Free to sing?
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"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech."
Noam Chomsky
About twenty years back, when the city of
"Jao gaan, aanobik bomatakey dharo,
Jodi paaro Pokhraney chashbash karo"[i]
(Go, song, catch hold of the Nuclear Bomb /If you can, do some farming around Pokhran)
Or
"Kato hajaar morley tobe maanbey tumi sheshey
Boddo beshi manush gechhey baaner jaley bheshey"
(After the death of how many thousands would you realize that too many people have washed away by floods?a wonderful Indianised transliteration of Bob Dylan’s ‘How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?)
Suman has always been the proverbial rebel an anti-establishment revolutionist whose pen would always be an unscathed depiction of the times and the trepidations. For him, nothing was permanent not the least his identity and the comforts of an upper-caste Hindu existence. On hearing about the gruesome killings of Christian Missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two children by Hindu Fundamentalist outfits, he decided to give up his religion and took up Islam, and his name after the noted Sufi saint Sheikh Kabir, who lived during the times of the Bengal renaissance (although his detractors have a different version of this conversion they look at it as a means to circumvent the law and marry, for the fifth time, noted Bangladeshi crooner Sabina Yasmin).
As is very evident, change is something that came naturally to Suman. During the Singur-Nandigram protests in
"Janaan dichhey ei muhurto kothay kader praner daam,
Rokto diye praan bikiye poth dekhachhey Nandigam"
(The times are figuring out the value of every life everywhere/ By shedding blood and giving up lives, Nandigram is showing the way)
Immediately, Suman and the Trinamool Congress formed a natural alliance. Their similarities would by far surpass their differences the differences stemming from their backgrounds, their thought-processes and their individual quests. While Trinamool Congress was steadfast in its desire to ensure that the CPI(M) government in the State was toppled, Suman’s ambitions, in his own words, would be long-cherished Utopian dreams like cooperative farming, equitable distribution of resources and many others, which had once formed the bulwark of the left, and now their biggest eyesores. However, brushing aside differences, Trinamool Congress and Ms. Mamata Banerjee in particular convinced Suman to contest the 2009 General Elections from the Jadavpur constituency, a CPI(M) bastion. Suman reluctantly agreed and, buoyed by the strong anti-incumbency factor and Suman’s own charisma, he emerged victorious by about 58000 votes. And that is when the honeymoon ended!
Ever since he was elected, Suman started realizing that politics was not his cup of tea. He started finding discrepancies in the way MPLAD funds were being distributed, leading to a major showdown with his party top brass. Always a media favourite, Suman raised his voice in the media against unscrupulous elements in his party who would use these funds to foster their own interests, and use his persona as a façade so that the public is left oblivious. Reprimands from his party and a cold-shoulder from his party supremo did not help matters much. The dynamite within this disciple of Pete Seger was awaiting one igniting spark. And it came very soon.
The forested regions of the western part of
To resist the inhuman atrocities committed on the people living in the ‘Jangalmahal’, as this area is popularly called, the Maoists started providing arms and ammunitions to local villagers, and quickly developed a symbiotic relationship where one would complement the other. While the Maoists would persistently continue their tirade through apolitical means, the villagers would organize their rebellion into more of a political fight, using political techniques of negotiations and strikes to start with. When nothing changed, with the active support of the Maoists, the people of Jangalmahal and their leader Chhatradhar Mahato, a tribal mass-leader once with the Trinamool Congress, started raising the tempo of their protests to a point that very soon, Jangalmahal became a burning national issue.
At this stage, the Government of West Bengal thought (and rather incorrectly, as subsequent events seem to suggest) that the best way to weed out the dissenting voices in this tribal belt is to somehow capture their leader Chhatradhar Mahato. And that they did, sending policemen in the guise of reporters, undermining all degrees of decency of conduct. The Human Rights activists and organizations like APDR took to the streets of Kolkata, and to everyone’s utter surprise, the marches were led by an MP whose party was openly (and quite uncomfortably) trying to distance itself from Chhatradhar owing to the Maoist-nexus. There we had him again the perennial rebel Kabir Suman, a spirit that could not be towed down by mundane political considerations.
In a unique show of solidarity to the causes of the fighting tribals of Jangalmahal and demanding the immediate release of Chhatradhar, Suman released an album titled ‘Chhatradharer Gaan’ (Songs for Chhatradhar) with eight tracks, each privately recorded at his residence, each portraying the pitiable plight of the tribals, the valour of Chhatradhar (one of the tracks in fact compares him to Birsa Munda, the legendary tribal fighter) and the brutality of the Joint Paramilitary Forces sent out by the Home Minister P. Chidambaram to crush the protests and annihilate the Maoist extremist elements. The album, like most of his recent ones, did not have a commercial release. It was circulated from hand to hand in the colleges and universities of the city, yet again underlining the stupendous popularity that Suman still garners among the enlightened youth. And, all hell broke loose!
