Anton Chekhov’s Ward No. 6 (1892) has Andrey Yefimitch Ragin, a doctor in a small town, as its main character. His quest for philosophical conversation brings him closer to one of the five patients in the lunatic ward, a man clear of reason and forceful in logical arguments. The intimacy between them becomes the reason for the authorities to push Dr Ragin into the ward as a mad man, bringing their number to six, the ward for the six.
A story by Manto in 1955 revolves around the transfer of inmates from an asylum in Lahore to India following the Partition. Bishan Singh, from the city, Toba Tek Singh, its central character, like Checkov’s doctor, is the only sane person around in the madness generated by the tumultuous events of 1947. He refuses to belong to either Pakistan or to India.
The ‘insane’ have always been a problem for systems that decide what the truth is. As I write this column, my thoughts go back to Checkov and Manto. I do not have the large creative visions they had; yet, I find it necessary to engage in an imaginary conversation with them. Other conversations in a world that one expects to be reasonable have already turned absurd. Here is an example.
I have been watching closely the progressive unfolding of the social engineering by the current regime in India. Beginning with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, moving through the demands of economic boycott of Muslims in Karnataka, the wrecking of the hijab issue, various state regulations related to inter-faith marriages, curbs on UGC fellowships for scheduled caste students, the provision of funds for genetic studies focused on ‘purity’, the judicial tweaking of the OBC quota, it has now come to talk of launching a population control policy. When possible, I write on these issues, to remind fellow countrymen that India has a Constitution and that we need to adhere to it. I normally try to educate myself on any issue that I want to write about; and the columns I contribute to this newspaper are carefully read by watchful editorial colleagues.
Therefore, when I wanted to comment on the proposed population control bill, pending in Parliament, I checked the sources for exact details. On the day I checked them, November 26, the internet showed a bill introduced by a Rajasthanbased BJP MP as being listed, with the draft of the bill available for one to read. There was another bill proposed previously and supported by 125 MPs. But it was withdrawn. There were also media reports on a third bill in the pipeline that another BJP parliamentarian had announced he would propose. The one that was available on the internet on the day I checked the online resources had all of the incentives and disincentives one has heard about in the context of any ‘stringent population control legislation’. But it had one more really shocking element in it. It had proposed ‘disenfranchisement’ of the ‘offenders’ — those who will have more than two children. To take away the voting rights of citizens under any circumstances is entirely against citizens’ rights granted by the Constitution. I wrote my piece and sent it to the editor, as I normally do, some two weeks before it was to appear today. Then, closer to the date of its publication, I received a call from the editorial section informing me that they could not locate the document on which I had commented. I was travelling when I got the call. And, so, I assured them that when I get back to my desk, I would send it to them. However, when I opened my computer to look for it, I was in for a shock. It no longer exists. All references to it on the internet have just disappeared. This has never happened before. I spent considerable time trying to dig up the traces of the document. But all of them have been meticulously cleaned. This sent a shudder down my spine. Had the bill been a figment of my imagination? Has an insanity set in, leading me to imagine an entire parliamentary document when it did not exist? To ward off the thought, I decided to check all my downloads from the date I had written the piece. The Google record showed, minute by minute, all my web-related activity. That record had all of the sites I had visited before writing the article. But as I attempted to open one site after another, I noticed that all of the matter that I had accessed from the government’s official websites had been removed. The other sites I had visited continue to exist in the form I had seen them. I would have closed the matter there; but I remembered that sometime back the census sites, which I had referred to in the past, had been made inaccessible as well. Besides, in place of the proposed bill, a new announcement by the BJP MP who had previously announced that he was to propose a population control bill started appearing in the media over the last few days. A few television channels organised discussions around the new bill. I could not access its exact text, but media reports have comments on it.
What is this phenomenon? Is it a method of sounding out public opinion on the question of population? Is it just an indication of the indecisiveness of the party in power on the issue? Or is it an exercise in political messaging? If giving glimpses of such documents to the public and then withdrawing them from public view is being attempted as political messaging, the implied message is to stereotype minorities without any respect for facts and figures related to birth rates, population statistics, infant mortality rates and infertility levels. Besides, the frequent disappearance of data from public view amounts to a complete mockery of the citizen’s right to information. Allowing shocking ideas to be first circulated and then moping them up to give the impression that they were never stated is an old handtrick in mass psychology of fascism. Are we already there? Has India become another ward number six?
G.N. Devy is Chair, The People’s Linguistic Survey of India
