Will we carry the old hates, the old intolerance into the New Year? There is something disquietingly similar about two separate developments in the last week of the dying year. In Gandhinagar, Gujarat, about 20 motorcycle borne goons attacked the multiplex cinema on Wednesday where M.F. Husain's directorial venture, Gajagamini was to be premiered, damaged the set, and defaced some of the artist's paintings. The screening and release of the film have been called off indefinitely. On the same day, the RSS came down heavily on New Year revelries, calling for a ban on celebrations to welcome "the Christian New Year". On cue, the Hindu Jagran Manch warned it would disrupt New Year festivities in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, by disconnecting electricity to clubs and restaurants and "stopping the music in party halls" if necessary. Both the attack on Husain's work in Gujarat and the RSS edict in Uttar Pradesh are inspired by the same irresistible urge. To protect "Hindu/Indian culture" - be it from Husain's"anti-Hindu" portrayals of Hindu goddesses that kicked up a furore two years ago or from the promotion of "westernisation and vulgarity" among the youth in the name of new year functions. At one level, it is all quite amusing, really. If the RSS were to have its way, for instance, it would ban not just new year revelry, but also birthday cakes, honeymoons, and contraception - for being symbols, all, of cultural imperialism. Tagged to its litany of don'ts is a list of dos. Drinking cow's milk and burning ghee for puja will be obligatory in the ideal Hindu home, apart of course from producing more than two children per family. Burning a kg of ghee a day will ostensibly create more oxygen for the environment; needless to say, more Hindu offspring will counter the dangers posed by runaway Muslim numbers. Despite the enormous temptation, though, it will not do to simply dismiss such theories as bizarre. They must be heard and countered because otherwise they may just end up setting the agenda. They already have in Uttar Pradesh, for instance. Here, newly anointed Chief Minister Rajnath Singh recently took time off from the weighty problems of administering to a notoriously poverty-stricken state,to pronounce an edict that outlaws the beauty contest on account of its being against the "Hindu ethos". While violent attacks such as the one on Husain's works in Gandhinagar or the threatened invasion by Hindutva hoodlums of new year parties in Kanpur are perpetrated by a small group, the problem is not one of this "lunatic fringe" alone. The real problem lies in the tacit support that is often provided to these small groups by political leaders. Be it the Keshubhai Patel administration looking the other way in Gujarat even as activists vandalised trucks carrying colas, disrupted beauty pageants and burnt churches, or the erstwhile Shiv Sena government's blinking at the terror tactics of the culture police in Maharashtra, the message is loud and clear. The lunatic fringe prospers when the mainstream abdicates its responsibility to rein it in.
