a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/67424836.cms">The Times of India
Won't attend literary meet now: Nayantara Sahgal; CMO distances from row
PTI | Jan 7, 2019, 09.16 PM IST
MUMBAI: Amid flak by opposition leaders and authors over rescinding the invitation to author Nayantara Sahgal to inaugurate the 92nd all-India All Marathi literary meet this week, the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) on Monday distanced itself from the controversy.
Soon after the CMO clarification, Sahgal said she won't attend the meet now even if a fresh invite were to be sent to her.
"I am not reconsidering my visit to the literary meet in Maharashtra," Sahgal, 91, told PTI on Monday night.
In a statement, the CMO said the decision on whom to invite for the meet is taken by the organisers and the state government has no role in it.
The CMO statement came after the organisers invited Sahgal, 91, to attend the meet, scheduled this week at Yavatmal, and later cancelled it, citing law and order issues.
Opposition leaders like Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam alleged the invitation was cancelled at the behest of the ruling BJP.
The CMO statement said a section of media is dragging the state government's name in the controversy. The Akhil Bharatiya Sahitya Mahamandal (which organises the meet), is an autonomous body and neither the CM nor the state government interfere in its functioning, it said.
The Sharad Pawar-led NCP was not impressed by the government's statement and said the invitation was cancelled "out of fear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi" would not like if Sahgal, niece of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, attended the literary meet.
The NCP said Modi always speaks against Nehru and asked Fadnavis to re-invite Sahgal for the meeting.
The noted English-language author who was at the forefront of the 'award-wapsi' (returning of awards) campaign, was to inaugurate the meet on January 11 in the presence of Fadnavis.
In 2015, several writers returned their awards to protest against what they described as "rising intolerance and growing assault on free speech" under the Narendra Modi government.
NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said, "The way Sahagal's invitation was cancelled by the organisers of the meet, the government's hand is there somewhere (in this)."
"Modi always speaks against Nehru. Sahgal belongs to Nehru's family. There is a fear in the mind of the Maharashtra BJP and the chief minister of Maharashtra that if Nayantara Sahgal attends the meeting, Modi won't be happy," Malik said.
The invitation was cancelled after a member of the MNS threatened to disrupt the meeting opposing Sahgal's presence, the NCP leader said.
"If the invitation was cancelled in the name of law and order, it is the responsibility of the chief minister, who is also home minister of the state, to convince Sahgal to attend the function," Malik said.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray issued a statement on Monday, admitting that one of his local party workers had opposed Sahgal's presence at the literary meet. "As the party chief, I am not against inviting her," Thackeray said.
"If Sahgal's presence at the All India Literary Meet is transcending into a cultural exchange, I or my party will not oppose it," Thackeray said, adding that he "deeply regretted' the inconvenience caused to supporters of such literary events by the action of a few of his men.
Nirupam said the decision of the organisers to rescind the invite to Sahgal was taken at BJP's behest. The MNS is just a front, he added.
"Literature should not surrender before politics. If a government is scared of writers, it means that its days are over," he said.
The rescinding of the invitation to Sahgal has exposed the "intolerant" face of the BJP government led by Devendra Fadnavis, Maharashtra Congress president Ashok Chavan said.
The invitation was cancelled to ensure "political security" of the chief minister, he said and attacked Fadnavis for issuing a clarification on the issue but not condemning the meet organisers' decision to cancel the invitation to Sahgal.
Chavan asked Fadnavis to invite Sahgal afresh if the meet organisers did not cancel the invitation to her "under his pressure".
"This episode has exposed the intolerant face of the Fadnavis government. Fadnavis conveniently distanced himself by issuing a clarification but didn't condemn the organisers," a statement quoted Chavan as saying.
"Are these not double standards? This shows what the organisers did (cancel the invite) was at the behest of the chief minister," Chavan said.
Maharashtra's cultural affairs minister Vinod Tawde, however, said the state welcomed everyone.
"If someone had opposed Sahgal after her speech at the meet, then it could have been understood. It is not fair to oppose her completely. Maharashtra is a state that welcomes everyone to present their work," he said.
Noted Marathi author Aruna Dhere, who will preside over the event, also criticised the organisers for cancelling Sahgal's invitation.
"It is shocking that you respectfully invite someone and later back out. Sahgal should be invited (again) with respect," she said.
Laxmikant Deshmukh, the outgoing chairman of the literary meet, said the organisers should have thought before inviting Sahgal, as her line of thinking was well-known.
The literary meet's reception committee said the organisers had decided to revoke Sahgal's invitation, "as a controversy has cropped up against her name and to avoid any untoward incident from those who threatened to derail the literary meet".
Meanwhile, several Marathi authors and journalists Monday announced they would be boycotting the meet to mark their protests over the Sahgal's 'insult' by the meet's organisers.
Historian Ramachandra Guha tweeted, "The Maharashtra that fears the words of a ninety one year old woman writer is the Maharashtra of Godse and his mentors, not the Maharashtra of Ambedkar, Phule, Gokhale or Tilak."
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Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
January 07, 2019
July 01, 2017
India: Premchand, Shaani and communalism | Kuldeep Kumar
FRIDAY REVIEW / The Hindu, June 30, 2017
by Kuldeep Kumar
The writings of these stalwarts reflected the plural character of Indian society
Every year on the occasion of Id, I am reminded of Premchand’s heart-rending story “Idgaah” which celebrates a poor child’s love for his grandmother. While we find short stories and even novels — Amritlal Nagar’s “Shatranj Ke Mohre”, for example —focusing on the Muslim elite, Premchand is perhaps the only exception as he depicts the life of a poor Muslim family in this story. A five-year-old boy Hamid, who has lost his parents and is being brought up by his grandmother Ameena, spends whatever little money she had given him to buy sweets and toys in the Id fair, on buying a chimta — a long iron tweezer used for taking out rotis from a choolha (oven). As he used to see Ameena burning her fingers everyday while making rotis, he bought the chimta for her.
This year, when Id was celebrated this past Monday in a rather subdued atmosphere, I recalled another of Premchand’s short story “Mandir-Masjid” (Temple-Mosque) which shows an old Muslim landlord respecting both temple and mosque equally as the “House of God” and willing to make any sacrifice to uphold this principle and safeguard the sanctity of these places of worship. The way this story, published in 1925, portrays the mechanism of the production of communal violence, one feels that it was written very recently.
Similarly, his article on Hindu-Muslim unity, published in “Hans” in November 1931, remains as valid today as it was at the time of its writing. I found this article in the Premchand Number of the now-defunct literary journal “Uttargatha” that the late Savyasachi used to edit from Mathura. A selfless Marxist writer who sank most of his lecturer’s salary into bringing out such magazines and publishing booklets to propagate progressive views on social, cultural and political issues, his real name was Shyamlal Vashishth and he brought out this special number on Premchand in January 1981. It contains rare archival material and has become a collector’s item.
Respecting sensitivities
Even in those days, beef was an important issue affecting Hindu-Muslim relations. Premchand informs his readers that beef is primarily eaten by those who are so poor that they cannot afford mutton or chicken. Also, most of the so-called “untouchable” Hindus too eat beef. In the Arab lands, cow is not found. Therefore, there is no question of Islam prescribing eating of beef. He feels that if the two communities come closer and start respecting each other’s sensitivities, Muslims will themselves give up eating beef as those Muslims who live in close proximity of the Hindus in villages do not eat beef. Towards the end of the article, Premchand reminds the readers that the wars that took place between medieval rulers were for political power and not for religious reasons. He points out that in 1857 both the Hindus and the Muslims had voluntarily accepted the weak Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader and presented a sterling example of a united Indian nation. Fortunately, Premchand did not live to witness the horrors of Partition as he died in 1936.
Muslim characters
After Premchand, one finds Muslim characters only in Yashpal’s writings. Shaani, whose novel “Kala Jal” (Dark Waters) was the first to depict the life of an aristocratic Muslim family that had fallen on bad days and had become rather poor, had shaken the Hindi literary world by raising the question about the absence of Muslim characters from Hindi fiction.
Shaani’s short stories offer a poignant phenomenological description of how a member of the minority community feels in post-Partition India. His question regarding the absence of Muslim characters in Hindi fiction led to the inevitable next question: “Is Hindi literature really a Hindu literature?” He posed this question while taking part in a long and illuminating discussion with three well-known Hindi writers — critic Namwar Singh, poet-critic Vishwanath Tripathi and fiction writer Kashinath Singh.
The discussion was published in two parts in Sahitya Akademi’s literary journal “Samkaleen Bharatiya Sahitya” (Contemporary Indian Literature) in 1990. Later it was included in “Shaani: Aadami Aur Adeeb” (Shaani: Man and Writer), edited by Janaki Prasad Sharam and published in 1996, a year after Shaani’s untimely demise. The discussion offered a tentative reason behind this absence and the discussants felt that perhaps Hindu writers are not really familiar with the Muslim family life and its expression in social sphere.
Shaani is an Arabic word for enemy. When Gulsher Khan, a Pathan living in Bastar’s Jagdalpur town, adopted this nom de plume , he believed that one was known by the worth of one’s work in literature and he wanted to be known simply as Shaani. But very soon, he realised that this was just a utopian dream and people were not willing to forget, or let him forget, his Muslim identity.
All his life, he kept struggling with this unsavoury reality. He was the only writer who could see through the class differences in the Muslim society and how they determined people’s attitudes. His short story “Biradari” (Community) is a fine example of this. Premchand had felt that both Hindus and Muslims must be familiar with each other’s religious traditions. If they are familiar, they will have respect for each other. Perhaps he was right.
by Kuldeep Kumar
The writings of these stalwarts reflected the plural character of Indian society
Every year on the occasion of Id, I am reminded of Premchand’s heart-rending story “Idgaah” which celebrates a poor child’s love for his grandmother. While we find short stories and even novels — Amritlal Nagar’s “Shatranj Ke Mohre”, for example —focusing on the Muslim elite, Premchand is perhaps the only exception as he depicts the life of a poor Muslim family in this story. A five-year-old boy Hamid, who has lost his parents and is being brought up by his grandmother Ameena, spends whatever little money she had given him to buy sweets and toys in the Id fair, on buying a chimta — a long iron tweezer used for taking out rotis from a choolha (oven). As he used to see Ameena burning her fingers everyday while making rotis, he bought the chimta for her.
This year, when Id was celebrated this past Monday in a rather subdued atmosphere, I recalled another of Premchand’s short story “Mandir-Masjid” (Temple-Mosque) which shows an old Muslim landlord respecting both temple and mosque equally as the “House of God” and willing to make any sacrifice to uphold this principle and safeguard the sanctity of these places of worship. The way this story, published in 1925, portrays the mechanism of the production of communal violence, one feels that it was written very recently.
Similarly, his article on Hindu-Muslim unity, published in “Hans” in November 1931, remains as valid today as it was at the time of its writing. I found this article in the Premchand Number of the now-defunct literary journal “Uttargatha” that the late Savyasachi used to edit from Mathura. A selfless Marxist writer who sank most of his lecturer’s salary into bringing out such magazines and publishing booklets to propagate progressive views on social, cultural and political issues, his real name was Shyamlal Vashishth and he brought out this special number on Premchand in January 1981. It contains rare archival material and has become a collector’s item.
Respecting sensitivities
Even in those days, beef was an important issue affecting Hindu-Muslim relations. Premchand informs his readers that beef is primarily eaten by those who are so poor that they cannot afford mutton or chicken. Also, most of the so-called “untouchable” Hindus too eat beef. In the Arab lands, cow is not found. Therefore, there is no question of Islam prescribing eating of beef. He feels that if the two communities come closer and start respecting each other’s sensitivities, Muslims will themselves give up eating beef as those Muslims who live in close proximity of the Hindus in villages do not eat beef. Towards the end of the article, Premchand reminds the readers that the wars that took place between medieval rulers were for political power and not for religious reasons. He points out that in 1857 both the Hindus and the Muslims had voluntarily accepted the weak Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader and presented a sterling example of a united Indian nation. Fortunately, Premchand did not live to witness the horrors of Partition as he died in 1936.
Muslim characters
After Premchand, one finds Muslim characters only in Yashpal’s writings. Shaani, whose novel “Kala Jal” (Dark Waters) was the first to depict the life of an aristocratic Muslim family that had fallen on bad days and had become rather poor, had shaken the Hindi literary world by raising the question about the absence of Muslim characters from Hindi fiction.
Shaani’s short stories offer a poignant phenomenological description of how a member of the minority community feels in post-Partition India. His question regarding the absence of Muslim characters in Hindi fiction led to the inevitable next question: “Is Hindi literature really a Hindu literature?” He posed this question while taking part in a long and illuminating discussion with three well-known Hindi writers — critic Namwar Singh, poet-critic Vishwanath Tripathi and fiction writer Kashinath Singh.
The discussion was published in two parts in Sahitya Akademi’s literary journal “Samkaleen Bharatiya Sahitya” (Contemporary Indian Literature) in 1990. Later it was included in “Shaani: Aadami Aur Adeeb” (Shaani: Man and Writer), edited by Janaki Prasad Sharam and published in 1996, a year after Shaani’s untimely demise. The discussion offered a tentative reason behind this absence and the discussants felt that perhaps Hindu writers are not really familiar with the Muslim family life and its expression in social sphere.
Shaani is an Arabic word for enemy. When Gulsher Khan, a Pathan living in Bastar’s Jagdalpur town, adopted this nom de plume , he believed that one was known by the worth of one’s work in literature and he wanted to be known simply as Shaani. But very soon, he realised that this was just a utopian dream and people were not willing to forget, or let him forget, his Muslim identity.
All his life, he kept struggling with this unsavoury reality. He was the only writer who could see through the class differences in the Muslim society and how they determined people’s attitudes. His short story “Biradari” (Community) is a fine example of this. Premchand had felt that both Hindus and Muslims must be familiar with each other’s religious traditions. If they are familiar, they will have respect for each other. Perhaps he was right.
March 02, 2017
India: Threatened for rewriting one of the narratives of the ‘Ramayana’, Volga details the rise of intolerance
scroll.in - 2 March 2017
‘Once, we accepted the right to question mythology. Now, we are intolerant': Telugu writer Volga
Threatened for rewriting one of the narratives of the ‘Ramayana’, Volga details the rise of intolerance against a feminist perspective in literature.
