[Reader-list] Arundhati Roy on Taslima Nasreen and Nandigram: Interview on IBNlive.com with Karan Thapar

[shuddha at sarai.net]

Dear All,

(Apologies for Cross Posting on Reader List and Kafila.org)

As we have been discussing both Nandigram and the situation that Taslima
Nasreen has found herself over the last few weeks, I thought that it might
be interesting to listen in on a conversation that Karan Thapar has had
with the writer Arundhati Roy that takes on both these questions. This
interview was broadcast earlier today on CNN-IBN. I found the transcript on
the IBNlive.com website

regards

Shuddha

------------------------------------------

Transcript of Arundhati Roy interviewed on the treatment of Taslima Nasreen
by Karan Thapar on 'Devil's Advocate', broadcast this evening on CNN-IBN

The transcript was published on Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 20:32, on the CNN IBN
website
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/if-treated-like-taslima-id-give-up-writing/53464-3-single.html

To watch the video of the interview - see - 
http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/53464/12_2007/devils_arundathi1/if-treated-like-taslima-id-give-up-writing.html

---------------------------------------------

Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. How do India’s leading authors
respond to the treatment given to Taslima Nasreen over the last 14 days?
That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Booker Prize- winning
novelist Arundhati Roy.

Karan Thapar: Arundhati Roy, let me start with that question. How do you
respond to the way Taslima Nasreen has been treated for almost 14 days now?

Arundhati Roy: Well, it is actually almost 14 years but right now it is
only 14 days and I respond with dismay but not surprise because I see it as
a part of a larger script where everybody is saying their lines and
exchanging parts.

Karan Thapar: She, I believe, has been in touch with you . What has she
told you about the experience that she has been through?

Arundhati Roy:Well I have to say that I was devastated listening to what
she said because here’s this woman in exile and all alone. Since August
she’s been under pressure, she says, from the West Bengal police who
visit her everyday saying, “Get out of here. Go to Kerala, go to Europe
or go to Rajasthan. Do anything but get out of here. People are trying to
kill you,” not offering to protect her but saying get out. On 15th
November when there was this huge march in Calcutta against Nandigram, they
said, “Now you’re going to be killed so we’re going to move you from
your flat to some other place” and they did it but they withdrew most of
her security which is paradoxical because on the day when she was
supposedly the most under the threat, she had no protection. A few days
later they gave her a ticket and pushed her out of the state.

Karan Thapar: Listening to the story she told you about herself, do you
believe that the West Bengal government’s behaviour has been unacceptable?

Arundhati Roy: Well it has been utterly, ridiculously unacceptable. I mean,
what can I say? Here you have a situation where you’re really threatening
and coercing a person.

Karan Thapar: Far from protecting her, they were threatening her?

Arundhati Roy: Absolutely.

Karan Thapar: What about Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee? He is a poet, he is an
author; how does he emerge from this story?

Arundhati Roy: He emerges from the story, as far as I am concerned, as the
principal scriptwriter who managed quite cleverly to shift all the
attention from Nandigram to Taslima and Taslima is not the person who is
displacing the poor peasants of Nandigram. She is not the person who is
robbing people of their daily.

Karan Thapar: So he used her as a pawn to take the pressure off himself in
terms of Nandigram?

Arundhati Roy: I think very successfully because we are discussing her and
not Nandigram right now.

Karan Thapar: So he’s failed to stand by any of the constitutional duties
that as a Chief Minister he should have upheld?

Arundhati Roy: I should say at this point that we do not have the
constitutional right to free speech. We have many caveats between us and
free speech so maybe he has upheld the constitutional rights to us not
having free speech.

Karan Thapar: On Friday, Taslima announced that three pages from her
autobiography Dwikhandito, which allegedly had given offence to critics,
are to be withdrawn. Do you see that as a sensible compromise or a mistake?

Arundhati Roy: Well, neither. She does not have any choices. She is just
like a person who has now got the protection of the mafia which is the
state in some way. She has nowhere to go. She has no protection. She just
has to blunder her way through this kind of humiliation and I really feel
for her.

