On censorship, surveillance and dystopia

Cynics often take stances that are dark, pessimistic and leave little room for what sociologically could be called an ‘agency’-based approach. Censorship is one such area. Invocations of Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, conspiracy theories, surveillance societies, are inevitable and unavoidable. Reality, however, to disappoint many, is far more complex and nuanced than ‘governments-out-to-get-us’. But then again, governments are getting us—artists, journalists, or activists, who express dissenting opinions, or upset the status-quo; people who question governments and regimes—both, dictatorships and democracies. The media and culture industries are stronger and more insidious than ever: not only are they manufacturing consent, they also manufacture conscience, often from a moral high-ground. Conversely, there’s also a new wave of media that destabilises these assumptions, with credible and commendable critiques. The picture, to put it in simpler words, is horribly complicated. And because we’re very used to a debate configured in binaries, his often disappoints cynics and their critics.

Last Thursday night, I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on 'Censorship and Society', organised by Asia Society India and OPEN magazine. The panel, moderated by Supreme Court advocate, Madhavi Goradia Divan, consisted of brilliant speakers, like Mahesh Murthy, Neville Taraporewalla and Anjum Rajabali. Thus, their expertise ranged from media laws, new and social media, scriptwriting, and cinema. The arguments, therefore, covered a diverse range of topics, many of them discussing the nuances of the right to free speech, freedom of expression, and the right to information, and, of course, the media.

However, this post is not a report of last night’s debate; although, many of the arguments from it shall be the foci of my analyses of censorship, it shall not be limited to the same. In the following segments, I will review some of the pertinent points from last night, and proffer analyses of points which the panel missed out, or did not engage with adequately.  

I

In India, in the past year or more, we have seen an insidious culture of censorship and surveillance. Last year alone, several cases have highlighted this: a Jadhavpur University professor was arrested for circulating a satirical cartoon on Mamata Banerjee; Aseem Trivedi, an activist-cartoonist with India Against Corruption, was charged with sedition for “disrespecting” the national emblem and Parliament; in November, two young women from Palghar were arrested for criticising the virtual shutdown of thecity following Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s high profile funeral. At the heart of these cases was the infamous Information Technology Act (2008), and the equally infamous Section 66 A—which according to Divan, is “grossly disproportionate”. The “phenomenal diversity” of the media and the internet, she said, presents a paradox: it is both a liberating medium and an inhibiting one. According to Neville Taraporewalla, while the new hyper-media in India is “extremely volatile”, we still are “a pretty free country”. The need to adapt to these new environments, he felt, is still very important. Mahesh Murthy said that, with the IT Act and liability act, the government has potential deniability as individuals can now decide what is offensive and may issue takedown notices for the same. In most cases, the question is largely about power and political clout, rather than hurting the sentiments of people. Earlier this year, Murthy was charged with defamation along others, by IIPM head Arindam Chaudhury, for posting critical opinions against the institute. 

Anjum Rajabali, who wrote the scripts for movies like Aarakshan, Rajneeti, and the critically acclaimed The Legend of Bhagat Singh, suggested that we be more passionate about our liberties and expression. He cited the cases where films in India have been banned, or censored often under the threat of violence made by fringe groups. In many cases, like Kamal Hasan’s Vishwaroopam, films are banned even when passed by the CBFC. He said that the film community is a fairly strong and powerful group; but producers, instead of challenging these calls for bans and censorships, immediately buckle. The government defending the peoples’ liberties, he said, is a pipe dream.

Censorship, then, covers a myriad range of issues and concerns, and it’s nearly impossible to give justice to—or even list out—all of them. From the panel’s discussion, however, it seemed clear that Murthy and, to a lesser extent, Taraporewalla, were of the notion that we don’t need censorship. Murthy’s arguments included the idea that more repression would lead to the Streisand Effect. We, according to Murthy—and this included politicians, public, fringe groups, etc.—need to “develop thicker skins”; that we “need to protect ourselves from offense”, and not expect the state to do so. Murthy, in my opinion, explained instances of censorship as aberrations: how imbalanced and immature society, and the political class is, to react to criticisms (to his credit, he also said that no society is ever mature). However, this is problematic on two accounts.

