Political bombshell in literary jamboree

Literary meets, whether salons or festivals, are supposed to be very genteel, cultured and polite affairs. The literary world, which includes publishers, writers, critics and even readers, is small and self-contained; one might even call it incestuous. In India, this universe is even tinier because it is formed of English writers.

Everyone knows everyone in more than one capacity and the caravan moves from one festival to another.
There are some unspoken rules and conventions of this club. Whatever one’s views about a peer, one doesn’t express them in public. One may bitch about the other in a party or over a boozy lunch, but a public lashing out is frowned upon. Even while reviewing a fellow club member’s work, it is best to use anodyne language and euphemisms, because you never know when you might require the other’s help to write a blurb for your book or provide an introduction to an agent.
Girish Karnad, by attacking V.S. Naipaul on stage at a literary festival, broke that code. He used 40 minutes of the hour allotted to him to rebuke the Nobel Prize winner for all kinds of sins of omission and commission. Karnad’s main criticism was that Naipaul was endemically anti-Muslim and that this had informed his work for years. Ergo,
the festival should not have honoured the Trinidadian author with a lifetime achievement award.
This was a bombshell. Not the assessment itself, which is old hat and has been directed at Naipaul for years. Anyone who has read Naipaul’s writing will know his contempt for many things, including Islam and its contribution to history. Indeed, Naipaul has been even nastier in his comments about Africa and Africans, something that has escaped the attention of his many Indian fans. But over the years, he must have got used to all the criticism, so the disapproval of an Indian author would not matter to him. He did not exert himself much to reply to Karnad, except to say something general about the problems with Indian secularism. It was left to his supporters, including Farrukh Dhondy, to stand up for him.
Karnad’s real crime was the venue and platform he used. The festival authorities quickly pointed that out — Karnad, they said, had been invited to speak on theatre but instead chose to wade into Naipaul. How rude that was. It was like belching (or worse) at a party, simply not done. Besides, this was not done by some parvenu, attention-seeking enfant terrible but by someone who is no less patrician and in his own domain, well known and respected. Imagine if such a comment had been made by a politician. It would have been easy to deal with it, because politicians are meant to be ridiculed, even if they have something sensible to say. In Jaipur, the local government got pilloried — rightly — for succumbing to community pressures and banning Salman Rushdie from coming to attend the litfest. But in Mumbai, Karnad was one of our own, stepping out of line and actually raising not a literary point — that would have been fun — but a deeply political one. Engaging seriously with burning political issues is not something that our literary establishment, especially the English one, is known for. The growing number of literary jamborees are more about networking and celebrating success rather than focusing on the troubling questions of the day. Better to have yet another panel discussion on “whither the novel” than “whither India?” Karnad’s comment was more about the latter than the former and therefore was disturbing. It must have made many people squirm.
The sensible way to address Karnad’s comments would have been to throw the floor open to questions about what he said and have a healthy, no-holds barred debate. But, by not letting Dhondy (and presumably others) speak, Karnad lost part of his case. Why not let people challenge your presumptions and pronouncements? The festival officials let Karnad go on and on — he should have shown the same courtesy. This was either nervousness or arrogance, neither of which reflects well on him.
So we were left with the usual television interviews wherein he got more airtime to declaim and denounce, with no one to stand up to him. This was a hit-and-run tactic, not the kind of thing that someone who is part of the “intellectual” in-crowd should have done. Karnad has said he was waiting for many years to say this; in which case, he looks terribly self-absorbed, a man less interested in debate than in venting. Now, with his sweeping comments about the quality of Rabindranath Tagore’s plays (views that many may well agree with), this impression is getting reinforced. An uncharitable view might be that Karnad is enjoying the media limelight.
Yet, by setting this unruly cat among well-behaved pigeons, Karnad has opened a window to the possibility of vigorous debate about larger issues that go beyond narrow literary concerns. The plethora of literary festivals is wonderful and allows readers to see and hear authors. But the purpose should be much more than that. The ban on Rushdie was not just about the Jaipur Litfest and the contretemps in Mumbai was not merely about one writer making digs at another. These are wider questions about today’s India which concern every citizen; writers have a duty to think, write, debate and most of all talk about them. The fact that the discussion takes place on a platform meant for something else is neither here nor there. There is no right place or wrong place for this.
As one writes this, news comes that Karnad has been re-invited for next year’s Mumbai Litfest (to talk about theatre, one reads.) That is good to know. It may indicate that the organisers as well as the wider lit community is ready to look beyond this incident. But it may also show that this was little more than a small stone cast on a placid lake and the ripples have died down. Things will then get back to business as usual. That will be a real pity. It will be great if next year Karnad climbs the podium, takes a deep breath and lets loose about some holy cow or the other.