Nationalism as a ritual
Hammer and Tongs
ALOKE THAKORE
The Indian media make a biannual find. About a week or ten days before 15th of August and 26th of January, they discover nationalism. Celebrations and memorializing begin. Usually a film release helps them in the process; or sometimes there may be a book release, a re-rendition of an anthem, and when all else fails there are always pseudo-events around the celebrations. Independence Day gets more hits than Republic Day in such matters and that may have something to do with the relative absence of republican ideals in our political life. But that is another matter. This year is no different.
What did independence mean, what does it mean, how was it achieved, how is it remembered, and what meanings do we make of the event, the date, or the process? These are all valid questions. The answers, however, will always turn on how one chooses to define the ¿we¿; the addressee of the questions is more important and crucial than the addresser. But in the case of the media, the newspapers and television channels are both the addressee and the addresser. They both ask these questions and they answer it, too. Sure, they trot out people who answer some of these questions. But it is ventriloquism.
The easiest form this mode takes is finding out people who can be identified by the readership, both in terms of identification as recognition and as belonging, and asking them what independence means. Their answers presumably tell us in some way how we all feel about independence. Among the most common of the ways in which the celebrations takes place is in this form of sharing. By now all newspapers have a ready list of all those who were born in 1947.
Then comes the expert. Popular historians, a tribe that includes both academics and journalists with each masquerading as the other, write pieces on different aspects of independence. Given the photographic possibilities and the general awareness and interest of the reader, pieces on films, sports, personalities and the like abound. In its television avatar, there can always be the talk show or the walk show, which is talking heads who walk around to give visual relief and sustain interest for those who prefer the mise en scene to the dialogues.
Then comes the list. Sixty things, sixty people, sixty events, sixty sportsmen, sixty actors, sixty businessmen, sixty politicians, sixty leaders, sixty who is someone or something; the only redeeming feature is that a list of sixty journalists who made a difference has not been done. The reason for such an omission is surely not because editors do not think they are not as important; heaven and juniors know the stock they put by their words, suggestions, and columns. The last paragraph of Lord Keynes¿s General Theory was, it seems they believe, written keeping them in mind even if he mentioned defunct economists and academic scribblers. Be that as it may, the lists are there. Easy to make, easy to put together, and easy as fillers. There is, after all, the day to celebrate.
But why is there such an itch to celebrate? One can be, as the young say, a party pooper and suggest with Faiz that this was not the freedom, this was not the dawn, which was desired or hoped for. One can always suggest with professionally ingrained gloominess that one sees the glass half-empty and goes out to those parts of the country where independence, at least in the form that Gandhiji dreamed, is still to visit. One can take the ¿oh not so trite¿ route and suggest that there remain more unexecuted ways, even if not original, in which the media can cover the event. Possibilities are endless is the tagline here.
But what of just letting it go by. What about not being in the celebration business? Just being in the reporting and analysis business. Letting someone in the editorial team write a thought piece for a change; though one can never put it past the collective to not come up with a list there, too. Reporting on the celebrations that the state organizes or civil society groups put together. And treating it as a solemn day where the media rededicate themselves to the words in the state emblem, the one below the bull and horse with something about truth in it, and publish their ethical policy every year so that there is something to hold them accountable by. Now that would be cause for celebration.
Or else let us just accept that a historical event allows itself to be used, and excuses and alibis are uses, too.