Understanding Use Of Satire And Returning In Contemporary Politics In India
By Suraj Gogoi & Tony Kurian
14 December, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Satire and returning marks the political predicament in India today which is taken control by a right wing Government under the leadership of Narendra Modi. The various agents and agendas that are considered 'acceptable' gives us the current milieu of this nation-state. Contemporary forms of satire and acts of returning to our mind doesn't qualify under the widely used currency of 'political society'. The actors here—organizations and individuals—are fully aware of the boundaries and nuances of rights and citizenship. The recent developments are neither 'modern' nor 'indigenous'. It is rather a production due to conflict with the state and what it began to represent, promote, foster, support and endorses. People began to draw and share their opinions. Politics of dissent was expressed through cartoons—like the great cartoonists Henry Low and Thomas Nast taught us. Cartoons became a more powerful weapon than an article to fight killing of rationalist, caste violence, harassing social activists and so on. However, undeniably, returning has taken centre stage in contemporary India to express protest. Question here to be asked—are matter and manner of returning the same; if yes how and if no why? A related question is why did satire and returning emerge to our political centre stage at a particular moment?
The travel of satire
As soon as Modi became the Prime Minister there was a looming crisis over the curtailing of speech from within the party and outside. Although the changes that the Modi government would bring into various spheres of life and politics was already imagined, but soon people witnessed the execution. We had burning down of archives, ban and attack on food habits, the shameless act of killing rationalist to harassing of activists. Such was the colour of violence that many voices faded to this tide. However, amidst this violence we saw an increase of protest from various spears—activist, academicians, film makers, students, everyday civil society and so on. These protests witnessed a resounding use of satire to express dissent. From social media platforms like newspapers, magazines, blogs, face book, WhatsApp, paintings, cartoons platforms and so on, satire became an act of political resistance to the power structure that has come to rule the country and imposing a dominant Hindu way of life to the Hindu and Non-Hindu alike. Satire became an everydayness to the political climate of India. This grand use of satire is un-witnessed in the history of politics of the sub-continent.
The unity of satire establishes a discourse which has become more efficient in the age of technology. Satire often targets certain ideas, actions, individuals. So at a very primary level it is the availability of such bodies and things that makes satire possible. India is lucky to have witnessed the various colours and 'unfailing criticism' of its politics through R K Lakshman and his contemporaries. However satire transcends public intellectuals. It is a intellectual space which is even more powerful than the ideas of intellectuals who reflect on our everydayness. The debate raised by Romila Thapar on intellectuals is unable to foresee satire as a space which has its own history. Satire is like language which accommodates any kind of ideology as we saw with the case of the Nazis.
The event of returning: is it dissent, rebellion or heresy?
Social scientist Paul Root Wolpe in analyzing the difficulties faced in different professions makes an important distinction between dissent, rebellion, and heresy. This framework can be very useful to understand the acts of returning and other forms of protests that has been initiated in India. Dissent, he explains, is when one is a believer in the method of gaining knowledge but argues for a different cause for a certain problem at hand. For instance HIV doesn't cause cancer. On the other hand a church agreeing for homosexual marriage can qualify as a rebellion for it questions the authority structures of the profession. Heresy on the other hand, according to Wolpe, is a much more radical position where one challenges the central values of the orthodoxy and also further evaluates the claims. Using this we can categorize what does the many faces of returning bear.
Returning has created new avenues for political expressions. As a group act returning has come out as a very powerful tool to express the unjust and lack of freedom. It has caught the attention and limelight in the right manner. Returning has two dimensions to it. On one hand, it signifies giving up certain privileges which the collective bestowed on individual. On the other hand, it is by giving up the same privilege the individual attempt to be a part of the collective and performs a political art. Returning has also triggered a debate in various quarters. The act of returning encompasses the returners and non-returners alike. It has also brought to notice of the political lineages of individuals who until now seemed quite. The act of returning and the voices that have come in support or solidarity towards it are seen as 'insult' to the nation-state. It has in a way shown us how a nation is thought to be and how minimal of self-criticism a nation can take. It also shows how un-democratic a country India is and our politics is when Raj Thackrey(leader of a regional political party) threatens to kill someone if the individual in question voices about 'intolerance'. It is unfortunate how such remarks are seen as healthy by people like Anupam Kher (a prominent film actor).
To argue that all individuals who participated in the saga of returning belong to one political class is a blindness of insight. These individuals come from multiple positions having a shared concern for the collective. In other words returning can be treated as a solidarity against the growing intolerance. Solidarity against a just cause is nothing wrong though it gets increasingly difficult to undermine the past, caste location and social capital one share for many in today's world. In doing so we are trying to undermine the very basis of solidarity. The availability of solidarity should be seen as a healthy political environment against all the growing intolerance towards something as basic as food. As 'tolerance' has different meanings attached to it if we look at the history of colonialism, returning and its related debate that it has generated can be seen as an event that transcends the boundaries of the political.
Tony Kurian, Research Scholar, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences , Suraj Gogoi, Research Scholar at Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics