Getting Sentimental

Voices of Sanity is a collection of essays and interviews providing glimpses of the views of, among others, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Praful Bidwai, Vandana Shiva and Pervez Hoodbhoy. An overdose of September 11 punditry is already clogging cyberspace but these important views are now deservedly gaining influence. Only, Voices paints itself into a sentimental corner. Articles on a mother’s tears in To My Seven Year Old or a poem bemoaning Nothing to Say to You, are irritatingly flimsy. The collection might have gained had Hindi, Bengali and Marathi authors been represented. Or if commentaries from Dainik Jagran and Anandabazar Patrika had been included.

The challenge in this country surely is how to create a protest space rooted in the soil. In this sense, documents like this should aim to reach those who might be at the frontlines of the invisible war, for whom the temptation of violence and murder may be very real. The mob at Malegaon may not be swayed by John Lennon’s lyrics. Nor might the nationalist ulema of the Deoband Dar-ul-Uloom look kindly on women in trousers defending liberal Islam. Denunciations of war become wearyingly romantic if not enmeshed with local realities in the local idiom. Painting undergraduate posters and strumming guitars would jar among Dharavi’s unemployed or in Naxalite Andhra. Voices’ aims are unclear. It preaches to seminarists already in a state of electronic siege about the war. Yet fails to reach a wider audience by ignoring the Indian dimension.