A response to Roy's Rage

My friend Nishant, a Delhi-based journalist and social worker, has sent me a strong, well-argued rejoinder to my post on Arundhati Roy (Roy's Rage). In his response, Nishant makes some nuanced observations (like the cast angle in Kashmir issue) which can only come from a person who has seen things on the ground. I am reproducing his letter here, with his permission:

Hi, Zafarbhai. Interesting posts you send me. They are thought provoking, and sometimes provocative too, like this one. I thought I would write my views on your views on Arundhati Roy. I decided to write, because I think there is one very obvious school of thought you have omitted, among many others, in the hate-Roy-love-Roy binary. There are people who are on the side of the issues that Roy raises but do not agree with her approaches to them. I am one such person. In fact, I think she needs to do some theoretical thinking to bind all the struggles through a coherent thread.

I have watched Roy closely ever since her first essays during the NDA regime started coming out. I mostly agreed with her in those days. But, with time she has shown the biases that rooted NGO-wallahs show in India, rather north India. Or, should I say in the Indo-Aryan India.

I will keep my criticism short, for I want to make it a bigger intellectual exercise some day.

Since you have talked about Kashmir in the post below and because this is Roy's favourite milch cow these days, let us begin with it. For a very long time, the security forces are involved in gross human rights violations in the Kashmir valley. And, for the equally long time the activists in Kashmir, the rest of India and other parts of the world have been trying to highlight the travails of the Kashmiri people. But, what Roy has started doing is using these violations to make a political point. She calls Kashmir India's colony. It will be great to know Roy's definitions of both 'colony' as well as the 'imperial centre'. But, no definitions ever emerge from her writing, for she is forever creating 'a maze of words'. If Kashmir is a colony, then is Punjab a colony as well? What about the Northeast then? And, the Red Corridor? And, the small Dalit ghettos that we find everywhere in the country? Is the net flow of money from the Kashmir valley to New Delhi? If we start defining the term colony in such a way, soon we will be left only with a Hindu India, which I think is an RSS project.

Perhaps, creative writers don't waste their time defining what can be called a colony and what cannot be. Perhaps, they are there only to create creative works out of popular struggles, without giving much thought to the discontents of these struggles. Or, perhaps, it's much easier to declare a bigger entity your enemy, rather than the negative forces contained in popular struggles.

It doesn't matter much to Roy and people like her -- I can count on my fingertips how many of them work closely to come out with a coherent line of thought on Kashmir and similar issues -- that the struggle in Kashmir is spearheaded by upper-caste Muslims, the likes of Gilani, that Brahmin among Muslims, with the sole exception of Yasin Malik. It does not matter to her that almost all lower caste Muslims of the valley are against the Hurriyat politics. It does not matter to her that no upper-caste Muslim is ever interested in getting Hindus back in the valley. It does not matter to her that the upper-caste leadership of the Kashmiri struggle is not only religious in nature, it is opposed to Left-wing politics as well. The second target of the Kashmiri militants in the early 1990s were left-wing activists of the valley, the first being Kashmiri Pandits.

It also does not matter to her that lower-caste Bihari Muslims and Hindus who go there every year for work work under abysmal conditions and suffer abuses from the elite of the valley. Gilani is a Bal Thackeray-like figure of the valley. He abuses all outsiders and particularly hates Biharis. He makes fun of Hindus and believes the Islamic culture is the most superior form of culture available. If he was borne into a differnt religion, Roy would have been writing articles against him.

Perhaps, it is more profitable to be left-wing in Delhi and quiet about ideology in Kashmir.

In 2004 summer when I was in Kashmir, I read hatred-driven articles in a religiously coloured newspaper called Greater Kashmir (Roy loves this paper; she keeps quoting from it). That was the time of the annual Amarnath yatra. We were yet to see the communal protests in the valley against it that we saw last year. But, in retrospect I can say that the unrest was building up. The Muslim elite of the valley has always been against the popularity of the Amarnath yatra, though their official stand is that it shows the syncretic spirit of the valley. In once such article, I read how the writer had described in graphic detail the scene of the base camp or the route of the yatra. It was full thinly-veiled caste remarks about the kind of people who had come to the valley from outside and spoiling its environment. The writer wrote about the shit gathered on the banks of the Lidder. A friend of mine did a performance at Khoj Studios called The Shit of the Other. I connected the two stories when I heard about his performance much later.

Much later when the Amarnath row broke out, another of such activists Gautam Navlakha reproduced that argument of the beautiful Lidder and the shit of the other. Needless to say, you have to be Brahiminical to hate shit so much.