Karan Thapar: You used an interesting phrase. You said she has to blunder
her way through this humiliation. Was withdrawing those three pages,
admittedly under pressure, a blunder?

Arundhati Roy: I don’t know. Honestly, we can all be very brave in the
security of our lives but she has nobody to turn to and nowhere to go. I
don’t know what I would have done in that situation.

Karan Thapar: She had no other choice, perhaps.

Arundhati Roy:She really is in a mess. I think it is a reflection on all of
us.

Karan Thapar: Let’s come to the issues and the principle that underlie
what I call the Taslima Nasreen story. To begin with, do you view freedom
of speech as an absolute freedom, without any limitations or would you
accept that there are certain specific constraints that we all have to
accept?

Arundhati Roy: It is a complicated question and has been debated often. I
personally, do view it as something that should have no caveats for this
simple reason that in a place where there are so many contending beliefs,
so many conflicting things, only the powerful will then decide what those
caveats should be and those caveats will always be used by the powerful.

Karan Thapar: So you’re saying that given the fact that many people are
vulnerable, freedom of speech for them should have no caveats, it should be
absolute and that’s their only protection?

Arundhati Roy: I think so because if you look at the facts, you have
outfits like VHP or the Bajrang Dal or the CD that the BJP produced during
the UP elections, you see that they do what they want to do. The powerful
always do what they want to do. It is the powerless and the vulnerable that
need free speech.

Karan Thapar: Let’s explore the position that you’re taking – free
speech is an absolute freedom and there should be no limitations on it.
What about the view that by criticising Islam, Taslima has offended beliefs
which for tens of millions of Indians, maybe for hundreds of millions are
sacred? These are beliefs that underlie their dignity and their sense of
identity. Should freedom of speech extend that far as to threaten
people’s sense of themselves?

Arundhati Roy: I don’t believe that a write like Taslima Nasreen can
undermine the dignity of ten million people. Who is she? She is not a
scholar of Islam. She does not even claim that Islam is her subject. She
might have said extremely stupid things about Islam. I have no problem with
the quotations that I have heard from her book. Dwikhandito has not been
translated into English but let’s just assume that what she said was
stupid and insulting to Islam but you have to be prepared to be insulted by
something that insignificant.

Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you some of the things that she said, not
from Dwikhandito, but from an interview she gave to Anthony McIntyre, The
Blanket in 2006. She says, “It’s not true that Islam is good for
humanity. It’s not at all good. Islam completely denies human rights.”
Elsewhere she talks about what she calls the venomous snake of Islam. To me
that sounds as if it goes perhaps beyond a simple critique and into
deliberate provocation.

Arundhati Roy: It sounds like Donald Rumsfeld or some Christian
fundamentalist.

Karan Thapar: And you would rile at him so why not rile at her?

Arundhati Roy: Yeah, but I wouldn’t say ban him or kill him. I would say
what a ridiculous person. What a ridiculous thing. How can you start
reacting to everything like that? We have an infinite number of stupidities
in the world. How can you start having your foundations rocked by every
half-wit?

Karan Thapar: Let’s put it like this, does freedom of speech necessarily
include the right to offend?

Arundhati Roy: Obviously it includes the right to offend otherwise it
wouldn’t be the freedom of speech.

Karan Thapar: But is that an acceptable right in India?

Arundhati Roy: One person’s offence is another person’s freedom.

Karan Thapar: That maybe so in England and America where Western levels of
education have allowed people to hear something offensive without reacting
violently. In India, where the education levels are so disparate, where
religion is so emotionally and passionately held, then if you have the
freedom of speech merging into the right to offend, you end up provoking
people often to violence, sometimes to death.

Arundhati Roy: First of all, I think we have to understand that education
is a very loaded term because modernity is what is creating some of this
kind of radical fundamentalism. And it’s not like traditional India
anymore. In fact, if you look at any studies that have been done, actually
communal riots have increased.

