THE POLITICS OF CONTROVERSY, VIGILANTISM AND CENSORSHIP IN GITHA HARIHARAN’S ‘IN TIMES OF SIEGE’

Abstract

This paper analyses how the issues of the politics of controversy, vigilantism and academic censorship are dealt in GithaHariharan’s ‘In Times of Siege’. In the novel, Hariharan puts the narrative of Basava in centre and implicitly refer to the fissures found in historiography and mythical narratives of India. Covering the two month of troubled times in the life of Prof. Shivmurthy, she speaks of the academic freedom in India that has often been subjected to ordeal due to certain controversial calls for censorship by diverse political, social, religious and ethnic fundamentalist organizations and communities. Given the opportunism and aggressiveness on the part of fundamentalist forces in such a situation, the creative and academic space becomes a kind of battlefield where history, art and culture are to be contested in an over-zealous fashion. ‘In Times of Siege’ exposes how politics of ideology has always been a potent way mobilizing un-official historical and mythical discourse and narratives prevalent in the modern day India. Political overtones of the book become evident when we find a conscientious professor pitted against the ruthless forces of bigotry, communalism, fanaticism and narrow-mindedness embodied by the group IthihasSurakshaManch. Their demand of the subtraction of Prof. Shiv’s lesson on Basava shows how the forces of such kind aim at creating uproar by endorsing the fabricated hurt to their religious and cultural assumptions. They desire hegemony for having the remote control of the historical imagination of academic institutions to sanction a culturally-controlled version of history and myths in national curriculum.