A recent email from Sangeet Natak Akademi betrays a curious diminishing of the function of the institution

The recently announced Amrit Mahotsav seems to be the dominant rubric through which various cultural entities are to be interpreted for the 75th anniversary of Independence

A curious email landed recently in many mailboxes. Dispatched by the Deputy Secretary (Music) of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the email informed its distinguished recipients of a September 24, 2021 scheme announced by the Prime Minister on Mann Ki Baat: Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. The PM, it says, desired that the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Indian Independence be “filled with the colours of art, culture, songs and music.” (Of course, if one follows the Kangana Ranaut calendar, this is only the 7th anniversary of Independence).

Obedient to this requirement, the Akademi informed its addressees that the Ministry of Culture had initiated three competitive events for which it was seeking mass public participation: 1. Deshbhakti Geet Writing, 2. Rangoli Making and 3. Lullabies. While one need not have any objection to these activities, there is clearly a diminishing of the function of contemporary India’s most significant state agencies of cultural patronage that they, firstly, indicate with such precision the forms of cultural production that they will support, and second, the implication that independence can only be celebrated through idioms of praise, decoration, and slumber-inducing quietude.

Are we to infer that the 75-year-old nation will not be able to withstand the force of more complex and engaged artistic practices? Are we to understand further that the state will no longer support critical aesthetic practice that finds its inspiration and provocation in the many scenes of darkness within the borders of the nation and turn instead to the production of scenarios of virtuous and majoritarian domesticity?