Malini Nair
January 21, 2017
India: Some Two speakers pull out of Jaipur Literature Festival over inclusion of RSS ideologues
India Today
Two speakers pull out of Jaipur Literature Festival over inclusion of RSS ideologues
M.A. Baby is a prominent member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a part of the party's polit bureau in Kerala whereas Raghu Karnad happens to be a journalist-cum-author. Both have conveyed their decision to the JLF.
by Dev Ankur Wadhawan
Jaipur, January 19, 2017
Kerala CPI-M leader M.A. Baby and journalist-cum-author Raghu Karnad, who were listed as Speakers at the Jaipur Literature Festival which begins today, have decided to pull out of the 5-day event. This after two senior RSS ideologues -- Manmohan Vaidya and Dattatreya Hosabale -- were included in the list of Speakers at the festival.
M.A. Baby is a prominent member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a part of the party's polit bureau in Kerala whereas Raghu Karnad happens to be a journalist-cum-author. Both have conveyed their decision to the JLF.
WHO ARE VAIDYA AND DATTATREYA
Manmohan Vaidya is currently the Akhil Bhartiya Prachar Pramukh or the RSS' in-charge for media relations. Dattatreya Hosabale is the sah-sarakaryavah or the Joint General Secretary of the RSS. The session involving Hosabale and Vaidya titled 'Of Saffron and the Sangha: Dattareya Hosabale and Manmohan Vaidya in conversation with Pragya Tiwari' is scheduled for January 20.
Festival producer Sanjoy Roy told India Today, "Well, M.A. Baby sent us a letter quite a while ago, saying that the politburo had asked him to not come to the JLF because we had invited people from other ideological platforms and Raghu had sent us a letter and an email also days ago, saying that he potentially felt he shouldn't be on the same platform where we were giving space to speakers from the Right. I wrote back to Raghu, saying that you have every right to think and feel what you wish to. We believe that this a platform where all sides need to be represented and that's our stand."
The JLF refuted allegations that there had been pressure on the organisers to include people considered to be right of centre in their ideology.
WHAT JLF PRODUCER FEELS
"Unfortunately, I think in some sections of the media, there have been reports that we have been pressured to invite these people. Nothing of this sort. We have been inviting people from across the political spectrum, both from India as well as from abroad to represent what we believe is very important", Roy said.
The Jaipur Literature Festival conveyed that they had invited people from the right ideology in the past as well, including Dr. Murali Manohar Joshi, but there had not been such a hue and cry over it back then. "We must hear all perspectives across the ideological divide. And without being able to listen to the other side, I don't understand how people feel that they can even counter a thought or an idea or a stand. How do they do that? It's ignorance and we believe that it's imperative for us to allow our audience and visitors to be able to listen to all sides and then make up their own minds on an issue", Roy stated.
Two speakers pull out of Jaipur Literature Festival over inclusion of RSS ideologues
M.A. Baby is a prominent member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a part of the party's polit bureau in Kerala whereas Raghu Karnad happens to be a journalist-cum-author. Both have conveyed their decision to the JLF.
by Dev Ankur Wadhawan
Jaipur, January 19, 2017
Kerala CPI-M leader M.A. Baby and journalist-cum-author Raghu Karnad, who were listed as Speakers at the Jaipur Literature Festival which begins today, have decided to pull out of the 5-day event. This after two senior RSS ideologues -- Manmohan Vaidya and Dattatreya Hosabale -- were included in the list of Speakers at the festival.
M.A. Baby is a prominent member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a part of the party's polit bureau in Kerala whereas Raghu Karnad happens to be a journalist-cum-author. Both have conveyed their decision to the JLF.
WHO ARE VAIDYA AND DATTATREYA
Manmohan Vaidya is currently the Akhil Bhartiya Prachar Pramukh or the RSS' in-charge for media relations. Dattatreya Hosabale is the sah-sarakaryavah or the Joint General Secretary of the RSS. The session involving Hosabale and Vaidya titled 'Of Saffron and the Sangha: Dattareya Hosabale and Manmohan Vaidya in conversation with Pragya Tiwari' is scheduled for January 20.
Festival producer Sanjoy Roy told India Today, "Well, M.A. Baby sent us a letter quite a while ago, saying that the politburo had asked him to not come to the JLF because we had invited people from other ideological platforms and Raghu had sent us a letter and an email also days ago, saying that he potentially felt he shouldn't be on the same platform where we were giving space to speakers from the Right. I wrote back to Raghu, saying that you have every right to think and feel what you wish to. We believe that this a platform where all sides need to be represented and that's our stand."
The JLF refuted allegations that there had been pressure on the organisers to include people considered to be right of centre in their ideology.
WHAT JLF PRODUCER FEELS
"Unfortunately, I think in some sections of the media, there have been reports that we have been pressured to invite these people. Nothing of this sort. We have been inviting people from across the political spectrum, both from India as well as from abroad to represent what we believe is very important", Roy said.
The Jaipur Literature Festival conveyed that they had invited people from the right ideology in the past as well, including Dr. Murali Manohar Joshi, but there had not been such a hue and cry over it back then. "We must hear all perspectives across the ideological divide. And without being able to listen to the other side, I don't understand how people feel that they can even counter a thought or an idea or a stand. How do they do that? It's ignorance and we believe that it's imperative for us to allow our audience and visitors to be able to listen to all sides and then make up their own minds on an issue", Roy stated.
January 10, 2017
India: Literature and the curse of communalism ( Taha Kehar)
The Hindu,
Why political novels are akin to gunshots in the midst of a concert
Literature is a powerful tool that helps writers plumb the depths of the human psyche and pluck out the hidden dependencies and scars of a particular era. Although fiction allows writers the latitude to create and imagine lives, most authors of political novels tend to focus on capturing the emotional zeitgeist of the times. Through an emphasis on the large movements of history, they seek to understand the private moments of sadness and explore the sounds and flavours of a forgotten era.
Partition has been billed as a distressing phase in the subcontinent’s history. The tragedy and turmoil that surrounded the birth of Pakistan has been likened to the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. Many novelists from India and Pakistan have provided scathing accounts of this period.
A majority of fiction presents a darkened view of a historical moment that brought a tectonic shift in priorities and redrew the map of the subcontinent. More often than not, these works build narratives around political themes and motifs to recreate the times and bring emotions to the fore.
The nineteenth century French writer Stendhal would have viewed the growing emphasis on politics as little more than a gunshot in the middle of concert. Orhan Pamuk firmly believes such political novels must accomplish the unrealistic task of understanding everyone to “construct the largest whole”. This method demands a degree of objectivity that is seldom found in political novels about Partition as it is difficult to achieve.
Most works about Partition tend to emphasise the idea of communal violence without understanding its essence. The focus on communalism becomes a tautological flaw in these books as the violence stoked by religious differences becomes the cause and the consequence of the conflict.
Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India is possibly the only novel that deviates from this communitarian focus as the story is told from the perspective of an impartial observer. The narrator not only belongs to the Parsi community, but is insulated from the prejudices that are usually entrenched in the minds of adults. As a result, references to Gandhi, Jinnah, Master Tara Singh and even Lord Mountbatten are laced with objectivity. Sidhwa does not pin the blame on either community for the violence that surrounded Partition. To the contrary, she presents the foibles of each community in a nuanced manner.
On the other hand, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan falls into the trap of explaining the hysteria and violence through the lens of communalism. Throughout the novel, the emphasis remains on highlighting the violence orchestrated by Muslims and portraying the atrocities of Sikhs as a reaction to this bloodshed.
Such biased interpretations of a particular era serve to explain how and why political novels are akin to gunshots in the midst of a concert.
[. . .] FULL TEXT at http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/Literature-and-the-curse-of-communalism/article17014506.ece
Why political novels are akin to gunshots in the midst of a concert
Literature is a powerful tool that helps writers plumb the depths of the human psyche and pluck out the hidden dependencies and scars of a particular era. Although fiction allows writers the latitude to create and imagine lives, most authors of political novels tend to focus on capturing the emotional zeitgeist of the times. Through an emphasis on the large movements of history, they seek to understand the private moments of sadness and explore the sounds and flavours of a forgotten era.
Partition has been billed as a distressing phase in the subcontinent’s history. The tragedy and turmoil that surrounded the birth of Pakistan has been likened to the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. Many novelists from India and Pakistan have provided scathing accounts of this period.
A majority of fiction presents a darkened view of a historical moment that brought a tectonic shift in priorities and redrew the map of the subcontinent. More often than not, these works build narratives around political themes and motifs to recreate the times and bring emotions to the fore.
The nineteenth century French writer Stendhal would have viewed the growing emphasis on politics as little more than a gunshot in the middle of concert. Orhan Pamuk firmly believes such political novels must accomplish the unrealistic task of understanding everyone to “construct the largest whole”. This method demands a degree of objectivity that is seldom found in political novels about Partition as it is difficult to achieve.
Most works about Partition tend to emphasise the idea of communal violence without understanding its essence. The focus on communalism becomes a tautological flaw in these books as the violence stoked by religious differences becomes the cause and the consequence of the conflict.
Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India is possibly the only novel that deviates from this communitarian focus as the story is told from the perspective of an impartial observer. The narrator not only belongs to the Parsi community, but is insulated from the prejudices that are usually entrenched in the minds of adults. As a result, references to Gandhi, Jinnah, Master Tara Singh and even Lord Mountbatten are laced with objectivity. Sidhwa does not pin the blame on either community for the violence that surrounded Partition. To the contrary, she presents the foibles of each community in a nuanced manner.
On the other hand, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan falls into the trap of explaining the hysteria and violence through the lens of communalism. Throughout the novel, the emphasis remains on highlighting the violence orchestrated by Muslims and portraying the atrocities of Sikhs as a reaction to this bloodshed.
Such biased interpretations of a particular era serve to explain how and why political novels are akin to gunshots in the midst of a concert.
[. . .] FULL TEXT at http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/Literature-and-the-curse-of-communalism/article17014506.ece
January 17, 2016
India: At the 89th all India convention on Marathi literature right-wing Sanatan Sanstha comes under fire
The Hindu, Pune, January 17, 2016
Sabnis slams Sanatan Sanstha
by Shoumojit Banerjee
At literary meet, Pawar and Fadnavis tell litterateurs to keep off politics.
Days after his public apology for his remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, noted litterateur Shripal Sabnis on Saturday launched a broadside against right-wing, fringe elements.
Dr. Sabnis was delivering the inaugural lecture at the 89th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, Maharashtra’s biggest literary event, which began in Pimpri-Chinchwad on Friday.
The second day of the event also saw Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis hurling veiled barbs at Dr. Sabnis.
Dr. Sabnis, who is president of the literary meet, targeted the fringe right-wing Sanatan Sanstha for stifling intellectual dissent in general and for its alleged role in the murder of rationalist-thinkers Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi in particular.
‘Harmful propaganda’
“The Sanstha’s pernicious activities and division of Maharashtra’s social fabric on caste lines has caused each saint to be identified by a particular caste. For instance, the Sanstha has attempted to spread such harmful propaganda like ‘Jnaneshwar was the saint of the Brahmins’, and ‘Tukaram belonged to the Marathas’... this is alarming propaganda,” alleged Dr. Sabnis, reading out from a 135-page speech in which he touched upon surging intolerance and communalism.
The author himself was embroiled in a raging controversy after describing Mr. Modi as “a man forever smeared with the taint of the 2002 Gujarat riots,” whom he would not endorse.
Dr. Sabnis’ remarks threatened the smooth conduct of the Sammelan, with both the BJP and the Sanatan Sanstha demanding that he recant his statement.
Dr. Sabnis also alleged that he received a death threat from the Sanstha’s top lawyer. Earlier this week, he was forced to retract his remarks after it became apparent that the BJP activists could disrupt the event.
Both Mr. Pawar and Mr. Fadnavis, in their speeches, said literary personalities should not “indulge in politics”.
“While it is good news that someone of Dr. Sabnis’ capabilities is heading this meet, there needs to be a rethink on the process of election of the Sammelan president,” remarked the NCP strongman, in a rebuke to Dr. Sabnis.
The four-day literary meet got off to a grand start with a spellbinding display of literary pageantry manifested as a “granth dindi” (symbolic procession of books), attracting huge crowds on the H.A. grounds in Pimpri on Friday. More than 400 stalls have been put up.
Sabnis slams Sanatan Sanstha
by Shoumojit Banerjee
At literary meet, Pawar and Fadnavis tell litterateurs to keep off politics.
Days after his public apology for his remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, noted litterateur Shripal Sabnis on Saturday launched a broadside against right-wing, fringe elements.
Dr. Sabnis was delivering the inaugural lecture at the 89th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, Maharashtra’s biggest literary event, which began in Pimpri-Chinchwad on Friday.
The second day of the event also saw Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis hurling veiled barbs at Dr. Sabnis.
Dr. Sabnis, who is president of the literary meet, targeted the fringe right-wing Sanatan Sanstha for stifling intellectual dissent in general and for its alleged role in the murder of rationalist-thinkers Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi in particular.
‘Harmful propaganda’
“The Sanstha’s pernicious activities and division of Maharashtra’s social fabric on caste lines has caused each saint to be identified by a particular caste. For instance, the Sanstha has attempted to spread such harmful propaganda like ‘Jnaneshwar was the saint of the Brahmins’, and ‘Tukaram belonged to the Marathas’... this is alarming propaganda,” alleged Dr. Sabnis, reading out from a 135-page speech in which he touched upon surging intolerance and communalism.
The author himself was embroiled in a raging controversy after describing Mr. Modi as “a man forever smeared with the taint of the 2002 Gujarat riots,” whom he would not endorse.
Dr. Sabnis’ remarks threatened the smooth conduct of the Sammelan, with both the BJP and the Sanatan Sanstha demanding that he recant his statement.
Dr. Sabnis also alleged that he received a death threat from the Sanstha’s top lawyer. Earlier this week, he was forced to retract his remarks after it became apparent that the BJP activists could disrupt the event.
Both Mr. Pawar and Mr. Fadnavis, in their speeches, said literary personalities should not “indulge in politics”.
“While it is good news that someone of Dr. Sabnis’ capabilities is heading this meet, there needs to be a rethink on the process of election of the Sammelan president,” remarked the NCP strongman, in a rebuke to Dr. Sabnis.