Karan Thapar: Aren’t you evading my point? You’re questioning what is
meant by modernity and education but you and I know that the levels of
sophistication in terms of being able to handle offence to your religion or
criticism of your God vary hugely.

Arundhati Roy: What I am saying is that level of sophistication is far
better in rural areas than urban areas.

Karan Thapar: You mean that rural Indians are better able to take criticism
of Ram or Allah?

Arundhati Roy: If you look at the kind of riots in rural and urban areas,
you’ll see that, historically.

Karan Thapar: Let me give you a specific example. If criticism of Islam by
Taslima Nasreen leads to a situation where people come out and riot on the
streets and there is a real genuine threat that innocent people could end
up killed, what in that circumstance should be the government’s priority
— to defend freedom of speech or prevent the loss of human lives?

Arundhati Roy: I don’t think that’s a choice. I think they have to
protect freedom of speech and do everything that they can to prevent the
loss of human life because here what is happening is that this kind of
right to offend or ‘my sentiments have been hurt’ have become a
business in democratic politics. Let’s say the political parties are
engineering these situations which lead to a loss of life otherwise why
should it be that Dwikhandito has been on the bestseller list for four
years in West Bengal and nothing has happened and suddenly when there’s a
massive march and a massive mobilisation against the CPM, the book suddenly
reappears as insulting people’s faith?

Karan Thapar: So you’re saying mischief makers, manipulators whipped up
sentiments four or five years after the book was published, to deliberately
try and corner Taslima and to create an atmosphere that perhaps worked in
some peculiar way to the advantage of the West Bengal government?

Arundhati Roy: Look at who’s benefiting from it. All the anger about
Nandigram has now suddenly turned to us asking the same state that
criminally killed people in Nandigram to now protect Taslima Nasreen.

Karan Thapar: Are you trying to suggest that perhaps that the West Bengal
government was in some way involved in engineering this incident to deflect
attention from Nandigram to Taslima?

Arundhati Roy: I would say that it would have had a lot to do with it and I
am saying that it is so easy to do these things.

Karan Thapar: When the situation happened, it would have perhaps been
judged as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s dilemma. Perhaps as a poet and author
he felt a need to defend or desire to protect the freedom of speech. As a
Chief Minister, undoubtedly he knew that he had the duty to stop and
prevent the loss of human life. If therefore, by putting pressure on
Taslima Nasreen to leave the state for a while, he was able to save ten or
fifteen lives that would have otherwise been lost on the streets of
Calcutta, did he not do the right thing?

Arundhati Roy: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s the game that they
would like us to play. ‘I did it in order to defend innocent lives.’
But I think there’s a deeper script in the understanding of what is known
as the deep state. I think that this was a provocation that actually could
have ended up creating a loss of lives because, I want to go back to it,
why should it be that for four years that book was on the market and no
lives were lost. Everything is in the timing.

Karan Thapar: So you really do believe, when you use phrases like the deep
state that there was a conspiracy, even though we don’t fully understand
it, to deflect attention from Nandigram to Taslima and to perhaps put her
in a position where under pressure she was forced to leave and the
government didn’t actually have to physically throw her out?

Arundhati Roy: I wouldn’t use the word conspiracy because that sounds
like an intelligence operation and I don’t think that something like this
needs to go as far as a conspiracy but I would certainly say that you need
to examine the timing of this because that’s all we are ever left in
India. No one ever gets to the bottom of anything. It is always like, who
benefits, why did this happen now. I would like to know, why it happened
now.

Karan Thapar: So you’re saying something that’s pretty fundamental.
You’re saying that far more simple —as you did at the beginning— that
the West Bengal government behaved unacceptably. Now you’re saying that
there was almost Machiavellian intent, not a conspiracy but a Machiavellian
intent behind the way they have played this game out?

Arundhati Roy: You are making it sound like I have a very deep insight.

Karan Thapar: No, you have a deep distrust and a huge suspicion.

