Even though this issue is of grave seriousness, I would use a story as a metaphor to relate and express my views.
It reminds me of an age old family story, where two brother's keep quarreling. This happens because of lot of reason's, one of which is difference of opinion.
Now if I happen to be an excellent gujarati artist, and you are an excellent marathi artist. Won't there be difference of opinion? Yes!
I say, this drawing of lines or curves is agains't my way of drawing, I can't understand how you love this form which is so dark and desponent. Iin their own sense, both are right, but can't come to consensus. Fights increase to a point that father has to intervene. Now here is the classical case of secularism.
Now pen and paper secularism will say, stop drawing your way, you are foolish, you both are too religious, please . . . draw modern . . . !, it is neither marathi, nor gujarati, it is majoratarian, best state of art, maximum number of viewers, highest scope of progress. Now both brothers find his father sensible . . . both proudly claim to be secular, both enjoy, compete and admire each other. We both ridicule at how foolish our painting of bamboo and stick was, and how cool it is to photoshop and make modern designs, silently accepting the double standard's of judging. A marathi dream is religious, but a mozart dream is cool and secular, what lady gaga wears is secular, but wearing saree is small mentality and religious, wearing a middle finger t-shirt is secular, but wearing tshirt with marathi slang is not, ! texting a phrase(with all due respect to auther) in shakesphere's difficult english about god or mother is secular, but same in fb post in gujarati or hindi is down market(although sometimes the post makers are sadly amateurs in photoshop ), rather it should be embraced and celebrated along with english, because how much creativity on fb itself with so many languages and so many expressions !!! Maybe you will struggle with both parochial language and english, but fairness should not be the only criteria, when we come to society, creativity,variability should, be too . . . of course when it comes to law and order, fairness is only criteria, but not in day to day social situations!!
and irrevokably (with all due respect to extraordinary efforts, breath taking visuals, amazing soundtrack, and brilliant get together of creative heads in GOT ) Idolizing Daenerys targaryen in GOT is secular, but idolizing kali or some ajmer khwaja(sufi) is religious, just because it hasn't been marketed well and is not majoritarian.
Coming back to the story,
But one bright day, a customer came, with his daughter. He told, "my little kid used to love both your paintings and look what she has brought with her" and then showed an archive collection to their past paintings. One after other, both of them understood what went wrong.
Secularism exists only when there are differences and it is a process of celebrating the differences.
If a blank painting has been painted 5 colors, one thing to do is to erase whole painting and have only one color, that is what is linearity, and other thing to do is to embrace those 5 colors making them even more colorful and harmonious, making identity even more stonger but with celebrating sense, embracing the differences.
India, as a country has humungous unspeakable scope of creativity with thousands of dialects, so many differences, if only we celebrate these differences. If only a marathi is not shy of marathipana, a gujarati not shy of gujaratipana, but both admiring each other's differences. Let me speak my gujarati poems, let you play your marathi instruments and sit together in jugalbandhi or fusion. That is the true spirit of secularism.
Don't you see the suffocation already? From offices to school? We have so much embraced this majoritarian idea of one idea, one plan, on way of dreaming, that we forgot that we are humans and each one of us is different in our own ways. Not allowing differences to exist will only create more suffocation . . . creativity can't prosper where there are no differences. It will become the most boring, ruthless cold world otherwise, which few countries are very much experiencing . . . Initially it feels exciting in majoritarianism, with power to project big, but slowly it recedes and we realize how many dreams we have killed within ourselves or ourside ourselves . . .
It is like silver coated jail, where you have power to do everything, but still you can't cross this jail . . . you have to live within this jail, this is what modern framework had done, It has drawn an invisible mentle line between modernity and millions of traditional ways, and kills one aspect of dream diversity every day . . .
Regional Jingoism,Fanaticism, etc are terms often used by media to decimate dreams and aspiration of alternate view . . .
Like in ecosystem has to have natural order, so does human aspirations too . . . If you are destroying old ways of tradtions and rituals, but not replacing them with enough number of new traditions and rituals, completely different in approaches, then imbalance will be felt. . .
