John Storey might have been writing about cultural
studies in Britain but his observation about all basic assumptions of cultural
studies being Marxist is equally relevant to the Indian context:
“…This is not to say that all practitioners of cultural studies are
Marxists, but that ‘cultural studies’ is itself grounded in Marxism. All its
major texts are informed, one way or another, by Marxism; whether or not their
authors regard themselves as Marxist, post-Marxist or rhetorical Marxists
(using rhetoric, vocabulary, models, etc., without, necessarily, a commitment
to the politics).”2
The relevance of the observation to the issue under discussion
will be apparent if one remembers that Marxists can reconcile diametrically
opposing views with the aid of ‘dialectical materialism’. As in Britain, the
arts and culture sphere in India too has come to be dominated by Marxists and
their variants Storey described. There is no dearth of ‘useful idiots’,3
in the public sphere, either in the media or in that amorphous mass called the ‘public
intellectuals’. The ‘public intellectuals’ do not have to necessarily come up
with ideas that solve the mysteries of the universe or be able to find
solutions to the myriad problems that daunt our society. Their skill-set, to
use the human resources jargon of the information technology age, includes glib
talk, an ability to write gobbledygook liberally sprinkled with socialist
clichés and an infinite capacity for networking with the high and mighty. For
them, who they know is the ‘seed capital’; what they know is inconsequential.
In short, they are literary and cultural wheeler-dealers. They have acquired the
enviable Marxist acumen of being able to reconcile diametrically opposing
propositions, with élan. The politicians find the ‘useful idiots’, well, useful
and the ‘useful idiots’ could do with political patronage. Thus the two have
developed a symbiotic relationship. It was one of those, who had acquired a name
as a litterateur, who had advised Rajiv Gandhi to ban the Satanic Verses. It was probably what Rajiv Gandhi wanted to do anyway to propitiate a
political constituency, but when the advice came from a litterateur, it had
acquired an ‘intellectual stamp’. It is another matter the litterateur acquired
his name and fame by writing semi-porn fiction and publishing collections of ribald
jokes, not all of which were his own. His ability to network with the media
while being a press officer in the government came in handy. He could call in
old favours and what the British call the ‘old boy network’ or the ‘charmed circle’
came in with offers of syndicated columns as post-retirement sinecures.
It was said that till the book was banned in India in
1988, not many knew of it, although Salman Rushdie had published three books
earlier and won a Booker prize for his second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981). It was after the Indian ban that the world noticed it and Ayatollah
Khomeini had issued the infamous fatwa and a bounty on Salman
Rushdie’s head. The ban and the fatwa condemned Rushdie into
exile, and to live incognito for a long time. The ‘curious incident’, as
Sherlock Holmes told inspector Gregory in The Adventure of Silver Blaze, was not what the dog did but that ‘the dog did
nothing’! In this case the curious thing was the ‘useful idiots’ did nothing.
They did not cry, ‘artistic freedom was being trampled upon’, till their throats
turned hoarse. Nobody returned their Sahitya Akademi or Padma awards!
However, the famous litterateur, who recommended banning
the book, had had a change of heart in 2010. What could be the motive? One
could only surmise, but was it self-justification, remorse or mendacity? In his
syndicated column, he urged his readers to look at the positive side of the
ban. He sheepishly explained that the ban had immensely helped Rushdie and his
book with increased sales. Thank him for small mercies, for he did not justify
the bounty on Rushdie’s head, reasoning it had garnered him international
sympathy! None but an ‘intellectual’ like the ‘litterateur’ could come up with
such a ‘brainy’ idea: ‘ban books to increase their sales’! Even Marxists would
be stumped as the reasoning was beyond their beloved ‘dialectical materialism’.
When the eminent columnist T. J. S. George had to run for
cover for offending, a ‘particular community’ to use evasive journalese — which
expression does not seem to circumscribe ‘freedom of expression’, again the
‘useful idiots’ were not up in arms to protest. The media too tasted the wrath
of the ‘particular community’ after the Deccan Herald affair in 1986, and when
offices of all the four main newspapers in Bengaluru were attacked on different occasions. The lessons learnt almost a decade
ago seem to have long lasting effect, for the media did not venture to express
solidarity with its Danish brethren in the recent cartoon controversy. Its
condemnation in the Charlie Hebdo massacre was too muted and not unqualified, as we shall see
latter.
However, it would be inappropriate to inculpate the ‘particular
community’ alone of intolerance of cultural and media freedom, when it offends
their sensibilities. The ‘useful idiots’ were equally quiescent when recently,
the secular party workers of DMK burnt down the offices,
along with three unfortunate employees of Dinakaran in Tamil Nadu, all in the ‘good cause’ of the internal power-struggle in
the ruling dynasty there. Contrast this with the campaign it ran when some Hindu organisations protested against the making of Water. The
social malady the movie sought to project was no doubt an anachronism, but is a
century old and no longer exists. The ideological fatherlands of our
left-liberal intellectuals did not shy away from curtailing artistic freedoms.
The land of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev banned Dr. Zhivago and prevented its author, Boris Pasternak from receiving the Nobel Prize. Another Nobel winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed the plight of
soviet intellectuals in his novel, The First Circle, was exiled. The land of
Mao ‘respects’ the ‘freedom of expression’ much more brazenly: in the Tiananmen Square Massacre, in 1989, it gunned down between 2000 and 3000 unarmed civilians —
intellectuals, labour activists and students — protesting against galloping
corruption in the ruling communist party.
....................................
2 Storey,
John. (1994). “Introduction: The Study of Popular Culture and Cultural Studies”
In Storey, John (Ed.) Cultural
Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. Harlow. Pearson Education. p. xi
3 The
phrase has often been attributed to Lenin, but it appears he had never aid it. See Safire,
William. (1987). “On Language”. The
New York Times Magazine. April
12, 1987. Accessible from http://goo.gl/PhkIxn
Excerpted from ‘ARTISTIC FREEDOM & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY’: ‘TWISTING FACTS TO SUIT THEORIES’ & OTHER SELECTIONS FROM VOXINDICA. p. 26-30.
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