Taslima Nasrin and Free Speech

Mahashweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Ashish Nandy and Girish Karnad have issued this statement on Taslima Nasrin and Free Speech.

Public Statement by Forum For The Protection of Free Speech and Expression

At a time when India is projecting itself on the
world's stage as a modern democracy, while it hosts
international literary festivals and book fairs, the
Government of India, most mainstream political parties
and their armed squads are mounting a concerted
assault on peoples' right to Free Speech.

It is a matter of abiding shame that even as some of
the world's best-known writers were attending the
Jaipur literary festival and prestigious publishers
were doing business at the World Book fair in Delhi,
the exiled Bengali writer Taslima Nasrin was (and is)
being held in custody by the Government of India in an
undisclosed location somewhere in or around Delhi in
conditions that amount to house arrest. Contrary to
misleading press reports stating that her visa has
been extended, her visa expires on the 18th of
February, after which she is liable to be deported or
remain confined as an illegal alien.

Taslima Nasrin is only one in a long list of
journalists, writers, scholars and artists who have
been persecuted, banned, imprisoned, forced into exile
or had their work desecrated in this country. At
different points of time, different governments have
either directly or indirectly resorted to these
measures in order to fan the flames of religious,
regional and ethnic obscurantism to gain popularity
and expand their 'vote-banks'. Every day the threat to
Free Speech and Expression increases.

In the case of Taslima Nasrin it was the CPI (M) and
not any religious or sectarian group who first tried
to ban her book Dwikhondito some years ago. The ban
was lifted by the Calcutta High Court and the book was
in the market and on bestseller lists in West Bengal
for several years. During those years Taslima Nasrin
lived and worked as a free person in Calcutta without
any threat to her person, without being the cause of
public disorder, protests or demonstrations.
Ironically, Taslima Nasrin's troubles in India began
immediately after the Nandigram uprising when the
people of Nandigram, mostly Dalits and Muslims, rose
to resist the West Bengal Government's attempt to
takeover their land, and tens of thousands of people
marched in Calcutta to protest the government's
actions. Within days a little known group claiming to
speak for the Muslim community asked for a ban on
Dwikhondito and demanded that Taslima Nasrin be
deported. The CPI(M)-led government of West Bengal
immediately caved in to the demand, informed her that
it could not offer her security, and lost no time in
deporting her from West Bengal against her will. The
Congress-led UPA Government has condoned this act by
holding her in custody in Delhi and refusing, thus
far, to extend her visa and relieve her of her public
humiliation. They have once again played the suicidal
card of pitting minority communalism against majority
communalism, a game that can only end in disaster.

Inevitably, hoping to make political capital out of
the situation, the BJP is publicly shedding crocodile
tears over Taslima Nasrin, going to the extent of
offering her asylum in Gujarat. It seems to expect
people to forget that the BJP, VHP and RSS cadres have
been at the forefront of harassing, persecuting,
threatening and vandalizing newspaper offices,
television studios, galleries, cinema halls,
filmmakers, artists and writers. Or that they have
forced M.F. Husain, one of India's best-known
painters, into exile.

Meanwhile, in states like Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh
and Karnataka, away from the public glare of press
conferences and television cameras, journalists are
being threatened and even imprisoned. Prashant Rahi
from Uttarakhand, Praful Jha from Chattisgarh,
Srisailum from Andhra Pradesh, P. Govind Kutty from
Kerala are a few examples. As we speak Govind Kutty,
who is on a hunger strike in prison is being
force-fed, bound hand and foot. Scores of ordinary
people, including people like Binayak Sen have been
arrested and held illegally under false charges.

We the undersigned do not necessarily agree with,
endorse or admire the views or the work of those whose
rights we seek to defend. Many of us have serious
differences with them. We agree that many of them do
offend our (or someone else's) religious, political
and ideological sensibilities. However, we believe
that instead of making them simultaneously into both
victims and heroes, their work should be viewed, read,
criticized and vigorously debated. We believe that the
Freedom of Speech and Expression is an Absolute and
Inalienable Right, and is the keystone of a modern
democracy.

If the Indian Government deports Taslima Nasrin, or
holds her as an illegal alien, it will shame and
diminish all of us. We demand that she be given a
Resident's Permit or, if she has applied for it,
Indian citizenship, and that she be allowed to live
and work freely in India. We demand that the spurious
cases filed against M.F. Husain be dropped and that he
be allowed to return to a normal life in India. We
demand that the journalists who are being illegally
detained in prison against all principles of natural
justice be released immediately.

Read Dr Mrinal Bose's appeal on Taslima here.

Read the letter on Taslima Nasrin by Mahmood Farooqui, Delhi-based columnist, writer and actor here.

Read writer Ruchir Joshi's article on the 21 November 2007 anti-Taslima riot in Calcutta here.

Calcutta 154

Let sleeping dogs lie...

American poets

"The true author of a poem is neither the poet nor the reader, but language."

