SHIVANI MOHAN

India has become the Republic of Hurt Sentiments. We have lost all sense of humour. Suddenly we are a bunch of snappy, grouchy twitter-critters and karmic killjoys.Gone are the days when some self-deprecating humour could break the ice in our multi-cultural milieu. You could get away with calling your Bengali friends Babumoshais, anyone South of Vindhyas, a Madrasi. And a few Santa Banta or Bawa jokes did not hurt anybody. But not a day goes by these days, without some individual, group, morcha, sangh or political party raising objection to some book, film, song, music, cartoon, article or idea. There is no dearth of agendas - religious, political, socio-cultural, economic, casteist, racial. Are we really taking ourselves too seriously?We have always been a multi-cultural society. A secular state with diverse languages, religions and races. Did cultural and intellectual prejudices always exist but were kept in rein earlier? Or have we suddenly woken up to our inherent differences a few decades into this democratic marriage? A vigilant print and electronic media and an uninhibited social media discourse have ensured better awareness and domino effect. Trolling in real life is the new sadism. Filing litigation, the new claim to fame. Add to this the age-old Indian vote bank politics, and it is a heady, petty cocktail to whomovedmysentiments-land!Noted American columnist Tom Friedman recently observed, “India has a weak central government but strong civil society, bubbling with elections & associations at every level.”Our society is also bubbling with a new rudderless vengeance and depleted patience. Shahrukh Khan wrote a harmless and rather honest article on what it means to be an Indian Muslim. But soon all Hindutva brigade-ists were up in arms asking for an apology.Kamal Haasan has had a harrowing time getting his film Vishwaroopam released in his home state due to objections by some local Muslim groups while many other neighbouring states with higher percentage of Muslims ran the movie to packed houses. In neighbouring Karnataka, however, the police demanded that an art gallery remove partially nude pictures of Hindu deities made by a young artist Anirudh Krishnamani, lest they hurt Hindu sentiments. Most art lovers in India still lament over how one of India’s most prolific artistes, M F Hussain was forced to leave India due to protests over some of his paintings and later even died overseas.At the Jaipur Literature Festival this year, Ashis Nandi, a renowned sociologist, in a session called ‘Republic of Ideas’ made comments about deep rooted corruption in all strata of society in India. Pat came Dalits slamming on him charges under Prevention of Atrocities Act. A representative of the community declared on national television that Nandy’s statements implicated Dalits as corrupt people, intolerant and with no sense of humour!Earlier in November, two young girls had been arrested (later released) for simply writing and liking a Facebook status update criticising a public holiday being declared for Shiv Sena supremo, Balasaheb Thakeray’s death.We’re almost forcing our artistes, actors and intellectuals into silence. Somewhere amidst this daily brouhaha, we are losing sight of the real issues. We are a country with divergent views for trivia but no solution for the big picture called India. We are a country that allows people like Akbaruddin Owaisi and Praveen Togadia to spout vitriol openly but cannot protect three young girls who want to write poetry of humanity and sing sufi songs. We are a country of a-dime-a-dozen custodians of tradition, but no route map to preserving it.There are new terms being coined by the dozen- cultural terrorism, cultural emergency. We are a billion people with different languages, religions, sensibilities. Have we reached a stage where we cannot coexist anymore?As the rich, tolerant culture of India dies a notch every day, people have made careers out of appearing on heated TV news hour debates with prosthetic frowns and belligerent vocals. The bitter truth is that India’s rich diversity is putty in the hands of these vested interests, forever to be milked for personal one-upmanship and malicious media mileage, which brings me to news of cows of Haryana and Punjab protesting at an event recently against Narendra Modi’s claims that all of Delhi drinks milk procured only from Gujarat.Phew, India you never cease to amuse me!Shivani Mohan is a Delhi based freelance journalist.                         –Khaleej Times