The Varanasi spectacle
ON December 13, the PM presided over yet another temple project. He inaugurated the Kashi Vishwanath corridor linking the temple complex to the ghats of the Ganga. The televised ceremony offered us a riot of colours; it gave us sheer spectacle. Deep reds merged into burnt sienna, mustard dovetailed into a rich beige, ornamental golds overlapped with cream, and today’s master colour, saffron, dominated everything else. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s elaborate and rich film sets pale in comparison to the glittering display of piety and consummate political performances. The spectacle provided the setting for not only religious rituals — baths in the sacred river and the chanting of Sanskrit shlokas by pundits — but also for political speeches.
The beast of violence lurks on the boundaries of every society. It has to be kept outside these boundaries by a government that rules in the interests of all, that respects all human lives, that ensures justice.
We listened to tales told often enough — that in the past, Hindu rulers battled to avenge the desecration of temples by Mughal rulers. Some leaders tell us that the glories of a Hindu state and civilisation will be restored. Few people have any idea of what a Hindu state and civilisation look like. No doubt, we will be suitably informed when the project is completed. What we do know is that excavations of discomforting historical memories expose a vulnerable minority to even more violence. A mob can easily assume that members of the minority community are responsible for what kings did centuries ago and punish them. Kashi is the abode of Lord Shiva. He is the guardian of justice/dharma. He destroys the world if injustice prevails. Let a democratic India worship Shiva as the embodiment of justice, and as the ascetic who can do without too much spectacle to celebrate His divinity.
Spectacle need not be ornate. Consider the play Uttar Priyadarshi written and directed by the gifted Manipuri director Ratan Thiyam. Emperor Ashoka returns victorious from the Battle of Kalinga. He expects acclaim. Instead, he is surrounded by wailing war-widows clothed in stark white, and ghosts of soldiers killed in the battle. Mourners symbolically wrap him in crimson banners. The juxtaposition of white and searing reds is spectacular without being opulent. Thiyam, agonisingly conscious of the violence that wracks his beloved Manipur, reflects on unnecessary bloodshed. Ashoka ruminates on sufferings caused by war. The contrast between an uncluttered set, an emperor who is at war with himself, and reams of red satin that unfurl across the stage is striking. Buddhism and its message of peace do not come easily to Ashoka. He has to learn through a prolonged period of internal conflict that the battle between good and evil is not external to us. It takes place within us. We have to battle our own demons.
The message of the play is salutary. Our society has to come to terms with itself and with our history. Why should we see violence as a property only of medieval India which gave us magnificent architecture, cuisine, manners, poetry, language, and above all, the richness of Hindustani classical music? Think of the violence that dodges our bare lives: hate speeches, SUV deliberately crushing peaceful protesters, hooligans surrounding and outshouting a group saying the namaaz, rapes, and domestic violence. We do not destroy temples. We also watch silently when churches and masjids are destroyed, and when sacred books are desecrated. Think about the ravages of violence, about what violence does to the victims, to us and to our society. ‘Each new morn,’ says Macduff of war in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, ‘new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven in the face, that it resounds.’ The costs of violence are incalculable. Why violence? For what?
Poet Amreeta Syam scripts an imaginary conversation between Subhadra, Arjuna’s wife, and Lord Krishna in the poem Kurukshetra. The Mahabharata depicts a war of the just against the unjust, a war of the righteous against the unrighteous. But as Yudhishtir himself acknowledges at the end of the war, the costs of war were beyond compare. Subhadhra asks the God to account for these costs. Her young son Abhimanyu was brutally killed in the Great War, and with despair she introduces a subversive note into the dialogue: ‘This is a fight for a kingdom/Of what use is a crown/all your heirs are dead/When all the young men have gone/…And who will rule this kingdom/So dearly won with blood/A handful of old men/A cluster of torn hopes and thrown away dreams’.
In our world, violence is no longer a part of war, it is part of our every-day lives. It always has been so, but we live in a democracy. For long it was thought that democracy and violence were antithetical. Today, we see Indian citizens being tortured by vigilantes. We also see people crowd around the assassins, record shameful acts on their cameras, and post them on social media. What kind of a society celebrates bloodshed as spectacle? The point is that democracy can coexist with violence. We should recognise that the beast of violence lurks on the boundaries of every society. It has to be kept outside these boundaries by a government that rules in the interests of all, that respects all human lives, that ensures justice. For when violence becomes spectacle, we are turned into helpless audiences. When violence holds us in thrall, moral disintegration follows. For we cannot control violence, violence controls us. It leaves stigmata much like the murder of Duncan left blood on Lady Macbeth’s hands: ‘What, will these hands ne’er be clean?’
