The Good,The Bad and The Cultured

Words are only symbols of things; they are not the things themselves. This is one of the basic tenets of semantics. But sometimes we identify some words and some things so closely that it is possible for anyone with a considerable amount of malevolence residing in his mind to turn the table with the very mention of a word or a few words in public. The word ‘culture’ has such an effect on the Indian psyche. More so, when the usage is ‘our culture’.
The meaning of a word is bound to change in the course of time, irrespective of its etymological history. The frequent use of 'our culture' in the Indian media, however, suggests that any sort of transformation that the usage had to undergo has more to do with manipulation than an ingenuous degeneration. I say this because, on a number of occasions things have gone out of hand due to the deliberate intervention of a few criminals disguised as the protectors of 'our culture' into certain events which were of little concern to the common man. These people, often dubbed by the media as the moral police, argue that their acts are targeted at those things which they believe to be against 'our culture'. So what exactly is ‘our culture’? What is the exact number of things that would feature under the label ‘Against Our Culture’?
Before I futilely attempt to seek answers to these questions (I say futile because at the end of this script you can trust me to confess that I haven’t got a clue on what exactly-and I mean exactly, nothing short of it-our culture is) I shall draw your attention towards a self-proclaimed protector of ‘our culture’ who has unfortunately occupied the highest office in the ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Mr. Priyaranjan Das Munshi. A couple of decisions that he has taken in the recent past is obnoxious enough to put even the toughest hardliner in any right-wing party to shame. First, it was the downright idiotic decision to ban a popular television channel named AXN for a period of two months. Then in a similarly outrageous way he decided to ban another channel FTV for three months. According to the minister both these channels had one thing in common-they aired programmes each which were against ‘our culture’.
Now, let’s scrutinize these two controversial programmes and what went against their favour. The show titled ‘World’s Sexiest Commercials’ televised by AXN was supposedly comic, sardonic or even sarcastic, but definitely not sexy. The ads featured in the show were meant to raise laugh and not to titillate the audience. Veteran journalist karan Thapar had these thoughts and more as he snared the minister with a volley of questions in an interview. You are free to figure out the level of stupidity on the part of this so-called protector of ‘our culture’ as he admitted that he found the particular show to be sexy after viewing it personally.
In response to a notice from the ministry, FTV had pulled off ‘Midnight Hot’, which, incidentally, was once voted as one among the five most popular shows on Indian television, by the end of 2006. This moral super cop who went lamenting about the blow ‘our culture’ received with the telecast of a show in which “female models walk around in bikinis”, was short of an answer as to why he decided to ban the channel three months after the show was taken off air. He also found himself cornered when questioned on the logic in banning television channels in their entirety for televising a single objectionable programme.
Adult entertainment and the Indian television industry share a long-term association. But there has been a steady decline of it’s quantity over the past decade. Now, I’m not pornographically disadvantaged. With the kind of reach that porn enjoys these days, I don’t think anybody is. But I have no qualms on watching a TV show which has sexual content, at midnight, an hour when most kids are asleep, when family members rarely stay up together to watch TV. And if I’m not in the right frame of mind (or body, for that matter) to watch it, I could opt to view any other channel or to turn off the television set. But I wouldn’t go bragging about in public on the blow ‘our culture’ received at the hands of an innocuous TV show. Nor do I believe that it’s right for a person in authority to ban something simply because his point of view clashes with its content. Not in a country which is known as one of the largest democracies in the world. Not at the time when a coalition led by the supposedly liberal Indian National Congress is in power at the centre.
If the whole matter can be brought down to one man’s ego, then it raises the obvious question of his own sexual competence. I hope that someone who is not impotent would occupy the chair of the minister for I&B the next time the Prime Minister decides to shuffle the ministers of his cabinet. Someone who is not ‘cultured’ enough so as to take an affirmative action as far as adult entertainment on TV is concerned maybe right for the job.
And as I had promised, I have no answers to the questions I posed. But, one of my friends had a different take on this issue and on parting I’ll leave you with his stream of thought. According to him all this hoopla on culture is just a front; the real reason could be something else, if a good amount of money had changed hands the very same ministry would have let these channels telecast sexually explicit shows even during daytime.It’s a long shot. Maybe true, maybe not. But on an afterthought I feel inclined to believe it. And it’s because I believe in something else. That is “culture follows the living habits of people; not the other way around”. Maybe it’s true in this case too. Bribery may be the only ‘culture’ that we Indians posses. And what better way than to ban television channels for violating ‘our culture’.