“We need collectives that can confront fear in society. There is an accentuation of fear which may be due to social and cultural constructs,” musician T.M. Krishna said.
Speaking during a virtual discussion of his book The spirit of enquiry: notes of dissent at the Jaipur Literature Festival with former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Mr. Krishna said the biggest thing about fear was that it made one look behind their back.
“A lot of our schooling itself is self censorship. It has not been created yesterday. We knew what questions to ask and what not to ask in class. We asked only those questions that could be asked. Is that not self-censorship? It is the accentuation of this fear that makes this monster, that makes it come in front of you — that is what is happening now,” he said.
To a point raised by Mr. Gandhi about Mr. Krishna “questioning a lot of things that need to be questioned” on injustices and inequalities, Mr. Krishna said, “The question arose whether I should ask questions only about injustices closest to me and leave out the ones that happened in a larger context.”
Noting that most questions were not meant to point fingers at someone, the musician said, “Not asking a question will also raise the question as to whether I am also participating in that injustice.”