Author: Balbir Punj
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: January 27, 2010
URL: http://expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Akademi+sets+bad+precedent&artid=0oz78TwImk4=&SectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&MainSectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&SEO=Sahitya+Akademi,+Yarlagadda+Lakshmi+Prasad,+Kaurav&SectionName=m3GntEw72ik=
The Sahitya Akademi under the ministry of
culture has selected the Telugu novel Draupadi for its annual award in the
outstanding literary work in that language category. The novel by Yarlagadda
Lakshmi Prasad is an unabashedly base, pornographic portrayal of the central
character of the Mahabharata, completely contrary to how the great epic delineates
her.
Even as a literary piece the book or its contents
do not stand scrutiny. For instance, Draupadi is fantasising about sex when
one of the Pandava brothers, Nakul, comes to inform her of the killing of
all her five sons at the end of the Mahabharata war. How could anybody, that
too a woman, be indulging in such fantasy when the war has devastated all
the noble families known to her?
The original epic shows Draupadi as a woman
of great fortitude and high moral fibre. This is why, says the epic, she has
been seen as successfully resisting the attempt to disrobe her and Lord Krishna
himself comes to her rescue and foil the dishonour sought to be meted out
to her by the Kauravas. She also gets a boon from the lord that enables her
to feed the Pandava brothers in the long years of their exile.
Had the novelist merely wanted to present
a different Draupadi in his novel, people would have simply ignored the book
that he has written. But his purpose is seen in the pornographic undertone
of the entire novel, the imagined events he attributes in her life and the
dialogues that seek to display her as a lascivious character. The purpose
of the author is not literary but to mock at the faith of millions who hold
the Mahabharata character as an exemplary woman who comes through a series
of misfortunes.
Even then, that work could have been ignored.
But the Sahitya Akademi choosing it as an outstanding work in Telugu literature
is an insult to Telugu itself. The akademi is not only awarding it but will
be spending taxpayers' money to translate this pornographic work into different
Indian languages.
This is the height of insolence of a group
of people who have no respect for the sentiments of the majority of Indians
and Indian womanhood. In a representation to the President of India T H Chaudhury,
a former technocrat and chairman of the VSNL, has demanded that she does not
sully her hand by giving away an award to a book that denigrates womanhood
page after page.
Why is the government ignoring the hurt sentiments
of millions of Hindus in choosing this book for the award? Is it a product
of the same mental make-up that once enabled an official affidavit to be submitted
to the Supreme Court that questioned the historic reality of Rama?
However, in the same government there are
forces that are extra-careful to act when even a whisper of concern is expressed
in any literary or artistic or other work that is claimed to be against Muslim
sentiment. While any critical work regarding anything concerning Islamic sentiment
immediately brings violent protests and the government hastens to ban these
works, no concern is shown for Hindu sentiments. Remember how the 'secular'
establishment had responded to Muslim concerns over the Danish cartoons and
Tasleema Nasreen, who was hounded out of Kolkata under the pressure of Islamic
fundamentalists.
Every time such atrocities are committed in
the name of artistic freedom or freedom of expression against Hindu sentiments,
the so-called secular constituency leaps to defend the perpetrator of such
atrocity and wisdom is doled out quoting the Constitution. Such advice to
Hindus ignores the considerable case that has build up over the years to distinguish
where the freedom of expression of an author ends and where the freedom of
other people begins. This is no thin line.
Freedom to write cannot be a licence to abuse.
Misinterpretation can be ignored, misjudgements, even in critical works, can
be overlooked but deliberate distortions and malicious attributions do not
deserve the protection of the right to freedom of speech and expression. Even
so, nobody is asking for a ban on Y L Prasad's book; any citizen of this country
has the right to protest when such malicious works are sought to be put on
the pedestal at taxpayers' cost.
Those who quote the Nobel Prize given to Boris
Pasternak, the Russian author for his work Dr Zhivago in this context, fail
to observe this distinction. Dr Zhivago was a critical portrayal of the contradictions
in the Soviet revolution - it said nothing demeaning of anyone, no pornographic
passages, the events in it told a story and had deep roots in the path that
the Bolshevik revolution took and consumed the very people who led the revolution.
Prasad has not written a critique of Mahabharata;
he has produced an overt sexual fantasy and pinned it on an epic character.
Even so, Prasad can have his book. What one is objecting to is the government's
eagerness to reward such malice, while it is extra anxious to proscribe even
a straw that is claimed to hurt the minorities.
- punjbalbir@gmail.com
