Is culture the new politics? JLF panelists debate

Is culture the new politics? Has intolerance become the new culture? Is the role of political parties in dissecting culture beyond the acceptable line?
Panelists including BJP leader Shazia Ilmi, "new-age marketing guru" Suhel Seth, Indian-American author Rajiv Malhotra and author-director Arshia Sattar delved into these issues threadbare during the concluding session of Jaipur Literature festival.
"Culture is not the new politics. Any government feels threatened or insecure because of culture because it disseminates ideas. Forces that prefer control certainly do not want someone to challenge and that is why colonial government started censoring the art and culture. But it's not something new. While culture makes us best and politics makes us worse," Arshia said.

Shazia Ilmi, however, chose to differ and said that culture has always been about politics.
"Culture is bedrock of politics, especially for young republic like us. Culture is not monolith...We are talking of new cultural identity in arena of politics. When we became a nation the entire spectrum of all things were debated in constituent assembly. We jostled to put them together," she said.
"I don't speak of extreme positions. I know so less of Ghalib but so much of Shakespeare. English has disproportionate influence on mobilising power in the country, westerners take so much interest in Sanskrit more than we do," she added.

Seth took on the fringe elements allegedly being injected by political parties to control the art and literature and using them as brownie points to play vote bank politics.

"We had political ideologies earlier which turned into political ideologues and political ideologues later turned into political idiots. They talk of issues that divide us rather than what inspire us. These fringe elements use literature for scoring brownie points in politics. These elements pushed the artist M F Husain into fugitive and make him die in London. Why can't they get an art to counter the art?," he said.
"The political parties should refrain from injecting fringe elements into policy making in mainstream politics on culture. Every government that comes to power rewrites our history books. Is the culture evolving over the years so fragile that it can alter with the force of one comment," he added.

Rajiv Malhotra said, "I believe it's foolish to say that culture is not part of politics? It's not culture versus no culture but between one culture and another culture. Political system should patronise the enrichment of culture rather than dividing and controlling.