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Next Ban on
Ramayana?
WSN Network
 India's
right wing ultra-nationalist party, BJP, known for cultural
terrorism, has now gone a step further and its Chhattisgarh
provincial government has banned Charandas Chor (Charandas the
Thief), the iconic play by the late Habib Tanvir.
The action came
after a demand by Satnami Dalit community leader Baldas to prohibit
Habib's satirical work he claimed he felt that the play insults the
Satnami community's religious idol Guru Ghasidas.
Tanvir's play,
based on the classic folk tale narrated by Rajasthani writer
Vijaydan Detha, deals in the absurdist tradition with the
impossibility of being truthful.
The adventures
of Charandas, a petty thief with a heart of gold, is a darkly comic
take on human nature. But then, Mr Baldas thinks otherwise and
believes -- 34 years after Tanvir first produced his play -- that
the playwright was calling all Satnami Dalits thieves.
In a satirical
editorial hauling the BJP government over coals, the Hindustan Times
said tomorrow there may be demands on the Ramayana "simply because
Valmiki is described as starting off as a bandit (Ratnakar) and thus
tarring all members of the Kirata Bhil community? A ban on Dante
Alighieri's The Divine Comedy because the Muslim Prophet is
described amid uncomfortable settings? A ban on Munshi Premchand's
short story Shatranj ke Khilari (The Chess Players) because it
showcases Awadhis as effete softies?"
If the
Chhattisgarh government can ban the great literary work of Padma
Bhushan Habib Tanvir, a giant of Indian theatre, what chance do
lesser writers have of writing freely and growing as creative
forces? Someone or the other always gets piqued by some book or the
other. And governments here comply without a murmur. The truth is
India, with its cottage industry-demographic understanding of art
and literature, doesn't deserve its great writers. What it
celebrates is being the paradise for pen-pushers.
27
May 2009
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