Ask him why he abandoned the PUCL—and the whole raft of human rights concerns — and he has an equally self-assured reply. I broke with the PUCL when it began to raise human rights issues in Punjab and for the Naxals. If a State is open and democratic like ours, the monopoly for violence can only lie with the State, says he. You can fight its misuse but the fight must be unarmed. There can be no justification for armed insurrection in a democracy. Only a dictatorship justifies armed rebellions. A vast sea of grey laps before his arguments, but Shourie is a man who only sees the world in hard grids of black and white. WHAT COMPLICATES simple denunciations of Arun Shourie, however, is that, unlike many contemporary writers and intellectuals, he has dared to leave the ivory tower and take on the big questions of our time, bare-knuckled. He has put himself in the firing line and been willing to be skewered for his views in public. What also complicates the denunciations is not just his intelligence or the sterling journalistic career; it is his massive body of work as a writer. Shourie has written 21 books. Their style may be tedious and prolix, but they are still erudite and staggeringly meticulous. Whats more, many of them are lightning rods that prise open difficult and new areas of thought, areas earlier generations have papered over. Yet, they stop short of shedding new light because Shourie merely marshals facts with a sort of rising and hysterical indignation. He is not exploratory; like some zealous lawyer, he fits evidence to a preconceived thesis. He seems incapable of interpretation – the key attribute of a thinker. And when he does think, the arguments are narrow and bigoted. (Except his arguments for an alternative affirmative action in place of reservations and a truly secular nation where all citizens will be identified merely as individuals and have equal access to the State.) Shouries book on Ambedkar, Worshipping False Gods for instance, documents Ambedkars visceral opposition to Gandhi. It is important we recognise this animosity between two giants, but instead of presenting the complex and competing concerns of dalits and upper-caste Hindu nationalists, Shourie merely rants at Ambedkar for hating Gandhi and supporting the British. (Never mind that the RSS did much the same, or that Gandhi himself praised Ambedkar and recognised his legitimate political compulsions.) Similarly, Shouries books on Islam and Christianity document how closed the Judaic religions are to reform, but instead of framing that as an invitation or challenge for cultural dialogue, contrary to evidence, he constructs it as a danger to Indian nationhood. Ditto for his work on the destruction of temples in medieval India. Or for his demolition job on Left historians. It is true that Left historians cornered State patronage and wrote histories that suited their theses. But if Shourie objected to the ICHR being colonised by the Left, why didnt he speak out against it being captured by the Right under the BJP? Momentarily cornered, he laughs wickedly, Where is the question of the Right wing dominating history writing. The Left has had a headstart of 50 years. But if you really want a justification for that, Ill have to quote Chairman Mao: Sometimes, to correct a great wrong you have to cross proper limits. Besides, all call to reform is a kind of incitement. Perhaps the real key to Shouries complex character then — his high sense of personal integrity, his austere dislike for high living, his capacity for unexamined bigotry, his driving sense of simple Good and Evil, and his zeal for public service and reform — lies in his Arya Samaji background. It would explain both the reflexive distrust of Islam and Christianity and the simultaneous imitation of everything that is disliked in those religions. It would explain the passion for a muscular State, latched closely with the selfarrogated voice of dharma. We live in an oceanic society, Shourie says, as a kind of epilogue to our conversation. The irony is that when he could have been one its most consummate cartographers, he has increasingly insisted on swimming in its shallowest pools. Yet, the truth is, no one can easily dismiss Arun Shourie, because for 30-odd years, he has sought answers to all the big public riddles of governance, efficiency, probity, equality, and cultural coexistence. The tragedy of his dwarfed intellectual positions then is a sort of tragedy of contemporary Indian public life. Unlike the founding fathers who clung to the altar of complex arguments and public discourse, faced with the enormousness and bewildering amplitude of Indian dilemmas, public intellectuals today inevitably reach for the quick-gun answers on either side of the Left-Right divide. At other times, they merely capitulate. In the days to come, the real implication of Shouries interview to Shekhar Gupta could play itself out in two different ways. On the one hand, it could expose itself merely as yet another cynical political game. On the other, in its intrepid defence of the freedom of expression, it could start to redeem some of the promise he showed in the 70s. The pity is, one hopes for the latter but is more likely to bet on the former. WRITERS EMAIL shoma@tehelka archive.tehelka/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne120909acid_dreams.asp
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 23:22:20 +0000
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