The four-day literary meet got off to a grand start with a spellbinding display of literary pageantry manifested as a “granth dindi” (symbolic procession of books), attracting huge crowds on the H.A. grounds in Pimpri on Friday. More than 400 stalls have been put up.
November 03, 2015
November 02, 2015
India: Open Letter from Writers to everyone
via Indian Cultural Forum
Open Letter from Writers
November 1, 2015
Through this open letter, we address everyone, from the President of India to the child who has just learnt to read and discover the world around her.
Many of us writers have spoken up, in one way or the other, whenever our country has been at a point of crisis. But in recent times, we have seen an assault on certain facets of our day-to-day living, from attacks on the scientific temper to physical and often fatal attacks on citizens.
In response, over the last few weeks, several writers returned awards and resigned from their positions in the Sahitya Akademi; or issued statements of protest about the encouragement to intolerance which will have an adverse effect on our polity as well as on the relationship between castes and communities. Our concerns involve more than any one institution such as the Sahitya Akademi. The all-pervasive concern is with safeguarding the constitutional rights of each and every citizen to live as she chooses. This, we see, is being violated every day with old divisions such as caste becoming deeper and more violent; with new divisions being created to shrink the space for discussion and debate; with educational, cultural and other institutions being weakened further by censorship and fear of debate; and worst of all, the idea of India – the idea our freedom fighters envisioned – being distorted into a homogenous India, with its diversity torn apart.
We will continue to express our concerns in as many ways as we can, and in as many voices as possible. We appeal to all citizens of conscience to join us and keep our idea of a plural, tolerant, diverse and argumentative India alive.
Yours sincerely,
1. Adil Jussawalla
2. Ajmer Aulakh
3. Ananya Guha
4. Anil Joshi
5. Arup Kumar Dutta
6. Ashok Vajpeyi
7. Atamjit Singh
8. Baldev Sadaknama
9. Bina Sarkar Ellias
10. Chaman Lal
11. Dalip Kaur Tiwana
12. Damodar Mauzo
13. Darshan Buttar
14. Datta Naik
15. Easterine Kire
16. Ganesh Devy
17. Githa Hariharan
18. Gurbachan Singh Bhullar
19. Jaswinder
20. K. Satchidanandan
21. Keki Daruwalla
22. Krishna Sobti
23. Kum Veerabhadrappa
24. Mandakranta Sen
25. Mangalesh Dabral
26. Manmohan
27. Mitra Phukan
28. Mohan Bhandari
29. Nayantara Sahgal
30. Pargat Singh Satauj
31. Patricia Mukhim
32. Pradnya Pawar
33. Rahman Abbas
34. Rajesh Joshi
35. Sara Joseph
36. Shashi Deshpande
37. Subha
38. Surjit Patar
39. Uday Prakash
40. Waryam Sandhu
41. Xonzoi Barbora
Open Letter from Writers
November 1, 2015
Through this open letter, we address everyone, from the President of India to the child who has just learnt to read and discover the world around her.
Many of us writers have spoken up, in one way or the other, whenever our country has been at a point of crisis. But in recent times, we have seen an assault on certain facets of our day-to-day living, from attacks on the scientific temper to physical and often fatal attacks on citizens.
In response, over the last few weeks, several writers returned awards and resigned from their positions in the Sahitya Akademi; or issued statements of protest about the encouragement to intolerance which will have an adverse effect on our polity as well as on the relationship between castes and communities. Our concerns involve more than any one institution such as the Sahitya Akademi. The all-pervasive concern is with safeguarding the constitutional rights of each and every citizen to live as she chooses. This, we see, is being violated every day with old divisions such as caste becoming deeper and more violent; with new divisions being created to shrink the space for discussion and debate; with educational, cultural and other institutions being weakened further by censorship and fear of debate; and worst of all, the idea of India – the idea our freedom fighters envisioned – being distorted into a homogenous India, with its diversity torn apart.
We will continue to express our concerns in as many ways as we can, and in as many voices as possible. We appeal to all citizens of conscience to join us and keep our idea of a plural, tolerant, diverse and argumentative India alive.
Yours sincerely,
1. Adil Jussawalla
2. Ajmer Aulakh
3. Ananya Guha
4. Anil Joshi
5. Arup Kumar Dutta
6. Ashok Vajpeyi
7. Atamjit Singh
8. Baldev Sadaknama
9. Bina Sarkar Ellias
10. Chaman Lal
11. Dalip Kaur Tiwana
12. Damodar Mauzo
13. Darshan Buttar
14. Datta Naik
15. Easterine Kire
16. Ganesh Devy
17. Githa Hariharan
18. Gurbachan Singh Bhullar
19. Jaswinder
20. K. Satchidanandan
21. Keki Daruwalla
22. Krishna Sobti
23. Kum Veerabhadrappa
24. Mandakranta Sen
25. Mangalesh Dabral
26. Manmohan
27. Mitra Phukan
28. Mohan Bhandari
29. Nayantara Sahgal
30. Pargat Singh Satauj
31. Patricia Mukhim
32. Pradnya Pawar
33. Rahman Abbas
34. Rajesh Joshi
35. Sara Joseph
36. Shashi Deshpande
37. Subha
38. Surjit Patar
39. Uday Prakash
40. Waryam Sandhu
41. Xonzoi Barbora
October 25, 2015
October 23, 2015
Interview with Sadanand Menon: It’s Time to Go Not by the Letters but by the Spirit (Chitra Padmanabhan)
The Wire - 22 October 2015
Interview: It’s Time to Go Not by the Letters but by the Spirit
By Chitra Padmanabhan
On the eve of a meeting called by the Sahitya Akademi’s executive council to debate the novel situation created by the return of Akademi awards by leading litterateurs, noted cultural critic Sadanand Menon tells Chitra Padmanabhan that it is important to see whether the Akademi can be pushed to take that one step across the lakshman rekha which it has not taken until now – to prove they are separate from the state and can take an oppositional position when they see an arm of the state doing wrong.
Q: How do you look at the recent actions of literary figures from all over India returning their Sahitya Akademi awards in protest against the institution’s silence on the murder of Kannada writer MM Kalburgi as also the recent instances of intolerance in the country?
A: The critical question now seems to be what stand the executive council of the Sahitya Akademi (SA) will take in their meeting tomorrow, October 23. Influential writers Vikram Seth and Indira Parthasarathy have indicated that their own decisions on whether to return their awards or not will depend on the executive action of the Sahitya Akademi’s board.
The gesture of dissent that marks the return of awards or the stepping down from membership of cultural bodies by literary figures in the current context, leads to the question – what does it all add up to? A series of individual actions have been taken by artists – in this case specifically, litterateurs, claiming a call of the conscience – who are saying the time has come to speak out. They are also critiquing the inability of the SA to categorically condemn or speak up against the murder of writers like Malleshappa Kalburgi, who also happened to be a member of the Akademi.
For the media, which is quite diligently carrying the news and, in fact, searching for more and more artists who might want to take similar action, it is a novelty and part of the daily excitement that it craves for. But it is also possible that, in a fairly short while, this will become ‘stale news’ (‘just another resignation’). A kind of ennui will set in and the news will shift to the inside pages, and then less and less will be reported.
So the question needs repeating – what do these gestures of dissent add up to? Have they dented the stance of the government or made any difference to the workings of the culture ministry or its culturally challenged minister? Have they made any difference to the Akademis and institutions from which artists are resigning? Or will these institutions simply brush it away with, ‘kya fark padta hai’ (‘what difference does it make’)? If that will be the outcome of these acts of dissent, it will indeed be most unfortunate.
Do these gestures signify a new inflection point?
Each of these individual actions is certainly an important gesture, relatively new in our context. Not that people have not resigned earlier in protest. There has been a tradition of that since the days of the Raj and during various stages of the Indian republic – during the Emergency or after the 1984 pogrom against Sikhs or after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom against Muslims. People return their awards for various reasons. Even a couple of months ago, senior army officers were threatening to return their medals over the OROP stand-off with the Modi sarkar.
This, however, is a very specific moment where writers are asking the institution itself to speak out. The question is not the return of the awards or resignations from committees. The question really is – what is the nature of these institutions, why are they not able to reflect the angst or spirit of their constituents, the artists who are part of their constituency? Why is it that these institutions are not able to immediately speak out against the unspeakable horrors committed by other agents of the state and the silencing of independent voices? So the issue is this: Are we battering our heads against a wall that is not going to fall. Is it a futile exercise?
Is it?
Well, it certainly has released a new energy, some fresh adrenalin of self-respect among writers and artists. Coming on the heels of the ongoing protest of the students of the FTII, Pune, it could indicate that the coming struggle against communal fascism will be a cultural struggle led by the artist community, at a time when progressive or radical politics seems to be on the retreat. The Akademis, though, were framed within a Nehruvian structure of liberalism, which ostensibly acknowledged that they should constitute an autonomous space – a space for the artist and her voice. Nehru was the first president of the Sahitya Akademi and his famous statement has been quoted in the media recently: “As President of the Akademi I may tell you quite frankly I would not like the Prime Minister to interfere with my work.” In the idealistic flush of those origins, the notion was implicit that this is a space where dissent can happen or that this is an institution that does not necessarily hold the hands of the state. The state may have put in some resources to support it but, in principle, it was free and could voice its own opinion.
Can you recall any example when the Akademis did so?
In the history of post-independence India, we don’t see any example where this has happened. No artists belonging to the Lalit Kala Akademi, the Sahitya Akademi or the Sangeet Natak Akademi have ever institutionally opposed the state. They have received certain benefits from these institutions – awards, grants, fellowships, foreign travel once in a way for a festival or a book fair and so on. Besides being endorsers of these institutions and, by proxy, being endorsers of the state, they have hardly taken independent positions or spoken out like public intellectuals, exercising moral leadership and cautioning and restraining the state from taking violent and unconscionable steps in Kashmir and the North East or with regard to developing nuclear weapons or not checking the growth of casteist and communal forces. They have hardly been beacon lights or corrective forces. We don’t have examples of that.
But haven’t these institutions, at various points, been headed by acclaimed names?
Individually, the work of many artists has surely challenged some of the pet beliefs of the state. But their representative institutions have not shown any inclination to reveal their spine. Even with someone like UR Ananthamurthy as president, the Sahitya Akademi did not display any particularly independent stance. Nobody has tried, till now, to make the cultural bodies accountable to a larger public or to the notion of their own independence and status as an autonomous voice. This notion has really never been tested till now.
A Jean-Paul Sartre could decline his Nobel and thereby retain his status as an independent thinker and public intellectual – as someone who could talk back to the nation. We have not had such examples in recent times of those who have been part of these institutions and have talked back like that. A large number of people from different bhasha backgrounds are part of the Sahitya Akademi; also people from the performing arts, representing multiple art forms, are part of the Sangeet Natak Akademi; and artists representing the entire spectrum of visual and plastic arts are a part of the Lalit Kala Akademi. But they never have, individually or collectively, pushed these institutions to speak up against the depredations or repressions of the state.
This moment, therefore, where artists seem to be asking these institutions to be accountable – saying that as an institution the Sahitya Akademi should have condemned the murder of Kalburgi or at least have issued a statement against it, if not by the general council, at least by the officiating president – is a moment where I think a completely new turn can happen. That’s why it is important to see whether it can be pushed in a direction where the institution takes that one step across the lakshman rekha which it has not taken until now, and show and prove that it is separate from the state and can take an oppositional position when it sees some arm of the state doing wrong.
Does this moment have enough momentum for that new turn to happen?
This is the anticipation and the excitement – that these currently scattered gestures of dissent can snowball into a movement. My hunch is that on its own, left to itself, it might not happen – it will need the intervention of groups, organisations, institutions or just a collective of artists and thinkers whereby the frisson released by the resignations of at least 50 writers/artists by now adds up to the larger institution itself being able to speak out. That will be the moment when we will see a necessary contradiction emanating between the institution and the state – a healthy and vital contradiction, unlike the present charade of the SA constantly endorsing ‘nation building’ without supporting the questions which individual artists, poets, writers and thinkers have raised – from K.A. Abbas to Sahir Ludhianvi; from Kadamanitta Ramakrishnan to Namdeo Dhasal; from Mahasweta Devi to Arundhati Roy.
This is a moment when that possibility exists. If it can be worked on and negotiated, spoken, discussed, then this would be something that you would call momentous. Until then, it remains the decision of concerned individuals; the question of how these individual decisions, besides the initial congratulations we give to these individuals, which I too have done, figure in the larger canvas, still remains hanging.
Why, despite the fact that the Akademis were framed within a Nehruvian structure of liberalism, have these institutions not been able to develop an autonomous voice?
Difficult to say. Obviously, during the first decade-and-a-half after independence, it was considered churlish to critique the state because it was the inheritor of a positive freedom struggle. ‘Support’ was spontaneous, and many were ready to accept the new state uncritically. Interestingly, many writers retained a ‘critique’ in their own works but were willing to give more time to the institutions.
There were very few people like Sahir Ludhianvi and Kaifi Azmi who voiced their angst even within the first decade of national independence (exemplified in the lines from the film Pyaasa, ‘jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hain?’) already anticipating the coarsening of the state. Sadly, that never amplified into a tradition of institutional dissent.
Soon these institutions ossified and got identified as extensions of the state, extensions of a certain non-existent cultural policy. The old feudal and paternalistic device of giving awards and fellowships was equated with policy, with the result that the creation of a healthy policy for these institutions never took off. The institutions languished.
The past 25 years have seen yet another aberration when, as the markets grew post-liberalisation, many commercially successful writers and artists assumed a new kind of celebrity-hood and entered a new economy. That’s when many, what you might call mainstream market artists, who no longer needed state patronage, moved out of the Akademis. These institutions then became a refuge almost entirely for a new set of people who were the antithesis of the dissenting writer/artist and who merely wanted to leverage their being part of a state institution in their small ways in their own constituencies. It is a sense of proxy power, a sense of ‘recognition’ from the state, which creates the worst kind of feudal servitude possible.
On top of it, soon after the Modi sarkar took power in Delhi, they issued an unprecedented circular – fashioned as a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ – to all these institutions, converting them into ‘subordinate offices of the ministry’. It is interesting how the media completely ignored this development. That has effectively neutralised these institutions and turned them toothless. This, then, is certainly no climate for asking questions or talking back or talking to power.