Roy herself wasn't very far behind when she quoted from a placard that one protester was carrying during that mammoth march in Srinagar during the Amarnath row, which she described in her first major essay on Kashmir. The placard said something like 'Bhookha nanga Hindustaan, jaan se pyara Pakistan'. Being rooted in the Indo-Aryan ways of anti-establishment protests in north India, Roy gave a twist to the slogan. She thought the people of Kashmir were questioning the globalisation policies that India has pursued in the last few decades and which have increased poverty in India. Great interpretation. Even if that protest had taken place three decades back, the protesters would have carried similar banners. She missed the caste abuse implicit in the slogan. She forgot that Pakistan was an upper-caste Muslim's upper-caste dream. She forgot that when the Muslim elite of the Kashmir valley see kinship in Pakistan, it's nothing but a caste kinship. She obviously has read no literature of the partition time, in which both upper-caste Hindus and upper-caste Muslims hurled caste abuses at each other when they counted the underbelly of both religions.

My friend Sanjay Kak made a film on Kashmir. He is Roy's friend as well. I remember one scene in which he is trying to show the strategies used by the security forces to win over a local villager. A uniformed officer is seen to be felicitating the villager with a radio set. The context of the film makes it look like an Indian nationalist trick. But, Kak too belongs to the same caste group that so much dominates India, both in its oppression and its opposition to its oppression. He forgot to seek the opinion of the villager who accepted the 'gift'. I guess the villager was a Gujjar. The caste of the villager makes him that sort of character that you see in the paintings of the colonial times, where among sahebs, both white as well as brown, you see a lower-caste dhobi, maali, malishwala or one such professional almost tripping out of the painting at the edge. I like to believe that Kak muffled a voice. Perhaps, he missed out on an Ambedkar. He had the golden chance of following a lower-caste voice in a film otherwise full of upper-caste characters.

Zafar, if there is one dominant struggle in India that is upper-caste in character, this is it. And, I am not surprised that an activist community that is characterised by their annual candle-lighting exercise at the Wagah border -- that another symbol of caste solidarity and hatred at the same time -- feels so close to the struggle in Kashmir.

You have quoted Roy as saying, 'No one speculated about the mystery of hundreds of unknown candidates who materialized out of nowhere to represent political parties that had no previous presence in the Kashmir Valley.' I guess you know that some of these candidates were from the Bahujan Samaj Party. Mayawati is expanding. Hers is the only national party that has found support in every corner of the country. She put up candidates in all assembly segments in the elections last year. I think the BSP managed around 5 per cent votes. It will be great to do a caste analysis of Mayawati's candidates and the ones who issue election boycott calls in the valley. Roy will get her answer then.

Some day Roy should also tell us where she has got the figure of 'one armed soldier for every 20 civilians' from. Whatever number of soldiers we have in Kashmir is a huge and horrible number, but Roy's number borders on propaganda and it keeps changing. According to the 2001 census, the population of the valley was approximately 56 lakh. Is she using this figure to make her point? If yes, then total number of armed soldiers will be 56 lakh/20 = 2 lakh 80 thousand soldiers. But, she has quoted a much higher number on different occasions. In this interview given in Feb. 2009, she says this number is between five lakh and seven lakh. Other activists and my friends in Kashmir have quoted a figure of 10 lakh soldiers as well. Pakistan also quotes a figure of one million soldiers. I guess you get the point here.

This is not to say that I don't agree with her that Kashmir is a heavily militarized zone, but perhaps one should not get carried away in creating a scary picture that can bring personal benefits.

Let's come to her ideas on the nuclear bomb. She wrote a lengthy article on the issue of India and Pakistan going nuclear. The BJP government was in power in those days, and the tests were done by a BJP prime ministers. When a right-wing government is in power, it's much easier and simpler to hate the state. Then one does not get into the ideological complexities that she got into on the Kashmir issue. But, Roy has no original argument ever. She picks them from here and there, most notably from the popular struggles which already have developed arguments. This is what she did in the case of her anti-nuke arguments.

If you notice, Zafar, these days our rhetoric against nuclear bombs is based on the same principles on which our nationalism is based. Many dominant groups in India see the nuclear bomb as a signifier of an assertive India. And, these groups include both pro-bomb guys as well as anti-bomb buys. The idea of India that both these groups have in mind are the same upper-caste elite of India who sometimes hate Pakistan and on other occasions want to love it, both on the ground of race solidarity.

But, I object to viewing a nuke only through this lens. I feel a nuke is a signifier in a pure sense. When a right-wing government uses it, it acquires a right-wing character. And, if a left-wing government wants to use it, it can use it international negotiations. Is it important to tie the Indian nuclear bomb to Pakistan? Isn't this a 90s phenomenon? When Indira Gandhi ordered first nuclear tests, she was willing to be on the side of the global left than on the side of the Indian right. But, half-baked arguments of people like Roy and Anand Patwardhan do is make all other interest group retreat from the nuclear debate. They project the bomb as a Hindu bomb to be deployed against a Muslim neighbour. So, other groups that may have believed in the theory that either everybody can have this bomb or nobody should have it are forced to retreat.

