College magazines are little tinder boxes of passion and
righteousness. Two things feature prominently in them; love and revolution.
Both these passions that the young generations value most all over the world
especially when they are in the college campuses need not necessarily be
expressed in the matured frame of mind. Ignited by the idea of establishing a
world which is devoid of all censorships and creating a society that functions
on the dictums of equal rights and justice for all genders, students bring
forth college magazines, which are often circulated amongst the students,
enjoyed, critiqued, trashed and at times archived. This is a romantic web which
is created out of the fine threads of utopian thoughts and seen from the
perspective of a student it is not a bad idea to be a part of the production of
a college magazine.
(The Editorial Board)
Abundance of revolution and romance never discounts a
college magazine of its serious intent. There are several college magazines
published in the world, meticulously handwritten and finely illustrated by the
best talents of a given time in the campus and many cherish them for their
content and production. Cheap production and printing technologies have changed
the look and finish of the college magazines that often reflect the editor’s
and the production team’s familiarity with the magazines that they admire or
the magazines that cater to their political affinities. In the pre-internet
days, college magazines were the avenues where the ‘silent and deceptive’ ones
amongst the students came out with their real talents in writing poems,
stories, essays and so on, though many of them would put their authors into
pure shame in their matured years. At the same time, so many established writers
too have done their debut publishing in the college magazines, handwritten or
printed.
(a page from the magazine)
In Kerala, handwritten magazines and college magazines have
always been a craze. With the arrival of blogs and social media, almost every
literate Malayalee with a facebook account attempts some kind of creative
writing on a daily basis. Some of them almost take revenge on the college
magazine editors who had discarded their ‘masterpieces’ when they were in
college, while writing in the social media. However, in the days of
intolerance, at least in Kerala, a college magazine has hurt the sentiments of
the, yes, the right wing people. The controversial magazine has come out from
the Zamorine Guruvayoorappan College in Kozhikode, North Kerala. A cursory
google search tells me that the magazines that had come out of this college
before too have rubbed many people wrongly. Today, anything that refers to
Rohit Vemula, Death Sentence, Bharat Mata, Islam, Beef, JNU and so on could
create some tension in the social sphere only because some sections of the
Indian society feel that uttering these words are as good as sedition or as
good as hurting the sentiments of some religious groups.
(a page from the magazine)
The magazine in question is titled ‘Viswavikhyathamaya Theri’,
which could be roughly translated as ‘Illustrious Expletives’ or Universally
known Abuses. I would go by ‘Illustrious Expletives’. The crux of the editorial
content of this magazine is how ideology has subordinated language into a sort
of oppressive tool and derived expletives from the words that were once used to
connote the downtrodden, Dalit and other fringe communities. India tops amongst
the world countries in using expletives in daily parlance. In North India, each
sentence that is exchanged between people both in the public and private domain
is underlined by a word of abuse, which in fact refers to the subordinate
position of women in the society. It is ironical that a dominant society that
calls the country a ‘mata’ (mother) and even resorts to honor killing to
protect the gene pool of the family through denying the women of their conjugal
rights, turns its daily language into a basket of expletives that highlight the
private parts and incestuous relationships of women absolutely objectifying
them into usable and transferable commodities, by excluding them even from
their physical agencies.
(from the magazine)
Such naturalization has happened almost in all the societies
in India and elsewhere where the male folks have taken the reigns of the society.
Language is a primary tool of control and subjugation and Malayalam, the native
language of the Keralites, is not different from such ideological and chauvinistic
co-optation. The magazine deals with the history of such co-optations and
analyses how this linguistic turns had taken place over a period of time by
slow, steady but violent exclusion of the subject communities. The magazine
analyses various such manifestations in the articles written by the student
writers and some of them are written by in-house scholars. To be very frank,
while going through essays and expressions, what I could gather was the passion
and angst with which those articles were written and I should appreciate it.
But if someone asks, whether they are the ultimate critique, well researched
and well argued to establish the counter points, I would say, most of them have failed miserably. But one
should not avoid the passion with which these articles are written and they
should be respected for the very intention.
(from the magazine)
While I appreciate the choice of the content that includes
the mandatory translation of Rohit Vemula’s last letter where he quotes Carl
Sagan (that gives the dead a sort of super sensitive and imaginative qualities
and his aspiration to become a poetic writer of scientific matters stands justified
despite the absence of his such writings in the public domain for qualitative
scrutiny), a debate on death row, a discussion on the Kodungalloor Bharani
festival where songs created out of expletives are sung as a ritual, mandatory
discussion on theatre and films. Etymological origins of certain words that are
currently used as abusive words in Malayalam language also are brought into the
ken of discussion to prove that it too has happened as a result of the
linguistic apartheid. As a neutralizing point, I came across extremely ‘natural’
romantic poems, stories and notes which perhaps, I should say, did not have any
literary merit. The illustrations go well with the sloganeering attitude of the
articles but not so commendable when compared to the illustration that the
Kerala populace is familiar with.
(a page from the magazine)
I am surprised why the ABVP, the student wing of the BJP
took this magazine as an offence to the public or private sentiments and even
went to the extent of burning a copy of it within the college premises. Like
the cases that are highlighted in the vigilant media dominated by the debate
television, this magazine is lionized beyond proportion. It could have been
avoided by sensible people even within the ABVP (right wing does not mean being
dumb). A college is an expression of the general sentiments of the students who
have elected a college union. Had it been an ABVP led union, the magazine would
have been of a different sort and wouldn’t have even been noticed by many.
First of all by making something like an ‘internal’ college issue into a public
matter it at once causes a fruitless debate and also gives a lot of media space
to the not so talented people. If ABVP thinks that a magazine like this could
hurt them, then what about all the mainstream magazines published in Kerala?
They are much more vocal and critical about the issues. A right wing party,
though logic is the last thing that they would listen to, should heed to the
apparent and visible fact that censoring by force will never suppress the
rebellious thoughts generated in the minds of the young people who are
instrumental in producing this college magazine. Amongst them, the really
talented and rigorous ones would migrate into the mainstream politics,
literature and academics. And they will demolish the illogical right wing
sentiments, if not today, tomorrow.
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