Coming back to the gestures of dissent we are witnessing, even though these individual gestures are questioning the lack of autonomy of institutions, do you see them as implicitly critiquing the state also?
Whenever an artist/writer speaks up, it must be construed as a critique of the state. Right now it is a heroic, principled and bold gesture, but it has still not aggregated into a force that can provoke the larger institutions to take an independent stand, which will be an open and unequivocal critique of the state. Till that happens, these gestures will continue to be interpreted as a kind of romantic, heroic activity.
Interestingly, most of these artistes are in their sixties and above, and they reflect an older idealism. One doesn’t see a rush of blood among the younger lot; many of them have to negotiate with anxiety and fear about what such a gesture may entail. That is why institutional action is so important, where the institution becomes a shield and says, we support creative artists who, in fact, are extending the mandate of the institution by speaking out.
As long as that does not happen, this juncture too will be like a flashing moment in history. One just hopes it does not dilute or dissipate. Currently, the only friend these individuals have is the media, which is playing it up. Tomorrow, 10 people resign and if the media does not report it, it’s as if the event never happened. Therefore, it is all the more important for these artists to educate the media that support does not just mean breaking news; it also means understanding and upholding the larger principle of freedom of speech. The media needs to see the connections. If journalists can get a Nobel for literature, as Svetlana Alexievich’s achievement has demonstrated, media organisations should reflect on a connection that is so implicitly possible.
Interview: It’s Time to Go Not by the Letters but by the Spirit
By Chitra Padmanabhan
On the eve of a meeting called by the Sahitya Akademi’s executive council to debate the novel situation created by the return of Akademi awards by leading litterateurs, noted cultural critic Sadanand Menon tells Chitra Padmanabhan that it is important to see whether the Akademi can be pushed to take that one step across the lakshman rekha which it has not taken until now – to prove they are separate from the state and can take an oppositional position when they see an arm of the state doing wrong.
Q: How do you look at the recent actions of literary figures from all over India returning their Sahitya Akademi awards in protest against the institution’s silence on the murder of Kannada writer MM Kalburgi as also the recent instances of intolerance in the country?
A: The critical question now seems to be what stand the executive council of the Sahitya Akademi (SA) will take in their meeting tomorrow, October 23. Influential writers Vikram Seth and Indira Parthasarathy have indicated that their own decisions on whether to return their awards or not will depend on the executive action of the Sahitya Akademi’s board.
The gesture of dissent that marks the return of awards or the stepping down from membership of cultural bodies by literary figures in the current context, leads to the question – what does it all add up to? A series of individual actions have been taken by artists – in this case specifically, litterateurs, claiming a call of the conscience – who are saying the time has come to speak out. They are also critiquing the inability of the SA to categorically condemn or speak up against the murder of writers like Malleshappa Kalburgi, who also happened to be a member of the Akademi.
For the media, which is quite diligently carrying the news and, in fact, searching for more and more artists who might want to take similar action, it is a novelty and part of the daily excitement that it craves for. But it is also possible that, in a fairly short while, this will become ‘stale news’ (‘just another resignation’). A kind of ennui will set in and the news will shift to the inside pages, and then less and less will be reported.
So the question needs repeating – what do these gestures of dissent add up to? Have they dented the stance of the government or made any difference to the workings of the culture ministry or its culturally challenged minister? Have they made any difference to the Akademis and institutions from which artists are resigning? Or will these institutions simply brush it away with, ‘kya fark padta hai’ (‘what difference does it make’)? If that will be the outcome of these acts of dissent, it will indeed be most unfortunate.
Do these gestures signify a new inflection point?
Each of these individual actions is certainly an important gesture, relatively new in our context. Not that people have not resigned earlier in protest. There has been a tradition of that since the days of the Raj and during various stages of the Indian republic – during the Emergency or after the 1984 pogrom against Sikhs or after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom against Muslims. People return their awards for various reasons. Even a couple of months ago, senior army officers were threatening to return their medals over the OROP stand-off with the Modi sarkar.
This, however, is a very specific moment where writers are asking the institution itself to speak out. The question is not the return of the awards or resignations from committees. The question really is – what is the nature of these institutions, why are they not able to reflect the angst or spirit of their constituents, the artists who are part of their constituency? Why is it that these institutions are not able to immediately speak out against the unspeakable horrors committed by other agents of the state and the silencing of independent voices? So the issue is this: Are we battering our heads against a wall that is not going to fall. Is it a futile exercise?
Is it?
Well, it certainly has released a new energy, some fresh adrenalin of self-respect among writers and artists. Coming on the heels of the ongoing protest of the students of the FTII, Pune, it could indicate that the coming struggle against communal fascism will be a cultural struggle led by the artist community, at a time when progressive or radical politics seems to be on the retreat. The Akademis, though, were framed within a Nehruvian structure of liberalism, which ostensibly acknowledged that they should constitute an autonomous space – a space for the artist and her voice. Nehru was the first president of the Sahitya Akademi and his famous statement has been quoted in the media recently: “As President of the Akademi I may tell you quite frankly I would not like the Prime Minister to interfere with my work.” In the idealistic flush of those origins, the notion was implicit that this is a space where dissent can happen or that this is an institution that does not necessarily hold the hands of the state. The state may have put in some resources to support it but, in principle, it was free and could voice its own opinion.
Can you recall any example when the Akademis did so?
In the history of post-independence India, we don’t see any example where this has happened. No artists belonging to the Lalit Kala Akademi, the Sahitya Akademi or the Sangeet Natak Akademi have ever institutionally opposed the state. They have received certain benefits from these institutions – awards, grants, fellowships, foreign travel once in a way for a festival or a book fair and so on. Besides being endorsers of these institutions and, by proxy, being endorsers of the state, they have hardly taken independent positions or spoken out like public intellectuals, exercising moral leadership and cautioning and restraining the state from taking violent and unconscionable steps in Kashmir and the North East or with regard to developing nuclear weapons or not checking the growth of casteist and communal forces. They have hardly been beacon lights or corrective forces. We don’t have examples of that.
But haven’t these institutions, at various points, been headed by acclaimed names?
Individually, the work of many artists has surely challenged some of the pet beliefs of the state. But their representative institutions have not shown any inclination to reveal their spine. Even with someone like UR Ananthamurthy as president, the Sahitya Akademi did not display any particularly independent stance. Nobody has tried, till now, to make the cultural bodies accountable to a larger public or to the notion of their own independence and status as an autonomous voice. This notion has really never been tested till now.
A Jean-Paul Sartre could decline his Nobel and thereby retain his status as an independent thinker and public intellectual – as someone who could talk back to the nation. We have not had such examples in recent times of those who have been part of these institutions and have talked back like that. A large number of people from different bhasha backgrounds are part of the Sahitya Akademi; also people from the performing arts, representing multiple art forms, are part of the Sangeet Natak Akademi; and artists representing the entire spectrum of visual and plastic arts are a part of the Lalit Kala Akademi. But they never have, individually or collectively, pushed these institutions to speak up against the depredations or repressions of the state.
This moment, therefore, where artists seem to be asking these institutions to be accountable – saying that as an institution the Sahitya Akademi should have condemned the murder of Kalburgi or at least have issued a statement against it, if not by the general council, at least by the officiating president – is a moment where I think a completely new turn can happen. That’s why it is important to see whether it can be pushed in a direction where the institution takes that one step across the lakshman rekha which it has not taken until now, and show and prove that it is separate from the state and can take an oppositional position when it sees some arm of the state doing wrong.
Does this moment have enough momentum for that new turn to happen?
This is the anticipation and the excitement – that these currently scattered gestures of dissent can snowball into a movement. My hunch is that on its own, left to itself, it might not happen – it will need the intervention of groups, organisations, institutions or just a collective of artists and thinkers whereby the frisson released by the resignations of at least 50 writers/artists by now adds up to the larger institution itself being able to speak out. That will be the moment when we will see a necessary contradiction emanating between the institution and the state – a healthy and vital contradiction, unlike the present charade of the SA constantly endorsing ‘nation building’ without supporting the questions which individual artists, poets, writers and thinkers have raised – from K.A. Abbas to Sahir Ludhianvi; from Kadamanitta Ramakrishnan to Namdeo Dhasal; from Mahasweta Devi to Arundhati Roy.
This is a moment when that possibility exists. If it can be worked on and negotiated, spoken, discussed, then this would be something that you would call momentous. Until then, it remains the decision of concerned individuals; the question of how these individual decisions, besides the initial congratulations we give to these individuals, which I too have done, figure in the larger canvas, still remains hanging.
Why, despite the fact that the Akademis were framed within a Nehruvian structure of liberalism, have these institutions not been able to develop an autonomous voice?
Difficult to say. Obviously, during the first decade-and-a-half after independence, it was considered churlish to critique the state because it was the inheritor of a positive freedom struggle. ‘Support’ was spontaneous, and many were ready to accept the new state uncritically. Interestingly, many writers retained a ‘critique’ in their own works but were willing to give more time to the institutions.
There were very few people like Sahir Ludhianvi and Kaifi Azmi who voiced their angst even within the first decade of national independence (exemplified in the lines from the film Pyaasa, ‘jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hain?’) already anticipating the coarsening of the state. Sadly, that never amplified into a tradition of institutional dissent.
Soon these institutions ossified and got identified as extensions of the state, extensions of a certain non-existent cultural policy. The old feudal and paternalistic device of giving awards and fellowships was equated with policy, with the result that the creation of a healthy policy for these institutions never took off. The institutions languished.
The past 25 years have seen yet another aberration when, as the markets grew post-liberalisation, many commercially successful writers and artists assumed a new kind of celebrity-hood and entered a new economy. That’s when many, what you might call mainstream market artists, who no longer needed state patronage, moved out of the Akademis. These institutions then became a refuge almost entirely for a new set of people who were the antithesis of the dissenting writer/artist and who merely wanted to leverage their being part of a state institution in their small ways in their own constituencies. It is a sense of proxy power, a sense of ‘recognition’ from the state, which creates the worst kind of feudal servitude possible.
On top of it, soon after the Modi sarkar took power in Delhi, they issued an unprecedented circular – fashioned as a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ – to all these institutions, converting them into ‘subordinate offices of the ministry’. It is interesting how the media completely ignored this development. That has effectively neutralised these institutions and turned them toothless. This, then, is certainly no climate for asking questions or talking back or talking to power.
Coming back to the gestures of dissent we are witnessing, even though these individual gestures are questioning the lack of autonomy of institutions, do you see them as implicitly critiquing the state also?
Whenever an artist/writer speaks up, it must be construed as a critique of the state. Right now it is a heroic, principled and bold gesture, but it has still not aggregated into a force that can provoke the larger institutions to take an independent stand, which will be an open and unequivocal critique of the state. Till that happens, these gestures will continue to be interpreted as a kind of romantic, heroic activity.
Interestingly, most of these artistes are in their sixties and above, and they reflect an older idealism. One doesn’t see a rush of blood among the younger lot; many of them have to negotiate with anxiety and fear about what such a gesture may entail. That is why institutional action is so important, where the institution becomes a shield and says, we support creative artists who, in fact, are extending the mandate of the institution by speaking out.
As long as that does not happen, this juncture too will be like a flashing moment in history. One just hopes it does not dilute or dissipate. Currently, the only friend these individuals have is the media, which is playing it up. Tomorrow, 10 people resign and if the media does not report it, it’s as if the event never happened. Therefore, it is all the more important for these artists to educate the media that support does not just mean breaking news; it also means understanding and upholding the larger principle of freedom of speech. The media needs to see the connections. If journalists can get a Nobel for literature, as Svetlana Alexievich’s achievement has demonstrated, media organisations should reflect on a connection that is so implicitly possible.
October 19, 2015
Ramachandra Guha: Arun Jaitley’s remarks an insult to intelligence of writers
Akademi protests: Arun Jaitley’s remarks an insult to intelligence of writers
Arun Jaitley
When I saw on Twitter that the finance minister had written a blog attacking writers, I was puzzled. When the goods and services tax hangs unresolved, when drought stalks the land, when major questions of monetary policy are being debated, why would the man in charge of the Indian economy expend time and energy on us mere writers?
Then I read Arun Jaitley’s blog itself, and my puzzlement increased. From what I have seen or heard of him (we have never met), Jaitley seems a reasonable, even-tempered man. But this attack was ill-tempered, and at times even ad hominem. The FM claimed the speaking out of writers against the murder of fellow writers was a “manufactured revolt”, indeed “a case of an ideological intolerance towards the BJP”. He suggested that these writers were pawns in the hands of the left or the Congress, and that they were playing “politics by other means”.
These comments are an insult to the intelligence of these writers, and to their individuality. The returning of literary awards began in Karnataka, where some writers returned state Sahitya Akademi awards in protest against the failure of the Congress government to prevent the assassination of distinguished scholar M.M. Kalburgi and to apprehend his killers. As one Kannada writer said: “In the changed political situation, where the state and Centre are mute spectators of all the fundamentalist forces, writers, rationalists and intellectuals are living in fear.”
Then, Uday Prakash and Nayantara Sahgal returned their central Sahitya Akademi awards. The respect these writers commanded, and the press coverage of their act, inspired other writers across India to return their state or central awards. But these gestures were spontaneous. They were not “manufactured”. There was no organised campaign. It was writers taking decisions as individuals.
In his post, Jaitley mentions the murders of Kalburgi and Narendra Dabholkar, but forgets to add the name of Govind Pansare. I trust the omission is accidental. In any case, from the fact that the protests began in Karnataka, it should be evident this is far from being, as Jaitley insinuates, a Congress conspiracy. The Congress might seek to make cynical use of these protests, but the writers themselves are individuals who belong to different political persuasions, or none at all. ]
I know many of the writers involved; most are longstanding critics of the Congress. Contrary to Jaitley’s claim, most have never been “recipients of past patronage”. They live in towns across India, in modest homes and with uncertain incomes, metaphorically as well as physically far removed from Lutyens’ Delhi. It is deeply unfair to accuse these writers of careerism. But some are perhaps guilty of inconsistency. When, in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi banned Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, that brave liberal Dharma Kumar wrote in The Indian Express that “in a secular state blasphemy should not in itself be a cognisable offence; the president of India is not the defender of any nor of all faiths”. Sadly, not many intellectuals were so forthright in condemning the ban.