Arundhati Roy: That’s true but I also know that this is the word on the
street. You don’t need a rocket scientist to figure this out. It is
something that we have seen happening over and over again. It is nothing
new or amazing that’s happening.

Karan Thapar: Let’s turn to the Central Government’s response to
Taslima Nasreen. Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Pranab Mukherjee said
that India would continue extend protection and sanctuary to Taslima
Nasreen and then he added that it is also expected that guests will refrain
from activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments of our people.
How do you respond to that?

Arundhati Roy: It is like being sentenced to good behaviour for the rest of
your life which is a death sentence for a writer. If I had to live
somewhere in those conditions, I would become a yoga instructor or
something. I would give up writing because this is such a nasty thing to
do. Here is a woman who is a Bengali writer. She can’t function outside.
It’s a question of principle anyway. It is not about her, it is about us.
What kind of society are we creating? Sure it’s tough to take the kind of
things she said about Islam but she should be put in her place,
intellectually and otherwise. Not like this where she will become a martyr
to somebody else.

Karan Thapar: When Pranab Mukherjee says that it is expected that guests
will refrain from activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments
of our people, is he in a very real sense giving Muslim fundamentalists a
veto, both over what Taslima can write and say and therefore whether she
can stay in Calcutta?

Arundhati Roy:Who does he mean when he says ‘our people’? Am I included
for example? Because by saying this he certainly hurt my sentiments. You
can’t really match people’s sentiments.

Karan Thapar: You are quite right. ‘Our people’ includes the whole
range of people but I suspect that when he says our people he had those who
we were protesting against Taslima on the streets of Calcutta in mind. Has
he, therefore, given them a veto over what she can write and say, and
therefore a veto over whether she can continue to live in Calcutta?

Arundhati Roy:It is not her. He has taken a veto over all of us. I mean I
have also been told by the Supreme Court that you will behave yourself and
you will write how we ask you to write. I will not. I hope that is extended
to everybody here.

Karan Thapar: Given that Taslima’s case is not a unique case, you’ve
suffered as you said at the hands of the Supreme Court, M F Hussain has
suffered, art students in Baroda have suffered, even people doing cartoons
and satires of Gandhi on YouTube have suffered, are we an intolerant people?

Arundhati Roy: We’re just messy people. Either we have the principle of
free speech or you have caveats that will fill up this whole room and we
will all just be silenced. There will be no art, there will be no music and
there will be no cinema.

Karan Thapar: Are you moving in that direction where caveats to free speech
are becoming so many that there is no freedom to be artistic?

Arundhati Roy: What I am saying here does not matter. I might believe in
this but I know that tomorrow I have to deal with the thugs of the
government, courts of the fundamentalist and everybody else. In order to
live here you have to think that you are living in the midst of a gang war.
So what I believe in or don’t believe in is only theoretical. However,
how I practice is a separate matter. How I survive here is like surviving
amongst thugs.

Karan Thapar: But then the corollary to what you’re saying is very
important. You’re saying that artists, particularly those who see things
differently, particularly those who are stretching out and wanting to be
new and avant-garde, have to contend with the thugs, as you call them, with
the government and the majority that’s trying to push them back.

Arundhati Roy: We do and we will. The thing is that I also don’t expect
to be mollycoddled. I know that we have a fight on our hands and how do we
survive in this gang war. The state is just another gang, as far as I am
concerned.

Karan Thapar: So you’re saying that it is not easy to be different in
India?

Arundhati Roy:Well, it’s challenging and we accept that challenge.

Karan Thapar: What’s your advice to Taslima Nasreen?

Arundhati Roy: I really don’t have any advice. I feel very bad for her
because, let me say this, her’s is actually the tragedy of displacement.
Once, she has been displaced from her home. She has no rights. She is a
guest and she is being treated very badly. She is being humiliated.

Karan Thapar: Arundhati Roy, it was a pleasure talking to you on Devil’s
Advocate.