Mohit Just's Library tagged JLF →  View Popular, Search in Google

There are several voices of apology attempting to justify the conduct of the Government. The most favoured argument is to range the freedom available to a reckless writer belonging to the most privileged section of society, living in a foreign country against the sensitivities of a complex multi religious, multi cultural society. It is posed as a case of freedom of creative expression of one against the ‘sentiments’ of the masses. The second is the ‘limits to freedom’ argument. The argument is that no freedoms are absolute and romantic notions of freedom of speech borrowed from the liberal west are not applicable in our context. Restrictions have to be imposed in the interests of public order. The third argument is to make this an isolated case of Rushdie versus the Rest of India, where the focus shifts to Rushdie’s intemperance and his lack of contrition at his continued acts of blasphemy, his dubious merits as a writer and his penchant for attracting publicity to himself. The fourth argument is the one coming from the Indian version of secularism which while ostensibly treating all religions/faiths as equally deserving of deference believes that minority faiths, such as, Islam deserve a more aggressively visible demonstration of deference to protect its followers from a predatory majority.Posed in this manner it seems almost reasonable that in the case of the latest Rushdie episode the ‘larger’ interests of the nation prevailed against the interests of a minority of liberal intellectuals.
These arguments are both perverse and fallacious. Freedom of speech and expression is not just one of the Rights available in a democracy, it is its very foundation. Everything else is dependent on it. It is fundamental to democracy in the most fundamentally defining way. Safeguarding the Right, conserving it and promoting it is the foremost responsibility of the State more important than anything else that it does. It is an enforceable Right and failure to protect it amounts to the complete abdication of its most primary responsibility. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to listen, to receive information, to demand information, to discuss and debate and is therefore universal, not just the right of one individual to express himself. Limits on it can only be imposed by law and not by executive action. The limits/restrictions have to be exceptional and justified in the rarest of circumstances.

salman_rushdie offence free_speech freedom JLF wp

The ‘never give offence’ brigade imagines that a more plural society requires a greater imposition of censorship. In fact it is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest extension possible of free speech. In a homogenous society in which everyone thought in exactly the same way then the giving of offence would be nothing more than gratuitous. But in the real world where societies are plural, then it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. And we should deal with those clashes rather than suppress them. Important because any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. The right to ‘subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism’ is the bedrock of an open, diverse society. Or, as Rushdie put it in his essay In Good Faith, human beings ‘understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the unsayable; not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men.’
Shabbir Akhtar was right: what Salman Rushdie says is everybody’s business. It is everybody’s business to ensure that no one is deprived of their right to say what they wish, even if it is deemed by some to be offensive. If we want the pleasures of pluralism, we have to accept the pain of being offended. Not least at a literary festival.

salman_rushdie offence free_speech freedom JLF wp

there will be no point to the festival if the invited writers are forbidden from challenging the fast-settling status quo. The fate of the festival is the same as the fate of free expression. The problem is not that four writers spoke up at JLF, the problem is that so few of us did...
19. It is wishful to assume the censors haven’t entered our heads. The space for thought has shrunk, is shrinking right before our eyes. They want not just that Rushdie shouldn’t come, they won’t even allow his image on a screen. They want not just that Kak’s documentary not be screened, they want the entire event cancelled. Each step they gain is harder to reverse...
22. Why read at all? For a sense of empathy and risk. Because only reading will prevent you from mistaking fiction for fact and help you see the internal borders of a made-up story. Why read? Because culture is conversation.

india freedom censorship reading writing JLF wp

What is clear from these incidents is the role of the state: it has been glaringly absent or regrettably passive. The government has abandoned the people. Give up the idea that the state will protect you when some thugs say they are offended because you buy a book they don’t like. If you persist in reading it, they will threaten to turn violent. And instead of preventing them, the state asks you to restrain yourself...
So afraid have we become of the mob, and so attuned do we have to be of others’ sensitivities, that virtually no topic is safe any more...
There is peace in the graveyard, but there is no life. When they chill speech, they kill creativity, leaving an acquiescent state, an aggressive mob, and abandoned writers. Where is the poet who will “name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep”?
Not in India, which they won’t let him visit, where they won’t let him speak, even via a video-link, and where you won’t find the book in which that line appears.

