A thoroughly biased report [on Ashis Nandy controversy at Jaipur Literary Festival] - Letter to Communalism Watch

[27 January 2013 - via email]

harsh,

i am sorry to have to say that i think your report (which i paste below this note) on ashis nandy is written with a brazen bias, a form of unfair reporting that i find repugnant.

it should be absolutely clear to anybody who knows nandy and has read his work, that he was being misinterpreted in this controversy around his remarks at the jaipur festival. your report first presents the (in my and every fair minded person's view) misinterpretation, then mentions his statement in a press conference repudiating that interpretation of him in such a way as to suggest that he was trying to wriggle out of a charge that, in your view, was justified. i am not even saying that you should have presented the interpretation as a misinterpretation. that is merely my view and no doubt the view of others who know nandy's work. but i am saying that it would have been perfectly possible to write a report that mentions the interpretation in neutral terms and then his repudiation in neutral terms, and let people who were there or who know nandy from his other writings on caste, decide for themselves, what he meant. your report was very far indeed from such a model of fairness.

you also say that he produced no statistical evidence for the fact that corruption charges are more frequently made against obc and scst persons than others. this is a comically pedantic demand. if i were to say in public in new york that far more criminal charges are made against african-americans than whites with a view to suggesting that this was due to a bias of perception that ignores entrenched criminal activity by whites (think of the fact that no wall street person responsible for the financial crash has yet had criminal charges brought against him), just as nandy was doing when he made his claim at the jaipur festival, i would feel no great scruple to present statistical evidence. it is something that all people aware of the injustices of the societies they live in (here in new york on the matter of race, there in india in the matter of caste) would take for granted. no one would demand statistics of me here in new york were i to have made that remark in public, except those who were racialist and defensive about these distorted perceptions of african-americans that make them the constant target of criminal charges in this racist society. and nandy was assuming that others who were aware of the injustices of a casteist society and not defensive about such distorted perception of obc and scst persons in such a society, would allow him that latitude in reporting the facts, without having to produce statistics. and i think you should worry, therefore, if my analogy is a good one, that your sort of demand for statistics is only be made in new york by racists who are defensive. i am not for a moment insinuating that you are a casteist who is defensive about the distorted perception of obcs and scst in a casteist society. that would be to adopt your sort of tactics in the way you made that report of nandy. i am only telling you that your demand for statistics is going to come off as either being made by such a defensive person or someone who is reporting on a controversy in a thoroughly biased way. i have no doubt that it is not the former. i have no doubt that it is the latter.

as for your opening remark about nandy being overrated, it is fine to have your opinion on this matter (my opinion is that he is one of the most creative intellectuals in india in the last few decades, even though i have sometimes disagreed strongly with him in the past), but it clearly sets the tone for the kind of snarky, unfair reporting in the words that follow. i realise that you set out to do no favours to nandy in this report. the fact is that you went very measurably beyond that. you were gratuitously unfair in your reporting of what happened, and ended up doing no favours to yourself.

since i have long admired 'communalism watch', i was most upset and disappointed to read your report in its pages. i am copying some friends of mine who want to watch and oppose communalism as much as you do. i would like to submit this letter to 'communalism watch' for publication and i would like you to submit it to you to circulate it via your excellent south asians citizens wire. i think fairness to nandy requires that you do so.

Akeel Bilgrami
Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy,
and
Committee on Global Thought,
719 Philosophy Hall,
Columbia University,
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212 854 6971
Fax 212 854 4986

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Communalism Watch - January 26, 2013
India: Ashis Nandy in shit for making clumsy casteist claims at the Jaipur literature festival 2013
According to reports the overrated Indian intellectual Ashis Nandy made a statement
"Most corrupt people come from OBC, SC and ST communities"

Full Text at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/ashis-nandy-in-shit-for-making-clumsy.html