Can we safeguard our right to question and demur?

We Indians love boasting about our hoary heritage, our many-splendoured past. Listening to those accounts, I wonder: are we the same people? Have we morphed into another race altogether? Look at these two stories from the ancient world.

The boy is fed up with his father’s dishonesty in offering only sick, emaciated cows for the ritual sacrifice. “What else?” he asks incessantly. The angry father shouts back, “You!” The boy goes to the land of death, where, his fearless questions compel Yama, god of death, to disclose hidden truths about the afterlife. Today Nachiketa is celebrated for his uprightness and integrity.

Nachiketa is the son of a brahmin sage. But Satyakam is the son of a maidservant — Jabala. He wants to join school, a place for the privileged classes. Even to make the attempt, he has to have a patronymic. “I was so busy working that I don’t know who fathered you,” his mother shrugs. “Say your name is Satyakam Jabala.” Impressed by the boy’s unflinching honesty, the teacher admits him.

Seeking truth, even disturbing truth, had value in the ancient world. Naturally, fearlessness impelled this search, and the questioning spirit provided motivational force. Dissent was not a crime. Look at the Charvakas who once roamed here, preaching pure atheism and sheer materialism. They poked fun at every tradition. There were disputes galore, but their right to differ from the mainstream was never in question.

A story from the Sangam age in Tamil Nadu describes a poor man, seeking a reward from an art-loving king, for a poem that he persuades his personal deity Siva to “ghostwrite” for him. But court poet Nakkirar objects vehemently, pointing to a structural flaw in the verse. Siva tries to daunt Nakkirar with his third eye of fire. But the human poet will not retract. To this day, both poems are part of the Tamil heritage.

Debates were legitimate means of demolishing opposition. Polemics between monistic philosopher Sankara, and Mandana Mishra of the Mimamsa school, had Mishra’s scholar wife Sarasavani as the arbiter. Finally, with a wry smile, Sarasavani tells her husband, “You are no longer a householder. Renounce the world and follow the winner.” Such myths stress intellectual freedom and integrity.

We do see remnants of that uncompromising spirit in the freedom fighting days. Sardar Patel could openly disagree with the Mahatma, as with Nehru, and yet be recognised by both as their bulwark of strength.

When Gandhi was mesmerised by Sarala Devi Chaudhary, Rajaji could admonish him, “I shudder to think how near to ruin, not you, but all saintliness, all purity, all asceticism, all India’s hope… What right had you to… dally with such ruin…? When in your boat was the faith and fate of millions of simple souls who if the boat capsized would have seen unspeakable shame and death…? Come back and give us life!” Not without cause did the Mahatma acknowledge Rajaji as his conscience keeper.

Is such relentless truth speaking possible today? When the corrupt and the criminal — whether sports mandarin, political supremo, godman — strut through salaams and prostrations? Strike terror with their clout? Can we stop sycophantic mobs from beating up anyone who raises questions? Can we stop book banning and theatre burning? 

Like many modern thinkers, I wonder. Did the bhakti movement, sweeping across the country, insisting on total surrender to the chosen godhead, also quite unwittingly, weaken our will? Do we need to reclaim, restore the path of knowledge, gnanamarga, to recover intellectual integrity? Healthy skepticism? Questioning spirit? Power of dissent? The ability to recognise, voice and accept bitter truths? And thereby rehabilitate ourselves?

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist, writing on the performing arts, cinema and literature