India the ban-capital of the democratic world

My desire to read University of Chicago scholar Wendy Doniger's book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, has been aroused.

Why? Because it's now banned in India.

Penguin India recently caved in to the demands of a Hindu Right Wing activist, Dinanath Batra that all copies of the book be destroyed because it allegedly misrepresents Hinduism from a deeply salacious point of view.

To allay fears that India is going the way of Hindu fascism, Batra said that he is not against alternative perspectives, it's just that there should be "guidelines" for expressing dissent. The octogenarian RSS is not aware, as so many of the old, semi-literate fogies of Indian politics and the Indian religious establishment are, that alternative and dissent mean flagration of "guidelines". 

Whether or not Hinduism has the DNA of real "dirty" sex embedded in it or not is moot; what's lamentable, as activist Arundhati Roy observes, is the fact that free speech has been censored in a country that prides itself on being the world's most populous democracy.

The censorship of the book comes in the heels of earlier censorships of books with religious and cultural content, like Joseph Lelyveld's The Great Soul, a biography of Gandhi. Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, who is poised to be India's next Premier, personally campaigned for a banning of the book because it had allegedly portrayed Gandhi as a "homosexual". Modi had also asked for a national ban of the book.

Two other books that have been banned in India are: Jitendra Bhargava's The Descent of Air India, and Tamal Bandophadyay's Sahara, The Untold Story.

Bhargava's book doesn't have any religious content, but it takes to task the dealings and the abuse of power of former aviation minister Praful Patel. Patel is accused of ruining the once-significant national carrier Air India.

Neither of these books have been banned, but both Patel and Subrata Roy, founder of Sahara Pariwar, the unscrupulous Indian conglomerate with holdings in every business imaginable, have slapped defamation suits worth crores of rupees in Indian courts. The defendants don't want to fight their battles in Indian courts when the plaintiffs are powerful and can bribe their way around the judiciary.

A timely reminder that freedom of speech is restricted in India and that citizens are not free to speak inconvenient truths or express opinions that unsettle the powers.

American democracy

When Alexis De Tocqueville praised American democracy in the 19th century, little did he anticipate the very same democracy would morph into a gallimaufry.

India and freedom: oxymoron?

I had wished "happy birthday" to a cousin of mine on Facebook.

I noticed that others had posted the same on his "wall".

But the birthday boy never thanked anybody back till very recently.

He said he had been in China and he wasn't able to access Facebook because "Facebook is banned in China."

The tone in which my cousin mentioned the fact of banning was normal, as though he were reporting the absence of bananas in Alaska.

My cousin's nonchalance in this matter didn't perturb me in and of itself. After all Indians are phlegmatic where the question of human rights violation, or threats to autonomy and freedom--abstract stuff like that--is concerned. But threaten the urban middle class with a ban on malls, then Indians would be up in arms.

What perturbed me was what the cousin said in conjunction with the "ban". He said that "China is a magnificent country."

How could a member of thriving democracy (then again, India is a poster child for democracy without being really democratic in any meaningful sense of the term) commit the sin of such a blatant oxymoron?

"Facebook is banned in China. China is a magnificent country." The utterance has two separate parts not joined by a "but" or "however" to highlight a contradiction. It's as though the observer were looking at two different parts in the same thing and is deaf and blind to the contradiction.

I'm not saying that my cousin is politically obtuse; it's just that he is being characteristically Indian in his observation of China. He notices the presence of Beijing's beauty--the gorgeous malls, the clean roads, the overall architectural splendor, cleanliness and efficiency. In this aesthetic and infrastructural sense, China is the obverse of India.

The beauty of China has obviously mesmerized the Indian visitor, as it had mesmerized the American visitors back in the day of the 2007 Beijing Olympics.

But the absence of freedom did not register as a significant lacunae in China's apparent perfection. He didn't express shock at the fact that Facebook is banned in China. Nay, he overrode the concern for freedom and democracy and a lack of both in China as frivolous and went on to tub thump about the nation's "magnificence."

I believe that Indians in general are comfortable living with violation. There are low and high level violations of all kinds everyday in India. Take freedom or rights away from Indians--they won't mind is my guess. But take the guarantee of a monthly wage away from them, they'll faint in horror. Trade security (of a monetary kind) with freedom and Indians will be un-protesting to the hilt.

In light of the recent power blackouts in large parts of India I noticed a queer sentiment among my Indian brethren (and sisterhood) on Facebook. Many were "fed up" with living under Indian governance, marked as it is by inefficiency and grave corruption. Some yearned for a recolonization of India. The argument was that Indians fared "better" under the British Raj.

Perhaps Indians don't quite care for freedom-"shreedom" and such non-material garbage.

What do they care for? I don't know; maybe a flat far removed from the stench and squalor of everyday Indian reality? To attain that they might be willing to forego freedom and many rights.

As my favorite fictional servant Balram Halwai had noted in The White Tiger, Indians are born to be ruled and if ever they are in the market looking for an invader/ruler, China would be the nation of choice.