diversity and difference. They far surpass everything else in importance.’

In Daruwalla’s words, ‘The landscape that confronts the writer today is bleak ... Faces will continue to be blackened with paint and painters like M. F. Hussein will be forced into exile. A writer like Taslima Nasreen will have to leave Kolkata under a Leftist regime. Statesmen will continue to be praised for their nationalism “despite” the fact they are Muslims. Mob murders will continue to be described as accidents’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.