jaipur JLF freedom free_speech offence reading books friends salil_tripathi wp

But a third, more insidious kind of muzzle on the genuinely free expression of ideas in India is what one might call a soft opposition, or self-censorship. This is a section of well-meaning Indian opinion that honestly doesn't understand what individuals have to gain by rocking the boat of a particular religious order, and believes that "religious sentiments should always be respected" and art has no business to question or mock what is held by some to be sacred. As its representative, one might take the bestselling novelist Chetan Bhagat, who said about the controversy, "[Rushdie] is a hero as far as his others writings are concerned, but writing something that attacks somebody's god is not the right thing to do....I'll not make somebody who attacks my god a hero. This is India, you cannot hurt feelings here."
It is true that freedom of speech, as Rushdie observed in a long interview with Barkha Dutt, is the source of all other freedoms. But, as the number of hostile responses to Kunzru's arguments on his website demonstrate, this idea is bound to be interpreted only in the context of the overall climate of freedom in the society in which its value is asserted. India is actually unfree in so many ways, ranging from the casual harassment of women on streets to the persistence of caste hierarchies in social life to the entrenched patriarchy and deference of family life to the persistent tendency to explain all events as manifestations of the divine will. It is a country where young people are brought up to "always respect their elders" and to think twice before speaking their mind -- basically, to be conformist, to value the old or accepted answer over the subversion of the new idea or question.
It isn't especially surprising, then, that the notion of dissent and skepticism of absolute truths enshrined in the idea of freedom of speech has a limited appeal in India. Tolerance may be an idea with a long history here, but not freedom of speech.

reading books jaipur JLF freedom free_speech dissent offence wp

"I was reminded of all this by a friend's tweet from Jaipur: "Audience member has said that 'as a person from literature' she disapproves of adaptations." Not being there myself, I have no idea who this lady from literature was. Perhaps it was Virginia Woolf. Perhaps it was Salman Rushdie in drag, getting his revenge on Rajasthan Police. Perhaps she was a character from a Jane Austen novel come to life. Her identity will most likely forever remain a secret. But if that is how she described herself, not to mention her casual dismissal of a genre of infinite variation and possibility, I'm just glad I wasn't at the session today. Otherwise, just like last year, I'd have been begging Mother Earth to come claim her recalcitrant son."

jaipur JLF books reading showoff humor wp

the word of god grows best in fields watered by the state's pelf, and ploughed by the state's swords.
Salman Rushdie's censoring-out from the ongoing literary festival in Jaipur will be remembered as a milestone that marked the slow motion disintegration of India's secular state...
Few Indians understand the extent to which the state underwrites the practice of their faith. The case of the Maha Kumbh Mela, held every 12 years at Haridwar, Allahabad, Ujjain and Nashik, is a case in point...
Last year, the Uttar Pradesh police sought a staggering Rs.2.66 billion to pay for the swathe of electronic technologies, helicopters and 30,000 personnel which will be needed to guard the next Mela in 2013. There are no publicly available figures on precisely how much the government will spend on other infrastructure — but it is instructive to note that an encephalitis epidemic that has claimed over 500 children's lives this winter drew a Central aid of just Rs.0.28 billion.
The State's subsidies to the Kumbh Mela, sadly, aren't an exception. Muslims wishing to make the Haj pilgrimage receive state support; so, too, do Sikhs travelling to Gurdwaras of historic importance in Pakistan. Hindus receive identical kinds of largesse, in larger amounts. The state helps underwrite dozens of pilgrimages, from Amarnath to Kailash Mansarovar. Early in the last decade, higher education funds were committed to teaching pseudo-sciences like astrology; in 2001, the Gujarat government even began paying salaries to temple priests...
It doesn't end there: the state regulates, on god's behalf, what we may eat or drink — witness the proliferation of bans on beef, and proscriptions on alcohol use in so-called holy cities. It ensures children pray in morning assemblies funded by public taxes, provides endowments for denomination schools and funds religious functions. It pays for prayers before state functions, and promotes pseudo-sciences like astrology. And, yes: it censors heretics, like M.F. Husain or Mr. Rushdie...
the real costs of India's failure to secularise: among them, the perpetuation of caste and gender inequities, the stunting of reason and critical facilities needed for economic and social progress; the corrosive growth of religious nationalism.
India cannot undo this harm until god and god's will are ejected from our public life...
In a 1927 essay, philosopher Bertrand Russell observed that theist arguments boiled down to a single, vain claim: “Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must be design in the universe.”
The time has come for Indian secular-democrats to assert the case for a better universe: a universe built around citizenship and rights, not the pernicious identity politics the state and its holy allies encourage.

india censorship religion faith atheism secularism salman_rushdie JLF wp

The crowds this year dwarf the 200-odd souls who used to make the trek to Jaipur back in 2006 and 2007 to catch what was then a tiny fest. This year, the JLF is probably Asia’s largest literary festival, and has 220 speakers and writers, and about 15-20,0

literature festival jaipur JLF india

-My favourite audience reaction to the fest? Provided by a glamorous young fashionista in a Paris kitsch outfit and a truly gorgeous hat, who was seen exiting the Baithak tent at great speed. "Is everything all right, darling?" an equally glamorous editor

literature festival jaipur india JLF

Perhaps the only way to understand the Jaipur Literature Festival is to think of a traditional mehfil crossed with a darbar. Over six years, the JLF has grown from a sleepy, intimate local festival held on the lawns of the eccentric Diggi Palace to Asia’s

jaipur literature JLF nilanjana_roy writing for:@twitter