[Reader-list] i met a Terr(ori)st, and so, understanding...

[inder salim]

We all are mediators, translators.
Jacques Derrida
 " As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention
of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end"   Michel Foucault
does not stop here. He continued writing, and gave us wonderful
insight about the complexities of the times we are living in. So I
intensely feel, that every step we are taking towards 'a tomorrow' is
malicious and therefore, dangerous, and yet we are marching, growing
and flourishing. But this shining world is what Ronald Barthes writes
in his Myth Today :
"The whole of France is steeped in this anonymous ideology: our press,
our cinema, our theatre, our popular literature, our ceremonies, our
Justice, our diplomacy, our conversations, our remarks on the weather,
the crimes we try, the wedding we are moved by, the cooking we dream
of, the clothes we wear, everything, in our everyday life, contributes
to the representation that the bourgeoisie makes for itself and for us
of the relationships between man and the world"
A lucid one for all of us, but let us insist that it is actually about
Europe and America, only. So let us see how Edward Said dares the West
about its indifference to the other.
Said defines Orientalism as first, as style of thought based on an
ontological and epistemological distinction between 'Orient" and
'Occident ' and second, a discourse, a Western style for dominating,
restructuring , and having authority over the Orient. The link between
the two, according to Said, is that Orientalism was fundamentally a
political doctrine willed over the East ( Mashriq ) because it was
weaker than the West- the west then elided the Orient"s difference
with its weakness. In short, as an internally consistent system of
knowledge about the East, Orientalism has always operated as an….
Said, as we all know is a champion of 'the Oriental' and therefore,
gives us a political will to understand our respective 'presents'
without any prejudice to history.
So, without excessive wandering through quotes, I quickly come to the
recent arrest and alleged involvement of Bangalore Doctors in UK car
Bomb thing and the statement made by our PM that he could not sleep on
seeing the weeping mother of the alleged  terr(ori)sts. He instantly
gained sympathy from  Muslims in India and else where.  He was quite
aware of the fact that Hindu Right Wing would spew venom on such
utterings and that actually happened in a copy book style. But the
form of his statement is full of meaning if we don't read this in
relation to our colonial  history. For example, ex-PM Mr. Blair ( now
Catholic )  never said anything like this about Iraq, Afghanistan etc,
because, perhaps they know that they are still Masters. But in India,
we in 'free India' feel what we say is solidly ours. But I quote
Barthes again, " …speech which is restored is no longer quite that
which was stolen: when it was brought back, it was not put in exactly
the same place".  So this way the Myth consumers have exhausted our
free ManMohan Singh's uttering in one go. Saeed Naqvi, our senior
journalist was quite jubilant on TV about PM's humanistic statement.
I wonder, if one can see that Barthe's Negro boy on 1957 Paris Match
magazine has metamorphosed into our humble looking SardarJi. Examples
are slippery and hence mythical. Our PM never said anything like this
when local TV shows Muslim weeping mothers of Kashmir or elsewhere,
because that is not significant in the eyes of our erstwhile colonial
Masters. Let us presume, that he must have said it inwardly, and what
he has said outwardly, he never meant like that. Or he is so
transparent ?
Cant resist. I am applying a little of Maurice Blanchot  to the
understanding of this word TERR(ORI)ST . " A writer never reads his
work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain
face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it'.  So
if the terr(ori)st too is separated from the act itself, then who is
the culprit? Where is the possibility to pin point the crime. The
terr(ori)st himself can not read his own script because it is secret.
If we don't exonerate a terr(ori)st from his so called crimes, then we
have to find a writer guilty too, particularly here, a writer liker
Salman Rushdie. But since both are 'unreadable'  to themselves, and
therefore, free to act and speak. Not surprising that even on the
surface the book 'Satanic Verses' is quite unreadable beyond 50 odd
pages. I found a Derrida lecture on 9/11 thing quite remarkable in the
sense. He attacks the very sound and resists any attempt to enter the
known details associated  with  the sound '9/11'. In science even, we
know that almost every big disease has a gene behind, and every gene
has a deep past. So, I guess if unheard melodies are sweeter in
comparison to those which are heard, then hidden part of the
terr(ori)st must be  uglier than those which are simply visible. Then
he is 'the Devil', and here Iqbal ( the poet )  hints about the secret
understanding between Devil and God? Should I go further, and talk
about how both God and Devil are untraceable entities unless we decide
to give them life, which we invariably do ?

'If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power,
knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason
that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a
considerable cost' . I quoted Focualt again. Are we paying the cost?
