Monsoons have played the perennial role of a game changer in an India choking and sweating through a long summer.
And as global heat hits the western hemisphere, even our average non-resident Indian, who blames India’s heat and dust as a major factor for his departure to cooler climes may think nostalgically of the Indian monsoons: a time of the year when dark rumbling clouds assemble in the skies like playful elephants (Vaprakreeda parintgajprekshneeyam, as Kalidasa said) and the earth begins to heave and turn green. Even the poet is moved:
‘Kabira’ badar prem ka hum per barsya aai
Antar bheengi Atma, hari bhai banrai…
(Says Kabir the cloud of love has soaked my heart to its core
And all around me is green…)’
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
In the age where global warming where unpredictable monsoons meet a whimsical state’s censorship a new kind of dread hangs over the world of letters. Once upon a time, poets like Kabir, Jayasi, Kumbhandas and Rahim were unacknowledged legislators who dared speak truth to power. No more. So veterans have learnt to write in code, so what they write is actually a husk cocooning many secrets that will break out like butterflies as soon as the words hit the dark, digital spaces. They fold their perceptions into a metaphor, like the Hindi poet Dhoomil:
Do not ask the ironsmith how steel tastes? Ask the horse who holds the bit in his mouth.
And our writers are not alone. The poems of a Romanian with a pseudonym Ana Blandiana from Bucharest also reflect what writers will do when the long arm of a repressive regime and police surveillance choke the freedoms of writers’ paradise. One of her best known poems , ‘You Never See the Butterflies’, crosses over to the natural world to find apt metaphors for the stifling of all natural phenomena and nothing works as it should.
“You never see
Butterflies, how they look at each other above us?
Nor the signs the wind
Makes to the grass as we walk by?…Haven’t you noticed the whispers
Growing on our backs?”
Monsoon in the tropics once meant rejuvenation of life, when plant life begins to appear everywhere around houses, often even inside, through cracks. But the long arm of a state-driven developmental model pushed locally by the power triads of neta (political leader), contractor and babu (bureaucrat), is wreaking havoc on lives this monsoon from Karn Prayag to Kedarnath Dham, from Ayodhya to Rajkot. Pilgrims to Badrinath, Kedarnath, Amarnath or Shrinath ji’s abodes can no longer walk through the first showers as if in a state of grace. And the farmers shiver as they plant their paddy seedlings that are increasingly being swept away in floods or worse, dying in the relentless heat due to delayed monsoons. We no longer consult astrologers to read almanacs and announce propitious times but seek the latest weather alerts.
Still, at the level of policy our chief ministers seem not to understand our increasing dependence on natural forces beyond the control of their civil engineers and magistrates. An odd combination on excessive religious ritualism and tourism promotion has led successive chief ministers of states like Uttarakhand to overrule ministers for environment, chief secretaries and wise counselling from expert committees they had themselves appointed to monitor the ecological dangers that global warming poses. In July this year a proposal was shot down by the chief minister because it enumerated grave environmental hazards of cutting trees in protected forests. It was also pointed out that the person the state insisted on appointing as the Chief Conservator of Forests in 2022 was a Director at one of the oldest protected forests in the area but removed by high court orders for alleged illegal activities in the area under his charge. In 2023 the Supreme Court had also advised the government to set up a committee to suggest ways of repairing the continuing ecological damage caused to the ecologically sensitive area by inadvisable projects. The media, especially the Hindi media, barely covered it.
When this writer called one of the senior journalists, his cryptic answer was it is unsafe to do in-depth stories that question state decisions. Notwithstanding the government back-tracking on the Broadcast Bill, he added that the danger to freedom of expression in the digital space was far from over. The state of UP, for example, he said, has just sent out an order empowering the information director to initiate action against the writers of any content, video tweet, post or reel deemed anti-national, and also against all content that “present government schemes in a wrong manner or with a wrong intention.” I have taken to writing fiction of late, he said ruefully. “There, at least I can write about communities like ours suffering multiple schisms and coming apart at the seams while more and more journalists report on ‘safe’ subjects.”
Also read: UP Media Policy Explained: Govt Can Withhold Payment if Influencer Projects Scheme With ‘Ill-Intent’
Tyrants and predatory states have a long history. Let’s return to the world of literature and reports culled from popular lore on how their shenanigans were reported and embedded in racial memory. Take the case of the earliest known great Aryan warrior leader Indra who ruled the Vedic pantheon for long. He first entered the Indus river valley ruled by elitist oligarchies and clans of priests. One disgruntled oligarch, Divodasa, aligned with Indra putting him in touch with a valuable disgruntled engineer Twashtra who crafted the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, Vajra. Armed with Vajra, Indra successfully quelled his opponents. Then he did what power hungry autocrats do: he killed both Divodasa and Twashtra, thus kicking away the step-ladder that had helped him climb up. Then he declared himself a lord of all he surveyed including the controller of all waters and monsoon clouds.
Enter at this point from among the common rural folk, a music and cattle-loving popular young cowherd, Krishna of the Yadava clan. He used the hills of Gokul to block the flooding of their fields and finally dislodged the by now pompous and old Indra from the Sanatan pantheon.
The lore of ‘Indra versus Krishna’ was undoubtedly crafted and modified through centuries as India mutated after facing multiple natural and man made disasters and roguish regimes. It was given shape by countless cultural spokespersons who celebrated Krishna, like Surdas, Raskhan, Ghanand, Meera, the group of eight Ashtchhap poets in whose religious devotion was the intent of side stepping kings and durbars. Their own vulnerability as defiant non-bhakts to the regimes they lived under, can still rhyme with and express the visions of millions of powerless who live under repression.
Later as a nascent Indian media took shape, prose writers, editors and reporters from Gandhi to Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthy to Nikhil Chakraborty, and Kuldip Nayar arrived. They wrote against censorship and upheld the freedom of speech at some cost to their own lives. Their writings still help us all make sense of change as it is happening, and of the value of communities that must stay united to sustain democratic values and human bonding.
It is not a plenitude of roti, kapda aur makaan and being the hub of an IT revolution that will sustain India’s democratic fabric and values, heal the rifts and bring peace. It is the freedom to speak, to write without fear of censorship. As the late writer Nirmal Verma’s memorable phrase goes, why can’t we have both roti and freedoms ?
As Michael Longley wrote:
“Who was it who suggested the opposite of war
Is not so much peace as civilization ?
…Who can bring peace to people who are not civilized?”
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