Octavio Paz


A delegation of poets from the USA is visiting Calcutta. They are part of the US-Calcutta Literary Exchange. The delegation is led by Yusef Komunyakaa.

An interaction with some of the members of the delegation was organised yesterday evening by the Calcutta International Foundation for Arts, Literature and Culture, at the Foundation's office on Park Street (overlooking the Park Street Cemetery).

Besides Yusef Komunyakaa, the other American poets present were Catherine Fletcher, Idra Novey, Nathalie Handal and Ed Pavlic. After a stimulating dialogue with artists and writers from Calcutta, they read from their work.



Yusef Komunyakaa received the Pulitzer Prize and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989. He was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Thieves of Paradise. His honors include the William Faulkner Prize from the University de Rennes and the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, where he served as a correspondent and managing editor of the Southern Cross. In 1999 he was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

We Never Know

He danced with tall grass
for a moment, like he was swaying
with a woman. Our gun barrels
glowed white-hot.
When I got to him,
a blue halo
of flies had already claimed him.
I pulled the crumbed photograph
from his fingers.
There's no other way
to say this: I fell in love.
The morning cleared again,
except for a distant mortar
& somewhere choppers taking off.
I slid the wallet into his pocket
& turned him over, so he wouldn't be
kissing the ground.



Catherine Fletcher is an editor for Rattapallax magazine and the online World Poetry Map, and the coordinator of the Endangered Language Initiative, a multi-year project of the New York-based People's Poetry Gathering and City Lore. This is dedicated to document, disseminate, and translate poetry in endangered, contested, and threatened languages.



Idra Novey's chapbook of poems The Next Country won the 2005 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and her translations of Brazilian poet Paulo Henriques Britto received a PEN Translation Fund grant; the book, The Clean Shirt of It, came out in 2007 in the Lannan Translation Series from BOA Editions. Her first book, The Next Country, received the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books and will be released in 2008.

Definition of Stranger

Person not a member
of a group. A visitor,
guest, or the breast
that brushes your arm
on the subway. Person
with whom you've had
no acquaintance but who's taken
your rocking chair
from the curbside
and curls up in it
and closes her eyes.
Person in line
behind you now, waiting
for a glass of water,
or of whiskey, of elixir.
Person logging online
at the same second
from the Home Depot in Lima.
Or in search of the Dalai Lama.
Person not privy or party
to a decision, edict, et cetera,
but who's eaten
from the same fork
at the pizzeria
and kissed your wilder sister
on New Year's. Person assigned
to feed the tiger at the zoo
where you slipped your hand
once
into the palm
of somebody else's father.



Nathalie Handal is the author of numerous award-winning books, including The Lives of Rain and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology (Academy of American Poets Bestseller and Winner of the Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Award). She is currently finishing Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (forthcoming).

The Warrior

It was Wednesday, I remember. Maybe it was Thursday. I had arrived early, early enough to drink some good wine alone with a man I thought we all should fear and for a second forgot. Then they arrived. Nothing in me had changed, even after the wine, even after I saw a goat and corpse cut open side by side. Some say this place is cursed, every drop of water sinks the earth. Strange the things one thinks about at moments like this—was I a stranger to the lover who saw my curves and scars, kissed them then slept like a deserter? Strange what comes to you in the dream-shadows of God—children you saw once in Nablus or Ramallah, who told you the hour the dates will grow in Palestine. Then they arrived. Announced—she died yesterday, but I heard she died a year ago, later that evening I found out she will die tomorrow. And then I heard him say, Shut up, there is only one way to fight a war. Become the other. I cross my legs and take his face apart trying to find a way to remember this moment otherwise.



Ed Pavlic is Associate Professor of English and director of the UGA Creative Writing Program. He is also author of the book of poems, Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue (The American Poetry Review/Copper Canyon Press, 2001), He was the winner of the American Poetry Review/ Honickman First Book Award and the Darwin Turner Award given by African American Review.

Call it in the air

Last time I saw you on your feet
we climbed Mt. Shavano to have lunch
on the angel’s hip. Year by year step by step you led me
up past the line where trees grow past
the line where shrubs cling to rocks & you tell
south by the lichen. I hesitate when my lungs begin
to ache, lose a full step for your every two.
We pass the line where grizzlies plunder
pine cone stores of black cat-eared alpine
squirrels. Empty craters that smell of thin green
air. We’re into the zone of the all too recently disturbed
stones where grizzlies find moths that blow
in off the plains of Kansas and Nebraska
to mate in the rubble beyond the tree line.
I don’t want to know any of this, but I do. You do too
but could give a damn. I’m scared & can’t breathe.
I join the invisible crowd & turn back
& you’re bears be damned
on all fours now. I sit on a boulder & gasp
for air & I see you get smaller & smaller
& with each blink I can see
it clearly. You could care about the glacier
angel up the slope. I remember how
you used to tell me I made you safe because
when kidnappers came they’d take the youngest.
The boy. Now I’m bigger than you are, so,
here I am, bait. & there you are
on borrowed time you’re about to give back.
Your liver floating in the numbdark, curled up
like a peach pit on a hissing
radiator, eyes alight with the flamedark
torch in each pulse. & there you go,
a slow drip of Patrón & a whiff of nicotine
for lunch as you search for the line beyond
which elevation the lungs change
to birds & you can go on living without any body at all.

