Elitist Eccentricities: Since When Freedom of expression Start Including Hate Speeches Mr. Ashish Nandy?
[From my column OBVIOUSLY OPAQUE in the UTS Voice, 01-15 February]
Ashish
Nandy comes across as the naughty boy of Indian intelligentsia, which is if you
go by the accounts of those out to protect his right to free speech. In his
quest for knowledge, he titillates, provokes, stings. He is a gadfly to his
protégés, noted psephologist Yogendra Yadav, who did never get his predictions
right, included. Ashishda has humbled him many a times, he recollects. I have
no idea if he ever felt humbled by the masses that consigned his predictions to
dustbins of Indian polity elections after election, but then that is beside the
point.
Nandy
is in news again, this time for prophesying that the republic will survive.
Ironically, is the republic under any imminent threat is a question he did not
bother with.
Indian
republic, it does seem, has developed a strange habit of getting threatened. A
curious development for a 60 plus secular socialist development as it
encroaches into a sphere hitherto monopolized by religions! Have not the Right
to Get Threatened and Right to Feel Persecuted been reserved for
religions? All of them I mean, Hinduism,
Islam, Christianity and the myriad others.
It was in grave danger last spring, as some Aam Admis (common men, if you
have no clue what this species is all about) had suddenly discovered. The
threat to its existence, they found, came from widespread corruption that was
eating the system from within. Being true patriots, unlike those running the
system according to them, they declared a war on corruption.
They
went on to invent a new age Gandhi, in the form of Anna Hazare. The fact that
this copy cat Mahatma was hitherto known for opposing reality show Big Boss for
hosting Pakistani actors like Veena Malik and beating ‘drunkards’ of his
village is beside the point. It was understandable if he had a problem with
Veena Malik being referred to as an ‘actor’, but then having issues with
someone being a Pakistani was not quite a Gandhian thing, provided Gandhi does
not mean Varun Gandhi(you know who, right?) to you.
Having
invented this new Mahtma, the Aam Admis inflicted him on the body politic of
the nation. He came to Delhi and roared, cameras rolling. He threatened the irreversibly
corrupt system and asked them to accept a draft he had brought with him. He
wanted, in true Gandhian sense, death sentence for corrupts and Kasab. To add
spectacle to the act, he wanted the sentence to be executed in public. People
came and listened to him for a while.
Then
they noticed Ram Madhavs of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh sitting on the
stage, right next to Hazare’s Bharat
Mata. The rest is history as they say. The history of these new champions of
middle class India funded by likes of Navin Jindals of both Tiranga and
Coal-gate fame being consigned to the dustbins of contemporary politics, that
is.
Nandy’s
republic was different. He would not, inexplicably, disclose what threatened his
republic while happily inventing the messiah who would save it. The savior, for
him, is corruption, the great equalizing force. It would redeem the republic to
live up to the dreams of its founding fathers (whatever happened to founding
mothers). That’s what he told a baffled audience in recently concluded Jaipur
Literature Festival.
The
republic, naughty Nandy further elaborated in his ‘subversive’ style, will
survive because most of the corrupt, never adding a ‘now’, “come from the OBCs
and the scheduled castes, now inserting a ‘NOW’ “and now increasingly scheduled
tribes.” Ask him for the evidence supporting this vulgar and undignified
statement in his own words, and he would scoff at you invoking his right to
free speech as if the right to free speech intrinsically includes insulting the
marginalized communities. Cite the requirements of research methodology which
the professor himself might have assiduously taught his students and his followers-in-awe
would tell you how original a thinker he is.
That
is where the statement requires a closer scrutiny. His take on Dalits and OBCs
is timeless and ahistorical. It has no temporality in here and now or there and
then. Most of the corrupt might be coming from the Dalits and OBCs since the
beginning of the time, at least right from the birth of the republic. Is that
the case though? Pause for a moment and recall Rajiv Gandhi’s iconic statement
of only 14 paisa out of a rupee reaching the people and one would remember that
Social Justice brigade was not even born on the Indian political scene. What
does, then, make Nandy make such a sweeping, timeless statement indicting
Dalits and OBCs? There are tens of Kalmadis for every A Raja, aren’t there?
Worse
than this is Nandy’s, and “now increasingly scheduled tribes” part. Does he
have any evidence to support this obnoxious claim other than indicting alleged
bribe-takers Shibu Soren(s) while absolving alleged bribe-givers P. V. Narsimha
Rao(s) of all criminal culpabilities? Narsimha Rao, by the way, is the only
former prime minister of India who has to face a criminal charge in a corruption
case, and is an ‘upper caste’ if one can remind Nandy.
