Culture: What Is The UPA Government’s Policy?

Nalini Taneja

TOO often the discussion on culture during the UPA regime has revolved around the failure of Jaipal Reddy to disturb the dominance of cultural bodies by RSS elements appointed during the former BJP led government’s tenure. While this is an issue of serious concern, the question of culture is much broader in scope.

To begin with, the institutions of culture whose autonomy has continuously been undermined by government appointees, and which also became communalised and willing instruments of the BJP’s communal agenda during the NDA rule, constitute just one part of the cultural landscape—the area through which government policy is promoted. Of larger influence are the broad patterns of culture which have evolved as part of the general right wing shift in ideology and politics all over the world in the era of globalisation. A large number of liberals and conservatives have failed to withstand a right wing assault encompassing culture as much as economy and politics. India has not escaped this fate either.

SHIFT TO THE RIGHT

What we considered as the Centre in Indian politics has shifted to the right. What we see as consensus today is nothing but right wing solutions to the crises of economy and politics on the part of bourgeois political parties. The collapse of Nehruvian vision is the collapse of the Centre, manifested not merely in the growth of the Hindutva forces, represented in the electoral spectrum by the BJP, but also by the transformation of the Congress into a right wing party. The choice for the country, until the left can manage an alternative Third Front, is not between liberalism and conservatism, or social democracy and the right wing, but between a communal, fascist right wing and a Congress right wing, that is ready to go along with the neo-liberalisation policies of the World Bank-WTO. In a way, just as New Education Policy preceded the New Economic Policy, so also did a right wing agenda in culture precede the IMF-World Bank mandated neo-liberalisation policies in so far as Indian governments are concerned.

The UPA government led by the Congress party has inherited in this respect not just the communal cultural agenda of the former BJP led NDA government. The Congress has its own legacy. In the past, the Congress party has failed to uphold democratic traditions, pursued anti people economic policies and at times allowed Hindu communal elements to dominate cultural institutions. The present UPA government is heir to all this.

RSS’s ASSERTION OF AUTHORITY

The watershed, if one has to evaluate changes in culture, was 1992, the year Babri Masjid was demolished by the RSS led communal forces during the Narasimha Rao led Congress regime. Since then the RSS has been asserting its the authority to speak for the nation and on the nation, and a section of middle class public opinion seems to have acquiesced in it. Terrorism and national security have become euphemisms for targeting the minorities and neighbouring countries, collaborations with Israel and the US. These right wing policies have now replaced the solidarity with developing countries and policy of non-alignment. The nation is also being subverted even as it is being appropriated and redefined in elitist, right wing terms.

The replacement of the State controlled media by a corporate controlled privatised media, with more and more concessions to foreign media companies, has meant a definite anti-democratic cultural agenda on the part of Indian governments during the last two decades. The space for meaningful news has decreased in newspapers while coloured supplements that promote consumerism have increased. More television channels have meant only more of the same rather than greater choice for viewers. Privatisation has increased the control of capital rather than ensuring democratisation. It has ensured autonomy for the ruling class which has been allowed to run away with the country along with its cultural and educational institutions, all of which today serve ruling class interests, with little concern for popular welfare.

MIX OF COMMUNALISM AND BUSINESS

The year long serialisations of Hum Log, Ramayana, Mahabharata, the increasing space to Hindu religious events and festivals, family soap operas that promote parochialism and patriarchy, MTV and V music channels with their remixes and obscenities that reflect nothing more acutely than the economic desperation of lower middle class girls forced into such careers, and the proliferating religious channels with their growing audiences, along with western soap operas and advertisements that promote crass consumerism, have created a bastardized culture that State sponsored cultural institutions can hardly hope to rival in influence, however well meaning the persons appointed to them.

The more heady mix of communalism and business created by the communalisation of religion and the commercialisation of cultural festivals, through a deliberate intervention by the Sangh Parivar and its sympathisers, has influenced urban middle class culture. Five star hotels and restaurants offer special thalis for navratras, departmental stores like Archies have special cards and gifts for Karva Chauth, Rakhi is being promoted as a religious festival in South India, and sindoor and karva chauth among dalits and tribals.

Clearly therefore the promotion of a democratic culture involves much more than a change of personnel in cultural institutions and curbs on moral policing of the BJP kind. It involves a democratisation of culture and the promotion of the culture of democracy, both of which are linked with the growth of democratic politics, and a secular, equal and effective educational system as a fundamental right.

THE UPA GOVERNMENT’s APPROACH

Where does the UPA government stand in relation to all this? That is the crucial question. The answer is also predictable. The Congress party has no clear objection to what has been going on in culture. It is not unhappy with the media that has no space for livelihood issues and peoples’ concerns. It seems to be indifferent to what Narendra Modi is continuing to do in Gujarat, or the blatant communalisation being promoted in Rajasthan by Vasundhara Raje. It hardly cares for the falling sex ratio, the caste panchayats and their uncivilised illegal rulings, or violence on dalits. It can co exist with satis and female infanticide in states ruled by it, even if it does not promote them. In pursuing neo-liberal policies, it may even go further than the BJP. For example in allowing FDI into media, entry of foreign players in education and the privatisation of education, and attacks on workers rights it is not easy to distinguish the policies of the Congress and BJP. The Congress is a globalising political party, committed to disinvestment in educational and cultural institutions as much as in the economic sector.

But that is not to say that nothing has changed with the defeat of the Hindutva forces. Clearly more space has opened for democratic politics, if for no other reason then because the Congress does not have a clear majority. It is accountable to Parliament and to electoral pressures rather than to a power centre which has no electoral legitimacy, as in the case of the BJP led government which was run by the RSS. And it cannot afford to ignore the left parties. This in itself has opened more space for democratic politics. But what needs to be emphasised is that the democratic forces in this country have nothing to gain from relying on the Congress. They have to build their own alternatives, for which the conjuncture of the incomplete hold of the Congress on the polity together with the defeat of the BJP provides a good opportunity. The battle over who constitutes the nation and country has sharpened in recent years. We must rely on ourselves to push forward a democratic cultural agenda rather than have expectations from the political parties, which are steeped in right wing culture.