There is a pain that screams at a writer from the blankness of a page.
I suspect this happens to artists of every kind. The singer whose voice seems sunken and as if on strike. The painter whose brushes stand still like a mockery of his dreams in contrast to his friends who express his vision’s colourful delight.
Even the teacher freezes sometimes and retreats into hollow regurgitation, reminding us that so much of learning depends on the spontaneity, emotional determination, and Saraswati-blessed flow of words at that moment.
I invoke the goddess of learning over the tamas of each artist’s particular block because there is such an emptiness in me, and even more so in the tragic event that has forced me to finally do something — the only thing I seem to know how to do, and that is to write.
For the past few days, I have scrolled and swiped past photos and video clips of Bollywood celebrities, billionaires, and pop stars a thousand times. But one chance encounter with the news of a murder has somehow seized me and refused to let go. Amarnath Ghosh, a 34-year-old classical dancer in Missouri, United States, was shot dead by an unknown assailant last week.
I did “my bit”, as they say, sharing the tweets and sympathising with friends of the victim who are trying very hard to get help or perhaps even attention from a world in which only billionaires, mega-celebrities, and megalomaniac politicians know how to live in it.
I write, thus, because I have a particular sankalpam or wish. It is for attention — not just to my words or sense of pain, but to the life, memory, and dare I say, the artistic soul of a young man who danced and died.
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A student of dance
Ghosh was doing his Master of Fine Arts in dance at Washington University in St Louis. On the evening of 27 February, he was shot dead while walking on the street close to his home.
His friends and former classmates have been sharing memories of him. A few Indian newspapers have covered the tragedy. And perhaps, as more and more voices speak up, many more will feel moved by the sadness of the incident and might come forward to help. “Justice” may be delivered too.
The Consulate General of India in Chicago stepped up to share their condolences and said that they were following up with the investigation, forensics, and providing support. But there has been no official response from the Indian or US government, and of course, no acknowledgement of the tragedy at all from celebrities and famous artists.
Indifference as injustice
What even is justice? Maybe catching and punishing the criminal? That goes without saying. But then is that all there is to it? Aren’t truth, understanding, and some kind of deep moral, cultural, and social change, also necessary?
After all, to cite the most obvious, and some would say extreme, example of the justice as “social change” paradigm, look at America since the summer of 2020. What kind of deep thirst existed here that a country exploded in rage and arson over the death of a black man in Minnesota at the hands of a policeman?
In retrospect, many of the things that sceptics warned us about back then have turned out to be true. There was much opportunism — of a very ugly kind. But whatever the consequences of that summer to America’s sense of itself, including its desperately declining state of apathy toward law and order and even reality itself, we have to wonder at the power of communication and persuasion (some might say “art” and some might say “propaganda”) to get millions of people to feel personally responsible, guilty, and “mad as hell” about the death of a man they knew nothing about.
I ask this question as a social scientist and student of media. Why does the world come to feel the pain of some victims of violence and not of others?
Is it all just a result of gargantuan psycho-political engineering?
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The unsung Indian student in America
When every institution in a society is rallied around one narrow, ‘identity-based’ discourse about who a “worthy” victim is and who isn’t, what chance do outsiders have to be even known beyond the immediate context of their friends and families?
Amarnath Ghosh, last week, in St. Louis.
Vivek Saini, January 2024, in a store in Georgia, at the hands of a man he had helped in the past.
Jaahnavi Kandula, January 2023, in Seattle. The policeman who killed her has no remorse or respect for the life he destroyed.
No remorse, no consequence. No “Be the Change” movement at all.
The last time there was actually a hue and cry about the death of an Indian in America was in 2017. Soon after Donald Trump’s swearing-in and just before the Oscars, Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was murdered in Kansas City, mistaken for an “Iranian” and then symbol-manufactured into a sacrifice for the “Right-identity” lobby.