If yes, then we deserve to know the accomplishments,  and if not, then
do we need to pay more than what we are paying. The paradox is that
someone who is not a terr(ori)st  can not justify Terr(ori)sm because
that would tantamount to Bad Faith. So I am on a slippery ground, I am
falling and standing up, falling again and moving to nowhere. Don't we
have a great Mahatma Gandhi and a greater Bhagat Singh, here, who
shaped our free India, a free India which is full of Reality Today and
Myth Today. Like many others, I too, am asking a hypothetical question
to  myself: If I was around those Pre-Independence days what side I
might have chosen?  Bhagat Singh's ( the terr(ori)st ) or the (
Non-violent )  Mahatma Gandhi's ?  If there was a choice, the answer
is 50:50. No, perhaps I might have disappeared in the mustard fields
of Punjab rather than spinning cotton in Sabarmati Ashram. Who knows,
the mind is so unpredictable. The third possibility is that  both
'BhagatSingh-ism '  and ' Gandhi-ism ' have lost their relevance in
our times. Things have perhaps moved, and yes to a reality which is
too vast to shrink and reveal itself to our curious minds, let alone
this little passage on the crutches of quotes.
So within this Myth Today, and myth past,  I yearn to understand
'violence', and it is not surprising that there is no single answer
and each answer is imperfect. If indifference towards 'the other' has
generated grievances, which remained unaddressed for hundreds of
years, then the very word 'grievance' looks like a swollen range of
mountains. An inwardly structured strange range of untroddenness which
is tunneled and deep and hence unpredictable. People living on this
imaginary mountain are constantly under threat and under a constant
danger of losing their paths back to the point where they started.
They go crazy and blow themselves up and others in frenzy. Ironically
this language too has been donated to them by the very system of
indifference(s).
Don't we live in a system that catches a petty thief in a bus who is
first mercilessly beaten and then  handed over the police for months
without a support, and finally labeled as a criminal for ever in the
police stations in comparison to a  fake medicine maker who can
extract an instant bail from the courts under the existing structure
of Laws; given the fact that we have more than 20000 crore industry of
fake medicine making in India.  No wonder that most of the people
refrain from direct stealing, but prefer the safe procedures to
contaminate products and play havoc with the health of others. There
are ample examples which point to one big thing and that is the State
is generating power for the already powerful, and thus, a system,
which is inherently manipulative.
I need to go back to Michel Focault,  " The strategic adversary is
fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday
behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very
thing that dominates and exploits us." So before, I point out a finger
towards the other, I need to look into my own heart and begin  afresh,
re-examine my inferences and draw fresh conclusion.
But once again, please see the image by Gilbert & Geroge , if not
attached then click http://indersalilm.livejournal.com . There are
only men in it; and as we know, women are mostly out of  G&G
phenomena. But, the image has a good Muslim presence in the back
ground. The head and hands of Artists are blood red.  Or, are they?
Here , I am applying a little Susan Sontag whose 'against
interpretation' thing is well known, and equally her disgust with the
imposing West over the non-West. Has 'the blood- red' on the hands of
two artists anything to do with the recent West versus Muslim
conflicts. G&G in their book write " We like the Indians very much ".
They were frequent visitors to an Indian Family in their Bangladeshi
neighbourhood. So, in that sense one can say that they were quite
conscious about the use of red in an area which was predominantly
occupied by non-white people.
Faisal Devji in his remarkable book Landscapes of Jihad emphasizes
about this metaphoric blood and real blood on the hands of those who
are at the helm of Foreign Affairs of the West.  He argues about the
inevitability of violence in the present scheme of things. He argues
that real Sufis of our times are motivated by Al-Qaeda's agenda who
are quite focused on the issues, which will finally restore 'ethics'
and even bring all environmentalists on a single platform. However,
another writer from Middle east ( cant recall his name) criticizes
Al-Qaeda and puts Hizobllah high on the map. Both the writers however,
point out the insignificance of  'fundamentalism' in future form of
terr(ori)sm, which is quite explicit in the present crude form of
Jihad.
There are many uneven outlines in the Faisal Devji's book, however,
both the writers have failed to point out the exclusion of feminism in
their propaganda of Jihad. This is certainly a war like situation
where there is no space for any other imperative such as feminism or
environmentalism. The 'feminine' is perhaps a deep subjective
discourse only, but on the limits of 'out there' one often comes
across a very bodily presence of gender, even. 'One of the biggest
problems with the modern feminist movement is its failure to bring men
along with us'. This quote is by Tammy Bruce. This squarely means that
stupid Men have been allowed to do whatever they want to do. The
result is war and terrorism. So the resultant failure of both Men and
Women.  But who is listening, anyway.
