What is Common Between Naseeruddin Shah, Anand Teltumbde, and Vinod Jose?

The problem of Anand Teltumbde, Naseeruddin Shah, and Vinod Jose is that they refuse to be sheep in anyone's stable.

Anand Teltumbde, Naseeruddin Shah, and Vinod Jose were disinvited from three events in one week.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

Anand Teltumbde, Naseeruddin Shah, and Vinod Jose were disinvited from three events in one week.

Teltumbde was meant to discuss his prison memoir at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival on 5 February. The day before, Mumbai Police gave an oral directive to cancel the discussion. No paper trail. Organisers were told to delete their posts. Teltumbde had spent 31 months in jail in the Bhima Koregaon case and is out on bail.

Shah, meanwhile, was supposed to speak at Jashn-e-Urdu at Mumbai University on 1 February. The night before, the university called to say "Don't come." They later told the audience he had declined. (He hadn't).

Vinod Jose, former Executive Editor of The Caravan, was invited two months ago to lecture on "The State of Indian Democracy" at St Thomas College, Kerala. Two days before the 5 February event, the college called him "controversial" and cancelled it.

The Timing

The cancellations happened on 31 January, 3 February, and 4 February. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) centenary celebrations in Mumbai were also scheduled for 7-8 February.

It would be simplistic to talk about authoritarianism, censorship, freedom of speech and move on. But to fully understand this, we need to zoom into the mechanics and ask ourselves some questions.

Why them? What is common between Shah, Teltumbde, and Jose? The answer is their two common crimes. Their first crime is that of being devotees at the altar of insisting that they will think like individuals. They are living reminders of the fact that it is possible to reject group think. 

The Problem With Independent Minds

Teltumbde criticises Hindutva yes, but also criticises Marxists, Ambedkarites, and the Indian National Congress. He is opposed to Rahul Gandhi's demand for a caste census, which has now been accepted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

Vinod Jose, who was the executive editor of The Caravan until 2023, received global praise for a critical profile of former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh which he did for the publication, while Dr. Singh was still Prime Minister. The magazine's journalism during Prime Minister Modi's tenure has also been exceptionally courageous and not just in the masthead. How does one bracket such a man and such a publication, which keeps doing its work regardless of who is in power?

Naseeruddin Shah is famous for refusing to pay obeisance to even his own industry, where slivers of flattery here or there can add a few crores to your bank accounts. He mocks them constantly, claims to use Filmfare Awards as door handles, called Rajesh Khanna an average actor, and once said that Amitabh Bachchan hadn't done a single great film. He has accused the industry of nepotism probably long before criticising it became trendy. He has been a fierce critic of power, and acted in movies which challenge the establishment throughout his life. 

What do you do with such people? What do you brand him as? This is a problem. Senior journalist Sankarshan Thakur, my dearest friend who passed away last year, once told me that his residential society management sent a letter to all residents which demanded that they "unconditionally submit" to rules made by the society, current and future. He wrote back to them saying, "I am in constant revolt even against myself, how can I unconditionally submit to anyone else?"

This is the problem of Jose, Teltumbde, and Shah. They refuse to be sheep in anyone's stable. In this time and age where everyone insists on flattening you into homogenous categories, the only way to describe them is as nihayti badtameez.

They are also dheeth (stubborn). Jose suffers almost a dozen sedition cases. Teltumbde has spent years in prison. Shah has been at the receiving end of a relentless public campaign of calumny. Most recently, an individual who is an employee at Times Now and believes that what he was doing is journalism accosted Shah at the Mumbai Airport and shoved a mike in his face. Sedition cases, prison, harassment, and yet, these people remain incorrigible.

How Suppression Actually Works

Privately, RSS people seek meetings with a variety of progressive artists and academics and in summary, "Why don't you just join us, we can continue having this dialogue there, we aren't as bad as you think."

Which brings me to the other aspects of this, the timing and the mechanics. You can't have Shah, Teltumbde, and Jose—some of the most exhaustive chroniclers of the ills in the RSS worldview—openly speak days before the RSS has "A-listers" in the film industry prostrate themselves and one after the other call them the same word, "inspiring". 

This is the vulnerability of totalitarianism. Even a small pin can burst a very large balloon. When you listen to Bhagwat's speech, you get more insight into the cancellations. Bhagwat says you can identify infiltrators from their language. Naseeruddin Shah was to speak on Urdu at a festival about Urdu. 

Bhagwat argues that Indian society is now near perfect. Teltumbde, Ambedkar's grandson-in-law, was going to talk about not only his time in prison but also the stories and condition of other prisoners. Prison is a canvas where the State vividly paints its incompetence and cruelty. 

Bhagwat argues that all citizens must be suspicious of each other and report anyone who looks like an infiltrator. It is here that he mentions language. He says employment must be given to all "even to Muslims". He says you can find infiltrators in menial jobs done with the hand and these are jobs which have been abandoned by Hindus.

So, infiltrators can be found in the sector with very few Muslims and those infiltrators should be identified by their language. However, we must give jobs "even" to Muslims. It is a masterclass in the RSS' age old double speak. Their cadre to whom the communication is addressed distills it perfectly and thus many Godses are born, who of course, the RSS disowns. 

Days before all this, can you have anyone talking about the idea of democracy? That would be quite a party pooper. There is another important thing about the timing. The BJP, which may have thought it will be smooth sailing after Bihar Assembly and Maharashtra BMC electoral victories, now faces forward castes revolting over UGC rules, farmers marching in Maharashtra, and social media being awash with evidence of the complete collapse of urban infrastructure across the country. There is anger from many quarters. People with high integrity who can eloquently express critique are best avoided. 

As for the mechanics, note that the cancellation comes at the last moment. This is done not only to prevent any outrage, second thoughts, and so on, but also to humiliate. A daily wage worker who build a small house in Mumbai, which was then demolished immediately, told me that the authorities wait for the construction of the house to be completed, as opposed to intervening the moment they find out. 

"Dusht hain, kasht dene se khushi milti hai inhe". (They are evil, they get joy out of suffering). 

The Message Behind the Cancellations

It serves as a message to the prospective A-lister attendees. There are consequences for not toeing the line. Unfortunately, there are those who, to quote Naseeruddin Shah, don't give a "fiddler's fart."

Shah responded with an edit in The Indian Express. Jose said that the lecture has already been delivered, without his uttering a word. Teltumbde's book is freely available to purchase and read, and the BJP is yet again about to discover the miracles of the Streisand effect.

In all three events, the audience was largely going to be young people. At a time when Gen-Z is demanding accountability across the world, the last thing the BJP wants is for young Indians to get a whiff of the possibility of thinking for themselves instead of swinging sticks at RSS Shakhas.

As for those who finally chose to disinvite, either because of coercion or wilfully, I have an anecdote to share. The great Mahesh Bhatt once shared with me that someone in the film industry informed him that they were going to embrace the BJP-RSS. Enough was enough, life should be simpler, etc. 

His response to them was, "Please do so by all means but just remember, don't think this will save you when your turn comes."

(The author is a lawyer and research consultant based in Mumbai. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.).