They went to town — the media, celebrities, big-name anti-Islamophobia activists and all. But as I wrote in the Huffington Post at the time, not one of the Hollywood stars at the Academy Awards flaunting pro-immigrant badges and anti-Trump righteousness even said his name. Let’s face it. His name, face, identity — none of them mattered to them. He was an opportunity for the celebrity-activist complex, that is all.
Our inadequate frames
I turn to social science, our limited, cautious, half hopes lost already perspective to make sense of it all. In our first semester in graduate school, we all read about the philosophy of social science, and of course, the long history of misuse of the label of “scientific method” by racists, eugenicists, and other bad people in the history of social sciences.
Whatever our limitations we had as a profession, it was still our duty. We were doctors of human pain too, but what we looked for was not bacteria or viruses, but something more intangible. It was our lot to propose — with whatever evidence we could — that when murders, discrimination, poverty, and despair happened, there would almost always be “social” or “political” causes for it.
At first, some of the social scientists pinned the blame almost always on the group they disliked, on their genes, or their culture. Then, a few decades later, they tried to change and ironically ended up in the same position. Now, the blame for a murder is not on the murderer but on the supposed privilege of the victim. Jews on 10/7. Hindus, Jews, Americans, and everyone else in Mumbai on 26/11.
This, in a word, is the glaring hole in our understanding of things. And yes, people are noticing it. Social media is full of comments about how no government or party is in a great hurry to help because his name is Amarnath Ghosh and not Anthony Gonzalves or Akbar Ghouse.
Apathy and apartheid
People are talking about Hindu apathy, or anti-Hindu apartheid, and things like that. It is the tragic reality of the vast machine that is modern mass society. We are cogs in a wheel, except for those we mattered to — a handful of family and friends.
But while we live, work, create, and feel, most of all, we must not let this be. We must do what we can. And what I believe we can do, is to really look at one “social” dimension to the apathy that surrounds the aftermath of this tragedy.
There are so many social categories of discrimination and double standards afoot here. The great American “human rights” lobbies are not interested or invested in the death of a “heathen” in their own country. They will focus instead only on the tragedy that confirms their usual tropes about heathens and pagans as dangers to women and Hindu gods as the cause of that dangerous behaviour. I will not make light of the other tragic news that happened this week to the Brazilian couple in India because it was a tragedy and travesty. But then, the double standards are obvious.
There is another thing that is obvious too — it is not just the Americans who are to blame for apathy toward such tragic incidents.
Why is there no outrage in India? Why are our 10,000 sound-bite talk show panels not screaming about this on TV night after night?
Love the CEO, forget the MFA student
Let’s ask the most fundamental question: Would the case of Amarnath Ghosh have received the same indifference had he not been a graduate student but was an Ivy-League MBA-wielding CEO of some tech firm or someone with economic and “social” heft?
I ask because this is part of the problem too.
One of the first comments I saw on X after the news of Ghosh’s death was about how he was to blame for his fate because “why should someone go to America to learn dance?”
Does anyone even wonder why, unlike the thousands of STEM and MBA students who are rarely mocked for their decisions, a dancer goes abroad? Or what kind of struggles Indian students not pursuing conventionally rewarding courses like computer science or engineering face both in India and abroad?
Thirty years ago, when I was a student, one of my fellow graduate students from India happened to be engaged to a dance student. I do not know how much of their struggle I can share here, but suffice it to say that there was pain, hardship, injustice, and many, many incredible survival stories through it all.
What I want to emphasise now, as a tribute to Ghosh by extension, is that the artist, dancer, writer, social worker, are all your fellow Indians too who have been through life largely misunderstood, ignored, misrepresented, mocked, and of course, sometimes gravely exploited by the more “fortunate” scions of the Indian economy in business, politics, and technocratic fields.
Courage and cowardice
My friend and his dancer wife stood on the cold streets of New York City with a young child performing Bharatanatyam for the subway commuters and passersby. That, simply, took courage.
And yet, somehow, when I see the mood of our nation today, I see no sign at all that anyone cares about art or the artists.
India, and sometimes Indians abroad, are all legendary for their absolute disdain when it comes to their use of people in the arts.
