SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Present Imperfect

So, did you see the opening day of Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings on CNN? I watched Ken Starr make his statement and, as expected, thought he was absolutely justified. But, that the American people choose to lay all the sins at his doorstep in order to let the president off the hook, doesn't surprise me one bit. They've displayed this kind of hypocrisy before, during that other famous trial -- O J Simpson's.

Only, at that time, it was the African-American community which defended the one in the docks, while all others protested against the jury's verdict. The offences of the accused don't even begin to compare. However, the -- subliminal or deliberate -- mindsets of the people do: Just as OJ was deemed innocent by his community, Clinton is ruled to be inculpable by prospering America. You see, evidence never matters. Only self-interest does.

But why'm I writing about the US when there's an election due in India? Right, sometimes my mind makes strange connections. For instance, when one of my friends called my last article, Pulp friction, "rambling," I was quite taken aback. *I* saw a single thread (ie, propaganda in place of undeviating reportage) holding it together. Just as now I see a link between the American polity and the Indian situation...

This election, like the last many elections, is not about politicians' integrity: Just as Americans don't see the bearing of Clinton's perjury and "private life" (which now includes extramarital fellatio in the Oval Office) on his presidentship, so also will Indians cast their votes for the patently corrupt. This election, like the last few, is only about the will of the minorities: Just as OJ received the support of blacks, so also will "secular" Mulayam and the Shroud of Turin garner votes...

But, at least for now, I don't wish to get into a Mani Shankar-Venkaiah Naidu-like tu-tu-main-main. I want to discuss two articles published on November 19; one written by Farrukh Dhondy, the Pune-born author, playwright, and producer for a television channel in London; and the other by Edward Zwick, Californian film producer/writer/director. It was an eerie coincidence, for the impeachment affair had me musing along a particular line -- and two people from different backgrounds and continents, with different stimuli, wrote on different subjects -- while echoing the gist of my thoughts.

Dhondy writes about the late Stokely Carmichael, Black Power leader, before noting his own experience with the British black community during his production of a controversial programme for Channel 4's Current Affairs. The episode investigated gangs of black youth, some of them under-teens, "who have created a new statistic in the last few years: juvenile gang rape." It consisted of a documentary with re-enacted criminal trials and interviews with social workers, police and court officials, followed by a discussion with black panellists.

The panel "began by reacting very strongly to the *fact* (emphasis, his) of the documentary. It was untrue, sensational, scientifically suspect, part of a white conspiracy to undermine the black community and ferment racial hatred, an old stereotype,' a new 'stereotype' and the work of Satan himself. Gut reactions. Ten minutes later, some way into the discussion, most of these black panellists began to agree... they admitted that the phenomenon existed. Beyond this, they had nothing to say... (Chairman) Darcus tried sociology, history, philosophy, anecdote. There came no reply but the cliched echo of racism. One panellist said the programme should have been made by a black team and then she would have trusted its research..."

Dhondy's conclusion? "While a few hundred thousand people in the black communities have proceeded without travail to set about learning, doing, owning and operating things, there has arisen, precisely because the liberality of Britain bent backwards in self-chastisement and guilt, an industry around race. It is a parasitic industry, paid for by the state, recognised and encouraged by the great and the good such as the BBC and the Guardian, whose credo is to cry 'racism' as a reflex and a defence, as the deflective mask which hides the depths of its own ignorance."

Edward Zwick, OTOH, writes about how his last thriller, The Siege, which depicts Islamic terrorists attacking the US, suffered from the activism of the American-Arab Anti-Discriminatory Committee. The group sent letters to every media outlet, stating that the film was "insidious, incendiary and dangerous." Even though members of the group who actually saw the film privately told Zwick that they were moved by it, "the organisation's official position has been to attack it as promoting stereotypes."

Zwick writes: "Any portrayal of the life of Muslims that includes representations of violence, no matter how well documented, is not only offensive, but also inflammatory. Forget the World Trade Center and the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; their position, simply put, is that all one billion Islamic people in the world can be portrayed only in their most positive aspect... (The) time-honoured expression of the insecurity of any new immigrant group, so worried about the pains of acculturalisation... is, I am afraid, finally as reductionist and disrespectful as the imputed offenses that it protests... These days, it seems, people wake up in the morning not only waiting to be offended, but also hoping to be offended. Central to any multicultural orthodoxy is the notion that, unless you are offended, you have no ontology."

