The brighter side of dark times

Dark Times:

“If a man is not a communist at 20, he has no heart. If he is still a communist at 30, he has no brain!”

This oft-repeated quote and variations of it, has been credited to various ‘great minds’: Shaw, Churchill, Disraeli, etc. I was introduced to it in the eleventh standard, by of all people, my economics professor.

The thought behind it is that there is a naiveté when we are young, “The world is meant to be equal and its inequality CAN be fixed quite easily”.

Am not sure why but the phrase came back to me while watching the outrageous events surrounding the JNU protest.

The doctoring of videos, ridiculous accusations, and the deplorable behaviour of the Patiala House ‘mob’ is the stuff that even Kafka wouldn’t dream up. Dystopia’s like in Orwell’s 1984, or Terry Gillaume’s Brazil seem to be the world we are heading for. ‘Minithought’ is in. And we are getting our own ‘thought police’. A dangerous trend is that in a country defined by the separation of the four estates: religion, courts, government and press, there appears to be a collusion of all four. And worst of all, ‘innocence until proven guilty’ no longer applies. The burden of proof lies now on the accused rather than the accuser. By and large the Indian student population has been relatively dormant, cocooned in their institutions, and not really being affected by the ‘outside’ world. Their comments on the ‘evils’ of society would be expressed in street play events at college festivals; tackling issues like dowry deaths, corruption, communal violence, etc.

These 20-minute presentations were simplistic in nature, elaborate in presentation, and effervescent in energy. However, the current crop of issues at JNU, Hyderabad University and even FTII are much more complex. Ever since Anna Hazare and his anti-corruption rally or the march for Nirbhaya, the nature of protest in India has changed. And in a strange way, so has the presentation of issues on the stage.

Last year, at Thespo 17, the entire festival was littered with comments about society with topics like suicide, rape, land acquisition, literacy and our obsession with stardom. What made it to the festival was only a fraction of the stories that young people sought to tell. A play from Jaipur called Saleeb by IIS University was about scarecrows that come alive to plead against the ill treatment of a woman by the rest of the village. And when the Panchayat does not acquiesce, they lose faith in human kind and leave. When scarecrows desert you, you know you are pretty bad.

Writers are normally the social conscience of the nation. Particularly the playwrights since there really isn’t any financial gain in it. Writers Bloc, the largest new writing enterprise in the country, threw up incredible stories in the last edition three years ago: Stories about how industrialisation affects a village, or relocation of tribes, etc.

The country is still plagued with these issues, but the new crop of writers’ are wrestling with topics that are far more complex and intense; mainly because the situation has got so much more complicated and dire. Topics like the confusion in Bastar, and caste discrimination in Tamil Nadu.

“Look at the bright side”, said a 70-year-old poet recently turned to his playwright daughter, “Finally, your generation has something to write about!” Maybe, it’s true what they say, out of dark times, come great art. In which case, we should expect some incredible art in the next few years. Though, it would be nice if the times weren’t quite so dark and scary.