More recently, when the Left Front government in West Bengal banned Taslima Nasreen’s books and exiled her from the state, too few liberals (and even fewer leftists) publicly opposed this. These failures opened up space for rightwing demagogues, who have since gone about intimidating writers and artists in many different parts of the country.
As I wrote in an article earlier this year (“A fifty-fifty democracy”, The Telegraph, January 24), threats to the freedom of expression in India are not new. They emanate from many sources — archaic colonial laws, the weakness of the judiciary, the corruption of the police, the pusillanimity of politicians, the complicity of publishers and media houses. What is new is the targeted killings of writers themselves. Previously, books were banned, art shows vandalised and films censored. Now writers are murdered merely for saying what they believe in.
Dabholkar was killed in Maharashtra with the state and Centre both run by the Congress; Kalburgi in Karnataka with the state run by the Congress and the Centre by the BJP; Pansare in Maharashtra with both state and Centre under the BJP. What was common was that the writers concerned had long been targeted by rightwing Hindu groups. This has made India a tragic mirror image of Bangladesh, where several brave, independent-minded writers have been murdered by Islamic fundamentalists.
It is these brutal murders that lie at the heart of the current protest. Notably, even those writers who have not returned their awards have been vocal about the rising intolerance we see around us — this intolerance expressed not merely against writers but against ordinary citizens as well.
In his polemic, Jaitley expectedly raised the question of past authoritarianisms. “How many” of these writers, he asked, “courted arrest, protested or raised their voice against the dictatorship of Mrs Indira Gandhi during the Emergency?”
There are four distinct (but perhaps interrelated) answers to these questions. First, some of these writers were born after the Emergency. Second, some of these writers bravely protested against the Emergency and suffered for it (Jaitley must know that Sahgal was a precocious critic of Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism, writing often for JP’s weekly, Everyman’s, and that her husband was victimised by Indira Gandhi). Third, as someone who has counted Jagmohan and Maneka Gandhi as his Cabinet colleagues, Jaitley cannot any more claim credibility or sanctity for his own opposition to the Emergency. Fourth, as someone who experienced the Emergency first hand, surely Jaitley should recognise and empathise with those who speak now of the importance of the rule of law and of the freedom of expression?
Last week, I met with a group of young academics in Bangalore. They asked whether my family feared for me because of my public criticisms of the BJP and the Congress, and of successive prime ministers. I said they did, at times, but in fact English-language writers are much less at risk than those who write in Indian languages. It is no accident that Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi wrote in their mother tongues; nor an accident either that the vast majority of writers who have returned awards do not write in English. These Punjabi and Hindi poets, Malayalam and Kannada novelists, are perhaps invisible from Jaitley’s radar. But they are known to, and sometimes targeted by, malcontents and murderers who (too often alas) claim some kinship with the wider Sangh Parivar, of which he is also a part.
Guha, a Bangalore-based historian, is author, most recently, of ‘Gandhi Before India’
Editor’s note: This column first appeared in the Monday, 19 October edition under the title ‘Writers matter’
October 18, 2015
India: Intolerance vs dignified dissent (Shiv Visvanathan)
Deccan Herald
Intolerance vs dignified dissent
Shiv Visvanathan, October 18, 2015
Famished road: Killing of writer M M Kalburgi and Dadri lynching strike at the very idea of India
Hardly a day passes without an incident or a statement being made that may rake up communal tension in the country. The killing of Kannada writer M M Kalburgi and the lynching of a Muslim blacksmith in Dadri for eating beef are but a reflection of this strife. These incidents triggered massive protests by writers and artists who returned their awards and relinquished to posts held by them at coveted literary organisations.
Sometimes, a single act can change the way you look at history. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was moving like a juggernaut confident in his majority, playing to the NRIs, convinced that the Congress was too effete to challenge him, smiling quietly to himself that the Nehruvian era was over. A new majority and a new world view had taken over India. Everything seemed to be going the way of the great celebration called the BJP. Yet, sometimes a small act, or a collection of small acts, can change the colours of politics.
Two events punctuated by a lynching changed the nature of the story. Firstly, 88-year-old writer Nayantara Sahgal returns her Sahitya Akademi award. It is a quiet gesture filled with dignity. There was none of the ranting and raving that the BJP was used to. No threats. No bullying. A voice of protest in the stillness of conformity. Sahgal objected to the killing of fellow writers and the lynching of an innocent blacksmith. She made two points. The idea of India is threatened when an innocent man can be lynched with impunity merely on the suspicion of cooking beef. Secondly, the India of ideas is threatened when writers lose the right to creativity. A society that condones murder is no longer civilised. A prime minister who remains silent through it all.
Quick compact statements that need unravelling: Sahgal was saying that an electoral majority was threatening democracy by suffocating dissent, eccentricity, the minority and the margins. A majoritarian regime then becomes an act of policing as classifications are created to prohibit or ban activities that the majority does not like. Thus, food bans threaten Muslims and the poor, censorship threatens the filmmaker and the author, and a fetishised security threatens ideas of dissent.
When murder becomes a site for celebration a la Sharma (Union minsiter) and Som (BJP MLA), politics acquires an ugly slapstick quality where governance is merely an act of bullying. Surveillance replaces transparency and silence becomes the lingua franca of conformity. Violence incarnates itself in several ways. Moral policing of sexuality, physical brutality against Muslims and ban against creative writers, all add up to a Hobbesian state for minorities and dissenters where the life of a citizen “is solitary, poor, nasty, short and brutish.”
Sahgal raised a small voice against that. Her sense of civility, her dream of India did not permit her to see a secular, socialist, plural and democratic India destroyed. Implicitly, it is clear that “Make in India” as a slogan for manufacture is going hand-in-hand with the unmaking of India as a culture. An idea of India needs an India of ideas which the BJP would not allow. Rectifying history does not create ideas. It is only an official form of vandalism.
Nehru Museum
The takeover of the Nehru Museum and Library in Delhi was a vandalisation of history, of governance as an act of philistinism. It is time to compare the pseudo-secularism of the Congress with the official intolerance of today. Secularism was a brilliant idea embedded into the wrong political context.
It was snooty and snobbish and alienated many people. But whatever its faults, it was not vindictive, vengeful or violent like the new intolerance and its Nehruvian envy. The new intolerance was an act of policing, a punitive notion of culture based on bans, a paranoid idea of security, a jingoism which would not allow for new ideas of sustainability or peace, especially with Pakistan. What Sahgal was questioning was the prime minister’s right to destroy a dream of India. For her, Modi’s majoritarian regime has destroyed the dream and turned India into a collection of nightmares. The silence of Modi is that final act of complicity.
In fact, when he finally did talk, he was mechanical. He blamed the Opposition which suddenly revived itself after a year of incompetence. Yet, there was no apology, no sign of mourning. It reminded one of Modi’s attitude to the riots of 2002. He had said “one felt sympathy for victims. It was like a dog getting caught under a car”. Akhlaq did not even summon that bit of emotion. Modi is more Rip.
The second event I want to discuss is the inking of Sudheendra Kulkarni, a very different kind of intellectual from Sahgal and both articulate different kinds of political imagination. Kulkarni’s book on Gandhi is a major effort at working through the Mahatma’s ideas. He has also been an aide of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani and thus, in the thick of BJP politics.
Yet, unlike many of his colleagues, he believes in a dialogue with Pakistan and as part of his effort, launches former Pakistan minister Mahmud Kasuri’s book in India. A courageous act especially when the bully boys of Shiv Sena had threatened Kulkarni. He goes through with the promised event and the Sena blackens his face hoping it can also blacken his name.
Kulkarni survives with dignity though the Sena bosses are busy felicitating the ink throwers, as if they are soldiers who have fought Pakistan. His restraint and his dignity wins admirers. Two small acts by two intellectuals poles apart in their politics.
Two small acts of courage sustaining an idea of an India of human rights and peace. Both are ethical dramas of dignity saying no majority can ransom a city or silence a dissenting intellectual. Both are marked by the politics of dissent as a BJP regime attempts to bluster its way out.
Suddenly, the BJP record looks dismal. It is a string of book bans, beef bans, film bans, acts of censorship and the brutality of moral policing. One can add to it a definition of security that makes ecology an act of sedition and civil society activism anti-national. The party has no policy tool except syllabus reform. It emasculates the university and banalises IIM and IIT thinking it can clone such institutions. In fact, one sees a fascism that uses food, sexuality and books as targets of a philistine government.
There is no attempt to understand the creativity of the Nehru era. It is a movement to create a right which has no imagination. Just a sense of resentment. Resentment cannot serve as a vision of society because all it produces is a bully boy theory of revenge. Democracy is about the availability of decency, of fairness of empathy for the other and we see little of it in the Modi era.
Two events of protest. Two individuals have changed the tenor of history. Modi, no matter how orchestrated, no longer sounds musical. Two acts of protest usually seen as noise have done it. Communication theorist Colin Chermy defined noise as “unwelcome music”. It has been never more welcome than now.
(The writer is a noted social scientist and professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, Haryana)
Intolerance vs dignified dissent
Shiv Visvanathan, October 18, 2015
Famished road: Killing of writer M M Kalburgi and Dadri lynching strike at the very idea of India
Hardly a day passes without an incident or a statement being made that may rake up communal tension in the country. The killing of Kannada writer M M Kalburgi and the lynching of a Muslim blacksmith in Dadri for eating beef are but a reflection of this strife. These incidents triggered massive protests by writers and artists who returned their awards and relinquished to posts held by them at coveted literary organisations.
Sometimes, a single act can change the way you look at history. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was moving like a juggernaut confident in his majority, playing to the NRIs, convinced that the Congress was too effete to challenge him, smiling quietly to himself that the Nehruvian era was over. A new majority and a new world view had taken over India. Everything seemed to be going the way of the great celebration called the BJP. Yet, sometimes a small act, or a collection of small acts, can change the colours of politics.
Two events punctuated by a lynching changed the nature of the story. Firstly, 88-year-old writer Nayantara Sahgal returns her Sahitya Akademi award. It is a quiet gesture filled with dignity. There was none of the ranting and raving that the BJP was used to. No threats. No bullying. A voice of protest in the stillness of conformity. Sahgal objected to the killing of fellow writers and the lynching of an innocent blacksmith. She made two points. The idea of India is threatened when an innocent man can be lynched with impunity merely on the suspicion of cooking beef. Secondly, the India of ideas is threatened when writers lose the right to creativity. A society that condones murder is no longer civilised. A prime minister who remains silent through it all.
Quick compact statements that need unravelling: Sahgal was saying that an electoral majority was threatening democracy by suffocating dissent, eccentricity, the minority and the margins. A majoritarian regime then becomes an act of policing as classifications are created to prohibit or ban activities that the majority does not like. Thus, food bans threaten Muslims and the poor, censorship threatens the filmmaker and the author, and a fetishised security threatens ideas of dissent.
When murder becomes a site for celebration a la Sharma (Union minsiter) and Som (BJP MLA), politics acquires an ugly slapstick quality where governance is merely an act of bullying. Surveillance replaces transparency and silence becomes the lingua franca of conformity. Violence incarnates itself in several ways. Moral policing of sexuality, physical brutality against Muslims and ban against creative writers, all add up to a Hobbesian state for minorities and dissenters where the life of a citizen “is solitary, poor, nasty, short and brutish.”
Sahgal raised a small voice against that. Her sense of civility, her dream of India did not permit her to see a secular, socialist, plural and democratic India destroyed. Implicitly, it is clear that “Make in India” as a slogan for manufacture is going hand-in-hand with the unmaking of India as a culture. An idea of India needs an India of ideas which the BJP would not allow. Rectifying history does not create ideas. It is only an official form of vandalism.
Nehru Museum
The takeover of the Nehru Museum and Library in Delhi was a vandalisation of history, of governance as an act of philistinism. It is time to compare the pseudo-secularism of the Congress with the official intolerance of today. Secularism was a brilliant idea embedded into the wrong political context.
It was snooty and snobbish and alienated many people. But whatever its faults, it was not vindictive, vengeful or violent like the new intolerance and its Nehruvian envy. The new intolerance was an act of policing, a punitive notion of culture based on bans, a paranoid idea of security, a jingoism which would not allow for new ideas of sustainability or peace, especially with Pakistan. What Sahgal was questioning was the prime minister’s right to destroy a dream of India. For her, Modi’s majoritarian regime has destroyed the dream and turned India into a collection of nightmares. The silence of Modi is that final act of complicity.
In fact, when he finally did talk, he was mechanical. He blamed the Opposition which suddenly revived itself after a year of incompetence. Yet, there was no apology, no sign of mourning. It reminded one of Modi’s attitude to the riots of 2002. He had said “one felt sympathy for victims. It was like a dog getting caught under a car”. Akhlaq did not even summon that bit of emotion. Modi is more Rip.
The second event I want to discuss is the inking of Sudheendra Kulkarni, a very different kind of intellectual from Sahgal and both articulate different kinds of political imagination. Kulkarni’s book on Gandhi is a major effort at working through the Mahatma’s ideas. He has also been an aide of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani and thus, in the thick of BJP politics.
Yet, unlike many of his colleagues, he believes in a dialogue with Pakistan and as part of his effort, launches former Pakistan minister Mahmud Kasuri’s book in India. A courageous act especially when the bully boys of Shiv Sena had threatened Kulkarni. He goes through with the promised event and the Sena blackens his face hoping it can also blacken his name.
Kulkarni survives with dignity though the Sena bosses are busy felicitating the ink throwers, as if they are soldiers who have fought Pakistan. His restraint and his dignity wins admirers. Two small acts by two intellectuals poles apart in their politics.
Two small acts of courage sustaining an idea of an India of human rights and peace. Both are ethical dramas of dignity saying no majority can ransom a city or silence a dissenting intellectual. Both are marked by the politics of dissent as a BJP regime attempts to bluster its way out.
Suddenly, the BJP record looks dismal. It is a string of book bans, beef bans, film bans, acts of censorship and the brutality of moral policing. One can add to it a definition of security that makes ecology an act of sedition and civil society activism anti-national. The party has no policy tool except syllabus reform. It emasculates the university and banalises IIM and IIT thinking it can clone such institutions. In fact, one sees a fascism that uses food, sexuality and books as targets of a philistine government.