And then he summarises exactly what flashes through my mind when some pinkbutt with a broken link between his eyes and brain says that Bhosle promotes hate and should comment only on the glitterati: "Movies about aliens and asteroids cannot offend anybody, but neither do they try to hold up a mirror to unattractive aspects of our country. And the truth sometimes hurts... To shrink from any subject because it is hurtful or politically incorrect, or Islamically incorrect, is to deny one of the most important function of art, which is to be provocative. So, I'm sorry I offend anyone. But I'm really not." Way to go!

So here I am, having jumped from Clinton to OJ to Dhondy to Zwick... Do you see the thread? It's the blindness to ground realities, the instinct to deny facts because they are uncomfortable.

Point to note: Dhondy is himself from a minority community -- both, in India and Britain -- and has belonged to the Black Theatre Co-op. Too, from his opus, I gauge that he's what Indians call "secular" (though in my opinion, that's an insult to him). While I know nil about Zwick, he's as "fundie" as moi -- as evinced by his lines: "The film makes clear that even in the fight against vicious and committed enemies, the ends, if they include the deprivation of civil liberties to any group, can never justify the means." Go figure.

It's obvious, the impetus for both gentlemen having chosen to take on the minority communities is disgust at the venality of the minority approach to reason. It's something I well understand...

It's true that minorities everywhere require special protective laws. But it's equally true that an overextending of concessions engenders a mentality which not only keeps asking for more, but considers that a God-given right. It finally makes a mockery of Equality...

So we have the TADA scrapped, state funding for trips to Mecca -- but not for Amarnath, demands for reservations on religious grounds, the rejection of Vande Mataram, the rebuffing of a common civil code, allegations of communal harassment at instances of plain crime, the banning of The Satanic Verses -- but not The Moor's Last Sigh, state salaries for imams -- but not for pandits, the preservation of illegal immigrants, the call to Khilafat, the ignoring of forced conversions, the refusal to yield a single derelict mosque, the Muslim League acceptable -- but not the Hindu Mahasabha, the distortion of history... the list goes on and on.

Like all vibrant communities, the Indian Muslim one is diverse and divided against itself -- politically, religiously and socially. Problem is, with all this fostering of imagined insecurities, it has fallen prey to the dangers of ethnic stereotyping and sloganeering. The UCC and Vande Mataram controversies are classic examples of what happens when stereotypes are played out to disastrous effect. There's no question of beginning a dialogue on the cloudy legal landscape between personal rights and the public interest.

Then there's the Pan-Islamic identity -- which has Mullah Mulayam asking for Rs 2 crores to be gifted to Pakistan. Or, a Patralekha Chatterjee who echoes: "the only sensible thing that India can do is to alleviate Bangladesh's poverty through aid and investment"; and, on the RSS asking citizens to report illegals: "the recipe is tantamount to creating an atmosphere similar to that prevailing in Nazi Germany."

In truth, I feel sorry for Muslims -- it's the "secularists" who raise my bile each time: These great and good who bend backwards in self-chastisement and guilt; whose credo it is to cry "Hindutva" as a reflex and a defence, as the deflective mask which hides the depths of their own fetid ignorance; who encourage the parasitic industry around communalism. For it's they who've created Democracy by calculator.

By what right does this gutter-life hold forth on evil Hindutva...? If there were no Congress-sponsored extraneous concessions to Muslims, there would've been no resentment in Hindus like me. No resentment -- no divide. No divide -- no Hindu vote bank. No Hindu vote bank -- no BJP! Secularists have NO excuse for their lead role in destroying the commonalty of India. They leave one with no choice but to forge ahead with aggression. So, I'm sorry if I offend anyone. But you must be nuts to believe I really am.

How Readers responded to Varsha Bhosle's earlier columns

Varsha Bhosle