Crossing the boundary

Thanks to Shuddha, of Sarai, New Delhi, I came upon this article by Daniel Barenboim, which appeared in the International Herald Tribune of 29 January 2008. It reminded me of my earlier posts Bridging the Divide and One Country. In today's world, we cannot but embrace multiple identities.

Daniel Barenboim, a pianist and conductor, is music director of the Staatskapelle Berlin and principal guest conductor at La Scala Opera in Milan. He is co-founder with the late Edward Said of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which brings together Arab and Israeli musicians.


BERLIN: I have often made the statement that the destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian people are inextricably linked and that there is no military solution to the conflict. My recent acceptance of Palestinian nationality has given me the opportunity to demonstrate this more tangibly.

When my family moved to Israel from Argentina in the 1950s, one of my parents' intentions was to spare me the experience of growing up as part of a minority - a Jewish minority. They wanted to me to grow up as part of a majority - a Jewish majority.

The tragedy of this is that my generation, despite having been educated in a society whose positive aspects and human values have greatly enriched my thinking, ignored the existence of a minority within Israel - a non-Jewish minority - which had been the majority in the whole of Palestine until the creation of the state of Israel in1948. Part of the non-Jewish population remained in Israel, and other parts left out of fear or were forcefully displaced.

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there was and still is an inability to admit the interdependence of their two voices. The creation of the state of Israel was the result of a Jewish-European idea, which, if it is to extend its leitmotif into the future, must accept the Palestinian identity as an equally valid leitmotif.

The demographic development is impossible to ignore; Palestinians within Israel are a minority but a rapidly growing one, and their voice needs to be heard now more than ever. They now make up approximately 22 percent of the population of Israel. This is a larger percentage than was ever represented by a Jewish minority in any country in any period of history. The total number of Palestinians living within Israel and in the occupied territories (that is, greater Israel for the Israelis or greater Palestine for the Palestinians) is already larger than the Jewish population.

At present, Israel is confronted at once with three problems: the nature of the modern democratic Jewish state - its very identity; the problem of Palestinian identity within Israel; and the problem of the creation of a Palestinian state outside of Israel. With Jordan and Egypt it was possible to attain what can best be described as a nice-cold peace without questioning Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

The problem of the Palestinians within Israel, however, is a much more challenging one to solve, both theoretically and practically. For Israel, it means, among other things, coming to terms with the fact that the land was not barren or empty, "a land without a people,"an idea that was propagated at the time of its creation. For the Palestinians, it means accepting the fact that Israel is a Jewish state and is here to stay.

Israelis, however, must accept the integration of the Palestinian minority even if it means changing certain aspects of the nature of Israel; they must also accept the justification for and necessityof the creation of a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel. Not only is there no alternative, or magic wand, that will make thePalestinians disappear, but their integration is an indispensable condition - on moral, social and political grounds - for the very survival of Israel.

The longer the occupation continues and Palestinian dissatisfaction remains unaddressed, the more difficult it is to find even elementary common ground. We have seen so often in the modern history of the Middle East that missed opportunities for reconciliation have had extremely negative results for both sides.

For my part, when the Palestinian passport was offered to me, Iaccepted it in the spirit of acknowledging the Palestinian destiny that I, as an Israeli, share.

A true citizen of Israel must reach out to the Palestinian people with openness, and at the very least an attempt to understand what the creation of the state of Israel has meant to them.

The 15th of May, 1948, is the day of independence for the Jews, but the same day is Al Nakba, the catastrophe, for the Palestinians. A true citizen of Israel must ask himself what the Jews, known as an intelligent people of learning and culture, have done to share their cultural heritage with the Palestinians.

A true citizen of Israel must also ask himself why the Palestinians have been condemned to live in slums and accept lower standards of education and medical care, rather than being provided by the occupying force with decent, dignified and liveable conditions, a right common to all human beings. In any occupied territory, the occupiers are responsible for the quality of life of the occupied, and in the case of the Palestinians, the different Israeli governments over the last 40 years have failed miserably. The Palestinians naturally must continue to resist the occupation and all attempts to deny them basic individual needs and statehood. However, for their own sake this resistance must not express itself through violence.

Crossing the boundary from adamant resistance (including non-violent demonstrations and protests) to violence only results in more innocent victims and does not serve the long-term interests of the Palestinian people. At the same time, the citizens of Israel have just as much cause to be alert to the needs and rights of the Palestinian people (both within and outside Israel) as they do to their own. After all, in the sense that we share one land and one destiny, we should all have dual citizenship.

Photo: A Palestinian boy overlooks the wall separating his home from the rest of the village. Courtesy: Eyal Dor-Ofer's Israel-Palestine photo gallery.