The unexamined collective life

Case against Mallikarjun Kharge, arrests of Hindu Mahasabha members, leave untouched a fundamental problem — the legal recourse forestalls a debate on national ideals

Our public culture oscillates between hagiography and vilification. Illustration: CR Sasikumar

The foundations of a well-functioning society are laws that reflect socially-just but flexible notions of right and wrong. However, when laws become the first resort towards dealing with social fractures, we are likely to end up with a society that refuses to deal with its most deep-seated regressive attitudes. Two recent events and the reactions to them point to our tendency to assume that the quick-fix of the legal route is the best way to deal with matters that might be considered socially reprehensible. The law, however, can only deal with symptoms. The habitual reduction of complex social issues to legal ones, in fact, lies at the heart of our desire to lead an unexamined collective life.

On January 26, the great Assamese singer Bhupen Hazarika was conferred India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. Soon after, senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge criticised the conferment, suggesting that a more deserving awardee might have been the recently-deceased Lingayat religious leader, Shivakumara Swami. The latter, Kharge seemed to imply, was a person of greater substance than someone whose fame lay in his skill as a singer. Soon after, acting on a complaint by the head of an Assamese socio-cultural organisation, the police registered a case against Kharge for “hurting the sentiments of the Assamese people”.

On January 30, the date of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 by Nathuram Godse, members of the Hindu Mahasabha’s Aligarh unit announced and re-enacted the murder. Media images showed a cheery saffron-clad woman pointing a pistol at an effigy of Gandhi. She was surrounded by a seemingly like-minded group that looked on as if inspecting an ice-cream menu at a push-cart at India Gate. The insouciance, fostered by the distance that time imposes and nurtured by hate, is a thing to behold. Subsequently, a group of so-called seers came out in support of the act, a variety of commentators unequivocally condemned it and a tweet by TV personality Ravish Kumar implied — somewhat confusingly — that the faux murderers were the actual “anti-nationals” and their not being branded thus was a victory of Gandhian values.

Following a public outcry — given the glib relationship to Gandhian values nowadays, the depth of such feelings is difficult to determine — the police arrested some participants of this contemporary Danse Macabre. The Indian Penal Code’s provisions invoked for the purpose include those that deal with acts which promote “enmity between different groups”.

A recourse to legal procedure has thus been the response to acts that sullied the memories of two significant public figures. A discussion on the mindset behind Kharge’s comments or the processes that produce actions like those of the Hindu Mahasabha activists has been forestalled by the apparent salve of a police case.

Our public culture oscillates between hagiography and vilification. There is no middle ground upon which we can question the thoughts and ideas of our “great men”. We either raise them to saintliness or condemn them as pure evil — but do not explore their ideas in all their frailties. For Kharge, Bhupen Hazarika was a “mere” singer and singing does not carry a value that is equal to that represented by the life of a religious leader. For Hazarika’s followers, on the other hand, he is beyond questioning, a god-like figure whose divinity proscribes inquiry into his role as, say, a political figure. Kharge’s simplistic evaluation (a singer is too insubstantial a figure for the Bharat Ratna) is met by an equally uncritical response (anything but a deferential attitude towards Hazarika is an insult to an entire culture). Hazarika was a remarkable artist, but he was also a very significant figure within the 1960s and 1970s politics of “authentic” Assamese cultural identity, particularly in relation to “tribal” claims of the significance of their life-ways. We needed a debate about what we consider valuable human attributes and the complex nature of a public figure’s legacy. But all we are left with is a police case.