Writers and artists enrich our lives with their work and change us in ways that are difficult to comprehend. But there has been a systematic and unabated surge in vitriol against writers, public intellectuals, artists and historians who have stood up, resisted political forces and have an unshakeable belief in values and ethics that are a part of their being.
The Constitution of India is now being read out in the open. It is fashionable to be seen on the right side of the protests. The idea of India as enshrined in the constitution is now being held up as a last resort for the country to have any semblance of peace and harmony.
A number of Indian writers, including Arundhati Roy, Devdutt Pattanaik and Ramachandra Guha, have once again asserted that there is an attempt to "break the back of our Constitution" and have spoken out against the Citizenship Amendment Act.?
Some of the writers, including Pattanaik, also criticised the police crackdown against students protesting against the law in Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University.
Amidst protests across the country, writer-activist Arundhati Roy compared the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) with the "1935 Nuremberg Laws of the Third Reich" and appealed to people to "stand up".
Mythologist Pattanaik suggested politicians "who never went to college" should not give advice on student activities. In a series of tweets, historian Ramachandra Guha reiterated Mahatma Gandhi's vow in 1919, in which he had asked his compatriots, Hindus and Muslims, to behave like children of the same parents.
This, however, is not something that began a week or a month ago. Artists have used the same set of rules and ideology that shapes our nation to voice dissent, and mirror the happenings in society with their works.?
A democracy allows freedom of expression and right to dissent, several creative practitioners customarily express their views against the ruling establishments in their countries. For example, when US president-elect Donald Trump was preparing for his swearing-in, celebrated American poet Anne Waldman described the event as a ¡°drunken dark show¡± during her address at Jaipur Literature Festival in India.? It is a right that everybody is granted in democracies around the world.?
In 2015, deep anguish rushed through creative corridors of India as rationalists MM Kalburgi, Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar were murdered for clinging on to their views.In between the period leading up to now, quite a few similar incidents of direct attack on creative practitioners surfaced.?
These included the hounding of Tamil novelist Perumal Murugan by Hindutva elements, the brutal murder of firebrand journalist Gauri Lankesh, the attempts to silence Malayalam novelist S Hareesh and Goa's award-winning writer, Damodar Mauzo, among others.?
Writers from across the country and languages came together to protest against the killings of Kalburgi, Pansare and Dabholkar in 2015. The movement that later came to be known as the ¡®awardwapsi¡¯ campaign involved the returning of prestigious state honours, such as the Sahitya Akademi and the National Awards. Headlined by heavyweights such as Nayantara Sahgal and Ashok Vajpeyi, the protest also garnered support from scientists and some filmmakers.?
Noted poet and writer Keki Daruwalla, who marched to the Sahitya Akademi building in National Capital with black bands on his wrists and across his mouth to signify the silencing of writers observed that artists are very lonely creatures, and that he was returning his award because he thought it was the only thing he could throwback to express his sentiment at the turn of events.?
As assaults on creative freedom and subjugation of fundamental rights became increasingly evident, more and more writers from India joined the chorus and expressed their disenchantment in a number of ways. While their public addresses and petitions were what met the common eye, books became their most powerful weapon to express dissent.
Gauri Lankesh¡¯s former husband Chidanand Rajghatta penned a book in her memory: "Illiberal India: Gauri Lankesh and the Age of Unreason", highlighting the life of the veteran journalist. The book pointed to the void that had been created since she was slain.
At a time when demonisation of Mughal emperors became fashionable with the renaming of roads, cities and railway stations, some books showed how much of the venom being spewed relied on little historical evidence. Similarly, while the ruling dispensation relished in criticising Jawaharlal Nehru, the writing community presented evidence and historical records to suggest otherwise.?
The arrival of social media and digital technology has changed our lives forever. Some argue that it has marked the onset of the post-truth era and one finds reason to believe in the argument after looking at the manner in which leading Indian authors and artistes were demonised for simply holding on to their views.?
Reputed historian Romila Thapar is among those who became the target of vicious right-wing trolls who are out to spread their own version of history. The difference is that Thapar is a professional historian of international repute whereas her trolls have been fed on a diet of misinformation and propaganda.??
If it doesn¡¯t seem to overly bother her, it is because she gives her reasons and shreds of evidence in her works and believes that it is up to the readers to either accept her assertions or reject them.
Similarly, historian Ramachandra Guha, who has written monumental works on Mahatma Gandhi, and has spent numerous years reading and researching on the life of Gandhi, also became a target of vicious trolls. Guha¡¯s prime assertion in the contemporary context remains that the ruling party BJP and its ideological parent RSS are viciously opposed to Gandhi in principle even if they celebrate him in words.?
So an overall atmosphere was built to suggest that writers and creative practitioners who opposed the ruling establishment were members of the so-called ¡°Khan Market Gang¡± -- the liberal elites. Others were called ¡°anti-nationals¡±.?
But they went on with their works, asserting their views and writing good books.?
In retrospect, all the fears and warnings that the writers and artists had been repeating over the years have now come true as the nation has been set ablaze in the wake of a controversial law that many regard as an assault on the Indian Constitution. The streets of Assam and the rest of India have been taken over by people who are reading and re-reading excerpts from the Constitution of India. It was this same ¡°holy book¡± that the writers had been clinging on to while they were marching in protest against the Sahitya Akademi, or when they were calling for freedom of speech and expression in the country.?
As the nation boils, many hearts are broken. India¡¯s vulnerable students became the target of a brutal assault by Delhi Police to curb protests. The shocking images and visuals that have surfaced from the premises of Jamia Millia Islamia this week will haunt most Indians for many years and decades to come.?
But it¡¯s also worth contemplating and asking ourselves, wasn¡¯t this what India¡¯s writers and artists had been repeatedly warning the country¡¯s people about???