Big Brother wants to control what you read

When the official in charge of funding libraries makes it clear that States must support the move to make libraries a central subject, you know Big Brother has not only arrived, but has established himself.

Why would any government want to take the trouble of amending the Constitution just to shift libraries from the state to the central list, unless it wanted to control what people read? The reading habit may be dying in metropolises, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) knows that there’s a thirst for books everywhere else. It’s also aware that the state with the largest number of public libraries is Kerala, followed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh. Four of these five have rejected the BJP decisively in elections.

Of course, it’s far-fetched to link the spread of libraries with election results. The real connection libraries have is with minds; they let fresh winds from all sides blow through. Its record of the last nine years and even during the AB Vajpayee regime, shows that the BJP wants winds of only one kind to batter our minds.

Bringing libraries under its control is an effective way of achieving this. The Centre needs to fund purchases only of ‘ideologically correct’ books; its storm-troopers can ensure that books by ‘subversive’ writers: Romila Thapar to Nirala, Perumal Murugan to Premchand — the list is long — are thrown out. This two-tier system of thought control has been proven to deliver results: the latest example being the swift arrest and suspension of a professor in Pune the moment the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) complained that their religious feelings were hurt. All he had done was, while teaching Bhakti poetry, to explain the essence of that genre: God is one, though there may be different names for him.

Rebels against organised religion from the 14th to the 17th centuries, Bhakti poets faced opposition from the orthodoxy. They would have laughed cynically had they been told that their ideas would be considered too radical for 21st century India. Once the Centre has libraries under its control, the Ministry of Culture could blacklist Bhakti poets too.

Keeping aside the uninformed actions of the student body, literature does have that dangerous ability to make you question. Long before the Bhakti poets started ridiculing bigots, ancient Greek philosopher Plato denounced poets for corrupting the minds of young people and banished them from his ideal state. For sure, the BJP knows exactly what it’s doing when it moves to control libraries. But what’s the rationale behind taking over the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs)?

The latest changes in the IIM Act bring these business schools directly under the control of the President. From appointments of directors to conducting inquiries to dissolving the Board, everything will be under directions of the Centre. The rationale given is to make them more accountable. Is complete control of renowned institutions the only way to make them accountable, or is this part of a larger pattern? Just last month, the Centre moved in to control Mumbai’s famous Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). UGC chairman Jagadesh Kumar, who, as Jawaharlal Nehru University vice chancellor, wanted an army tank installed on the campus to instil patriotism among his students, said this would bring “uniformity” in the university system.

Two months back, the Xi Jinping government in China introduced the draft of its Patriotic Education Law. Defined as “adherence to the leadership of the Communist Party’’ , and, of course, Xi Jinping Thought, patriotic education must be “integrated with all subjects”, said the draft.

The parallels between the world’s largest political party and the world’s largest communist party are disturbing, when you consider that the former controls the world’s largest democracy, while the latter has never hidden its contempt for democracy. Could anyone have imagined this situation 76 years after Independence?

Late reformist Asghar Ali Engineer, who used to investigate every communal riot, would often bemoan the ideological bankruptcy of the Congress, the dominant party till 2014. Only the communist parties and the BJP were ideologically-driven, cadre-based parties, he would point out, and between the two, the BJP would use every opportunity to infiltrate the system.

Engineer isn’t around to see his words come true. While the communists have shrunk to just one state, the Congress did nothing to prevent the BJP’s steady infiltration, at its zenith today.

August 15 is a good day to recall the words of the man who spearheaded the freedom movement. “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi. But in ‘Azadi ka Amrit Kaal’, sadly, the goal is ‘One Country, One Culture, One Thought’.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. They do not necessarily refect the views of DH.