Whither creative activism

The attack on Salman Rushdie is only one encounter in a wider global war. It took me back many years to an evening at the Oxford University Student Union where Rushdie was invited for a public reading session. He had accepted the invitation then with the sole purpose of defying the fatwa and sending out a clear message that he was coming out of hiding, whatever the consequences. It goes to his credit to come out in the open with guns blazing at fundamentalism, thereby declaring literature to be secular and not sacred. Who could tell that the spectre of fatwa relentlessly hovered nearby, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Advertisement

The attempt to scuttle dissidence and freedom of thought grows in its ferocity day in and day out. The worldwide rage and alarm at the attack on Rushdie underscore the failure of the state to ensure safety to anyone who believes in speaking truth to power, even if it is adversarial to religion or the state. The explosion of ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts has resulted in the deeply disturbing contravention of the essential right to free speech, a value and privilege we should all cherish as citizens of a democracy. “Everyone,” according to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “has the right of freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”

It is an ignominy that the debate on free speech has become fodder for insensitive political gain. Democracy lies anxiously under siege, forbidding creativity and liberal activism to cohabit. We stand at a moment of crisis when the free citizens of the world wonder if the imaginings of their forefathers surging towards the frontiers of liberty have not been scoffed at by the power-hungry state that sanctions indefensible intolerance to overwhelm the world. As Nadine Gordimer wrote to Rushdie soon after the fatwa in 1989, “We return to an age when persecution is tolerated if it is backed by religion.” The charge of “the medieval dogs of war, blasphemy and heresy”, in the words of Rushdie, cannot be used “to shackle and muzzle the human spirit”.

We have come a long way from the early days of the burning of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses to the present state of fear and censorship. Rushdie’s constant advocacy of non-acceptance of any boundaries or irrevocable interpretations has assisted in sabotaging established harmonies, stubborn thinking and institutionalised hegemonies. The very proscription of The Satanic Verses, therefore, amounted to the abrogation of social and moral obligations to the primary principles of debate and tolerance, a tangible scenario of declining democracies and barefaced right-wing populism. The problem screaming at us today is, how long do we endure this condemnation of public acts of memories and resistance to the blind acceptance of religious “truth”? Can burning of books or their outlawing be legitimised through the dispute of preserving an untainted and primeval religious identity or thinking? “The constant reshaping of meaning that the artistic process insists upon,” writes Rushdie, “cannot be surrendered to any gang of policemen, no matter how big their guns.”

At the heart of such shocking acts of violence lies the rise of fundamentalism that finds a common ground across nations in the literal submission to the holy scriptures, with complete faith in the infallibility of hermeneutics, emanating unilaterally from the diktat of religious heads who, in collusion with the political leadership, seek power to create a theocratic nation-state. Any oppositional stand is termed profanity, a crime in the eyes of the state that promptly reprimands as well as executes brutal punishment.

The daily bloodbath of terrorist attacks on innocent civilians is a loud indication of the serious dimensions of the ongoing threat by ideologues who unabashedly use religion to justify the indefensible. The important question to ask here is: what threatens such fundamentalists who are ready to kill for the defence of their religious identity? The answer lies in the construction of groups and versions of the “other” for the purpose of excluding them from the opportunities of welfare schemes, as well as holding them responsible for all social and political disturbances..

The dogmatic or orthodox strain found in every religion cannot be ignored if we have to come to grips with the intricacies of cultural identity and ethnic violence. Yet, the trouble in the world is that the western liberal discourse constructs the idea of the orthodox or superstitious East as a rabidly fundamental entity and thereby ignores the human and humane strengths of the marginalised that indeed have the potential to emerge in their own right. The effects of discrimination, therefore, have a brutal fallout in the hegemonic imposition of one’s views on the other. On the other hand, the recognition of the hybrid nature of all cultures or religions that inherently differ from the fiction of a pure or authentic national religious identity facilitates a more robust integration, resulting in the politics of difference broad-minded enough to alert humanity to a more expansive view of religion that is inherently far from any dogmatic element or a universal moral philosophy. The stereotyping of different religions or minorities assigns to them a dogmatic or bigoted character disregarding their fundamental cosmopolitan nature. The homogenising process itself goes against the very essence of religion that encourages debate and interrogation for the enhancement of knowledge and reason.

Needless to say, Rushdie has always believed in public participation in the affairs of the state, which is the mark of an egalitarian society where open debate and difference of opinion invite the vigorous presentation of opposing viewpoints, enriching our understanding of the challenges we face or the meaningless wars we fight. A collective defence against sectarianism, religious extremism, brutality of war and the terrorism of exclusion has all the moral and intellectual legitimacy within a democracy. When oppression becomes particularly acute, or expectations mostly deceived, people have risen as progressive actors opposing any form of unanimity or mindless obedience. Here lies, according to Rushdie, the “will to hold out against tyranny and vilification and murder: the will to win”.

The more one ponders on the ‘Rushdie Affair’, the more it throws light on the insecurity of religious institutions and political structures that unequivocally take a stand against the freedom of expression as well as refuse to recognise the function of art in upholding civilisations. Barbaric fatwas and extreme positions in the recent debates on freedom of speech only go to show the fragility of the notion of the ‘sacred’. As Rushdie maintains, “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes.”

— The writer taught Cultural Theory at Panjab University