There is no attempt to understand the creativity of the Nehru era. It is a movement to create a right which has no imagination. Just a sense of resentment. Resentment cannot serve as a vision of society because all it produces is a bully boy theory of revenge. Democracy is about the availability of decency, of fairness of empathy for the other and we see little of it in the Modi era.
Two events of protest. Two individuals have changed the tenor of history. Modi, no matter how orchestrated, no longer sounds musical. Two acts of protest usually seen as noise have done it. Communication theorist Colin Chermy defined noise as “unwelcome music”. It has been never more welcome than now.
(The writer is a noted social scientist and professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, Haryana)
October 16, 2015
Mitali Saran: Bringing India to book
Mitali Saran: Bringing India to book
We have to decide whether we're going to nurture freedom and art, or ban them bit by bit
Mitali Saran | New Delhi October 16, 2015 Last Updated at 20:44 IST
It’s gratifying to wake up to a newspaper featuring writers on page one. Yes, those awkward people who hide out at home a lot, being quiet and weird by themselves. Front page. They’ve gone rogue. A growing number are chucking Sahitya Akademi and other national awards back in the government’s face to protest India’s growing climate of intolerance, and getting slammed for it.
You’d think that writing a letter, submitting it, and getting rejected is just time-honoured literary tradition, but no, it’s a showdown. Off the page, writers are fairly peaceable folk until you poke them in the eye. The Prime Minister’s shoddy failure to speak out against the murder of writers and people trying to have dinner constitutes a poke in the eye, so they are, to use the technical literary term, pissed.
The RSS called these writers “self-proclaimed contractors of intellect”, which makes it sound as if you’re supposed to float tenders for the job of thinking, and also as if the RSS would not qualify to bid. The Finance Minister called the protest “politics by other means” even though it is straight-up politics. Arnab accused the writers of having a bias, possibly because he mistrusts the process of reaching a considered conclusion with no screaming at all. The BJP said it was all politically motivated; they’ve already been screwed over by the RSS turning out to be a political wolf in social work fleece, so maybe mole-like writers turning out to be grizzlies feels like déjà vu all over again.
Lots of people said, “Why didn’t these writers return their awards to protest the issue of the Muzzafarpur riots/Babri Masjid/Kashmiri Pundits/Emergency/Jallianwalla Bagh/Mughal invasion/hominids leaving Africa?” I imagine these people are also angrily asking how come our independence movement didn’t bother becoming our independence movement until it became our independence movement. Whataboutery has a new playmate in wherewereyouery.
But if writers are such irrelevant, marginal opportunists, why are so many knickers in a twist? You would think that the government would just ignore the national awards piling up in the garbage and get on with the task of developing India into one giant app, right? Maybe they’ve suddenly realised there’s some inconvenient competition on their turf.
Making art is a progressive political act that expands freedom of thought and action. If you see a comfortable, pretty space, you’re either ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the middle of it, or looking at very forgettable art. The civilised world values art for just this reason — a smart country picks the best of its self-expression, holds it up high, and encourages more. There is a reason why the enduring image of barbarism is a smashed sculpture and a burning library. The GoI tends to make news more for banning than for nurturing art. Now confronting itself in the pages of The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC, and Washington Post, it is stung less by the indictment of our writers than by the disapproving stares from the world stage. Now it has to pick a direction.
We publicly overvalue the books that cause people to try to pluck each other’s eyes out, i.e. the religious ones. But there are millions of books and artworks that express India. Their multiplicity is kryptonite to thought control, and they will keep coming. Artists who find their voices can be very loud, and very inconvenient. It is their job.
Perhaps the stupidest response to the protest, so far, came from the BJP’s Vijay Goel, who said: “Writers should be concerned with their pen only, otherwise giving awards would be stopped.” It’s so dim that it’s kind of sweet, like threatening the ocean with a hairdryer.
Mitali Saran is a Delhi-based writer mitali.saran [at] gmail.com
source url: http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/mitali-saran-bringing-india-to-book-business-standard-opinion-115101600494_1.html
October 14, 2015
India: Text of Prof. Chaman Lal's Letter to Sahitya Akademi as he returns the national translation prize given to him in 2001
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chaman Lal
Date: Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 6:27 PM
Subject: Return of Translation Prize
To: Vishavnath Prasad Tiwar-Gorakhpur, Chandarshekhar Kambar-Vice President Sahitya Akademi , Vishavnath Prasad Tiwar-Gorakhpur
Cc: "Dr K. Sreenivasarao"
Please find enclosed-
Dear Dr. Vishwanath Tewari,
With a sense of anguish, I have sent my covering letter along with a cheque for 15000/ rupees, which I received from Sahitya Akademi in year 2002 as part of National Translation Prize for year 2001, on a book-‘Samay O; Bhai Samay’- collection of poems of Punjabi poet Pash. Why I have to do it, I wish to explain here-
1. Udai Prakash, Hindi writer took lead in the matter of Sahtya Akademi not holding customary condolence meeting in Delhi office on the murder/death of Prof. M M Kalburgi, Kannada language Sahitaya Akademi award winner and a former Vice Chancellor. Sahitya Akademi kept mum over it and in protest Udai Prakash returned the award given to him by Sahitya Akademi. Innumerable writers, including many Sahitya Akademi award winners appreciated Udai Prakash’s stand and expressed solidarity with his step, myself as well.
2. Writers were expecting some sensitivity on the issue from Sahitya Akademi, however Akademi kept a stony silence over the issue, which resulted in some more writers taking step of returning Sahitya Akademi award in protest, notably Ashok Vajpayee. Even then Akademi did not respond to writers concerns and then came the decision of Nayantara Sehgal to return the award, who referred not only to the concerns of writers, she referred to even the overall attack on Nehruvian concepts of scientific temper, liberal thought and particularly the growing menace of communal violence in which an innocent person was brutally killed in mob fury with a false rumour technic. Nayantara Sehgal is the niece of founder Chairman of Sahitya Akademi and first Prime Minister of the country Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Rather than paying attention to 88 year old author, Sahitya Akademi President ridiculed her in most undignified manner and trolls of ruling party with patronisation from communal hatred groups attacked her viciously. And Nayantara Sehgal responded with a writer’s dignity by paying back rather than 25000/ rupees award money, she returned one lakh rupees to Akademi to cover for any royalties, if any, paid to her from her award winning novel’s translations in other languages than English. Krishan Sobti, one of most celebrated Hindi writer, holder of not only Sahitya Akademi award, but also highest honour of ‘Fellowship’ of Akademi, returned both to protest against such undignified behaviour of Akademi, at the age of 90 years, still no sense of shame or penance on behalf of Akademi!
3. Then came the decision of one of most eminent Punjabi fiction writer Gurbachan Singh Bhullar, which troubled my conscience even more, as looking at the daily events, I was feeling that now issue has not remained confined to just Akademi’s insensitive behaviour, there is wider Government patronisation to Akademi’s such conduct, as has been happening in the case of Film Institute of Pune’s case, where despite widest possible protest by most eminent film personalities, central government has shown utter contempt for them, and writers saw the same pattern in Sahitya Akademi’s conduct. The recent case of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library has also been fresh in the minds of writers/intelligentsia, where government has tried to destroy one of the most respected institution and Nehru’s legacy of historicism and scientific knowledge. All these issues, as earlier destructions of organisations like National Book Trust (NBT), Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) made Sahitya Akademi return of awards as symbols of protest against oppression of knowledge and freedom of ideas. It is true that Sahitya Akademi awards are not related to express such broad protest against overall stifling of society and diversity of Indian cultures. Return of Padma awards would have been more appropriate on behalf of writers/scholars to register their protest for that. And Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana has done exactly that today. Those who tell writers that rather than returning awards in such large numbers, they should have registered their protests by other means. For such opinions, one sees the reality of protests against Film Institute appointment or other issues, where scholars/writers have protested through statements, petitions, dharnas etc., nothing has worked, so the return of Sahitya Akademi awards has now become symbol of wider protest against increasing communalism, intolerance, saffornisation of institutions, suppression of rational ideas and scientific temper. It is not just protest of writers, this has turned protest against suppressed voice of all cultural fields and scholarly rational ideas. The case of Perumal Murugan, the Tamil writer also comes to mind, whose creative voice was killed by hatred led forces, yet Sahitya Akademi did not utter a word in support of the author. Even if he was not an awardee of the Akademi, he was and is an eminent Tamil author, whose suppression of voice in form of his withdrawing from writing in protest should have been the concern of Sahitya Akademi, a body of writers and literatures
4. So many Punjabi writers followed Gurbachan Bhullar’s lead, it made me even more troubled, as I was thinking that my Sahitya Akademi Prize is too little in reference to award returnees and it may just look like an act of bravado and publicity. When Waryam Sandhu, Ajmer Aulakh, Surjit Patar and more returned their awards, I could not remain aloof from them. Pash, Patar, Waryam Sandhu and I have been part of a progressive humanist values movement in literature from seventies, which always protested against any social or state repression through writings. I, as Hindi translator of Pash, could not keep Pash’s poetry-a burning symbol of protest separated from Waryam Sandhu or Surjit Patar’s writings even in reference to return of award money. By returning this prize amount and honour I am upholding the spirit of Pash’s poetry and his and mine solidarity with the writers of same times and movements.
5. This is moment of crisis and choices have to be made clearly-with whom I stand and I stand with my fellow writers of Punjabi as well as other languages, who have taken side of suffering humanity and spoken against the patronisation of communal hatred, attack on institutions of knowledge, attack on freedom of ideas and their expression fearlessly. I will be guilty to the spirit of Pash’s poetry, if I don’t honour the spirit of his poetry, which I have translated and it is Pash, whose poetry was honoured in translation, and I have to remain true to his spirit of poetry even in matter of translation prize. So to remain true to the spirit of Pash’s liberating humanist poetry, I join with my fellow writers in returning this prize money and honour given to me by Sahitya Akademi in the form of National Translation Prize in year 2002, for the year of 2001.
I hope my cheque sent by speed post today, shall reach you in a day or two. I surely feel unburdened after sending it today as many other writers have also felt. It is an irony that Sahitya Akademi, a great institution is taking such shape, where returning an award has become more respectable and honoured act than receiving an award! This situation is also a reply to the taunt of culture minister as well as Akademi President, who had tried to belittle the writer status of Nayantara Sehgal by saying that ‘she has got fame and money from Akademi Award’! It is not the writers, it is Akademi who is now reduced to indignity and it has to do a lot to repair the damage it has done to itself by not siding with the authors and playing to the tunes of an oppressive government.
With regards to editor of Hindi journal ‘Dastavez’, brought out by Dr. Vishwanath Tewari from Gorakhpur long ago!
Chaman Lal
(Retired Professor, JNU, New Delhi)
2690, Urban Estate, Phase-2, Patiala (Punjab)-147002
Prof.chaman@gmail.com, 09646494538
From: Chaman Lal
Date: Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 6:27 PM
Subject: Return of Translation Prize
To: Vishavnath Prasad Tiwar-Gorakhpur
Cc: "Dr K. Sreenivasarao"
Please find enclosed-
Dear Dr. Vishwanath Tewari,
With a sense of anguish, I have sent my covering letter along with a cheque for 15000/ rupees, which I received from Sahitya Akademi in year 2002 as part of National Translation Prize for year 2001, on a book-‘Samay O; Bhai Samay’- collection of poems of Punjabi poet Pash. Why I have to do it, I wish to explain here-
1. Udai Prakash, Hindi writer took lead in the matter of Sahtya Akademi not holding customary condolence meeting in Delhi office on the murder/death of Prof. M M Kalburgi, Kannada language Sahitaya Akademi award winner and a former Vice Chancellor. Sahitya Akademi kept mum over it and in protest Udai Prakash returned the award given to him by Sahitya Akademi. Innumerable writers, including many Sahitya Akademi award winners appreciated Udai Prakash’s stand and expressed solidarity with his step, myself as well.
2. Writers were expecting some sensitivity on the issue from Sahitya Akademi, however Akademi kept a stony silence over the issue, which resulted in some more writers taking step of returning Sahitya Akademi award in protest, notably Ashok Vajpayee. Even then Akademi did not respond to writers concerns and then came the decision of Nayantara Sehgal to return the award, who referred not only to the concerns of writers, she referred to even the overall attack on Nehruvian concepts of scientific temper, liberal thought and particularly the growing menace of communal violence in which an innocent person was brutally killed in mob fury with a false rumour technic. Nayantara Sehgal is the niece of founder Chairman of Sahitya Akademi and first Prime Minister of the country Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Rather than paying attention to 88 year old author, Sahitya Akademi President ridiculed her in most undignified manner and trolls of ruling party with patronisation from communal hatred groups attacked her viciously. And Nayantara Sehgal responded with a writer’s dignity by paying back rather than 25000/ rupees award money, she returned one lakh rupees to Akademi to cover for any royalties, if any, paid to her from her award winning novel’s translations in other languages than English. Krishan Sobti, one of most celebrated Hindi writer, holder of not only Sahitya Akademi award, but also highest honour of ‘Fellowship’ of Akademi, returned both to protest against such undignified behaviour of Akademi, at the age of 90 years, still no sense of shame or penance on behalf of Akademi!
