INDIA MUST CHOOSE TO DEFEND FREE SPEECH

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2012/01/india-must-choose-to-defend-free-speech/

INDIA MUST CHOOSE TO DEFEND FREE SPEECH
18 Jan 2012

As religious leaders call to ban Salman Rushdie from the Jaipur
festival in India, Salil Tripathi reports on the country's "sepulchral
silence"

India used to be the land of "gup", which meant talk, arguments,
conversations, and debates. Babble and noise, that's what "gup" is.
But it is fast becoming the land of "chup", of sepulchral silence,
where people must think twice before they say what they feel. The
hushed silence that "chup" demands is not the respectful silence of a
library, but the silence of acquiescence; the people demanding the
silence are the sort to burn or ban books.

The moment the organisers of the Jaipur Literature Festival announced
the lineup of authors attending the prestigious cultural event from 20
January — which included Salman Rushdie, along with Tom Stoppard,
David Remnick, Michael Ondaatje, Oprah Winfrey, and Hari Kunzru — it
was clear that there would be some drama. The rector of the
influential Islamic seminary in Deoband did not disappoint.

Maulana Abdul Qasim Nomani asked the Indian government to cancel
Rushdie's visa because he had hurt the feelings of Muslims. The Indian
Government said that as a person of Indian origin (and born in India),
Rushdie had the papers that allowed him to enter, and the government
could not stop him. That's when other groups demanded firm action. One
group threatened to attack him and political parties joined the fray.
India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, goes to elections next
month, and some 18 per cent of the electorate is Muslim. No party
wants to offend the Muslim vote.

The controversy goes back to 1988, when Rushdie wrote the novel, The
Satanic Verses. The Indian government found the book so explosive it
was banned. Announcing the ban, Indian officials said their decision
had nothing to do with the literary merit of the novel, but as it
contained passages that could be misinterpreted, leading to violence,
India thought it safer to ban the book. Rushdie's  earlier novel,
Midnight's Children, had put India on the world's literary map.

Protests against The Satanic Verses followed worldwide, including the
book being burned in Bradford in the United Kingdom. Vocal British
Muslims marched in London demanding action against Rushdie (a British
citizen). Britain stood firm in defending Rushdie's freedom. In
February 1989 the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa,
calling for Rushdie's death. Rushdie had to live in hiding for nearly
a decade; he was able to return to some semblance of normalcy after
Iran revoked the fatwa.

In the years since, Rushdie has returned to the country of his birth
several times, including at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2007.
The novel remains banned.

By demanding that Rushdie should not be allowed to enter India,
fundamentalists are seeking to set the terms under which dialogue can
occur in India. Muslims have been vocal in protesting against material
they find offensive, with the Bangladesh-born novelist Tasleema
Nasreen a frequent target.

But in the past quarter century, other groups have also joined in,
increasing the clamor against free thought, and narrowing public
discourse. Hindus drove India's most famous painter, MF Husain, into
exile, and the nonagenarian painter died in London in exile last year.
Other artists have been attacked for depicting images that some groups
have found offensive – last week, the painter Balbir Krishan was
assaulted because his art dealt with gay themes. Delhi University
withdrew an essay about the Sanskrit epic Ramayana and its variations
by the late poet, AK Ramanujan, because Hindu nationalists found the
essay offensive.

Mumbai University withdrew Booker Prize nominee Rohinton Mistry's
novel, "Such A Long Journey," after the grandson of a chauvinist
politician protested that his community (Marathi-speakers) was
portrayed badly in the novel.

Other groups, including barbers, police officers, cobblers, and
lawyers, have protested against films at different times, getting
titles changed, scenes edited, or songs dropped, because they find
something in that work offensive.

The inevitable result is deadened polity. While the People's Union of
Civil Liberties has admirably spoken out in defence of Rushdie, other
Indian civil society groups have been reticent, unwilling to take on
the intolerant, who respond not with argument, but with violence. A
few columnists and Bollywood personalities have also criticised the
fundamentalists. But no politician of consequence has done so.

India wasn't supposed to be like that — as Amartya Sen famously
characterised his compatriots, Indians were supposed to be
argumentative.

Stressing the importance of Rushdie's voice in Jaipur, the Indian
critic Nilanjana Roy pointed out: "It would be a great loss if the
manufactured controversy around (Rushdie's) visit silenced his voice
yet again. It would make India the land of 'chup'."

In Rushdie's novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the Prince of
Silence and the Foe of Speech is called Khattam-Shud, and he rules a
land called Chup (silence), which has a cult that promotes muteness.
It is a land at peace, in harmony. But that outward stability conceals
inner fragility. Such societies force their citizens to live a lie:
that their contrived cheer and forced harmony are superior. Open
societies appear brittle and frail because outwardly they are
cacophonous, where everyone can contradict everyone else, and where
nothing is sacred. But there is inner strength. As Rushdie wrote: "All
those arguments and debates, all that openness, had created powerful
bonds of fellowship between them… The Chupwalas (those from the silent
land) turned out to be a disunited rabble, suspicious and distrustful
of one another. The land of Gup (talk) is bathed in endless sunshine,
while over in Chup, it is always the middle of the night."

We watch as India hovers over that precipice; it must decide what kind
of society it wishes to be — where, as India's greatest poet wrote,
where the mind is without fear, or where words are swallowed, lest
they offend somebody.