Both Patwardhan and Roy ignore the fact India has and is developing missile capabilities that can deliver a nuke up to and beyond 2,000 kilometres. If we were to have only Hindu nukes, then there is no need to waste money on developing more missiles. Pakistan is already covered in the existing range. But, such details usually escape creative writers. They are more interested in creating impact through their works than argue their case. This is not to say that India's nuclear programme is not directed against Pakistan, but it is not exclusively tied to it.

And, of course, the anti-nuke lobby has never heard of using the bomb to press for disarmament.

I have an observation on Roy's stand on the Narmada issue as well. I quite liked her article on the Narmada dam. That, I think, is her best argued work. Even if all arguements are borrowed, we need such articles. And, I don't support Ramachandra Guha's critique of Roy's stand on the Narmada dam. But, I do agree with him that she is more interested in her popularity than the fate of the cause.

Look at what happened to the whole issue after the Supreme Court judgment. Both Medha Patkar and Roy have moved on to greener pastures, Patkar to Singur and SEZ-related issues and Roy to Kashmir, after making many other popular stops. I think the Narmada issue is one of the biggest defeats of the social movements in India. And, look at the contrast: while the peole have lost their land and livelihood, its leaders have prospered in their social standing.

The Medha Patkar kind of politics that Roy supported is primarily the cause for this defeat. Because Patkar is Gandhian, she did not allow any violence to take place on the Narmada issue. When the state and the courts went against the people, she simply retreated, or, should I say, moved on. Compare that to the fate of anti-land-acquisition movements. A lot of them, like Singur and Nandigram, are successful, and in many of them Patkar is involved. The deciding factor, however, was that no Gandhian was the supreme leader of these movements. In fact, violence proved to the ultimate deterrent against the capitalist encroachment.

These days Roy is busy lauding Kashmiris for their non-violent struggle. She may end up helping the people she is fighting against, which I won't mind in this case. But, her record is that wherever she goes, that struggle is screwed in a few years. A very dangerous activist to have among your midst.

Nishant.

Roy’s rage

“We should respect differing opinions up to certain point, and then it's time for the wise to blow the whistle. Sir, not only do I differ with what you say, but I would certainly not fight to the death for your right to say it. Not me. You have to pick your fights.”

- Roger Ebert (I'm a proud Brainiac)


There are two ways to deal with Arundhati Roy: you can dismiss her views as the angry rant of someone who represents a line or a party or a school of thought that you abhor. You abhor it because it shakes your Bollywood hued fairy tale worldview or it does not contribute (or rather threatens) to your secure-in-my-flat-with-a car-and-latest gizmos lifestyle.

Or you take her views seriously—like that of a prophet of conscience, a prophet who has her ears on the ground, and who can listen to the "grasshoppers", who can make us look what we only see. A true writer-prophet who warns us about our silent complicity in the crimes that are done in our name.

People say she is a one book (novel) wonder. I know why. She’s a writer who knows that we are past the age of novels, that the reality of our world is so dangerous that our short attention spans and parochial worldviews need to be upbraided by the regular hammering of reality through non-fiction, and not lulled into slumber by the gossamer navel gazing of immigrant lives in fictional settings.

Needless to say, I find myself in the second category. In fact, sometimes I feel that only she, among the panoply of Indian writers, points out issues and questions the anomalies in the system that enrage me. That too in a language that is her trademark style. To be fair, though writers such as Pankaj Mishra also ask uncomfortable questions, his touch is a tad mellow, more academic than angry.

Some say Roy creates a maze of words. Maybe yes. But is there no meaning in it?

Others say she is agonizingly repetitive. So what? I guess she has to do it to hammer home the point. Those who allege that Roy is repetitive don’t just get the point. I know why. Because they don’t want to. You have to be fair-minded and you have to have a sense of justice (irrespective of caste, creed and colour) to appreciate Roy’s point. You can’t understand her plea if you seal yourself in a wall of self-righteousness. She challenges you to get out of it.

And then face the truth.

In her essay, Democracy's Failing Light (Outlook), she makes many points about the fissures in India’s democracy. The points she makes can be summarized in a couplet by Allama Iqbal:

Jamhooriyat woh tarz-e hukumat hai ke jis men
Voton to gina karte hain, tola nahin karte

(Democracy is such a system of governance in which
votes are counted but not weighed)

Indian democracy has much strength, many merits. But that does not mean that we should not be aware of its shortcomings—how it is being misused by the powers that be (democracy fused with predatory market economy?). Roy shines her critical light on democracy’s fault lines. It could be our blind nationalism—another myopia—that often prevents us from seeing the truth and acknowledging the elephant in the room. Why do we forget what George Orwell, that brilliant journalist and writer, the creator of Animal Farm and 1984, had said about nationalism?