The Trinamool Congress, visibly upset with Suman (and understandably so, one would say!), did not appreciate this act of circumvention of the party line too lightly. In a Television Show hosted by Star Ananda, one of the most popular Bengali news channels, Partha Chattopadhyay, the Leader of Opposition of the State Legislative Assembly, openly asked Suman to either follow the party whips or quit the party. His logic was clear the Trinamool Congress being part of the UPA and Suman being an MP of the Trinamool, Suman’s open protests on an issue like this would lead to an environment of tensions within the alliance and would provide readily available fodder to their detractors, something that the Trinamool Congress can ill-afford, especially months ahead of the West Bengal Vidhan Sabha Elections coming up in 2011.
Chattopadhyay’s arguments seemed to make an enormous sense politically, but it could not mellow the artiste in Suman. His counter-arguments were simple. As a conscious commentator of the times, something that perennially existed in him independent and irrespective of his political affiliations, Suman would not allow this artiste in him to be bridled by a whip. His arguments in support of Chhatradhar emanated from his conscientiousness and feelings for the miseries of the people of Jangalmahal and no tag of Parliamentarian could be sufficient to deter the Urban Bard from his commitment to portray the reality.
Even at the cost of being expelled from the party, Suman decided to take his fight forward, and now plans to stage a Dharna outside the Parliament House from 6th March onwards to protest the sending of Joint Paramilitary Forces to Lalgarh and other places in Jangalmahal. One does not know if the Trinamool Congress, already overburdened by the excess baggage Suman is bringing on board, would be more than happy to offload him after this visible act of dissent. But whether or not it does so, these incessant protests by Suman while staying within the folds of a political party and a political system raise serious questions about the nature of the Indian Parliamentary Democracy and its linkages with the Fundamental Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression.
As I would look at it, the problem seems to be an existential crisis. On one hand, the Constitution enables all citizens with a Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression. On the other hand, there is a political system aimed at disciplining all the constituents of a single organization and putting forward a unified viewpoint. The question thus seems to be is there a conflict between the two. Just like two of his illustrious colleagues, Jaswant Singh and Shashi Tharoor, Kabir Suman is also encountering a situation where the later is visibly getting prominence over the former. A Fundamental Right that all of us (and Gulzar in the very visible TV Ad commemorating and eulogizing 60 years of the Constitution) seek to celebrate and cherish is not available to an artist simply because he is a clog in the wheel of the Parliamentary Democracy that all of us Indians swear by!
All through the sixty-three odd years of our independent existence, Parliamentary Privileges had been a universal bashing point. We had waxed eloquent about the number of additional privileges speeches or statements by MPs enjoy. Now, in the last couple of years, it seems that things are turning the other way round. An objective assessment of historical facts or a value-neutral comment on a political exercise is making parliamentarians, or for that matter all political beings, vulnerable to censure. And an interesting point to be noted in at least the three recent incidents is that all the three (even Jaswant Singh who would find it hard to digest that his only claim to fame in life has been an attachment to the BJP or a particular ministry) are people for whom politics is not the only means of earning a daily bread. At a point when we so vociferously claim that the institution of politics can be sanitized by bringing in enlightened minds from other fields, these incidents seem to suggest otherwise. They are indicative of the fact that the superhighway of politics runs parallel to one’s constitutional imperatives, like the need to assert oneself when one wants to; like the need to dissent when one requires to.
The Supreme Court in several cases (starting from Romesh Thapar and Brij Bhushan cases which ushered in the First Constitutional Amendment) have talked at length about the Right to Dissent being a part of Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression. However, incidents like these put a serious question mark over the ambit of such rights. If rights are universal, why are the curbed by instincts of malevolence? Why is it that our representatives, burdened with the rigorous task of representing ‘We, The People’ have to end up representing ‘Them, The Parties’? Why is it that an artiste like Suman or a diplomat like Tharoor have to remain as outsiders forever, recognized by people (as I write this, I am told of Shashi Tharoor being awarded the ‘Politician of the Year’ by NDTV 24x7) but sidelined by the powers-that-be in the party ranks? Are non-political popular faces mere amorous adornments to be flashed before the people before elections to say "Yes, they are here"? Why is it that an album like ‘Chhatradharer Gaan’, arguably one of the best albums to have been ever recorded in India (and this is a statement being made having the enormous socio-cultural contributions of the IPTA respectfully in mind) have to come into references in the media just to decimate the composer and his image as an irresponsible, seditious, self-gratifying evil soul? Why is it that the world’s largest and arguably the most colourful democracy does not grow up? Why is it that we cannot still tolerate dissent as a part of the checks and balances of a system that is prone to going wrong at times?
Several years back, Sudipto Chattopadhyay, a documentary filmmaker, made a documentary on Suman titled ‘Free to Sing?’ As the incidents have unfolded one cannot but ask the same question to all conscientious souls that consider politics as a means of representing the organic solidarity of popular conscience and consciousness ‘Free to Sing’? ‘Free to Speak’? ‘Free to Express’? ‘Free to be Free’?
"The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind…"
(Bob Dylan)