I know new rituals like texting ritual, coding ritual,etc are there, but still the touch or feel behind all is still same, but in India especially, the feel is totally different from north to south, east to west, and can be felt very clearly . . . .
Isn't 50,000 of varities of living decimated to just 10, a killing? Is it less than killing? What minimum we can do, is that a marathi first of all, know his rituals, try to gather the dreams behind the things he observes in a marathi society, secondly tries to embrace it, without shying out, and thirdly perpetuate it to next generation. The only thing he must understand is that my marathi is not better or worse than gujarati or madrasi, it is just that I am doing my part to mainain,appreciate and celebrate the biodiversity of this phantasmagorical world and make it worth living for next generation adding freshness and creating breeding grounds for both vivid diverse imaginations and reality to florish . . .
So next time you see, a gujarati or marathi magazine or if your friend speaks about something other than the terms fit out in your modern vocabulary, don't get shy away by the silver prison jail created by modern marketing withing you, rather break it . . . :)
Important Reactions
My good college friend :
well
i think you don't have any idea about what secularism is...I haven't
seen any secular person (or atheists) opposing any ones artistic
freedom.. However religious fanatics always get a way to banish artists
like taslima nasreen or fida hussuain ... These are the people who
creates problem whenever someone celebrates Valentines day or expresses
their love for same sex...These are the people who kill thousands in
communal violence over fairy tales and never express their regrets.
Me:
I had considered this aspect too . . . that's why I said, celebrating
the differences . . . I have lived in villages, and I have seen how I
learned to make beautiful madhubani art toys and krishna paintings from
my neighbors and we used
to learn it from khan chacha. . . thing is it was all mixed up, but now
I see people shy of expressing some forms of idea's . . . stuff you
are talking about are not celebrating difference, they are simply idiots
and I am against it . . . My point was against pen paper secularism,
where people in name of secularism try to belittle every other idea, old
in origin . . . I have met such people sadly in NGO's, in many places
who talk and preach about such stupid definitions of secularism . . .
and am very happy that you havn't encountered such people, if not people
do look up the newspapers, will mail you some links soon . . . . still
I respect your comment and will take it up . .
My good college friend :
I
am sorry if i was bit harsh in my last comment...People you are talking
about are wannabe europeans and i also hate them... but it has nothing
to do with being secular...I have seen deeply communal person behaving
in the same way... However in my opinion
religious fanatics are far more susceptible to attack any one who don't
share their views... i have given the example of fida hussain or taslma
nasreen...and this trend is increasing a lot in India...On the other
hand you can not give a single example of a secular group banishing
anyone or beating people who are too religious
Me
No, I am not offended, that's ok dear friend,
these discussions are more than one way . happy that you were not
diplomatic. . but yes, you are correct that fanatics are far more
susceptible because of bullshit distorted interpretations hardwired in
their mind, not just
that Zakir hussain,kamal hassan's hostility etc are also there in list
and I am against it, but as you correctly pointed out . . . the so
called wannable europeans use words like religion,fanaticism, regional
jingoism, etc to marginalize art forms very much connected to million
different gods, stories of gods, etc, god as a metephor,creativity,art
is brilliant but not to be confused with reality and existance and
supirior god inferior god kind of crap, which leads to fanaticism ,but
at same time don't underestimate imagination, even if it is not real,
it is extremely creative and exchanging process . . . contrasts of
opinions and ways of living which make it so special to live here, etc
which are very diverse in this nation, and is something not worth
losing. . . vast killing of iraq is example how fanaticism is dangerous,
that is why we need more gods, so as to break the hegemony of singular
way of imagination, but to take away imagination, and believe me, it will repress for a period, but will come up in a big way somehow . . . . imagination is one form of expression, beautiful until it is not compulsive and destructive . . . !!! abnegation is to be used in
extreme cases not in all societies,especially where there is alternate
solution of beautiful coexistance . . I hope that the public I am
conveying to, is definitely not of the fanatic kind . . . . that is a
big pre-assumption I have taken
. .
Some references for details . . . http://www.thehindu.com/.../the.../article6148767.ece http://www.thehindu.com/.../indian.../article3142086.ece