So
when does Nandy’s ‘now increasingly’ begins? Since Shibu Soren’s ascendance to
power in Jharkhand? Or that of Madhu Koda’s ? How many ‘corrupt’ tribal leaders
worth their salt could he find in Uttar Pradesh, a land of scams? Or in Madhya
Pradesh or Maharashtra?
Nandy,
the naughty professor, got to answer at least a few of these questions instead
of turning into a victim of ‘growing intolerance in society’, for which,
sardonically again, his supporters blame ‘corrupt’ Dalit leaders like Mayawati.
First of the set is the same. Where does he get such mind baffling statistics
from, statistics that can shame even the Mathematics genius zero loss Kapil
Sibal? However ‘original’ a thinker is, he cannot consign all data to flames to
reach at his preferred conclusions after all.
Therein
lays the signature brilliance of Nandy, the maverick intellectual. This is not
the first time he has offended a community.
He has quite a track record of doing the same. For the sake of those
with a fickle memory, the latest among those was his ‘qualified’ support to
Mohan Bhagwat’s claim that rapes occur in India and not Bharat. Not atypically,
Nandy had then prophesized that India was going to see lots of ‘anomic’ rapes
taking place in cities. The data on the contrary from the National Crime
Records Bureau did not bother him. Neither did the news reports coming from
across the country.
Decades
ago, similar was his take on Sati, or burning a widow alive on her husband’. The
institution was no longer rooted in feudal ideas of honour and valour but was
taking place more and more in upwardly mobile ‘modern’ families. He did not
have any evidence to support this ludicrous claim then, or when a 75 year old
Brahmin widow, a community not particularly known for valour, jumped in the
funeral pyre of her husband in the last reported case of Sati.
Why
does Nandy do all this? Perhaps, because he lives in a world of his own. His
world is a world of idealized, almost romanticized villages as rendered to us
in movies like Dabangg. His villages are inhabited by Chulbul Pandeys having a
heart of gold despite all their rustiness. His villages do not include those
like Khairlanji which witness worst possible forms of ‘anomic’ gangrape and
murder. Caste discrimination does not exist in his villages, except perhaps
during elections when the pre-modern identity somehow resurrects itself and
make castes vote en masse.
This
is why, perhaps, that he sees the redemption of the republic coming from corruption
that of the Dalits, OBCs and tribals, and not from struggles for social
justice. He, in fact, negates the very existence of such struggles.
This
actually is the real problem with his statement. Wrongly insinuating that most
of the corrupts are from marginalized communities is offensive, negating the
struggles for social justice is preposterous. There is no denying the fact that
quite a few of the leaders from the social justice camp are widely believed to
be corrupt, but why are they so?
How
a certain Mayawati and her Bahujan Samaj Party would would survive in a system that
demands ludicrous expenses running in tens of crores for contesting elections
in just a single constituency, forget the expenses of running the party. Her
voters are not rich enough to support her on their own, and she does not have the
kind of clientele with Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis like the Congress or the BJP. Who
has instituted this systemic corruption in the Indian political system in the
first place?
Nandy
would not answer this. He would, rather, trivialize the issue and would concoct
corruption as the solution instead of the gallant struggles for social justice
being waged across the country. Interestingly enough, his defender-in-chief
would be the same Yogendra Yadav, who as a member of Aam Admi Party finds
corruption to be the single biggest threat to the republic.
Yadav,
though, would never stand up for Dalit Professor Pramod
Bhumbe of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar College of Social Work in Dhule, Maharashtra
who was beaten up by the members of RSS, Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajarang Dal
for making ‘offensive’ and derogatory remarks against Lord Ram. There would be
no panel discussions either.
No
one would get to see outraged faces of suave and urban intellectuals crying
foul over the case. No one would discuss the other part of the argument that
the corruption of the elite conceals itself in myriad forms like scholarships
in same Oxbridge institutions as they themselves might have benefitted from. This
is why this whole free speech business is neither about freedom nor the
inabilities of the lesser mortals who fail to understand the subtleties of
nuanced statements.
The
freedom of expression is selective for them. You have it if you are ‘Ashishda’.
This is about the eccentricity of elites who have not abandoned their
patronizing claim over the toiling masses despite having abandoned them long
back. It is not for nothing that Ashish Nandy gets ‘misperceived’ twice in less
than a month.
Of
course, I am not for his arrest but I do wonder why only Akbaruddin Owaisi(s)
should get arrested for their hate speeches. Freedom of expression does not
include the freedom to insult a community, and that is what Ashish Nandy has
done. As it is, if his freedom of expression is boundless, why should the
freedom of those offended not be unlimited as well? If he has a right to hurt
(or humble) then the people have a right to get hurt, and humble him, as well. He
should have apologized for the republic has risen up.
Or else, he should learn
not to speak what he does not mean, time and again.
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