Firstly, the media is deeply political; access to media, and the access to representation itself is imbalanced, warped and contingent (this was made clear by Rajabali’s response to Murthy). So, to suggest that Muslims should not take offense at drawings of the Prophet ignores the complex geopolitical configurations in which debates on Islam are embedded and embroiled in. It is, also, a hegemonic system: Muslims may not have equal access to representation without reductionist debates defining what Islam is and how violent it is (see, as an example, the Intelligence Squared debate ‘Islam is a Religion of Peace’, especially Maajid Nawaz’s interventions). One need only look at ground breaking studies on media and culture industries, like Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Culture Industry or Noam Chomsky’s Media Control, Necessary Illusions and Manufacturing Consent (co-authored by Edward Herman), for an understanding of how imbalanced, misplaced and biased media representation can be.

Secondly, with the advent of the new media, conventional media has come under intense scrutiny. As Murthy pointed out, the new media (which, he claims is us) has outmoded the conventional media; far more Indians now rely on the web for information dissemination, and access to it; express their opinions on it, and so forth. Thus, any critique of media in the 21^st century has to be a discursive critique, not an objective one. With the sheer complexity of the media, this task has become difficult, if not entirely impossible. And formulating a critique of this shall be my concern in the proceeding paragraphs.

II

According to the Internet World Stats,as of June 30, 2012, there are around 137 million internet users in India, which is 11.4% penetration. And it is only a specific demographic group that has access to the internet, and thus, avenues for representation. Critics of the social media often point this out, but my concern here is with the quality of user generated content. Of course, with limited resources, I can hardly construct trends. But this does not change the fact that there is a lot of hatred, anti-Muslim and anti-Dalit sentiments, misogyny out there on the web.

For instance, the recent phenomenon of ‘Internet Hindus’, and steady rise in Hindutva, is a case in point, brilliantly highlighted by Ramachandra Guha in his book Patriots and Partisans. Misogyny is another worrisome trend. Two particular cases come to mind. A report on BBC Hindi revealed how journalist and CNN-IBN news anchor, Sagarika Ghose and women’s activists, Kavita Krishnan and Meena Kandaswamy were victims of sexist and misogynistic attacks online. Ghose, who was abused on Twitter by right wing nationalists, was called a “high class prostitute”; Krishnan was speaking at a Rediff.com online discussion when someone with the handle @RAPIST posted abusive comments, and asked where he could “rape her using a condom”. Despite the harassment, the chat was not moderated and the handle was not blocked by the site administrators. An apology was later issued to Krishnan (I urge you to read Anja Kovacs' post on what Rediff could have done to support Kavita Krishnan against rape threats).

A plea for more censorship in these cases is very problematic, and often unfeasible. For one, what would constitute censorship here: the fact that members of the public are trying to censure women? Or that we, the more liberal, secular voices, want more regulation? Both these questions only deal with the symptoms: the latter is difficult because most abusers use anonymous profiles or handles, which are notoriously difficult to track. Moreover, the fact that the police and law enforcement agencies simply do not care exacerbates things. Tragically, this leads to public intellectuals and journalists, like Ghose and Krishnan, to self-censor. It is unacceptable that any self-respecting activist or writer, irrespective of their gender and political leanings, ignore such slander and threats, or “have thick skins”, as Murthy suggested.

The deeper problem here is that there is no discipline in using the new media and the internet. While we may celebrate anonymity and anarchy on the web, every time a group like Anonymous or Op India hacks a government webpage (merely a cosmetic exercise in my view), there is no deeper or meaningful engagement with the politics of the internet. Most comments on websites like CNN IBN, or NDTV, or Hindustan Times are trolls, often lampooning the “sickular” nature of writers and journalists. If, as Murthy put it, the internet is a mirror to society, then we are, largely, a very awful society, no?

