Ukraine Crisis: “Artists Becoming Convenient Scapegoats During War”

Recently, an Italian university banned the great Russian author, Dostoevsky, in a typical knee jerk response to the ongoing Russia-Ukrainian conflict. The conflict culminated with the former invading the latter and immense human suffering that followed. Seldom do we expect the countries to follow a more nuanced approach in quelling crises of such mammoth proportions.

Instead, we find the innocent artists becoming convenient scapegoats. As if the buck of the blame for wars rests on the desks of those who stand for emancipation and whose sensitivities bring us closer to deciphering laws of nature or our psyche in seeming chaos and veritable disorder.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is often considered one of the greatest writers of all time. His famous “Crime And Punishment” explores the existentialist realm through the protagonist Raskolnikov’s story. Raskolnikov’s penury leads to him committing a crime while he is still remorseless, figuring out if he ‘consciously’ committed it.

And numerous complex themes run in turn involving relationships, questions of morality and alienation, guilt and punishment. Dostoevsky’s novel is a masterpiece for it explores the psychological realm while traversing through the stages of commitment of a crime and punishment. The latter occurs towards the end of the book.

In between, he ventures into the grey areas to bring out human suffering, complexities and absurdities that lend humanness to the character. Even the iron clad hearts of readers melt and grow over the protagonist’s, sympathising with his afflictions. We are not just shades of black and white. There are so many shades of grey about us.

Dostoevsky wasn’t a supporter of invasion in any of his works. Neither did he wittingly or otherwise write about a concept as sketchy as ‘great game’ of Kipling that acquired geopolitical proportions in the hands of opportunists.

In his iconic work that influenced many great men and women, “The Brothers Karamazov”, a recurrent theme was forgiveness instead of retribution and sacredness of every human life. So then it’s pertinent to ask why should writers be made a casualty in the war between nations, especially when they have the potential to bridge broken corridors and pull us together in a common thread of humanity.

And it’s not even the first instance of censorship. The Inquisition of mediaeval/pre-modern Europe had banned certain books believed to offend authorities’ religious or moral commands. Such books were put up on a prohibited list or often burnt, and the writers who failed to oblige were declared a heretic and sometimes burnt alive in the penultimate stages of the inquisition.

The Renaissance challenged Roman Catholic notions, especially in the realm of science, with the pronouncement of helio-centrism instead of geo-centrism as scientific truth. But, of course, the religious authorities did not like the idea and put such works on the banned list.

The famous trial of Galileo Galilei is a case in point. Who in later years had to accept geocentrism with muttered defiance “and yet it moves” ( e pur si muove ), now a legendary dictum. Renaissance scholar Servetus was burnt at stake for heresy.

Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Francis bacon, Rene Descartes, John Milton, Locke, Defoe, Voltaire, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, J S Mill, Alexander Dumas, Simon de Beauvoir have been on the infamous list at various times in the past.

Even poetry, often regarded as the highest form of human expression, has not been spared. Charles Baudelaire had to face the ire of moralists. On the contrary, there has been recurrent blame put up on poets for trespassing cannons of morality.

In our times, the British banned books like Hind Swaraj of Gandhi and works of Kazi Nazrul Islam. Likewise, Satyarth Prakash of Dayanand Saraswati was banned by the Pakistan government. Khalid Hosseini’s ‘the kite runner was banned by the Iranian regime.

Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen are some authors who were hounded out of their own countries. The Nazis burnt books that didn’t find resonance with their ideas. Book burning has become a common form of expression protected by some countries as freedom of expression and protest.

But what about the ‘freedom to read?’ Why shouldn’t individual choices and tastes be respected rather than dictated?

The censorship of authors and their works is a recent creation. We have had a history of disputes among sects and philosophies in our ancient past. There have been schisms within heterodox sects as Buddhism and Jainism and fierce debates of the proponents of either side.

Bhakti Sufi traditions challenged orthodoxies. Yet instances of burning books, targeting authors or making them run from pillar to post to save their own lives did not exist. Even rulers like Feroze Shah Tughlaq, who persecuted non-conformists, preserved and translated ancient Sanskrit scriptures during his expeditions.

After the British came, a ‘Victorian morality’ gave credence to banning things that came across as ‘vulgar’ or ‘obscene.’ Sensuality became a target, and thus earthly looking, half-clad, smiling and voluptuous Hindu gods and goddesses were regarded as obscene as opposed to airy, loosely clothed with saintly visages of Christian gods and angels.

The typical Eurocentric bias towards cultures and ethos came at odds with their own. The connection between the divinity and the artist was earlier in realms of the private sphere (and thus differences in iconographic details of their portrayal). It became a project in the public sphere through the commissioning of works and censures of anything that deviated from iconographical norms.

Many women authors of 19th and 20th century Europe wrote under pseudonyms to evade the target of moralists. For example, the legendary Brontë sisters wrote under pseudonyms. It was also when the housekeeping role of women became more embedded, and the gender roles became entrenched.

A deification of the women as pure and obeying came to prominence. Any aberration was condemned as signifying ‘loose morals’. For example, many anonymous writers and poets were women, possibly the famous poet ‘Anon’, who wrote breathtaking poetry under a pseudonym and died anonymously.

Thus, every book and every author is precious. Even if we disassociate with their views, they must not be condemned to the state of obliteration. Most writers imprint their own experiences and personalities in these books. We may never know the amount of impact they can have on somebody struggling with similar insecurities ending up finding solace in the characters or pages of a book.

Nobel laureate French writer Romain Rolland once said, “no one ever reads a book. He reads himself through the books.” And yet the writers are made to suffer. Walter Benjamin committed suicide on borders on Spain and Portugal. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for his radicalism and spent time in exile.

The entire world is their home. They transform the borders of nations and states and are humanity’s treasures. They are the heritage of one great civilisation knowing no bounds of time and space. And must be preserved at all costs. Every author deserves a shelf, not a shell.

Name : Kshipra Pal
Designation: Deputy Collector, Mai, U.P
Phone number: 6264024064