Squeezed between the Republic Day and the anniversary of
Mahatma Gandhi's assassination was the Jaipur Literary Fest. A fest marked not
only by the presence of exalted personalities but also by hypocrites.Well, we
may extol the virtues of "ahimsa" but we have just surrendered
to the threats of violent rioting. Salman Rushdie, the high profile controversial writer was continuously threatened and lots and lots of pressure built on the government to disallow him a visa...only to realise later that Rushdie being a PIO didn't need to have a visa to visit India. At last, he chose not to visit the JLF.
All this petty shenanigans by the self-proclaimed pro-religious orthodox has made me think a lot about censorship and that "elusive" democratic freedom of speech. I totally sympathise the organisers of the festival. Let down as they were by the spineless Rajasthan government, who had a keen eye on the Muslim vote bank in the current elections, they did their best. They were personally threatened by a baying mob of bearded youths who invaded the festival compound promising murder and mayhem if Rushdie was allowed so much as a video link (as Germaine Greer said at the time of the Danish cartoons row, “What these people really love and do best is pandemonium”). As cited by Richard Dawkins:
All this petty shenanigans by the self-proclaimed pro-religious orthodox has made me think a lot about censorship and that "elusive" democratic freedom of speech. I totally sympathise the organisers of the festival. Let down as they were by the spineless Rajasthan government, who had a keen eye on the Muslim vote bank in the current elections, they did their best. They were personally threatened by a baying mob of bearded youths who invaded the festival compound promising murder and mayhem if Rushdie was allowed so much as a video link (as Germaine Greer said at the time of the Danish cartoons row, “What these people really love and do best is pandemonium”). As cited by Richard Dawkins:
Here are two possible reasons one might offer for kowtowing to a violent threat such as was visited on the Jaipur Literary Festival last week.
- I shall give in to your demands to suppress freedom of speech, purely because I fear your threats. But don’t for one nanosecond confuse fear with respect. I do not respect you, I despise you and everything you stand for – especially given that your faith is apparently so weak in argument that it requires violent threats to shore it up.
It seems to me that there is nothing reprehensible in such a response. It is not cowardly, simply prudent, and Nick Cohen praises Grayson Perry for using a milder version of it. But the same cannot be said of the following: - I shall give in to you because I know that freedom of speech is not part of your culture. Who am I to impose Western, colonialist, paternalistic ideas like freedom of speech on your very different and equally valuable culture? Of course your ‘hurt’ and ‘offence’ should take precedence over our purely Western preoccupation with freedom of speech, and of course we’ll cancel the video link.
On American campuses, they held that if a man so much as looked around with a lustful eye, or called a young female a ‘girl’ instead of a ‘woman’, he was guilty of gross sexual impropriety. Yet abroad it was “more or less OK for a cabal of regressive theocratic bigots to insist on the chador, to cut off thieves’ hands and put out the eyes of offenders on TV, and to murder novelists as state policy. Oppression is what we do in the West. What they do in the Middle East is ‘their culture’. Leftists could not make a stand, because to their minds defending Rushdie would at some level mean giving aid and comfort to racists and strengthening the hand of the one enemy they could admit to having: the imperialist warmongers in Washington, DC.
During the mid 1950s, Pandit Nehru addressed a Conference of Newspaper Editors. He advanced the interesting notion that Freedom of Speech and Expression had not been granted to good editors alone; it was most necessary for the bad editors too. It would be easy to say that editors should use their freedoms responsibly and in national interest. Of course, bad editors would do no such thing; they would print scurrilous articles. But then who is to decide who is a good editor and who is bad? If this is left to the government, then predictably only "chamchas" will survive as editors and the honest ones who spoke the truth to power would be hustled off to jail as bad editors misusing their freedoms.
Nehru’s remarks are even more apt now than ever before. I was struck by Justice Katju saying that Salman Rushdie was a poor and sub-standard writer who would have remained unknown except for his scurrilous book The Satanic Verses. This, he is quoted as saying, is much more fundamental issue than merely banning him. Of course, every one is entitled to his own literary standards. I hope the Booker Prize authorities take note of what Justice Katju has said and immediately withdraw the original Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children and its prize as Booker of Bookers of over 25 years. But even a poor substandard writer deserves to be able to write and be read by such tasteless people who prefer him to better writers. A writer’s freedom of expression and for all of us the freedom to read and write as we please is not granted on a quality adjusted basis......but that's all the talk of principles,right? and when one offends you at the emotional level you don't really then care about the principles.
So if someone offends you or your religion, your basic reaction would be try and stop him from doing it. Everyone does! it's the basic human instinct that composes your reaction. But there are several ways of doing it. The reaction which we all saw at the JLF reminds me of the concept of "The Heckler's Veto". It is the shorthand for the proposition that if someone dosen't like an idea, he tries to veto the expression of such an idea by threatening public safety and this is what happened with Salman Rushdie. Those ignomarus fatwa-mongers tried to veto the expression of his thoughts and succeeded. How were they successful, is a totally different topic and I wouldn't delve into it. But the very canonic question is why? Why go against the very nature of your religion and order someone's killing? Why threat someone? If there is freedom of speech, there also is freedom to hear! You don't want to read it or hear about it it's ok! don't deny us! You were offended? Fine! Why don't you publish another book defying all of the facts and praising your religion! If you believe so much in your religion why not give the general public a chance to decide? open yourself to criticism and tell everyone what a glorious past your religion has had. Why just threaten and try to shut up the person before you? It only reveals your doubts in your own religion which you might be trying to cover up!!
Well, in a country like India it is a common sight....the people doing legal things are often afraid of people doing illegal things. It is not the first incidence. Apart from Rushdie, Tasleema Nasreen, M F Hussain were all heckled. Bajrang Dal threatened Hussain for drawing nude pictures of their deities....well why don't they go and demolish Ajanta and Khajuraho!!
As cited above: that when it is done in the west we see it as oppression but here it's all in the name of protecting our culture......well that's the irony. I would like to cite another incidence by Dawkins :
"When I publicly tackled Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Britain’s leading ‘moderate’ Muslim, on this very question, he repeatedly evaded it before finally conceding that death is indeed the prescribed punishment for apostasy but pleaded that “it is very seldom enforced.” So that’s all right then. Roll on the (‘inevitable’ according to the Archbishop of Canterbury) Sharia Law. Sir Iqbal who, by the way, was knighted for services to ‘community relations’, said of Salman Rushdie, at the time of the fatwa, “Death is perhaps too easy for him.”
Oh but of course, we mustn’t be shocked, it’s their culture and we must respect it."