III

The semantics of censorship, then, can configure our debates and discussion in limited ways. Not that this was a major flaw in the panel; it would be ridiculous to assume that. But it is also equally important that we pay attention to the theme of surveillance. Hugely popular in sociological and cultural studies literature, the theme of surveillance and policing gained prominence with the influential works of Michel Foucault, mainly his book, Discipline and Punish. The radical notion proposed by Foucault was using Jeremy Bentham’s ‘panopticon’ as a metaphor for the policing everyone engages in. Thus, peoples’ sexualities, their health, opinions, and other facets come to be policed by soft institutions, like the market, the health and medical industries. It is important to note that Foucault was wary of configuring panopticism and surveillance in rigid binaries; power, for him, is fluid, and exists in micro spaces and “capillaries”, and wherever there is power, there is also resistance to it. Thus, he recommends that we “cut off the head of the king”; that is, look at power configurations as more fluid and complex, rather than emanating from one particular source, like the government or oligarchies.

Following Foucault, surveillance, then, has a lot of ramifications for debates on censorship: one, there is both abject apathy and brutal repression on the part of the state in defining what dissent or offense is, which influences its response: thus, the women at Palghar were arrested promptly, but women who file complaints receive no action altogether. To put it in simple words: ‘society’ should be as much the subject of interrogation, as ‘censorship’ is.

In an earlier post, I had argued that the arrests of Aseem Trivedi and the Jadhavpur University professor, and the government’s crackdown on the protesters in India Gate after the brutal gang-rape and murder incident, are the result of (what I called) a ‘governance of paranoia’. That is, politicians’ and the political class’ fear of dissent is fuelled by the fact that political leadership in the country has become fragile, tenuous, and must reassert, to use philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s terms, “that the emperor is clothed”. In simpler words, the information society we are living in is more opaque than transparent; information is more readily accessible than its credentials. This makes slander a great political tool. Unfortunately, the real victims of slander—Ghose, Krishnan and the millions of other women—are conspicuously left out.

The debate, thus, must focus on not if we need more or less censorship and regulation, but critically examine the dynamics of the same.  That is, we must constantly be wary of censorship/surveillance of freedom of expression, and of censorship/surveillance of our access to information. It is in the latter that we are often failing.

Education and pedagogy are areas where censorship is most operational. One reason for this, perhaps, is because the link between pedagogy and propaganda is most direct: we saw this in Nazi Germany. China is experimenting on this presently; even in India, the teaching (and writing) of history often reasserts moral values rather than a critical interrogation of the same. But who is it that decides what students should study and what they should not? More importantly, on what grounds are these decisions made? This question: of censorship in education, was the one I posed to the panel. Unfortunately, their response was less than adequate.

There are three particular instances I had in mind while framing my question: one, the Yuva Sena-led protests following which the Vice Chancellor of Mumbai University deleted Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey from the English Literature curriculum; two, Mamata Banerjee’s move to delete references to Karl Marx from the state board texts, and banning English language dailies from libraries in West Bengal; third, a more general point, that is, assault against scholars for “offending sentiments” rather than the nature or credibility of their work. The examples of the GoI denying historian Peter Heehs' visa renewal, and the Sambhaji Brigade’s ransacking of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute also come to mind. Of course, I concede that I only mentioned the first example, which informed the responses of the panellists.

Nevertheless, Neville Taraporewalla’s reply, where he said we need to agitate more, and, curiously, that we have failed the Anna Hazare movement, was completely beside the point. (In my opinion, the Anna Hazare movement failed itself; as did Anjum Rajabali, if I remember correctly. Do read this post I wrote during the peak of the movement). Madhavi Divan’s response was more articulate, when she said that we need to speak up against such street censorship. However, Mamata Banerjee’s ban on Marx and the newspapers was not street censorship; it was one initiated by the political executive. So was the detoxifying of syllabi by Arjun Singh in 2004. And, if you bear with me, so is the Delhi University’s ambitious plan of the four year undergraduate programme (FYUP)—and I say so because not only does this overburden students with less-than-required courses, but because the poor quality of the same would fail to instill any sense of criticality in them (see Gautham Bhan's excellent review of the FYUP on Kafila). 

