The Polish theatre scholar Jan Kott, in his influential work Shakespeare: Our Contemporary (1965) wrote, “Shakespeare is like the world, or life itself. Every historical period finds in him what it is looking for.”
Kott seems to be most appropriate in twenty-first century India. It’s natural for a race of people who have been fed on Shakespeare for long to go back to the wise man for his sage words. Even the Bard is always willing to help his Indian bhakts . His continuing popularity cannot be judged only in terms of his works being adapted across theatre, films and fiction but also in the way he has discreetly entered our lives to become virtually a part of our psyche.
Look at India’s Who’s Who and you will realise that Shakespeare is very much a part of our socio-cultural and political-legal consciousness. Even the Supreme Court of India has referred to Shakespeare on more than one occasion in judgments. Justice A.K. Ganguly of the Supreme Court in 2012 quoted from Henry IV while describing the position of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the 2G spectrum sale case. He noted, “The position of the Prime Minister in our democratic polity seems to have been summed up in the words of Shakespeare — uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” He was referring to the delay caused by the Prime Minister’s Office in taking a decision that caused further delay in prosecuting Telecom Minister A. Raja. More recently, the Supreme Court, while giving its verdict on Section 377 of IPC on September 6, 2018, quoted from Romeo and Juliet , “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Dipak Misra, as Chief Justice of India, describing the importance of identity, wrote in a judgment, “The said phrase [‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet’], in its basic sense, conveys that what really matters is the essential qualities of the substance and the fundamental characteristics of an entity but not the name by which it or a person is called.”
Poor Shakespeare, in whose Elizabethan England homosexuality was considered a crime on a par with murder, would be turning in his grave to know he is being invoked today in India to decriminalise homosexuality.
Not only members of the judiciary but also sportsmen and actors have taken to Shakespeare to express themselves. Sachin Tendulkar’s crisis as the captain of the Indian cricket team has been described by the same quote that Justice Ganguly had used, in his biography, Sachin Tendulkar: A Definitive Biography . Deepika Padukone recently posted her picture on Instagram with a quote from Henry IV , “All things are ready, if our mind be so — William Shakespeare”, in the context of her upcoming film Chhapaak .
Why should the Indian politician lag behind in this “Quote the Bard Contest”? After all, who can beat the Bard at rhetoric? And what is Indian politics today but rhetoric?
Pranab Mukherjee, while presenting Union Budget 2012 as Finance Minister, leaned on Hamlet , “I must be cruel only to be kind,” only to justify the “cruel” budget and “kind” intentions of the government.
Smriti Irani, then Minister of Human Resource Development, quoted the witches of Macbeth , ‘Fair is foul, foul is fair’, accusing the Opposition of twisting facts while replying in the Rajya Sabha in February 2016 on Rohith Vemula’s suicide.
During the 2017 Kolkata Book Fair, Mamata Banerjee, in her enthusiasm to boast West Bengal’s resonance with Shakespeare, made a startling claim that Tagore was a great friend of Shakespeare and Keats.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his radio show ‘Mann Ki Baat’, on August 27, 2017 displayed his eclectic knowledge when he referred to the shastras , Mahatma Gandhi and Shakespeare in the same breath (a potential research project for researchers if they don’t want to make a living frying pakoras !) He quoted Portia thus: “Shakespeare in his play, The Merchant of Venice , while explaining the importance of forgiveness, has written, ‘Mercy is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes,’ meaning, the forgiver and the forgiven both stand to receive divine blessing.” So, forgive the political class for failing you and receive “divine blessing”. After all, we have always privileged the divine over the most basic in this country.
However, perhaps the most controversial appropriation of Shakespeare in the recent past was the formation of so-called ‘Anti-Romeo Squads’ by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in 2017. To name the squad after the Shakespearean hero invites an interesting reading despite the Bharatiya Janata Party’s keenness to rename places that have non-Hindu names — Allahabad to Prayagraj, Faizabad to Ayodhya and Ahmedabad to Karnavati. The naming of the squad, however, seems a deliberate political act. Historically, Romeo is the Shakespearean hero but the word today is also used as a noun referring to an attractive, passionate male suiter. In Uttar Pradesh, however, the star-crossed lover who died for the sake of his love has become no less than a molester and a criminal!
It is interesting to note Juliet’s ‘Romeo’ versus Yogi’s ‘Romeo.’ Juliet speaks of Romeo as someone who, after his death, “will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night,/And pay no worship to the garish sun.” But in the words of the Uttar Pradesh Police, Romeo is asamajik (anti-social), mawaali (ruffian), chichore-type ladke (young man of a frivolous kind). In this context, Romeo, aka the potential molester, needs to be located in the political compulsion to borrow the villain from the other community/culture/religion who needs to be brought to book. Naming the squad after Romeo also suggests the absence of its equivalent in Hindu religion and culture. The assumption, it seems, is that Hindus cannot be Romeos and Romeos cannot be Hindus. A Hindu Romeo is an aberration and another instance of the West corrupting Indian youth.
The squad was criticised across various sections of society including intellectuals, lawyers and social activists who alleged that in the name of protecting women they were harassing young men and making women more dependent in an already patriarchal society. The criticism from various quarters has led to the changing of the squad’s name from ‘Anti-Romeo Squad’ to ‘Nari Suraksha Bal’. However, as Juliet said, ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.’ (How can I desist from quoting the Bard?)
The changing of the name doesn’t suggest any change in the squad’s work. One thing, however, that it definitely has achieved is to supplant the negative firangi name with a more positive Hindu term that goes well with the party’s ideology.
Jai Shakespeare!
vikram@aud.ac.in
