India is moving into a society where some people have taken it upon themselves to decree what our fellow Indians are to eat, dress and do. Unfortunately, our government also seems to be tilting on the side of these self-appointed cultural police. Prominent scholars have already interrogated the government’s attempt to saffronize autonomous institutions like the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and Lalit Kala Academy etc. In the cultural sphere, the BJP led State governments have clearly introduced measures that are majoritarian in nature. The ban on beef eating, the introduction of Hindu texts like Gita and Ramayana in schools, renaming of city land marks like Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi mirror a State patronage to the agenda of the hindutva extremists. The increasing hate barbs against the minorities by the hindutva hot heads from within and outside the government is on the rise. Even highly dubious claims like the existence of, air planes and plastic surgery in ancient India based on different vehicles of Gods as well as the existence an elephant headed God, Ganesha are proclaimed as science. This means our science and academics are in great danger as everything scientific has to be derived somehow from the golden past of India. When all our presuppositions and premises are fixated into this golden past, there remains very little or no leg room for inductive and creative imagination. This constriction of imagination and creativity feeds in the building of an intolerant society.
Even the very denial of the existence of intolerance is a demonstration of intolerance. The contestation of the right to protest by returning awards may be democratic but the disqualification of their intent and imputation of motive to their protest is certainly a demonstration of intolerance. It is not only the award wapasi movement but also the official response to the dissenting voices that manifests that dissent has no space in our society. The artists, writers, scientists, historians and the like are all discredited for standing up for their right to dissent. The government follows the intolerant deductive logic within which all our conclusions are already pre-fixed. That is why when someone like Shah Rukh Khan does not toe the lakshman rekha, he clearly had to face an intolerant outburst. The voices that censor our freedom of expression are growing louder. They too can claim that they are exercising their freedom of expression. But the fact that their censoring sirens are an attempt to silence all forms of dissent cannot be concealed. These censors are a new incarnation of colonial inquisitions that have had so much bad press in our country. These new inquisitors talk of cultural cleansing that has all the seeds of an ethnic cleansing. Some thinkers have rightly pointed out that intolerance is indicative of a genocidal mentality. What is worrying is the psychic numbing that we exhibit to these intolerant genocidal tendencies in our society. Intolerance does not permit edited or adapted versions of what is deemed as national and erases every form of hybridity and alterity.
More than the rise of intolerance, the psychic numbing that we collectively exhibit is really an issue that sends shivers down our spine. We are faced with a dual pathology: the pathology of intolerance and psychic numbing to the same. The force and power of masculinity oozing out of the former produces a subdued silence in the majority. The Church in India is also part of this silent majority. It is frightening to be orphaned and denationalised by self-appointed Hindu ‘nationalists’. The apparently irrational violent intolerant forces scare us into passive submissiveness. Under the siege of psychic numbing, most of us have lost our voice. That is why those who try to numb the awakened by questioning where was their conscience during the 1984 riots while covering the Gujarat carnage particularly in the media are not free from the pathology of intolerance that is afflicting us. The sad scenario of our society seems to indicate a wholesale death of compassion in our society. Thus, it is not only the culture of intolerance but a collective psychic numbing that is crippling our society.
Are we to remain passive and do nothing about the crises that have befallen us? Is there a Christian response to these crises? The resources of our Christian as well as Indian traditions can assist us to overcome this moral and psychic anesthetization. The Christian imperative to stay awake and alert as well as love everyone can become a dharma that can reinvigorate the virtue of compassion forgotten in our Indian Society. Love is not merely consensus. It has to hold dissent in its embrace. The Christian imperative (dharma) to love enemies and forgive prosecutors provides space for dissensus. In fact, true love is an ethics of dissensus. It is a call to agree to disagree. Such an ethics of dissensus is missing from our society. Indeed, Christian love can open us once again to the Rig-Vedic axiom that invites ‘good thoughts from all directions’. While our nation has the resources to resist the reigning culture of intolerance and consequent psychic numbing, Indian Christians have the responsibility to let their Christian-ness and Indian-ness bring forth all the positive potentials of Indian society so that creative thinking and dialogical dissent can flower once again. While we are threatened by the cultural genocide, Christian resources have the power to bring to actuality the time-immemorial prayer that says “lead me from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality”.
(The author is the Dean of Philosophy, Rachol Seminary)