IV

As with most discussions I’ve had the fortune of attending, this one, too was enlightening. Certainly, there were several perspectives I came across, many of which I wasn’t aware of, or never considered. At the same time, I was also fortunate enough to find an engaging forum to express and apply ideas I already had.

On a more personal note, censorship is something about which I have very strong sentiments: not because, as someone aspiring to be in the expressing-ideas vocation, I wish to ensure that the creeping political influence is kept in check. But, because by denying access to newer ideas, and spaces for debate and discussion, I believe that we’re inching closer to a kind of dystopia—or, as Francis Fukuyama would have it, a tale of “two dystopia”—where our opinions and ideas would either lead to persecution, or self-censorship, both of which are unacceptable to me. For, as I mentioned earlier, it’s not only the censorship of opinion/expression that we must be worried about, but also that of our access to informed, free, and credible opinions and ideas. 

Notes & Acknowledgements: For the comments made by the panelists, I have, to the best of my abilities, provided quotes, and summaries of the general gist of the discussions. And I take full responsibility of any misquotes, and am more than willing to change them, if credible corrections are pointed out. My arguments, of course, are my own, and I believe I have done enough to specify the same. 

There are several ideas, some covered by the panel and some not, that I have missed out entirely; for instance, Wikileaks, the on-going trial of Bradley Manning, or the United States government’s incessant surveillance of journalists, and even the debate on copy-right infringement and intellectual property rights (like the Delhi University photocopying case). These examples clearly can, and need to, be addressed by any discussion on censorship. 

I am thankful to Nolina Minj, Malathi Jogi, Natasha Patel and Alex Thomas for their reviews of this essay. Unfortunately, due to certain logistical constraints, I haven't been able to make the all changes they recommended. I shall do my best to do so in the next blog update.

Subversive scribblings

I’m not a fan of theatre as such, let alone experimental theatre. But I do have an undisciplined interest in art – be it performative, written or the so-called fine-arts. Particularly so because I believe in the expressive and political nature of art; not as a wilful act of resistance, but as, Oscar Wilde would have it, a nuanced system of expressions that teases out complexities, and leaves the reader thinking, questioning and critical. So, when I read about a Chinese theatre group, Grass Stage Theatre, performing a “subversive theatre” production called Unsettling Stones (directed by Zhao Chuan) at Bombay’s National Gallery of Modern Art, my curiosity was piqued. In the light of China’s political culture of suppressing dissent, subversion, or free speech in the broadest sense, what I find worrisome – and here I’m echoing philosopher and cultural critic, Slavoj Zizek’s concerns - is the fact that we're looking to them for development paradigms (something I have satirically referred to in the essay, Shanghai-ed). Coming back to China, Zizek argues that in the west, traditionally, the rise of capitalism coincided with the demand for democracy; a system which was mutually beneficial for both. True, grave issues have plagued this alliance – colonialism for one; global capitalist hegemony, another – but with China, what we’re seeing is the existence of capitalism without the conditions of, or the need for, democracy.

When it comes to art, specifically, this phenomenon is compounded. Liu Xiaobo, the “dissident” writer, and human rights activist is currently incarcerated. Mr Mo Yan(literally: “don’t speak”), on the other hand, happens to be a party member,and widely respected across the country. His is the image of art that China wants to project. The political appropriation of art (be in for suppression or activism) is always a danger to the integrity and very operational matrix of a dynamic system of thought. The fact that Grass Stage Theatre is coming to India to perform, is itself a critique of the state and culture industry-appropriated art forms – not just in China, but, I believe, everywhere.

Needless to say, watching Unsettling Stones was an enlightening experience. As an art form – and that too, in a foreign language – it was evocative, lucid, and it pushed the mind to think, to feel; to transcend the negative space between the stage and the seats. I’m still struggling with ideas as I write this review: which theme to focus on? should I rely on description? or should I focus merely on reflections? But the fact that I am thinking and grappling with these ideas, I think, says a lot about the nature and the depth of the performance. For the sake of semblance of coherence, however, I shall divide my review into two broad sections: first, the physicality and aesthetics of the performance; and second, the philosophical and reflexive elements I read in the performance.

