Thought policeman

Since he is implementing official policy, however, he may want to be a little less confused about its direction — and his facts. He started out claiming that the foreign element in rock music was endangering the moral fibre of his city. He shouldappreciate that Mumbai is not exactly in the same category as Los Angeles. No gangsta rap out here. And no local equivalent to the reprehensible Snoop Doggy Dog either. Mumbai’s rockers are not from the anti-social fringe. Quite to the contrary, some of them are respected members of the international music industry. Having put rock musicians beyond the pale, Navalkar has proceeded to extend his strictures to creative work in Hindi and Marathi as well. He should understand that in the case of the latter, at least, gratuitous vulgarity has been an established device for decades. Generations of Mumbaiites have suffered frequent exposure to it without appreciable erosion to their value systems.

Whatever damage the city’s ethic has suffered over the years owes chiefly to the mafia. It is the government’s job to control that, not to go haring after imagined sources of moral corruption. With his action, Navalkar confirms the worst aspect of the stereotype right-wing politician — a tendency to scapegoat easytargets.

To be fair, of course, the left in India has been no less repressive than the right on cultural issues. About a decade ago the CPI(M) government in West Bengal came down heavily on Western music. A new technical term was invented to describe it: anti-culture. Usha Uthup, one of the most respected performers in the city, was personally attacked for corrupting good, solid Bengali values with this treacherous substance. Given such cases, it is time the state was told where its competence ends in cultural matters. It should be given the right to intervene only if it can prove that the work in question might immediately endanger civil society. Anything less would be a matter of perception, merely a personal viewpoint, and the state machinery should not be used to enforce it. If Navalkar does not like rock music, he can exercise his right not to buy tickets to concerts. He could profitably use the time to cruise the streets again and re-establish his connections with the past and with reality. But hecertainly cannot be allowed to use his official position to deprive other people of their entertainment.