- Eric Hoffer

Doesn’t that quote say a lot about us, as a society and as individuals?

Manish

A democracy means that one is allowed to pursue his own happiness and livelihood in the manner in which he sees fit, provided that he is within the law of the land, which is uniformly applied to all its citizens.

But all this imposing business ensures an autocracy and hurts all those who are soft targets. This is fascism in its seminal form.

A play like the Merchant of Venice should not be banned. Nor should it be culturally desensitized. (I hate all forms of bowdlerising!) But in case there is an objection raised by anyone about its lampooning a certain race or religious community, the producers, directors and actors could simply clarify that it is not their intention to offend anybody.

If a certain thing has contents which could hurt the sentiments of someone, just write a warning and make it clear that the purpose is not to hurt the sentiments of any one community.

I think that is fair enough.

So, rather than go about banning anyone or anything, we behave like mature considerate individuals and tell people in advance what to expect and respect others’ right to make up their own minds on whether something is appropriate or otherwise.

I would end by saying that banning something can never bring about the absence of hatred. Hatred stems from insecurity, xenophobia, lack of resources, lack of opportunities and intolerance. Excessive consumerism simply creates greater inequities of wealth and hence intensifies the struggle for limited resources. None of these problems can be solved by slapping a ban.

Each of these problems is interconnected and needs to be resolved holistically and democratically. Banning something is like brushing the dirt under the carpet. You never get rid of rubbish that way - you merely fill your house with more and more dirt.

The world is in a state of turmoil, and the causes of unrest really boil down to two - discrimination of one kind or another, and greed. And discrimination and greed, their causes and consequences, are exactly what The Merchant of Venice is about.

It might be said – ‘Do not perform this play. It encourages racial/religious/communal discrimination.’ And by extension, then, it could be said - ‘Perform only those plays that talk of harmony – that way people may forget all about hatred and learn to love each other.’

If only it were that easy to turn hatred into harmony.

Humankind, despite its great achievements, has much to be ashamed of. We cannot yet afford to forget the atrocities of history – the wars, the Holocaust, men like Stalin and Ceausescu.

We cannot afford to forget these horrors because they are not yet in the past – they live among us still, under different names: Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Godhra, Nandigram…the list, I am afraid, is endless.

The knowledge of history gives us knowledge of our mistakes and our wrongdoings.

It is up to us: we can deny that knowledge and ban plays from being performed, books from being written, all in the hope of thereby creating the world we want, whatever be the parameters of that world (and once we begin banning books and plays and thoughts and free speech, the parameters of that world we want cease to matter very much).

Or we can accept what history tells us and remember its lessons – that humankind is capable of doing great wrong, that it has done great wrong, and that, unless it breaks the pattern, it will continue to do great wrong. That pattern will never be broken through denial, or by banning the performance of plays.

Incidentally, Shakespeare intended The Merchant of Venice to be a comedy. And it is. A very funny one, even now, more than four hundred years after it was written. I marvel at the genius of Shakespeare – but about that, in another post…

So a Jew was bad, but cheating his of his wealth was OK.

This kind of mentality has to be checked.

In India, we have had Taslima Nasrin shamelessly hounded out of Kolkata, a city that prides itself on its intellectualism. How many Kolkata intellectuals spoke up on her behalf?

All the Page 3 bleeding hearts have strangely kept mum on her being hounded out of Kolkata.

Sad, but not strange.

Manish