Aesthetically speaking, Unsettling Stones adhered to minimalism as a performative style. The stage was stark; the actors wore no elaborate costumes; the lighting, subdued and sharp; there was no music or a background score. On the other hand, the diegetic noise of their footsteps, their breathing, of the irreverent songs over the radio – were elements that came together to form a discontinuous narrative, punctuated by emotive dialogues and pauses pregnant with tension and unpredictability.

The bodies of the actors were as much props as they were instruments of expression. As they stripped under the gaze of the authority – here, the gaze of the audience; their bodies were subjected to the discourse of surveillance, masquerading as safety. The stark nakedness, the subservience, the docility – bodies policed, forever subject of the panopticon, quite literally in the Foucauldian sense.

Even as they paced across the stage, seemingly erratic and random, it resembled our everyday pace; as we settle into routinized behaviour of the office, or the commute; they grooved to the rhythms played on the headphones, oblivious to the others; breaking into dances, or bouts of masturbatory pleasures, or retreating into a shell filled with simple ones:  endlessly repetitive, uncritical, un-reflexive – relishing the products of the culture industries.

As the performance progressed from one segment to the other, the actors’ relationship with the stage changed: from “acting” they went on to creating. Arranging props became a part of the performance; elaborate patterns drawn on the floor with chalk-dust, an act of creation, destroyed in the very next moment – the very act of destruction (or, deconstruction?) becoming a liberating process. Their emphatic grunts, as they hurled stones into the emptiness, resounding in the darkness of the stage; then they lay, face down, enemies of the state. Subversion trampled. Dissent crushed. Status quo, preserved. Is this how it all ends?

Although the performance was in Mandarin, it articulated what it set out to, loud and clear – to challenge the status quo; to partake in dissent. There were no romantic overtures. This was no revolution. There would be no change. An Orwellian pessimism was ingrained in the script – which is why the language didn’t matter. It spoke volumes, be it in its moments of silence, or in the loud joyfulness brought about by the culture industries, which sought to gratify and stupefy. Unsettling Stones is a philosophically rich performance; I’ve already mentioned Foucault's panopticon and Adorno’s culture industry, elements pertinent to the inquiry in the social sciences. It uses stark elements, a language of metaphors, to paint a vivid picture – both polemical and pessimistic. Of these, the “stone”, I believe was the most powerful. In the last two years, we’ve seen people’s outrage transform into action; stones becoming the weapons of the disenfranchised, of the marginalised. But do they really bring about change? Or are they doomed to resound in the empty darkness, as it did on stage? Can it be an instrument of freedom? Or is it just another weapon of the weak? Another brick in the wall?

At the heart of it lies a question we all continue to grapple with, a question about the fundamental nature of freedom: can there be freedom – of expression? of voicing dissent? of formulating a discourse of resistance? One answer points towards the fact that this very performance is one, and that there still might be hope. But structures aren’t always oppressive. They could be Orwellian. Or, they could also be Huxleyan: providing us with an endless source of self-gratification and pleasure; replacing criticality with complacency, and then with comfort and desire. And this is not just China we're talking about; in India, we're heading towards a similar fate, maybe.  Perhaps not as bad, or perhaps, worse. But we're heading there. Not totalitarianism. But a crass form of governance marked by corruption, decadence and ever in paranoia over the preservation of power. That said, I think it’s important to observe that as strong and rigid and iron-caged as structures can be, there is always space for dissent and subversion; they are, if I may say so, structural; or perhaps, inevitable. Structures are defined by their temporariness. They don’t last forever. In a way, Unsettling Stones left us with yet another question – a question that I don’t think I can articulate, but one which would ask us the possibility, nature and direction of change. Is there a chance, as The Who put it, for us to not be fooled again?