To question the ills of the system does not mean you are unpatriotic. Nationalism (be it in any form, religious or secular) makes us blind. Patriotism is different.

The Kashmir Issue

Roy draws our attention to the issue of Kashmir, one of the elephants in the room (among many others). She is right. Why don’t we want to talk about it?

None of India's analysts, journalists and psephologists cared to ask why people who had only weeks ago risked everything, including bullets and shoot-at-sight orders, should have suddenly changed their minds. None of the high-profile scholars of the great festival of democracy—who practically live in TV studios when there are elections in mainland India, picking apart every forecast, exit poll and minor percentile swing in the voteshare—talked about what elections mean in the presence of such a massive, year-round troop deployment. (An armed soldier for every 20 civilians.) No one speculated about the mystery of hundreds of unknown candidates who materialised out of nowhere to represent political parties that had no previous presence in the Kashmir Valley. Where had they come from? Who was financing them? No one was curious.

No one spoke about the curfew, the mass arrests, the lockdown of constituencies that were going to the polls. Not many talked about the fact that campaigning politicians went out of their way to delink 'azadi' and the Kashmir dispute from elections, which they insisted were only about municipal issues—roads, water, electricity. No one talked about why people who have lived under a military occupation for decades—where soldiers could barge into homes and whisk away people at any time of the day or night—might need someone to listen to them, to take up their cases, to represent them.

The minute elections were over, the establishment and the mainstream press declared victory (for India) once again…

We keep hating Pakistan. Why can’t we accept it as a neighbor? Pakistan has created most of its problems without much external help (abandoning Jinnah’s secularism and going for a stringent form of Islam as a state policy, for example; see two articles by Ali Eteraz: Pakistan is already an Islamic State and State-sponsored Sufism) but has India helped it in growing peacefully either?

Why did we not settle the Kashmir issue with impartial justice when the time was right (now we can't even accept it as an issue, as Roy points out, and merely broaching this topic will make one sound unpatriotic in some circles)? What answer do we have for the Pakistanis when they ask us why did we have to meddle in East Pakistan and help create Bangladesh? What answer do we have for them when they ask that we are working against them in Afghanistan (along with the imperial forces) and supporting anti-Pak groups?

Are our hands really clean before we can ask them about fomenting trouble in Kashmir and launching terror strikes against India?

Granted that Pakistan’s agencies are complicit in waging terror against India. But what about us? Are we paying them in the same coin? If yes, then where is the moral superiority of India?

If this goes on we, India and Pakistan, will one day destroy each other. Roy’s metaphor of the fighting in Siachen and its larger impact on the region, deserves our intense attention. Hindu hubris and Muslim masculinity will not save our future. It is bringing us to the brink of collapse.

Is there still hope for this wish of a poet?

Hum aayen gulshan-e Lahore se chaman bardosh
Tum aao subah-e Banaras ki roshni le kar

I hope novelist Musharraf Ali Farooqi is right when he said: "... I think a lot of politicians were eating Viagra for breakfast in those days. I am glad they have switched it to a more appropriate time. I feel that in the subcontinent we talk about war and carnage so very casually because we have no real regard for the sanctity of human life. I also believe that India and Pak situation will improve drastically within just a decade or two, to the extent that it will become unrecognizable. We'll just have to wait for the generation to die that helped create the divide - both before and after the Partition."

How to move out of the line of fire

JULY 15, 2001 was a remarkable day in the history of India-Pakistan relations. Pakistan's President Parvez Musharraf was on his maiden visit to India. He was to meet India's then Prime Minister A V Vajpayee the next day in Agra and issue a joint statement which would mark a thaw in relations between the two estranged neighbours.

Delhi was steeped in a discernible excitement and the 24-hour TV news channels went into overdrive speculating on what was going to result from this summit.

The two leaders met in Agra but the "Agra Declaration" was never signed. General Musharraf abruptly left India. A historic moment passed without being grasped.

What followed was an "eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation" between India and Pakistan on the border in 2002. Notwithstanding Gen Musharraf's overtures for "peace" with India on numerous occasions later on, not much progress was made and, after 911, his focus switched to the war on terror with his friend, United States President George W Bush.

Now that the clouds of war are on the wane and he has written a self-congratulatory autobiography, In the Line of Fire, after beating Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Gen Musharraf has once again turned his attention to resolving the issue of Kashmir, a territory claimed by both India and Pakistan.

In an interview earlier this month with New Delhi Television (NDTV), he gave a "four-point solution" to solving the Kashmir dispute, which includes a phased withdrawal of troops and self-governance for locals.

The news made international headlines.Truth be told, there is hardly anything new in his purported "four-point solution".

Published in Today, Dec 18

Read the full text here.