3. Then came the decision of one of most eminent Punjabi fiction writer Gurbachan Singh Bhullar, which troubled my conscience even more, as looking at the daily events, I was feeling that now issue has not remained confined to just Akademi’s insensitive behaviour, there is wider Government patronisation to Akademi’s such conduct, as has been happening in the case of Film Institute of Pune’s case, where despite widest possible protest by most eminent film personalities, central government has shown utter contempt for them, and writers saw the same pattern in Sahitya Akademi’s conduct. The recent case of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library has also been fresh in the minds of writers/intelligentsia, where government has tried to destroy one of the most respected institution and Nehru’s legacy of historicism and scientific knowledge. All these issues, as earlier destructions of organisations like National Book Trust (NBT), Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) made Sahitya Akademi return of awards as symbols of protest against oppression of knowledge and freedom of ideas. It is true that Sahitya Akademi awards are not related to express such broad protest against overall stifling of society and diversity of Indian cultures. Return of Padma awards would have been more appropriate on behalf of writers/scholars to register their protest for that. And Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana has done exactly that today. Those who tell writers that rather than returning awards in such large numbers, they should have registered their protests by other means. For such opinions, one sees the reality of protests against Film Institute appointment or other issues, where scholars/writers have protested through statements, petitions, dharnas etc., nothing has worked, so the return of Sahitya Akademi awards has now become symbol of wider protest against increasing communalism, intolerance, saffornisation of institutions, suppression of rational ideas and scientific temper. It is not just protest of writers, this has turned protest against suppressed voice of all cultural fields and scholarly rational ideas. The case of Perumal Murugan, the Tamil writer also comes to mind, whose creative voice was killed by hatred led forces, yet Sahitya Akademi did not utter a word in support of the author. Even if he was not an awardee of the Akademi, he was and is an eminent Tamil author, whose suppression of voice in form of his withdrawing from writing in protest should have been the concern of Sahitya Akademi, a body of writers and literatures
4. So many Punjabi writers followed Gurbachan Bhullar’s lead, it made me even more troubled, as I was thinking that my Sahitya Akademi Prize is too little in reference to award returnees and it may just look like an act of bravado and publicity. When Waryam Sandhu, Ajmer Aulakh, Surjit Patar and more returned their awards, I could not remain aloof from them. Pash, Patar, Waryam Sandhu and I have been part of a progressive humanist values movement in literature from seventies, which always protested against any social or state repression through writings. I, as Hindi translator of Pash, could not keep Pash’s poetry-a burning symbol of protest separated from Waryam Sandhu or Surjit Patar’s writings even in reference to return of award money. By returning this prize amount and honour I am upholding the spirit of Pash’s poetry and his and mine solidarity with the writers of same times and movements.
5. This is moment of crisis and choices have to be made clearly-with whom I stand and I stand with my fellow writers of Punjabi as well as other languages, who have taken side of suffering humanity and spoken against the patronisation of communal hatred, attack on institutions of knowledge, attack on freedom of ideas and their expression fearlessly. I will be guilty to the spirit of Pash’s poetry, if I don’t honour the spirit of his poetry, which I have translated and it is Pash, whose poetry was honoured in translation, and I have to remain true to his spirit of poetry even in matter of translation prize. So to remain true to the spirit of Pash’s liberating humanist poetry, I join with my fellow writers in returning this prize money and honour given to me by Sahitya Akademi in the form of National Translation Prize in year 2002, for the year of 2001.
I hope my cheque sent by speed post today, shall reach you in a day or two. I surely feel unburdened after sending it today as many other writers have also felt. It is an irony that Sahitya Akademi, a great institution is taking such shape, where returning an award has become more respectable and honoured act than receiving an award! This situation is also a reply to the taunt of culture minister as well as Akademi President, who had tried to belittle the writer status of Nayantara Sehgal by saying that ‘she has got fame and money from Akademi Award’! It is not the writers, it is Akademi who is now reduced to indignity and it has to do a lot to repair the damage it has done to itself by not siding with the authors and playing to the tunes of an oppressive government.
With regards to editor of Hindi journal ‘Dastavez’, brought out by Dr. Vishwanath Tewari from Gorakhpur long ago!
Chaman Lal
(Retired Professor, JNU, New Delhi)
2690, Urban Estate, Phase-2, Patiala (Punjab)-147002
Prof.chaman@gmail.com, 09646494538
October 07, 2015
India: Ashok Vajpeyi returns Sahitya Akademi award over the failure of the Sahitya Akademi to "rise to the occassion" to protect the autonomy of writers
The Times of India
Ashok Vajpeyi returns Sahitya Akademi award
TI | Oct 7, 2015, 04.19 PM IST
NEW DELHI: Ashok Vajpeyi, a literary heavyweight, has returned the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award, joining a parade of litterateurs renouncing their coveted prizes, to protest "assault on right to freedom of both life and expression".
Vajpeyi's decision came close on the heels of celebrated writer Nayantara Sahgal returning the Sahitya Akademi award over "vicious assault" on "India's culture of diversity and debate" and the "right to dissent".
Vajpeyi, a former chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi, voiced displeasure over the Dadri lynching incident and a string of killings of rationalists, while questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's continued silence on these.
"Sehgal was right. He is a very loquacious Prime Minister. Why doesn't he tell the nation that the pluralism of this country will be defended at every cost?" Vajpeyi said on Wednesday.
The 74-year-old Hindi poet, essayist noted critic on literary and cultural matters, disapproved of statements by senior political leaders, including Union culture minister Mahesh Sharma which, he said, "belittled the "multi-cultural and multi-religious" fabric of the country.
"There are the comments made by the culture minister about renaming Aurangazeb road to APJ Abdul Kalam road. He says Kalam was a great nationalist despite being a Muslim.
"These kinds of statements belittle the multi-cultural and multi-religious fabric of the country....What can writers do but protest," he said.
Sahgal, the 88-year-old niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, had in an open letter titled "Unmaking of India" referred to the lynching of a Muslim man by a mob in Dadri on Delhi's outskirts over suspicion of eating beef, and also the killings of Kannada writer M M Kalburgi and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare.
Sehgal had also questioned the silence of PM Narendra Modi on these incidents.
"This is in solidarity with writers and intellectuals being murdered in broad daylight...," Vajpeyi said.
He also expressed disappointment over the failure of the Sahitya Akademi to "rise to the occassion" to protect the autonomy of writers.
"The Sahitya Akademi has failed to rise to the occassion. They have not protested against what has been happening to the the writers' autonomy. The writers' community should rise in protest," Vajpeyi said.
Earlier, Hindi writer Uday Prakash had also returned his Sahitya Akademi award, raising similar issues. Six Kannada writers too had returned literary awards conferred on them by the Karnataka government against the delay in probing the killing of Kalburgi, himself a Sahitya Kala Akademi award recipient.
Ashok Vajpeyi returns Sahitya Akademi award
TI | Oct 7, 2015, 04.19 PM IST
NEW DELHI: Ashok Vajpeyi, a literary heavyweight, has returned the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award, joining a parade of litterateurs renouncing their coveted prizes, to protest "assault on right to freedom of both life and expression".
Vajpeyi's decision came close on the heels of celebrated writer Nayantara Sahgal returning the Sahitya Akademi award over "vicious assault" on "India's culture of diversity and debate" and the "right to dissent".
Vajpeyi, a former chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi, voiced displeasure over the Dadri lynching incident and a string of killings of rationalists, while questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's continued silence on these.
"Sehgal was right. He is a very loquacious Prime Minister. Why doesn't he tell the nation that the pluralism of this country will be defended at every cost?" Vajpeyi said on Wednesday.
The 74-year-old Hindi poet, essayist noted critic on literary and cultural matters, disapproved of statements by senior political leaders, including Union culture minister Mahesh Sharma which, he said, "belittled the "multi-cultural and multi-religious" fabric of the country.
"There are the comments made by the culture minister about renaming Aurangazeb road to APJ Abdul Kalam road. He says Kalam was a great nationalist despite being a Muslim.
"These kinds of statements belittle the multi-cultural and multi-religious fabric of the country....What can writers do but protest," he said.
Sahgal, the 88-year-old niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, had in an open letter titled "Unmaking of India" referred to the lynching of a Muslim man by a mob in Dadri on Delhi's outskirts over suspicion of eating beef, and also the killings of Kannada writer M M Kalburgi and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare.
Sehgal had also questioned the silence of PM Narendra Modi on these incidents.
"This is in solidarity with writers and intellectuals being murdered in broad daylight...," Vajpeyi said.
He also expressed disappointment over the failure of the Sahitya Akademi to "rise to the occassion" to protect the autonomy of writers.
"The Sahitya Akademi has failed to rise to the occassion. They have not protested against what has been happening to the the writers' autonomy. The writers' community should rise in protest," Vajpeyi said.
Earlier, Hindi writer Uday Prakash had also returned his Sahitya Akademi award, raising similar issues. Six Kannada writers too had returned literary awards conferred on them by the Karnataka government against the delay in probing the killing of Kalburgi, himself a Sahitya Kala Akademi award recipient.
April 05, 2015
Dalit literature goes global (TOI Report)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/Dalit-literature-goes-global/articleshow/46810541.cms
Dalit literature goes global
Martand Kaushik,TNN | Apr 5, 2015, 04.45 AM IST
For ages, Dalits have had their tales told by upper-caste writers. Premchand wrote of Dukhi, Mulk Raj Anand of Bakha, Arundhati Roy of Velutha and Mahasweta Devi of Doulati. But what if Dukhi, Bakha, Velutha and Doulati take up the pen and decide to tell their own tales? Over the past few decades, a Dalit literary movement has been giving readers a first-hand experience of how the community lives. In doing so, these writers are also re-scripting the conceptions of Indian society and history while challenging prevailing literary conventions.
The movement has become so influential that almost every university in India has Dalit texts on its curriculum. And now, the academic interest has gone global with the texts making their way into universities in the US, the UK, Canada and France. Britain's Nottingham Trent University and Universite Paul-Valery Montpellier, France in June 2014 together started a study that aims to "bring Dalit literature to new audiences". The ongoing project has been organizing conferences for scholars, writers and translators from India, the US, Europe and Canada.
Acclaimed historian Gyanendra Pandey recently started a course at Emory University, US, juxtaposing Dalit history with that of African Americans. Several other American universities including University of Washington, Seattle; University of Texas, Austin; and University of Oregon, offer courses which include Dalit autobiographies. A course in the offing at New York University (NYU) called 'Aesthetics and Politics' will also include a unit on Dalit writing. English translations like Omprakash Valmiki's Joothan (2003), Narendra Jadhav's Untouchables (2005) and Baby Kamble's The Prisons We Broke (2009) have emerged as popular texts.
"The circulation of Dalit literature in America is important to deconstruct an idea of India that is pervasive, and one that many diasporic Indians seek to cultivate: India as non-violent, Hinduism as mythological, anti-orthodoxy and benevolent, and both as peace-loving," says Toral Gajarawala, an associate professor at NYU. "The knowledge of India that circulates in the West is caste-free. Dalit studies offer a corrective to this 'idea of India' in an important way."
Different aesthetic
Dalit literature first found its voice in Marathi in the 1960s and 70s, and then soon appeared in other languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. Using autobiography as a literary genre, writers could share personal experiences of caste discrimination, making its existence undeniable for the middle classes. Even genres like fiction, poetry and drama became largely autobiographical in the hands of Dalit writers. Caste was seen as the definitive aspect of Indian society and raising political consciousness (Dalit chetna) turned into a literary goal.
In the 80s and 90s, a group of Hindi writers like Om Prakash Valmiki, Mohandas Naimishray and Kanwal Bharti had to fight a hostile literary establishment to carve out a unique space for Dalit literature. Attacked for their lack of "aesthetic sophistication", these writers argued that the Hindi literary intelligentsia's aesthetic standards were far from universal and concealed an upper caste bias.
Dalit writers, instead, shocked the readers with crude language and graphic descriptions. In Apne Apne Pinjare, Mohandas Naimishray talked about his experiences living in Delhi's red-light area GB Road. Surajpal Chauhan in Tiraskrit described the killing of a pig at a Dalit wedding. The idea was to confront the middle class readers with a reality they didn't wish to acknowledge.
In his autobiography Joothan (translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee), Valmiki writes, "Many big-name Hindi writers wrinkled their noses and eyebrows when I had a character swear in my short story Bail ki Khal (The Ox Hide). Coincidentally, the character who swore was a Brahmin, that is, the knower of Brahma, of God. Was it possible? Would a Brahmin swear?"
But the stress on autobiography is now being questioned by young Dalit writers. And this, in turn, has drawn criticism. "It is one of the things that the Dalit literary movement will have to wrestle with, if it wants to maintain its relevance. The Hindi writer Ajay Navariya, for example, has been accused of being too modernist, or not Dalit enough, for engaging in new and different aesthetic techniques. But I think we have to be sympathetic to the insistence on origin in so far as it is trying to challenge the monopoly of upper-caste people over cultural spaces," says Gajarawala.
Both archive and social history
Traditionally, autobiographies are about the author's uniqueness or her achievements. The writer's individuality is celebrated. But the 'I' in Dalit autobiographies frequently stands for the 'we'.The author's experiences are meant to represent the experiences of her entire community.
According to historians, Dalit autobiographies not only help recover the history of the community but also necessitate a rethink of Indian history.
"The point made by all sorts of oppositional histories — feminist, subaltern, Dalit, etc — is that history and the archive it relies on are both tendentious, written/preserved in the interests of dominant classes and groups. Dalit autobiography, like much subaltern and feminist writing (including autobiography), serves as both archive and history — in the absence of state sponsored versions of these," says Pandey.
Political Assertion
The very utterance of the term 'Dalit' is a political statement. The word means 'ground', 'crushed' or 'broken to pieces'. Thus, the 'Dalit autobiography' is not just a literary movement, it's part of a political movement too.
"The first generation of Dalit writers questioned the idea of India," says Raj Kumar, a professor at Delhi University, "They felt they weren't a part of it and rejected it. Later writers like Valmiki have a more mature approach. They engage with and explore the possibility of Dalits being a part of India. They see hope in Ambedkar's goal of annihilation of caste. The contemporary Dalit autobiography is an inclusive exercise. The Dalits are trying to write themselves into the Indian narrative."
Pandey, too, stresses the need for an inclusive approach. He says, "The chief problem here is one that faces any 'minority' movement, of not becoming too narrowly tied down by a politics of identity. So Dalits need to establish the worth of their identity and history, and yet work to ensure that the movement doesn't become unduly sectarian and isolated."
Several Dalit writers and critics have called Dalit autobiographies 'narratives of pain'. The plots are often strung together by a series of painful events that are outcomes of caste discrimination. In fact, the shared pain is what binds the community together. But far from being mere expressions of victimhood, contemporary Dalit autobiographies have become tools of political assertion. For contemporary Dalit writers, the real challenge lies in creating a fine balance between the idea of inclusion and the necessity of resistance.
Dalit literature goes global
Martand Kaushik,TNN | Apr 5, 2015, 04.45 AM IST
For ages, Dalits have had their tales told by upper-caste writers. Premchand wrote of Dukhi, Mulk Raj Anand of Bakha, Arundhati Roy of Velutha and Mahasweta Devi of Doulati. But what if Dukhi, Bakha, Velutha and Doulati take up the pen and decide to tell their own tales? Over the past few decades, a Dalit literary movement has been giving readers a first-hand experience of how the community lives. In doing so, these writers are also re-scripting the conceptions of Indian society and history while challenging prevailing literary conventions.