Before I being to know a little more about this 'feminine' in the
Orient,  I want to convince myself that indeed terr(ori)sm has a
limited scope.  Terr(ori)sts explicitly use to convey 'bodies' of
'others' as primary alphabets, but they use their own bodies if they
realizes some incoherence within. They write a script for themselves
and for unmarked (innocent) victims. The ink is 'blood' and therefore,
a monochrome on the political canvas. The form almost changes but the
content remains static. The wet and costly alphabets from the pen of a
terr(ori)st will often fail to match the gun of a writer if it was not
 for the vulgarity of the bourgeoisie-media and the hidden interests
of the West to sustain these painful scripts.
Now a big jump: I had a personal encounter with a terrorist ( now dead
), but before that I want to lift a little fragment from Guattari
Reader about a London Psychiatry of 1965. Mary Barune's Trip as we
know by the title of the chapter. This is how Mary ( the patient )
expresses " when I got the idea of a breast, a safe breast, I could
suck without being stolen from myself.  Nothing could hold me back…
When Jeo ( Deo Bearke , the Doctor ) put his finger into my mouth he
was saying to me, ' Look, I can come into you without controlling you,
possessing you, stealing you " . She later on painted her madness on
the canvas. She freed herself.
Yes, the Terr(ori)st, I met him during  fall 1990.  When I introduce
myself as ' this indersalim stuff from Kashmir… with love', I also
include this meeting with the terrorist in it.  Here, I quickly
realize that everything can not be talked about in this brief passage,
so… He was a little drunk and perhaps armed inside ( pharen, the
Kashmiri garment ). It was the crowded Jewel Chowk in Jammu when he
suddenly hugged me from behind. I could not believe my eyes, as he was
so transformed with a strange confident gesture: simply walked in
through my eyes. His father a butcher by profession, my good
neighbour, a school drop out, hair all red ( kachru ) , so prominent,
un forgettable- that face. He immediately tried to offer me money (
nearly Rs.10000) with a word of sympathy because of our migration from
Kashmir. The most surprising thing was that he wanted to take action
against those errant Dogra Hindus in Jammu who might have troubled me
in Jammu.  I had to clam him down. The moment was so intense that I
can hardly write down the details of that brief beautiful moment. He
left me alone and moved into a crowd which has not changed till date.
Now the question is who was He? Let me name him Mr. T  Just another
terr(ori)st ? May be for the reader and for 'the state', but for my
personal being, things are quite removed from the obvious.  What kind
of a personal trust there was, untold and beyond what is boldly
written on the political atmosphere of our times. If he had asked that
evening for a shelter, I might have invited him to come to my home.
Lines in between are blurred, and describe a situation which might
have caused a redefinition of an individual. Who knows what would have
happened if we had kissed that evening. I am constantly thinking about
him. His agenda of an Independent Kashmir might have melted down and
given way to a new 'self'.  But he was already a new self. That moment
has certainly changed me, and must have changed him as well. He had
the courage to extend his warm hand to someone who is Indian and had
to flee from the valley because of this label.  How this can happen
within the first few months of Kashmir movement. Now that he is dead,
I ask myself what his madness achieved? This whole exercise of
understanding ' a terr(ori)st  must be because of that meeting as
well. But the reader can easily see, how I look like a little shadow
of a Jeo ( the Doctor of Mary the patient ), who is merely documenting
Mary's Trip. I guess, latest psycho-analysis has merged much of the
Doctor with the much of Patient in such a way that any documentation
automatically isolates itself against that blend. I have a
metaphysical relation with  Mr.T and even now, I see his face, calm
and smiling with now crowd around. Just him and me.
There is whole lot Kashmiri Sufi poetry which one can quote in
fragments to describe this phenomena which enabled Mr. T to keep those
altruistic elements intact. Mr. T is eternal in this sense; and not
surprising that  Jean Genet was inspired to write monumental text on
the Palestine issue because of such encounters with freedom fighters
that time.
However, there is one couplet by Ghalib which I love to quote to
understand the Arab, a synonym of desert in terms of civilization.
Nafsay Kais, ki hay chashmay Chirogo Sahra. The poet describes Kais (
equivalent to West's Romeo )  as someone who is the eye and light of
the deserts. The word 'Nafas' includes the empirical side of love as
well as spiritual. In the second succeeding part of the couplet,
Ghalib talks about the contentment of civilization by pushing the
symbolic significance of love of Kais with Laila ( night )  in the
Culture of Arab.  Kais, the lover failed but the poet is content,
because the contribution of a great lover to a society certainly
survives to perform the function of a light and of an eye for the
generations to follow.
At best, 'the violence' has a limited scope, deep down every body
knows. Paradoxes are immensely equipped to squeeze us push us time and
again like swamps do when we  wriggle to come out.  I look drained,
and even feel the insignificance of quotes employed  to push the
meaning.  A different dynamics takes over, every time…you know…




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