:: Antara Dev Sen

Theatre of absurd

Antara Dev Sen

Augest.20: Earlier this year, when Shah Rukh Khan (currently offended by paranoid Americans) renamed his film Billu Barber as Billu (so as not to offend protesting barbers), I had, as a concerned citizen plotting protective measures, suggested that Habib Tanvir change the name of his classic play Charandas Chor to simply Charandas. When perfectly respectable professionals like barbers can be offended by their job description informing their identity, imagine what a stigmatised, lowly profession like chori would do to dear old thieves. We shouldn’t be mean to them just because they can’t form an association and protest.

Well, it would not have helped. Two months after Habib Tanvir’s death, Charandas Chor has been banned. Not because it has offended thieves, but because it has angered Satnamis. Right before we celebrated 62 years of freedom, the Chhattisgarh government banned the book and the play and is recalling the book from libraries. Apparently because of some reference to Guru Ghasidas, the founder of the Satnam Panth, having been a dacoit in his early life.

Of course it is absurd. But not because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Chhattisgarh has suddenly woken up to the "insult" of the Satnamis. The pioneering play — based on Vijaydan Detha’s short story, which in turn was based on a Rajasthani folk tale — has been staged for almost four decades all over the country and in several languages, has won India international awards, changed our cultural landscape and was made into a film by Shyam Benegal in 1975. Traditionally, many of its actors were Satnamis. We have only recently acquired the habit of blackmailing the arts on account of being suddenly, and often inexplicably, hurt.

I first learnt of Chhattisgarh as a teenager watching Habib Tanvir perform Charandas Chor with his "Chhattisgarhi" Naya Theatre troupe in Kolkata. Decades before the state of Chhattisgarh was born, this play stamped on the nation a clear cultural and linguistic identity for Chhattisgarh. Yet it is not absurd that the state of Chhattisgarh has banned this masterpiece of modern Indian theatre.

In fact, it is only natural, in our carefully nurtured culture of brittle pride. Anybody muscular can claim offence and we rush to pamper them. We cut and tailor everything from current art to ancient history to suit the whims of the bullies. And watch sheepishly as the nonagenarian M.F. Husain is driven out of his own country by Hindutva goons who have decided to be offended by his art.

This ban fits beautifully in that ambience of mob intimidation. We have been promoting a violent tradition of social censorship for years, often propped up by formal censorships like bans and the deletion of "offensive" parts of books, films, art or plays. Logic or democratic freedoms have no place in this game of muscle power. So don’t ask what’s offensive about Guru Ghasidas being referred to as a former dacoit when Valmiki, who gave us the Ramayana, was a reformed dacoit, too.

Forget it. In 2000, a dialogue in the film Joru ka Ghulam referred to Valmiki as a dacoit, which got the Valmiki dalits hopping mad. And since we are falling over backwards to try and appease caste and religious sentiments, the film could play only after the "offensive" reference was deleted. Or take the Tegh Bahadur incident of 2001. Following protests by enraged Sikhs, a school history textbook was changed, deleting references to plunders by Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur.

So it is not absurd that Charandas Chor has been banned because Satnamis have threatened to agitate against what they perceive to be a negative reference to their guru.

Especially in that wondrous state of Chhattisgarh, where the government excels in curbing democratic freedoms in the name of peace and security. Where the fight between Naxals and the state have left lakhs homeless and thousands dead over the last four years. Where the alienation of the tribal population is complete as their land is snatched for industrialisation and the battle for development becomes a war between the Naxals and a state-sponsored, unconstitutional vigilante group, the Salwa Judum. Every day innocents die horrible deaths in this war. The state responds with more brutality.

This is the state where peaceful protest lands you in jail with fake criminal cases or under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA), where you could be held for years without bail as an anti-national. It’s the state that crushes democratic dissent with the impotent rage of one who has failed to protect its citizens from Maoist violence. The state that encourages the militarisation and criminalisation of the tribal community, and fails to recognise the Frankenstein’s monster it is creating.

This is the state that jailed Dr Binayak Sen without bail for over two years — partly in solitary confinement — merely for being in touch with Naxals. A doctor and civil rights activist, Dr Sen would naturally be in touch with anyone who needed medical attention, since he provided healthcare to locals in this tribal belt largely forgotten by government health networks. This is the state where the local press has lost its freedom, where journalists are jailed or killed for raising questions.

So it is not absurd that the Chhattisgarh government banned Charandas Chor.

And it’s not just Chhattisgarh. We still cling to a value system that can destroy an individual merely because of his family background. Take the denotified tribals. These are people from certain tribes that were once designated "criminal" by the British. But even today, people belonging to these tribes are publicly lynched, killed by the police or jailed. It’s in their blood, we say, they are a clan of criminals.

Often it makes more sense to reinvent your past than to expect 21st century India to revise its obsolete value system. Some of these silly protests are part of that reinvention of historical identities. And it is not absurd that a state with a disgraceful track record in democratic freedoms would swiftly reach for a ban.

We have allowed matters to come to a stage where our cultural freedoms can be curtailed by even the most fleeting reference. I cannot recall this matter of Guru Ghasidas being called a former dacoit in the play, and am inclined to believe, as someone suggested, that the reference was not in the play but in the preface to the book. In which case, was the play banned because some Satnamis objected to a statement it did not make? Now that — even in our cynical times — would be quite absurd.

Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com