The movement has become so influential that almost every university in India has Dalit texts on its curriculum. And now, the academic interest has gone global with the texts making their way into universities in the US, the UK, Canada and France. Britain's Nottingham Trent University and Universite Paul-Valery Montpellier, France in June 2014 together started a study that aims to "bring Dalit literature to new audiences". The ongoing project has been organizing conferences for scholars, writers and translators from India, the US, Europe and Canada.
Acclaimed historian Gyanendra Pandey recently started a course at Emory University, US, juxtaposing Dalit history with that of African Americans. Several other American universities including University of Washington, Seattle; University of Texas, Austin; and University of Oregon, offer courses which include Dalit autobiographies. A course in the offing at New York University (NYU) called 'Aesthetics and Politics' will also include a unit on Dalit writing. English translations like Omprakash Valmiki's Joothan (2003), Narendra Jadhav's Untouchables (2005) and Baby Kamble's The Prisons We Broke (2009) have emerged as popular texts.
"The circulation of Dalit literature in America is important to deconstruct an idea of India that is pervasive, and one that many diasporic Indians seek to cultivate: India as non-violent, Hinduism as mythological, anti-orthodoxy and benevolent, and both as peace-loving," says Toral Gajarawala, an associate professor at NYU. "The knowledge of India that circulates in the West is caste-free. Dalit studies offer a corrective to this 'idea of India' in an important way."
Different aesthetic
Dalit literature first found its voice in Marathi in the 1960s and 70s, and then soon appeared in other languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. Using autobiography as a literary genre, writers could share personal experiences of caste discrimination, making its existence undeniable for the middle classes. Even genres like fiction, poetry and drama became largely autobiographical in the hands of Dalit writers. Caste was seen as the definitive aspect of Indian society and raising political consciousness (Dalit chetna) turned into a literary goal.
In the 80s and 90s, a group of Hindi writers like Om Prakash Valmiki, Mohandas Naimishray and Kanwal Bharti had to fight a hostile literary establishment to carve out a unique space for Dalit literature. Attacked for their lack of "aesthetic sophistication", these writers argued that the Hindi literary intelligentsia's aesthetic standards were far from universal and concealed an upper caste bias.
Dalit writers, instead, shocked the readers with crude language and graphic descriptions. In Apne Apne Pinjare, Mohandas Naimishray talked about his experiences living in Delhi's red-light area GB Road. Surajpal Chauhan in Tiraskrit described the killing of a pig at a Dalit wedding. The idea was to confront the middle class readers with a reality they didn't wish to acknowledge.
In his autobiography Joothan (translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee), Valmiki writes, "Many big-name Hindi writers wrinkled their noses and eyebrows when I had a character swear in my short story Bail ki Khal (The Ox Hide). Coincidentally, the character who swore was a Brahmin, that is, the knower of Brahma, of God. Was it possible? Would a Brahmin swear?"
But the stress on autobiography is now being questioned by young Dalit writers. And this, in turn, has drawn criticism. "It is one of the things that the Dalit literary movement will have to wrestle with, if it wants to maintain its relevance. The Hindi writer Ajay Navariya, for example, has been accused of being too modernist, or not Dalit enough, for engaging in new and different aesthetic techniques. But I think we have to be sympathetic to the insistence on origin in so far as it is trying to challenge the monopoly of upper-caste people over cultural spaces," says Gajarawala.
Both archive and social history
Traditionally, autobiographies are about the author's uniqueness or her achievements. The writer's individuality is celebrated. But the 'I' in Dalit autobiographies frequently stands for the 'we'.The author's experiences are meant to represent the experiences of her entire community.
According to historians, Dalit autobiographies not only help recover the history of the community but also necessitate a rethink of Indian history.
"The point made by all sorts of oppositional histories — feminist, subaltern, Dalit, etc — is that history and the archive it relies on are both tendentious, written/preserved in the interests of dominant classes and groups. Dalit autobiography, like much subaltern and feminist writing (including autobiography), serves as both archive and history — in the absence of state sponsored versions of these," says Pandey.
Political Assertion
The very utterance of the term 'Dalit' is a political statement. The word means 'ground', 'crushed' or 'broken to pieces'. Thus, the 'Dalit autobiography' is not just a literary movement, it's part of a political movement too.
"The first generation of Dalit writers questioned the idea of India," says Raj Kumar, a professor at Delhi University, "They felt they weren't a part of it and rejected it. Later writers like Valmiki have a more mature approach. They engage with and explore the possibility of Dalits being a part of India. They see hope in Ambedkar's goal of annihilation of caste. The contemporary Dalit autobiography is an inclusive exercise. The Dalits are trying to write themselves into the Indian narrative."
Pandey, too, stresses the need for an inclusive approach. He says, "The chief problem here is one that faces any 'minority' movement, of not becoming too narrowly tied down by a politics of identity. So Dalits need to establish the worth of their identity and history, and yet work to ensure that the movement doesn't become unduly sectarian and isolated."
Several Dalit writers and critics have called Dalit autobiographies 'narratives of pain'. The plots are often strung together by a series of painful events that are outcomes of caste discrimination. In fact, the shared pain is what binds the community together. But far from being mere expressions of victimhood, contemporary Dalit autobiographies have become tools of political assertion. For contemporary Dalit writers, the real challenge lies in creating a fine balance between the idea of inclusion and the necessity of resistance.
February 08, 2015
India: anti english language nativist from Maharashtra makes silly claims, gets told off by Rushdie
Stung Salman Rushdie lashes out at Jnanpith winner Bhalchandra Nemade
Writer
Salman Rushdie has kicked up a fresh literary storm by lashing out at
Jnanpith Award-winning Marathi writer Bhalchandra Nemade and describing
him as a “grumpy old b*****d”.
Booker winning Mr. Rushdie's personal attack on Mr. Nemade came in a form of an angry tweet on Saturday in response to Mr. Nemade dismissing his work as lacking in literary merit.
Shortly after being chosen for the prestigious Jnanpith award on Friday,
Mr. Nemade had made the remarks at a felicitation on the same evening
at a programme organised by Matrubhasha Samvardhan Sabha in Mumbai.
Mr. Nemade had dismissed the work of Mr. Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul as “pandering to the West”. He said Mr. Rushdie's works after Midnight's Children lacked literary merit.
Responding
to the criticism, Mr. Rushdie tweeted, “Grumpy old b*****d. Just take
your prize and say thank you nicely. I doubt you've even read the work
you attack.”
Known
to be a proponent of “nativism” endorsing an author writing in native
language and a world view that negates globalisation, Mr. Nemade had
described English as a “killer language” and said the primary and
secondary education should be in mother tongue.
“What
is so great about English? There isn't a single epic in the language.
We have 10 epics in the Mahabharata itself. Don't make English
compulsory, make its elimination compulsory,” he was quoted as saying at
the public felicitation. Mr. Nemade himself taught English and
comparative language at different universities and retired from the
Gurudeo Tagore Chair of English at the Mumbai University.
Mr. Nemade, whose 1963 novel Kosala (cocoon) transformed the form of Marathi novel, is currently working on a sequel of his 2010 tome, Hindu.
November 13, 2013
The Idea of India | Renuka Rajaratnam
November 10, 2013
Updated: November 10, 2013 15:44 IST
The idea of India
RENUKA RAJARATNAM
The HinduSalman Rushdie. Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash
Our literary fiction of the 1980s and 1990s endorses the Nehruvian narrative of pluralism.
“Bad times,” mused Salman Rushdie in his Imaginary Homelands,
“traditionally produce good books.” One of the most creatively
influential “bad’’ periods was undoubtedly the National Emergency
(1975-77). It threw open the Pandora’s box of Indian politics, unveiling
the appalling suppression of Indian democracy during Mrs. Gandhi’s
reign and releasing the foul airs of communal discord, which continue to
pollute the political scenario of India today.
Indian
literary fiction in English of the 1980s and 1990s responded strongly
to the authoritarianism of the Emergency rule by reviving the Nehruvian
vision of a pluralistic democracy so vividly expressed by Nehru in his Discovery of India:
“I am convinced that nationalism can only come out of the ideological
fusion of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and other groups in India. That does not
and need not mean the extinction of any real culture of any group, but
it does mean a common national outlook, to which other matters are
subordinated.”
Writers
like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor,
Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy — followed by the younger lot ranging
from Upamanyu Chatterjee to Vikram Chandra — have offered what the
cultural theorist, Homi Bhabha, called ‘the narratives of the social
imaginary’. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Vikram Seth’s The Suitable Boy, Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance find
a common ground in fashioning new forms of collective life while
rewriting the story of India as a nation. The writers endorse in their
work, either explicitly or implicitly, the Nehruvian ideals of a secular
nation both as an antidote to current communal inequity and as the
heart of Indian democracy.
Secularism
attained its contemporary meaning mainly because of its adoption as a
state ideology by Nehru after independence. Nehru’s The Discovery of India can
be viewed as a “foundational fiction” of the Nehruvian novels. Based on
the idea of India as a “composite culture”, it showed how religious and
cultural tolerance was the basis of Indian civilisation. The
cosmopolitan thrust of Nehru’s nationalism provided the ideological
matrix from which Rushdie, Seth, Ghosh, Tharoor and Mistry constructed
their social imaginary viewed through a historical perspective.
Interestingly, a common thread that links these novels is the fictional
configuration of the narrator as a historian. The narratives focus on
the National Emergency as a critical event that eventually led to the
collapse of the Nehruvian secular construct of the State policy, giving
rise to an alternative national ideology: Hindutva, based on a single
religious identity to establish its exclusive communal power. Strongly
contesting the singularity of Indian identity and citizenship, the
novels foregrounded the importance of relegating religion to the private
space and adopting the Nehruvian model of liberal democracy emphasising
that the Indian secularism is the fundamental principle of the public
domain. Nehru’s ideology did not promote an anti-religious or a
sans-religious state but envisaged a non-sectarian state that did not
privilege one religion over the ‘many others’.
A
notable feature of the state policy formed by Nehru was the way in
which the English language developed as a language of secular identity.
Nehru’s developmental ideology favoured the English-speaking educated
class providing them job opportunities in the public sector. The
founding texts of English as a secular language, in a sense, arguably
were the Indian Constitution and Nehru’s The Discovery of India.
Fiction of the 1980s and the 1990s demonstrated the role of English in
embracing secular modernity to move beyond the pigeon-holes of caste and
tradition. In Rushdie, we note the use of linguistic excess,
particularly in the Midnight’s Children,
symbolising the democratic mingling of all linguistic forces and the
‘chutnified’ outcome of English when spoken alongside other bhashas(languages).
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a powerful anti-Emergency narrative and can be in many ways — alongside Vikram Seth’s The Suitable Boy —
seen as a Nehruvian epic. Where Rushdie dismantles the idea of a single
national identity through a minoritarian perspective, Seth’s novel is
an explicit endorsement of Nehruvianism and strongly opposes a way of
imagining the nation on religious terms. Similarly, Rohinton Mistry in
his A Fine Balance engages deeply with the
issues of the State and offers a relevant critique that is more
reformative rather than revolutionary. Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel is
a modern political allegory of the epic Mahabharata that acknowledges,
as Tharoor puts it, the “multiplicity of many truths, which have helped
give shape and substance to the idea of India”. Tharoor sees cultural
reassertion of a pluralist India as a vital part of the enormous
challenges confronting the country. The cultural reassertion is a return
to Nehru and is as vital as the nation’s economic development. Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines draws
our attention to the divisive lines: ‘the shadow lines’, which are
drawn between nations and cultures and are potential sites of violence
when dialogues between them fail. It has attained a status of a cult
novel, I would say, and powerfully resonates with the crises of communal
conflicts across India in the past as well as the present.
A
common feature that is central to these novels is the description of
the crowd emphasising on the inclusive — plurality of the nation.
Nehru’s emphasis on the term ‘secular India’ in today’s language can be
seen more meaningfully as a plural India. To Rushdie, the defining image
of India is the crowd which is ‘many things at once’ — multiple,
heterogeneous and hybrid. This is the idea of India that is a sheer
marvel of plurality shaped by difference — a dream that Nehru so
cherished! How we cope with the collisions within the plurality and find
resolving ways to coexist forms the existential ethos of India.
Authors
discussed here have been cynically dismissed for many reasons; one of
them being their over-indulgence in strategic exoticism to be circulated
on the global market. On the contrary, I believe that these writers
have mobilised the imagination for a positive recasting of the nation
while seeking to make connections between the social imaginary and the
ethics of political agency. Can literature potentially reform a society?
May be or may be not. I believe good books can shape good times, as
they do have the power not only to react to society but to refashion it
by offering an alternative social way of thinking. The Nehruvian
narratives may well be considered as worthy repositories of South Asian
culture and education in general — their safety should be ensured, as
they sit precariously on book shelves in libraries and book shops the
world over suggesting a social change.
March 03, 2013
Kannada writer S.L. Bhyrappa finds himself reduced to a Hindutva mascot
From: churmuri
Time to save S.L. Bhyrappa from Hindutva bigots?
For an “infuriatingly good” wordsmith whose 21 works fetched him the Saraswati Samman and Sahitya Akademi awards, it is an odd twist of fate that, at 81, the Kannada writer S.L. Bhyrappa finds himself reduced to a Hindutva mascot, who supports bans on conversion and cow slaughter, and thinks “Tipu Sultan is a religious fanatic rather than a national hero”.
The turning point, suggests the Booker Prize-winning writer Aravind Adiga, in an article in Outlook* magazine, was Aavarana.
source: http://tinyurl.com/a3rt8fb
Time to save S.L. Bhyrappa from Hindutva bigots?
For an “infuriatingly good” wordsmith whose 21 works fetched him the Saraswati Samman and Sahitya Akademi awards, it is an odd twist of fate that, at 81, the Kannada writer S.L. Bhyrappa finds himself reduced to a Hindutva mascot, who supports bans on conversion and cow slaughter, and thinks “Tipu Sultan is a religious fanatic rather than a national hero”.
The turning point, suggests the Booker Prize-winning writer Aravind Adiga, in an article in Outlook* magazine, was Aavarana.
source: http://tinyurl.com/a3rt8fb
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