New Delhi: Mushrooming 'Anti-Romeo Squads' in Uttar Pradesh post the arrival of Yogi Adityanath at the helm have raised concerns about the danger of mainstreaming vigilante culture, but at the Shakespeare Society of India they are mourning the Indian tragedy that has befallen the bard's beloved Romeo Montague.
The tragic hero who has been the universal byword for self-less love has now been reduced to a predator, a crass paan chewing, swaggering Casanova who harasses every woman crossing his path, society president and Ashoka University Professor Jonathan Gil Harris told News18.
"What has happened to the word Romeo makes me laugh. But what is happening at the policy level doesn't make me laugh," Gil Harris said.
BJP had promised 'Anti-Romeo Squads' in its poll manifesto in UP to counter what it said was systemic harassment of women, and reports have come in from across the state that police have set up such squads in the last 48 hours.
Shiv Visvanathan, prominent social commentator who is also on the advisory board of the Shakespeare Society, felt that the threat looming is larger than mere misrepresentation of an idealistic hero like Romeo.
"What is happening is a merging of civil society and government to create a policing state, so when the state itself becomes vigilante it get a bit threatening," he told News18.
"How do you decide who is the Romeo and what are the Romeo clauses? If I hold a girl's hand am I Romeo?," he asked, citing examples of earlier instances of vigilantism when Bajrang Dal put up hoardings in Manipal that said "Don't hold hands."
“To me here is a man promising minimum governance and creating maximum surveillance,” he commented about UP’s new chief minister.
Gil Harris said Romeo and Juliet came from different backgrounds and fell in love, and the word Romeo has become a code word for ‘love jihadis’. “It will be used for trading communal tensions if people from different communities come together,” he said.
He added that the people have not read the tragedy by Shakespeare and miss the fact that the two were “mutually in love – Romeo and Juliet.” "Romeo is someone who accepts the agency of the woman he loves, and the community cannot accept that agency," said Harris.
Both Visvanathan and Gill Harris said that problem is with the world Romeo and Juliet live in and not in the lovers. If the people read the play it will speak back to them saying “problem is with you, not us,” said Harris.
Harris felt the denigration of Romeo to a “swaggering Casanova” is unique to India, one of the first countries where Shakespeare was taught. “There are films from East Asia where Romeo is comically represented but it is not the deep tradition the way it is here – know nothing about Romeo and show him as sexually predatory man,” he said.
Viswanathan said that before weighing their understating on literature we should worry on how they have no understanding of law and politics. “Forget literature, they have no understanding of law and politics. They have created an epidemic of suspicion and Romeo has fallen in their hand for that. Romeo is a fiction that has become fact,” he said.
The Shakespeare society is an organization formed to promote wider interest in the works of the Bard of Avon.
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