Advaita Kala

Kanchan Gupta is quick to tell me that he isn’t interested in a misery narrative or victimhood. His tweets from the night before which prompted our conversation were composed as a response to the rampant hypocrisy he perceived when it came to the debate on freedom of expression. Its many torch bearers, who he declines to name, have run a parallel campaign to silence him and others in the past.

It was an important disclosure, the intention behind this tweet may be attributed to political motive or “whataboutery” by critics but what it also underscores are the fault lines that lie within, that have prompted or dissuaded selective outrage and in the end compromised the larger fight for freedom of expression in India. What remains unstated in the larger debate about FOE is the point that this is above all the clash of establishments of differing ideology – one entrenched over decades and used to being unchallenged in its ecosystem and the other a majority government, insulated as well by its mandate. That they challenge each other’s insulation via a debate on freedom of expression makes for interesting sport.

The opposition unable to get a grip on national discourse because of its greatly compromised term in office has grabbed the intolerance narrative and made this about a higher moral cause, one that all Indians can unite under forgetting past transgressions. What the Congress fails to notice or rather overlooks is that it makes for a very dubious champion of freedom of expression, its own decades in power having led to a string of free speech suppressions and the infamous Emergency – a blot far more difficult to wash off than an ink stain. But never mind that, politics is about opportunism and every party may be accused of that.

But back to Kanchan Gupta, who at 34 quit the Pioneer newspaper following a phone call from Vincent George (then PA to Sonia Gandhi) to his Executive Editor at the time (over his article Ram Rajya vs Rome Rajya). His sudden decision left him without a job, salary, house and phone. A tad bit impulsive? Maybe. But Gupta couldn’t get himself to work for someone who was reduced to “a jelly fish after a phone call from a politician’s P.A.”. But when did this swing to the right start for him? What left him looking for a job at a critical point in his career? Like with all stories, there is a first act, one that began with the well meaning and benign intention of finding a way to balance the narrative, provide another perspective. This was not about a journalist championing a political ideology but about reportage that looked at all angles.

Gupta believes it was the Taslima Nasreen book ban that set him on the “right” path of perception. At the time under the able stewardship of Vinod Mehta, Gupta the Deputy Editor of the paper was asked about Lajja, the book that was in trouble in Bangladesh. It’s author, Taslima Nasreen used to write a column in Anandbazar Patrika and was known to Bengali readers but not beyond. Gupta wasn’t sure there was a story here, but asked their Bangladeshi correspondent to source the book which wasn’t available in India. In the interim, the book was banned and a xerox copy was couriered to Gupta, who took it to his editor and asked what he should do with it. Mehta, a man who reserved his right to offend all, asked Kanchan Gupta to read the book and translate the portions that had led to violent protests in Bangladesh. And so it happened. The response from the commentariat, literary and academic establishment, the group that Gupta refers to only half jokingly as the “IIC bunch” was instantaneous. “This was provocative”. “It was unnecessary to publish these sections”, etc etc were the arguments from the established champions of free expression. Mehta who received most of the indignation responded pithily with a “bugger off” or something like that. But what also happened, Gupta tells me is that his byline got the tag of a “trouble maker”.

His subsequent writing was on the radar, his positions on contentious issues attributed to a right wing political stand. His notoriety amongst the fraternity grew. After Ayodhya in December 1992, people who welcomed him to their table at the Press Club, started to look away and huddle together, avoiding eye contact. To be seen with him was to subscribe to his views. The intangible intolerance that is spoken of today was around then as well. Gupta calls this apartheid. It reached work. One morning, he walked into his cubicle to see a sticker plastered on the wall that said something like, “Press is for all but not open to all”. He admits it pushed him into a corner, but also strengthened his resolve to stand firm, no matter how unpopular his views might be. And at the time they were. He was going to challenge the establishment in government and in the world of letters. So he got labelled a right wing writer. The writing continued, the skirmishes followed.

Post the Babri Masjid demolition in December of 92-93, a petition was started requesting his editor to stop publishing his writings. Vinod Mehta consigned the type written and signed petition to where it belonged – the dust bin. But the few who had refused to sign the petition told Gupta about it and many of the signatories on that petition are the ones championing free expression in the present day. It is the hypocrisy that gets him, that prevents him from taking the protests seriously. The nature of power (irrespective of ideology) is to combat free expression. But it is this “ideological selection” that drives dissent, which compromises it far more than any democratically elected government ever could.

Whilst writers can and often are political – the cluster around one end of the spectrum is beguiling in an area of work that is about enquiry and challenging the establishment. The revolt so evident today, has found its tenor because the establishment i.e. the government today is contrary to the dominant ideological position in the literary and art world, even though there have been grave and equally provocative transgressions in the past.

But then why blame individual writer, question their motivations for returning awards? Hasn’t the government been too involved in the arts and hence politicised every institution, making even principles like free expression partisan issues? Gupta says that in any country in the formative stages of democracy, arts and literature cannot flourish without state patronage, especially in a country where if you were not an engineer or a doctor your future prospects were limited. Being an artist or a writer was impossible without the state playing provider. As a result there was gravitation to a particular ideological position. It was a cover, one that opened doors. The writers’ response today cannot be viewed in isolation from sustained state patronage, now denied or at risk at the very least. He takes it further and says, “Over the decades the arts and history have become captive to whoever controls the state. Not only the Akademis but even ICHR should be disbanded. The state should neither reward darbari writers and artists, nor sponsor the writing of history.”

As for being labelled a right wing journalist today? Gupta says it’s a lot easier, there are more jobs and one can hop professions, maybe even be a travel writer. It is a telling last comment from a seasoned “trouble maker”, should the tide turn politically, the “right wing” journalist can be assured that an alternative reporting beat will be the answer. The “other side” does not adjust quite as readily to contrarian voices.

Disclaimer:The views expressed above are the author’s own