Flat Fifth

Symphony of Censorship

When Dmitri Shostakovich premiered Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in 1934, its bold orchestration and raw emotional intensity shocked and thrilled Soviet audiences—until it terrified the regime. The modernist and sexually charged opera where Shostakovich intended to show the patriarchal society in which we live in, where through frustration and years of abuse a woman murders her husband was perhaps too much for the then Soviet State to bear. Immediately after its performance we find Stalin storming out of the Maly Theatre in Moscow 1936. Days later, Pravda’s infamous editorial ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ condemned the opera for cacophony and lack of ‘Soviet Optimism’. Shostakovich’s life changed overnight with an immediate withdrawal of Lady Macbeth from production across the USSR, with all his work blacklisted, public humiliation and a fear for his life. 

While Shostakovich’s career was not ruined, thanks to his Fifth Symphony (which in itself deserves its own article), and he was later considered as an official composer of the USSR – this was one of the many instances of the oppression of the Freedom of Speech and Expression. After his Fifth Symphony, which celebrated the might of the Russian resistance against the Germans, suddenly we find Shostakovich being celebrated as a great composer in the Soviet Union- not because of his musicality but because what he composed was understood by the State Media. 

Nearly a century later, the echoes of that authoritarian silencing reverberate in modern India, where our current government faces growing criticism for similar tactics. While controlling narratives and suppressing dissenting voices to quite literally orchestrate a sense of ‘cultural conformity’ cloaked as nationalism may seem like a viable option to those who govern us, to those governed this might be our worst nightmare. 

The situation in India has perhaps still a long way to go to reach the state in the Soviet Union in the 1950s-70s, or even in Nazi Germany, however the course for our path is set. Let us look at a few instances of Censorship that took place in India since 2014, the year our current BJP led government got elected as the ruling party.

In 2015 the film Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai by Nakul Singh Sawhney faced institutional suppression and mob censorship in India, particularly in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It is a documentary film that explores the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh, their communal and political roots, and their impact on Muslim communities and farmers. However the fact that it criticised the Hindutva Politics techniques such as communal polarization used to break traditional unity between Jat and Muslim farmers and that it allegedly exposed the BJP-RSS involvement in instigating the riot for the electoral gain was perhaps too much for the government to bear. The film was not banned, but suppressed. Its screening was blocked in Universities and was cancelled by authorities. 

In 2015, just one year after their electoral win, our government began what many like to call a censorship spree. Nothing is more dangerous in our country than foreign media, and more so- foreign media that critiques us. In 2015, British filmmaker Leslee Udwin, produced the BBC Documentary ‘India’s Daughter’ which explores the brutal 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder in Delhi interviews with the victim’s parents, lawyers, police and one of the convicted rapists, Mukesh Singh, who makes shocking and misogynistic statements justifying the crime. However instead of viewing facts as the truth, our Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Home Ministry cited them as “Objectional content” which could create public disorder and glorify rape. Additionally, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu described the documentary as part of an “international conspiracy to defame India”.

But that’s the past right? What about the present? Well in 2023 another BBC documentary India: The Modi Question was banned. It was a documentary on Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots and our beloved Prime Minister being labelled as the “Butcher of Gujrat” was not something he could let go very easily. Perhaps we have seen something like this before in 1930-40s Germany or in the Stalin Era? It was banned from being shown in India with screenings shut down across universities, students detained and Twitter and Youtube being ordered to block all links related to this. Ah, democracy.

Today’s India is just like Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet, especially the Allegro Molto- we never know what to expect. It is a claustrophobic descent into psychological and political dread—its abrupt tonal shifts, jarring dissonances, and obsessive repetition of his musical signature (D–E♭–C–B) create an atmosphere of spiraling paranoia. This unpredictability mirrors the chilling uncertainty of modern India’s censorship landscape—where a song, a film, or a tweet may seem safe one day and be erased the next. 

Unlike any of the more famous classical composers such as Mozart, Shostakovich’s compositions hardly show any light, any respite or hope. He shows things the way they are and thus it highly resonates with the current scenario in not just India, but across the world. Censorship has been a constant throughout history, with only its level or intensity fluctuating over time. While it is our ‘duty’ to put an end to it, realistically- as long as anyone is in power over the others, it will always exist to at least some level. And what is the alternative to someone being in power? Anarchy. For the word ‘realistically’ includes into our assumption: poverty, greed, corruption and loopholes.