04 November 2012, 02:35 PM IST
I cannot say I entirely agree with Girish Karnad's views on VS Naipaul, as he expressed them at a Mumbai litfest last friday but I am surprised by the outrage it has provoked. Many have disapproved of what he said because he said it in a forum that had just given Naipaul the Lifetime Achievement Award and had actually invited Karnad to speak on an entirely different subject, his life in theatre. But when you invite someone of Karnad's eminence to speak on a platform, any platform, you must be prepared for him to stray and address other issues bothering him. And Karnad appears to be seriously bothered by the paeans we sing to Naipaul who we have appropriated as an Indian author even though he has never really claimed to be one.
Naipaul's love for India, on those rare, very rare occasions that he does demonstrate it, has been dedicated to his vision of a great Hindu nation corrupted over the centuries by conquering Muslim hordes. He dreams of a great Hindu revival, which is fine with me, I do too at times, but his dreams are all peppered with weird nightmares about Islam. No wonder one of the first things he did on winning the Nobel Prize was to come here and visit the BJP office. As Karnad rather eloquently pointed out, the man who once declared he was not political because he refused to be ideologically programmed, now declaims how Ayodhya was an act of great creative passion and allows himself to be a brand ambassador of the political right. No wonder Rushdie called him a disgrace to the Nobel Prize.
But this is not about Naipaul's politics. Nor is it about Karnad's distaste for a writer who the world calls one of the finest, even though he is a crotchety old bore because there is little that Naipaul actually likes about anything at all. He has made an entire literary career out of his enormous dislikes. I cannot say I am surprised he won the Nobel Prize because the West loves writers who disrespect them and Naipaul goes a step further. He disrespects everyone and everything, a perfect reason to win all awards. What I do like however is the way Karnad sliced him. Writers must do this more often. Seize every opportunity to attack what they see as wrong, immoral, unjust and even plain rubbish that needs to be put down.
It disturbs me that most of us shy away from doing this. It's escapist and irresponsible. Writers, artists, actors, musicians are the conscience of a nation. It's shameful to see them queuing up behind the political establishment and parroting inanities in an environment getting seriously noxious. As a result, you will notice that a large number of our national awards every year go to sycophants and bootlickers, not to real talent. Real talent only gets recognised in the autumn of their lives when it's no longer possible to ignore them.
You know there's a serious problem when Ritwick Ghatak gets a humble Padma Shri and Safdar Hashmi gets nothing while Sant Chatwal gets a Padma Bhushan and Pranab Mukherjee gets a Padma Vibhushan, just one step below the Bharat Ratna. Do yourself a favour. Read the annual list of awardees. There are history sheeters there, people against whom CBI cases exist. It has reached such embarrassing proportions that the media no longer carries the full list. Yet I can name a hundred great Indians who have never got any recognition simply because talent is no more a consideration. Only sycophancy is. Every Government rewards its own charmed circle of half-wits. And to get these awards, everyone follows the Code of Omerta, not saying one wrong word in public.
I am delighted Girish broke that Code. I wish others would do the same. It's time we had sharper critics who used every platform available to us to stand up and speak our mind. That alone can raise the level of public discourse, teach us that in a free society there's nothing wrong in slaying a few sacred cows. That's why I love what Karnad did. Now let's go out and get some more.
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