Of bandhs, bans and cancelled tours

"AIB ban. Beef ban. Nirbahya documentary ban. Satanic Verses ban. India by Katherine Mayo ban, The Ramayana as told by Aubrey Menen ban. Indian censor chief's abusive-words ban." It was a robust Mumbai alpha male venting at what appears to have got the collective goat of citizens across the land. "With all these bans we've become a country of ban#$%@," he swore.

In the early 1980s, I had written an article on that distinctive Indian tradition of bandhs. Don't like a law or an occurrence? Call for a bandh. Object to a cricket team from a neighbouring country? Want to register your protest against a certain community? Hate the way your mother-in-law speaks to you in front of the kids? Why, just call for a bandh.

Deserted roads in the city centre, sleepy suburbs, children playing gulli cricket on the streets. A city gone to waste, income lost, a cloud of fear and rumours hanging over the city like a mushroom cloud. And, of course, schoolchildren secretly ecstatic at the holiday this afforded them. That was the '80s phenomenon of bandhs.

And today, because every thing is shortened, more minimalist and dinky, we have the 2.0 version of the bandh: the ban. Ban this, ban that, we don't like this, we don't like that, we don't like you, we haven't read it or seen or heard it - but we will ban it.

The ban is this era's version of the bandh. An insidious, completely cowardly and futile exercise of passive aggression and perhaps the most twisted response to Mahatma Gandhi's sterling ideology of satyagraha and peaceful protest. Because, if you do not like something or do not agree with it, you will not, as a Hallmark meme that's going around the Internet says, "Change it, ignore it or accept it," the only three things you can do about it. Banning things is the most cowardly response because it only pushes those things under that vast carpet of our Indian hang-ups. Fifty Shades of Grey, that paean to mommy pornography, might be something I would not dream of not reading (having been brought up on a steady stash of Henry Miller by the time I was 12), but my response, of course, would be to tell detractors to not read it (Where is Voltaire when you need him?).

And now, on the heels of all this prudery and punctiliousness comes word that "Emmy and Golden Globe-winning stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld's show in Mumbai has been cancelled". The ostensible reason: traffic disruption and parking issues at the venue. The subtext: one more nail in India's savoire-faire. 

"This cancellation is unavoidable due to circumstances beyond the artiste's and our control. Issues related to traffic and parking at the venue, which were brought to our attention only a couple of days ago, forced the cancellation of all of the artiste's travel arrangements, pending resolution of these logical issues," say the show's organisers in what appears to be an attempt to fast pedal backwards going nowhere. 

"I have always been fascinated by India and its culture. I have great respect for its people and their way of life. It is a great honour for me to be invited," Seinfeld, the creator of one of the world's biggest-ever sitcoms, an eponymous show whose stated theme "of absolutely nothing in particular", had said on the eve of his India outing.

Well, that's not to be. A big truck of Indian puritanism appears to have run down the 12th greatest stand-up comedian of all time!

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasmumbai@gmail.com