5/16/2014 Sensex and sensibility - The Hindu

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Opinion Lead
Published: May 16, 2014 03:02 IST | Updated: May 16, 2014 03:02 IST
Sensex and sensibility
Peter Ronald deSouza
The issue of sensibility should be at the top of the new governments agenda because its attitude to freedom of expression will
determine whether it is truly committed to the wonder that is India
The giddy rise in the Sensex is a measure of the anticipation that has gripped the country. Pundits have forecast a
stable government and those who know better are predicting a period of growing prosperity. In such a period when
reading the tea leaves is the prevailing fashion, let me add my own forecast to the many already on the table. I predict
that the first test of the new government will not be in the area of public finance, or on the policies for economic
growth, since measures that are to be taken to reboot the economy have already been identified, but will be on
developing a policy framework on sensibility. The first test will not be on Sensex but on sensibility.
Indias essential pluralism
Let me explain. The new government will have to very soon pass what I shall call the A.K. Ramanujan test. This is a
simple test based on just two articles that A.K. Ramanujan wrote on which the new government must take a stand.
The first is: Is there an Indian way of thinking? For many members of the new government, the title would be enough
reason for their cultural nationalism to be invoked. Of course there is an Indian way of thinking. Of course it is this
thinking that makes us, as a people, superior to others because we have over millennia evolved a way of
conceptualising our cosmos, and of our place in it, our Dharma shastras, that have been the basis of our grand
civilisation. It is this Indian way of thinking, it is argued, that has produced the great Mahabharata and the Natya
Shastra. This, Ramanujan would accept. But his position is more complex and more subtle than a superficial reading
of the title may suggest, since he argues against a simple universalism, showing how, time, place, and community are
all factors that qualify the moral law. The dharmic injunction is thus for anyone a combination of the universal and
the contextual. Our challenge, therefore, is to identify the reasons why a particular combination is both relevant and
right. Ramanujans reading serves as a powerful defence of the diversity of India, of the essential pluralism which is at
the heart of Indian civilisation.
A stand on heterodoxy
Which brings me to the second article: Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on
Translation. If the Indian way of thinking is right then we as a society have produced 300 Ramayanas. What will be
the new governments stand on A.K. Ramanajuns second essay? I have raised the core issue of a governments attitude
to sensibility because I anticipate that in the next few months we are going to see all the little hecklers who have
shown their faces in the last few years demanding censorship of books, articles, cartoons, paintings, plays, films,
photographs, a music band, discos, film songs, and even casual remarks about premarital sex come out of the
woodwork. Textbooks will come under scrutiny. Cultural organisations will face protest. Art works will be vandalised.
Universities will develop a moral police and self-censorship will grow. All in the service of restoring the glory of Indian
civilisation from the depradations of pseudo-secularism. The censors, both political and social, will demand forms of
expression that do not offend. Sections of the IPC, 295A and also 153A will be used to silence expression that self-
styled protectors of Indian civilisation find objectionable. Aubrey Menen faced it in 1956. Salman Rushdie in 1988.
Wendy Doniger in 2014.
I have placed the issue of sensibility at the top of the new governments agenda because its attitude to freedom of
expression will determine whether it is truly committed to the wonder that is India. Let not the professions of loyalty
to Bharat Mata, by the hecklers demanding censorship, deceive us. The truly loyal are those who appreciate the six
schools of Indian philosophy, who see not just the Brahmana but also the Sramana traditions, the Sufi and the
Bhakti movements, the Syrian orthodox practices and the metaphysics of Kashmiri Shaivism, as part of our culture.
The list of what is to be included is too long to be presented here. But it must be noted that they are all a part of
Indian culture. Faizs lamentations and Tulsidas prayers are as much a part of our tradition as Periyars scepticism.
The new government will have to take a stand on such heterodoxy. Sensibility, as an aesthetic disposition, as a culture
of appreciation of the diverse forms of cultural life, is what the new government will have to nurture and protect.
5/16/2014 Sensex and sensibility - The Hindu
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Sensibility has to become a treasured national resource for the new age. Sensibility sustains society more than the
Sensex. Man truly does not live by bread alone. We ignore this basic truth at our own peril.
The signs of the last few years are not encouraging. Lest the last three sentences are seen as being too rhetorical, more
political bluster than philosophical depth, let me get scholars whose scholarship on Indian philosophy and culture is
unquestionable to echo my views. I quote from the introduction of the first volume of the 20 volume series on History
of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, whose General Editor Professor D.P. Chattopadhyaya sets
out the seven principles for inclusion of articles in the encyclopedic project. Elaborating on the second principle he
states, we try to show the linkages between different branches of learning as different modes of experience in an
organic manner and without resorting to a kind of reductionism, materialistic or spiritualistic. The internal dialectics
of organicism without reductionism allows fuzziness, discontinuity and discreteness within limits. Organic evolution,
no reductionism, fuzziness, and discontinuity, all keywords that lead Indias intellectual life into a comfortable
heterodoxy.
Freedom of expression conflicts
I mention this authoritative scholarship because I see the censors reappearing. Fortunately we have a new Chief
Justice of India who has assumed office just as the new government will take its oath. In one of the first decisions of
his term in office, he has recommended for elevation to the Supreme Court two outstanding senior advocates and ex-
solicitors general of India. The Court is where the emerging Freedom of Expression (FoE) conflicts will have to be
decided and direction given on the core principles of Indias constitutional democracy. If Indian civilisation is as
plural as scholarship suggests, and if this plurality grows because of non-reductionism and organic evolution, and if
we are to be enriched by the great dissenting traditions such as Buddhism, and if we are to nurture, for our
civilisational benefit, some present day Carvakas, then the court must move beyond seeing FoE disputes only
through IPC 295A and 153A and read them through 19(1)(a) and 19(2) of the Constitution. We need a new
jurisprudence for a vibrant India and such jurisprudence must be a friend of FoE.
Democratic societies across the world have produced impressive case law on FoE, the most extensive being the United
States where in defence of the first amendment fine distinctions have been made on content, intent, place, procedure,
offence, etc, of hate speech. The Court has to go beyond asking for a report from the Law Commission on hate speech
and be prepared to see FoE as part of basic structure. It must be prepared to act suo motu. We need to build first
amendment type case law in India. We need to do so urgently. Soli Sorabjee, in an article titled Freedom of
Expression and Censorship: Some Aspects of the Indian Experience, published in the Northern Ireland Legal
Quarterly of 1994, concludes with the words of Madison endorsed by the SCI that it is better to leave a few of its
noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding proper
fruits.
Which brings me back to the point that the new government must develop a policy on sensibility. If they fail the A.K.
Ramanujan test then, as good Indians, we will give them a retest. And always in such cases the retest will be more
difficult.
They will then have to pass a Namdeo Dhasal test.
(Peter Ronald deSouza is professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.)
Keywords: Lok Sabha Elections 2014, Sensex election rally, pluralism in India, freedom of
expression, secularism, Indian Constitution, Wendy Doniger Ramayana syllabus row, A.K. Ramanujan, Three
Hundred Ramayanas
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