Sunday 5 January 2014

A literature festival and a call for a postnational South Asia



[A final version of this is published as 'Talking Literature' in EPW, 28 Dec 2013, p.142)

For years now, many of us including this writer have written opinion articles pleading for a federation or a EU like structure in South Asia with open borders across India and Pakistan. It was nice to be reinforced on these lines being in the audience for the Hri Research Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, a unit of the Kathmandu-based Himal Sothasian magazine, session on trans-National writings across South Asia in Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF). The session hosted Kanak Dixit, editor of Himal, Babar Ayaz and Mira Hashmi from Pakistan, Farrah Ghuznavi from Bangladaesh and Ashok Ferry from Sri Lanka. There were other sessions hosting writers from the different countries of South Asia, including one with Nighat Gandhi, who claims a multi-National identity.

To be honest, I have always wondered why the lit-fests are not called the city-English-lit-fests. Typically, these have a couple of sessions in what is now called 'Bhasha' (BLF was pleasantly better than the typical with several sessions on Kannada poetry, literaure and also other languages like Tulu, etc.) and otherwise mostly it is a show by the Englishwallahs for the Englishwallahs, the ones with the burden of looking modern and yet carrying the remnant provincial feudal values on their shoulders and living under the illusion that just because they share the English language with so many others across the globe, they have a global character. But then being only marginally away from them, I go to these melas and end up finding something or other that makes me feel good. The HRI session conducted by Laxmi Murthy was one such thing. Kanak started with referring to the post-national South Asia (Shivam Vij recently wrote an article on the idea at http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta3/tft/article.php?issue=20130927&page=9d, wondering if it should be called pre-nationalism), and he strongly argued that we need to look beyond the lived half-century of Nationalism in South Asia. The session was mostly on writing, focussing more on the increasing set of names from the non-India parts of South Asia, as Laxmi put it. Then as usual there was some talk about writing in Bhasha and about translations (Navanita Dev Sen from the audience pleaded for awards for translators). The day before, the well-known poets and critics Ashok Vajpeyi, K. Satchidanandan and others had nearly exhausted the Bhasha issue. I wondered if these were enough to take us to post-national South Asia scenario.

There is a measured silence in most discourses on development and politics in South Asia on the impact of military expenditure in subverting development efforts. In India, there are the usual arguments, with Pakistan and China around you, how can you cut down on defense. Similar arguments prevail in Pakistan and China. In a recent analysis, published in this magazine, of the National budget and military expenditure, Gautam Navlakha points out that 19% of the budget is spent on defense. This is, of course, what is revealed. There are expenses like maintaining the intelligence agencies, the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons and secret purchase deals of highly expensive modern conventional weaponry, etc., which are not subject to audit and are not revealed to public eyes. Compare that with the near 10% on education and similar amount on health-care. Is it really possible to have any meaningful development without diverting funds from the military? And without an educated aware people, is it possible to counter elements of jingoism? The answer to both these questions is no and hence 'post-National South Asia' remains an unfulfilled dream. The writers can only do their bit but the material realities of an insane world are far too overwhelming.

So the writers told us about realities that are common to the entire subcontinent. Kanak Dixit asked for 'the courage to critique one's own state and ... to have empathy for the other states'. Farah Ghuznavi, while talking of difficulties in publishing a book in the USA, mentioned the family as the only social service agency available to deal with mental health patients. The context was about the pressures from publishers to change her writing – one publisher wanted her to talk about mental health services in villages in her novel, and she refused because none exist, and the publisher then refused to publish her book. Babar Ayaz's book 'What is wrong with Pakistan' was released during the HRI session, and talking of the defects of the Nation-state Pakistan and the terrorism in and beyond Pakistan, he also mentioned the Hindutva and the Sinhalese chauvinism. Laxmi Murthy rightly asked when will we write a book titled 'What is wrong with India'. Mira Hashmi, in words full of wit and humour talked of the love for Hindi cinema. There was a lot of cinema talk in the fest including the presence of the great Gulzar himself.

To meaningfully talk of a post-National South Asia, we need to raise our voices against expenses in South Asia on external and internal security heads. Our arguments are simple. The territorial disputes have to be resolved by negotaitions. We can use the international bodies, the United Nations and the international courts and agree to come to terms. Once settled, with GPS and what not, there could be a permanent open border surface trade between India and China all the ensuing benefits. Perhaps the situation with Pakistan is more difficult. And yet, there are multiple solutions, if only there is a desire to seek them. For instance, consider a twenty-five year moratorium on arms in Kashmir followed by a referendum for a free Kashmir. In the mean time, a UN peace-keeping force can monitor the situation. Perhaps with open borders the Kashmiris will agree to live the way they are today, a part in India and a part in Pakistan. Perhaps they will seek a unification of the severed body and independence. In any case, with open borders like acoss the several countries in EU, it hardly matters how the administration is managed. Living within a 'National' paradgm, this will never make sense. But then how do we counter the jingoism, the 'Kashmir hamara avichhinn ang hai' rant! One way to do that is to demand significantly higher levels of investment in quality education and a far greater emphasis in education on theory of knowledge acquisition, and the ability to distinguish prejudiced beliefs from justified true beliefs. Granted that education per se is no guarantee that jingoism will disappear but education is certainly a requirement. Not sufficient but a necessary condition. Where will the money for such investments come from? There is no alternative to reclaiming what is lost to militarism. An often asked question is 'does China spend any less on military?' No, they spend more, but that is for the Chinese people to fight against. And is there any reason to doubt that there are as many pacifists in China as anywhere else on the planet! Besides, the human development indices for China are more than a few decades away for us to catch up with.

Back to the question of English, I wonder what would be the probability of Babar Ayaz turning up here if his book was written in a Pakistani zubaan? Very little, really. Such is the nature of these fests. Living in times when translations sell in no less numbers than the original, it is a shame that there are so few translations available. Aiyaz Sahib was very happy to learn from me that for more than my life time, transliterated versions in Devnagari of the likes of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Firaq Gorakhpuri have been available for us to read. It was nice to see that in spite of speaking in fluent Hindustani, Gulzar probably drew the largest audience. But then it is not literature alone, but much more the cinema connection that brings people to him.

Shabnam Virmani and her co-performer Vipul of the Kabir project fame ended the festival and that indeed was a gala event. A soulful evening in the open space of that otherwise far from literary Crowne Plaza warmed up the Deccan chill.