I have seen independent filmmakers barely recovering from having spent their life savings on their production, being asked to travel and screen their work for a pittance or for free.
I have seen researchers and writers invited to speak by wealthy socialites and not even offered a token compensation for their travel and stay, let alone an honorarium for their professional labour and presence.
And yet, we have been looking at an India that goes gaga about its business tycoons tossing out millions of dollars to get a foreign celebrity to come and sing at a wedding.
My point, with no ill will to anyone rich or otherwise, is simply about the big picture.
American collapse, Indian opportunism
We live in a society that is very nearly under collapse. In many ways, we hoped that the US would be the opposite; that its respect for law and order, meritocracy, and fairness would ensure a decent standard of life.
But American society is what it is today, tottering between the obvious scourge of gun violence on the one hand and the increasingly influential scourge of identity-premised apathy to human life and suffering on the other.
I hope it will change, and I believe it will change.
And India can play a role—but not if we don’t see our path ahead with new eyes.
The great (pre)wedding of our era, the numerous success stories about Indian diplomacy abroad, the obvious economic confidence — all of these have given Indians a great deal of pride in the nation today. But then I also see an enormous hole in our collective imagination, in our sense of ourselves too.
That hole is that we have no empathy for the arts or artists anymore. It is a cause-and-effect crisis. We have no empathy because we have not given our support to the artists who could help us feel for the world (and I don’t mean the usual identity-propaganda nonsense either).
Bharat’s real soft power
There are still millions of people who try to hold on to traditions, arts, and practices of feeling, expressing, and sharing. And that too without the slightest recognition or even basic support from a society blinded by money, engineering, business, and science (and of course, cricket and celebrity too).
Let’s face it: It was not the plutocrats but the artists, the Ravi Shankars and Zakir Hussains, who were the pioneers of Indian “soft power” on the world stage long before our pedestal-anointed managerial class went and took up top jobs in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
It is an abject case of ignorance, amnesia, and greed that today’s India goes more gaga giving credit to the moneybags and windbags for whatever goodwill and strength we still have around the world. It was always Saraswati’s children who did the work of bridging a divided world.
I daresay, the guru-shishya friendship-parampara of Ravi Shankar and George Harrison has turned postcolonial history around in more ways than anyone can imagine.
And how many more stories there must be? From the famous Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, and Srila Prabhupada to the thousands of quiet seekers of wisdom, truth, and beauty who made the journey to America unrewarded and unsung, sowing the seeds of enlightenment and harmony. Yes, they embodied the “vasudhaiva kutumbakam (The world is one family)”, which today people harp about.
For all Nataraja’s children
Imagine how many more stories of joy and true cultural friendship India can still produce on the world stage if we stopped our blind adulation of money and power and offered a little bit of attention, respect, and yes, material support to youngsters who love dance, art, music, words. Just the ones like Ghosh whose love for dance must have been so deep to have motivated him to travel so far to learn and to do more.
I see videos of Ghosh smiling as he dances. I wonder why no one rushes to claim that beauty, elegance, lofty glory he embodied in his spirit and body.
Why has Bengal not claimed him? Or the two Telugu states? After all, he learnt Kuchipudi too. Or the much-lauded American NRI community? Or the film industry, which owes so much to the traditional dancers of our land for its greatest cultural achievements, the song and dance.
Shivratri is coming, and thoughts turn to the cosmic dancer, to Nataraja.
On that great night, I hope we can spend some of our time and attention thinking about Ghosh and all those like him who are still living for a communicative purpose that neither today’s media, politicians, celebrities, or tycoons, can live up to.
I hope we have a renaissance of not just the art and beauty of the kind that this talented artist and student boldly went to foreign shores to express, but also of the knowledge about the usefulness of art and artists to India’s survival and revival.
“Tandava keli salpe ne!” to you, dear friend who I never knew.
May your offering to Nataraja be always honoured by gods and human beings.
Vamsee Juluri @vamseejuluri is Professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)