New Delhi: Three panellists who were set to appear in the New York event of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) reportedly gave it a miss over their unwillingness to share the stage with Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) national spokesperson Shazia Ilmi, according to Middle East Eye (MEE).
The panellists who withdrew from the event include authors Marie Brenner and Amy Waldman. Their decision to boycott the event came after several activists and writers had given a call to lodge their protest over the policies of the BJP through their absence at the event. The JLF event was “normalising” Hindutva in the US, the activists had said.
The JLF, which holds events even outside of India, including in New York, drafted Ilmi to take part in a panel discussion on Wednesday, September 14, and also to deliver the keynote address at the closing ceremony of the event. The three-day New York event was scheduled from September 12 to 14.
However, there has been no official word from JLF if the said panellists had actually pulled out of the event. Brenner and Waldman are still listed as speakers on the festival website as of Wednesday. When asked about speakers pulling out of the event, Manash Pratim Deka from JLF New York told MEE, “JLF celebrates the written word and ideas and is representative of diverse views and thoughts.”
However, British-Indian author Aatish Taseer, who is in the know of things, confirmed to MEE that they indeed did.
Taseer said those who had withdrawn were “afraid to make a political statement” since “they have relationships with people in the festival”.
The British-Indian author – whose Overseas Citizen of India card status was revoked in 2019 following his critical article on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Time magazine – said many of the speakers were made to believe that were attending a festival with “respectable, intellectual people with bodies of work behind them”.
Taseer further went on to say that South Asian activists and writers who were aware of the political situation in India had to “be mobilised to explain to participants that ‘these are full-on right-wing ideologues, including card-holding members of the BJP'”.
“These people who are appearing from the New York side who are liberals would never be caught dead with these [BJP] people. So it’s a really, really insidious and sly thing that the JLF leaders have done,” Taseer hit out.
In response, Ilmi, whose presence was objected to, said it represented “intolerance of the worst kind”, but said that “it remains entirely their choice” to stay away from the event.
“And if they are against freedom of expression, of others, or dissenting voices, a voice that is different from theirs [then] they must take a deep, hard look at themselves and examine the hatred and the bias that they have within themselves towards those who represent a different point of view.
“And this entire cancel culture and self-cancel culture that they are bringing to the table represents and smacks of intolerance of the worst kind,” MEE quoted Ilmi as saying.
Taseer further told The Wire in an email, “This is not an open exchange of ideas. What has occurred is that New York intellectuals, avowedly liberal, with long careers and impressive bodies of work behind them, have been blindsided by a gaggle of unpublishable crypto-fascists who – mutatis mutandis – they would not have been caught dead with were they confronted by their American equivalents.”
He added that the “JLF has exploited the natural ignorance that exists between any two societies to win legitimacy for Potemkin intellectuals, while sullying the reputations and outraging the morality of serious people. It’s a fiasco. If your aim is to make fascism palatable, let people know what they’re signing up for.”
Meanwhile, Ugandan writer and academic Mahmood Mamdani, who was also one of the panellists drafted for the event, said he would not skip it. “I have never before considered withdrawing from an event because I objected, however strongly, to the views of a participant – so long as the event itself was not being hijacked by this person or their organisation, thus closing it to opposing or divergent views,” he told MEE.
“My intent is not to normalise the views of those with whom I disagree strongly. My intent is to open up debate, not to close it,” he added. He has been roped in to speak on the nature of the nation-state and the path to a reimagined, decolonised future.
Responding to Mamdani, Suchitra Vijayan of the Polis Project in NYC said, “When India itself is now moving towards becoming an apartheid state, it’s intellectual dishonesty at its worse and deeply saddening for those of us who grew up with his work.”
Taseer too hit out at Mamdani, who often takes a strident position when it comes to Israel, saying that he will have to answer a lot for his position on India.
“You have a party spokesperson that is systematically creating a climate of genocide in a country where the demographics are even more explosive, even more volatile. If Mamdani believes what he believes about Israel, he should have the gumption to take the same position when it comes to India,” Taseer added.
Meanwhile, activists associated with the South Asia Solidarity Initiative (Sasi) and others spoke of holding a protest rally outside the venue in New York against the policies of the Narendra Modi government.
