Mum's the Word

As autumn morphs into winter , Chrysanthemums announce their arrival with a multi-hued burst of efflorescence. Mums, as the truncated name goes, display this soft splendour in many temperate regions of planet Earth in unfettered glory.

Sadly in contrast, the earthlings in many pockets of the globe live a straight- jacketed existence where speech is muffled and dissent crushed brutally or with brainwashing.

This repressive chokehold extends across creative arts. And the fountainhead of these diktats ,which are wrapped in a shiny mantle to delude the hapless citizens , are the politicos who thrive on untrammelled power. Kim Jong Un and Putin are dismal poster boys for tyrannical regimes where poisoning and killing dissidents , and even friends no longer useful, is the order of the day. Africa has a clutch of countries under authoritarian regimes like Burkina Faso, Niger , Sudan and some more and a ruinous war in Sudan currently is causing untold misery to its people.

Even in democracies the politicians promise the proletariat a rose garden , but what is delivered is a thorny nettle! Politics these days has become performative enough to come under the rubric of creative arts. In short, mum's the word!

It is hard to imagine that at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century , when human evolution has changed Homo Sapiens into Homo Deus (as described by Yuval Noah Harari in his books), the current geo-political landscape in pockets is a mirror image of the fictional world created by George Orwell in his iconic novel, 'Nineteen Eighty Four' ( 1949).

With amazing prescience Orwell writes about a dystopia where totalitarianism leaves citizens bereft of free speech and individuality. Phrases like "Thought Police", Ministry of Truth" and "Big Brother" have seeped into our minds as symbols of repression. What leaps out at us is the startling realisation that the world currently is an Orwellian redux. Trump's " Truth Social" is farthest from truth. Propaganda and personality cult building reiterated endlessly with the help of a troll army is practiced by many autocrats.

And we get lobotomised humans who think 2+2=5 , as in the Orwellian fictional world of Oceania. The concept is a metaphor for the erosion of human reason that makes it difficult to distinguish fact from falsehood. The "tele screens" doing mass surveillance in the novel are the precursors of the recent Pegasus surveillance zero-click spyware that was used worldwide on journalists, activists, politicians and even judges. India was the central focus in 2021.

There seems to be a lurking fear in the powers that be that any resistance to the status quo will upset the apple cart. Of course, silencing a questioning mind is as old as classical Athens. (5th century B.C). Socrates paid the price with his life for allegedly corrupting the youth by feeding them ideas that challenged the establishment. This is seen in praxis in the arc of bans on books, films, art, street art and the incarceration of social and political activists and academics in India and other parts of the world currently.

The list of book bans has a long tail. The reasons for doing so range from threats to national security, public order, religious sentiments to abetting ethnic enmity or for depicting prurience. These apply across the creative arts.

Arundhati Roy, the darling of the uber liberals and the bête noir of the rightists, who staunchly defends human rights, social justice and freedom of speech has been targeted often. Her book , 'Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction (2020) was banned recently . Along with Roy's book , Anuradha Bhasin's book, A Dismantled State : The Untold Story of Kashmir(2022)and A.G. Noorani' s The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012 , Kashmir at the Cross Roads ( Inside a 21st Century Conflict (72021)by Sumantra Bose and some other books were banned in a clutch of 25 banned books by the state administration. These books were said to be spreading false narratives and secessionist sentiments. Kashmir, a storied haven of breath-taking beauty is now associated with crackdowns, terrorism and displaced people.

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses was banned for blasphemy and a fatwa issued against him in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini. In a cat and mouse game of hiding Rushdie rode out the years but in August 2022 , he was stabbed several times by a young Shia Islamist moments before he was to give a public lecture. He survived to tell the tale in, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (2023).

Mostly, print and the television media are echo chambers which ricochet with the rah rah slogans deifying the powers that be. They prefer to compromise fearing the withdrawal of government support and advertising revenue. Unless you are singing Raag Darbari you'll be nixed, raided, defunded or bulldozed. A few intrepid journos carry on with minimum funds but maximum courage!

The same repressive approach operates towards the celluloid world and art. Over the years many films have been banned or released after many cuts. Either for being political satires, or for showing a lesbian relationship, explicit violence and abuse. Aandhi, Fire, Bandit Queen and Paanch fall under this category. Santosh, a recent Oscar entry from U.K has been banned in India. Interestingly, at the recently concluded Film Festival of Kerala the Canadian filmmaker Kelley Fyffe- Marshall was given the Spirit of Cinema Award for using cinema as a tool of resistance.

The legendary M.F. Husain, lauded as India's Picasso, was forced into exile because of threats to his life from the far right. They were enraged at Husain's depiction of nude deities. This in a land where gods and goddesses indulge in PDA ( public display of affection) in full public view in temples like Khajuraho. Vatsyayana's Kamasutra compiled in around 2nd century C.E. is less uptight about love and pleasure than our current self-appointed custodians of morality.

It makes one clench one's fists in anger that a dedicated environmentalist and an activist like Sonam Wangchuk from Ladakh, a much awarded educator with a Ramon Magsaysay award (2018) is in a Jodhpur jail under the National Security Act.

There is an endless list of JNU students and activists incarcerated and denied bail under the umbrella UAPA act. Saddest was the arrest of the octogenarian Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist based in Jharkhand in the Elgar Parishad case along with 15 others. His plea for interim bail for health issues was rejected and even a request for a sipper and a straw to drink water because of his inability to hold a glass due to Parkinson's disease was overlooked . He died in judicial custody in hospital in 2021 advocating the right to dissent and the freedom to speak the truth.

In Shakespeare's cornucopia of quotes there's this reassuring line from The Merchant of Venice : " But in the end truth will out". We hope and pray that we don't have to wait with sealed lips!

Ushi Kak aka Kashpundit, an author and a columnist, writes satire generally. Views expressed are the writer's own.

Cover image Courtesy r/conceptart