Posts by elysdir

Submission Call for Issue # 3

Jaggery Issue # 2

Issue # 2 of Jaggery is up today!! Includes fiction , poetry,  art and so much more.

you can read Issue # 1 here. 

Recalled: Wendy Doniger’s book ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’

In a perfect world people would get offended by books etc… and thereby learn to 1) tolerate and/or 2) write a counter book or at least an op-ed about why they are offended and why no one should read said book. And that would be it. Everyone would be left to make up their own mind. Unfortunately, a topic such as religion seems to open the door for a ridiculous type of passion which either leads to 1) book banning 2) book burning or 3) both. And lest the Western World think it’s just those countries that do such things, here’s a list of recent books banned in the U.S. (during 2000-2009). The latest book to be recalled and pulped in India is Professor Wendy Doniger’s non-fiction book ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History‘. Obviously the problem here is an ‘alternative’ history. The orthodox Hindu community in India likes the history they have and do not want it challenged or questioned. Should a history, in this case a religious history, be challenged, be allowed to be questioned ? I suppose those upset are asking if there is  nothing sacred left in the world? But I fear that adherence to ‘sacred’ leads to ‘dogmatism… Unfortunately Doniger’s publishing house, Penguin India, relented  but lest this be seen as ‘being soft’ let me add  that in the furor following Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ his Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered. Standing up for what is right is all very well but is it worth losing your life over? A vital question, I think, given the polemical world we are increasingly finding ourselves in.

Here is Doniger’s Statement:

Statement from Wendy Doniger: (bold, mine)

I was thrilled and moved by the great number of messages of support that I received, not merely from friends and colleagues but from people in India that I have never met, who had read and loved The Hindus, and by news and media people, all of whom expressed their outrage and sadness and their wish to help me in any way they could. I was, of course, angry and disappointed to see this happen, and I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in India in the present, and steadily worsening, political climate. And as a publisher’s daughter, I particularly wince at the knowledge that the existing books (unless they are bought out quickly by people intrigued by all the brouhaha) will be pulped. But I do not blame Penguin Books, India. Other publishers have just quietly withdrawn other books without making the effort that Penguin made to save this book. Penguin, India, took this book on knowing that it would stir anger in the Hindutva ranks, and they defended it in the courts for four years, both as a civil and as a criminal suit.They were finally defeated by the true villain of this piece—the Indian law that makes it a criminal rather than civil offense to publish a book that offends any Hindu, a law that jeopardizes the physical safety of any publisher, no matter how ludicrous the accusation brought against a book. An example at random, from the lawsuit in question:‘That YOU NOTICEE has hurt the religious feelings of millions of Hindus by declaring that Ramayana is a fiction. “Placing the Ramayan in its historical contexts demonstrates that it is a work of fiction, created by human authors, who lived at various times……….” (P.662) This breaches section 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). ‘Finally, I am glad that, in the age of the Internet, it is no longer possible to suppress a book. The Hindus is available on Kindle; and if legal means of publication fail, the Internet has other ways of keeping books in circulation. People in India will always be able to read books of all sorts, including some that may offend some Hindus.”

Mirza Waheed on Kashmir, Visas and Control

I will never forget my Kashmiri Aunts distress when they were not able to get visas in time to visit their dying father in Pakistan. They even missed the funeral. I have grown up surrounded by visa issues between India and Pakistan, as well as the state of Kashmir. Novelist Mirza Waheed’s essay ‘The Torturable Class’ is a wonderful piece on state control and how extraordinary fear is instilled in ordinary people by ordinary means. Please read it.

from ‘The Torturable Class’

 In the summer of 2012, I received a phone call from the Indian High Commission in London. It was odd. I hadn’t applied for a visa or any such thing. My wife and three-year-old son had, however, and had been waiting nearly three months. We were scheduled to visit my home in Indian-occupied Kashmir for my sister’s wedding, which was drawing close. We had been anxious and had written to friends and acquaintances to ask if they could help. We knew the drill, of course: for many “cross-border” couples—I was born and raised in Kashmir, my wife in Karachi—the trip home is an annual or biannual ritual of humiliation that must be borne if one is to see one’s people.

I told the voice on the phone that my wife was away—at work at the BBC World Service—and they could call her on her mobile phone. They did; a certain Mr. K told her they’d like to speak with her about her visa application; could she and her husband come for a meeting?

read full here in Guernica, a magazine of arts and politics

Pankaj Mishra and Kamila Shamsie in Conversation

A very thought provoking conversation on Guernica between Pankaj Mishra and Kamila Shamsie. They discuss the political novel, what it is and is not, why American novelists are not  political (are they fearful, Dave Eggers suggests), and what it means for a writer and novel to be ‘political’.  I think a lot of ‘American” writers need to be enraged about the income and class inequality in America, let alone what is outside of their borders (influenced by them/govt). But the stories being told are, usually, about adultery and drug abuse and not being as happy as the pursuit of happiness has promised– writers who’ve grown up in suburbia…. not so much they they are disengaged but that they are engaged with their ‘world’, their circle is smaller….? However some of the best writing remains on black/white/race… i.e. socially engaging. Also I think it important to remember that American fiction published is based on what American readers want to read therefore what American publishers will choose to publish… and so love stories between vampires and werewolves…

from the conversation:

Pankaj Mishra: Today, practically every country outside the West is undergoing an intellectual, political, and cultural churning, from China to Bolivia, Egypt to Indonesia, but we haven’t really had, after the 1960s, a major oppositional culture in Western Europe and America. The Occupy movement was so startling and welcome partly because it was the first such eruption of mass protests in decades.

read full here

Happy New Year

A Happy and Productive 2014 to readers and writers everywhere!

from the Jaggery Staff

Kamila Shamsie Interviews Malala Yousafzai on her memoir I Am Malala

Kamila Shamsie reviews/interviews Malala Yousafzai’s memoir I Am Malala written with Christina Lamb from the Guardian. Malala is not like other sixteen year olds because few other sixteen year olds are shot at by the Taliban for defending education, or end up addressing the U.N., or become the activist that Malala has become so quickly. Shamsie’s interview tries to get at who the real Malala is, though Malala herself contends that she left the real ‘her’ back in Swat a long time ago.

It is a  little heartbreaking though to read about how Malala skypes with her best friend in Swat in order to find out what everyone is doing, and how only when Kamila and Malala talk about cricket does the weight of the world fall off her. Malala comes across as such an empathetic person, and so it has become quite tiring to hear so many accuse her of being  a (U.S.) pawn and a fake instead of showing empathy and solidarity towards her. But then Malala’s points are valid. In a Pakistan given to  conspiracy theories, everything is suspect, even an adolescent being shot.

Literature that Reflects the Politics of Its Time.

Renuka Rajaratnam argues in The Hindu that the Indian novelists of the 80s and 90s championed Nehruvian ideas, whether intentionally or not, in response to the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi. She discusses, amongst other novels, Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy and Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel. For me, however, it is Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance which stands out for its powerful depiction of the atrocities forced upon Indians during the Emergency (castrations, anyone?), as well as how people from disparate socio-economic backgrounds come to live together and grow to respect and even love each other (the final scene is a microcosm of individual against authoritarian rule beautifully depicted through one woman and her domestic setting).

“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.” read rest here