Yesterday, we were sent an email from the organisers of Harud, the Kashmiri literature festival, announcing the indefinite postponement of the event.
…Born out of the best intentions to platform work of emerging and established writers in Kashmir, the festival has been hijacked by those who hold extreme views in the name of free speech.
(You can read the full text of the release at Nilanjana Roy’s blog, here.)
I was surprised to see this, since the Harud-related conversation I had been following, while passionate and non-conciliatory, had hardly been “extreme.” For those unfamiliar with the situation, it arose from criticism of Harud’s motives and institutional links, initially voiced by authors like Mirza Waheed and Basharat Peer, who stated that they would not attend a festival that, to them, flew in the face of the history of repression in the state, and seemed to normalise the social-political situation in Kashmir. An open letter, dated August 25, said:
Even as the reality on the ground is one of utter abnormality and a state of acute militarisation and suppression of dissent, rights and freedoms.
We would firmly support the idea of a literary/artistic festival in Kashmir if we were convinced that its organising was wholly free from state interference and designs, and was not meant to give legitimacy to a brutal, repressive regime.
(Read the whole open letter, signed by Peer, Mirza and 213 other signatories at the time of writing, here. To see early concerns raised about the festival, read a a report in The Guardian).
In response to the open letter, the organisers sent out a press note on Saturday, August 27, that suggested that they were fully willing to grapple with these concerns:
We wish to categorically state that the Harud literature festival is not government sponsored. It has been conceived with the intent of creating a platform for free and open, debate, discussion and dialogue through contemporary narratives, literary fiction, poetry and theatre.
The festival aims at showcasing writing in Urdu, Kashmiri, Dogri and English from the region and other parts of India. …We seek support for the spirit of the festival which is plural, inclusive and aims to be a platform for free speech and expression.
Having followed this thread along to this point, I was perplexed, and a little upset, to see the organisers imply that Harud’s cancellation was provoked by the fact that their critics held “extreme views,” were cutting off avenues of expression for other Kashmiris, and basically Hated Our Freedoms. (I have read no statements by any of the signatories of that open letter that said so; Rahul Pandita’s statement of support for Harud in this story in Dawn also suggests otherwise). While Peer and Mirza were quoted in The Guardian report as refusing to attend, it would be difficult to expand this to a call for a “movement to boycott the festival.”
But even if there were a movement to boycott Harud, I asked, how could it be equated to an explicit effort to shut the festival down? If the organisers thought that “those opposing the festival” should have “allowed this forum to go ahead and [expressed] their dissent at the festival” — then why not keep the festival on, and engage with their concerns? How could a peaceful interrogation of the festival’s principles be equated with a “denial of free speech” to those not part of a “vocal minority”? Surely the only way to deny speakers at the festival a chance to air their views would be to — cancel the festival?
The Harud organisers’ cancellation statement goes on to state:
With many authors voicing their concerns about possible violence during the festival due to the heightened nature of the debate, and a call for protest at the venues, we neither have the desire to be responsible for yet more unrest in the valley nor to propagate mindless violence in the name of free speech. We are therefore left with little alternative but to cancel the festival for now.
This amazed me. Then I discovered, thanks to Sonia Faleiro, that “concerns about possible violence” came from a Facebook group — it’s linked in her tweet — calling, indeed, for a boycott of Harud, predicated on the (totally inaccurate) rumour that Salman Rushdie was invited to the festival. The organisers flat-out denied any links or invitations extended to Rushdie in their August 27 note (and there’s a whole other argument about defending free speech and the rights of artists there), but this Facebook group, apparently populated by young men, was full of updates relishing the idea that a) Rushdie was going to be at Harud and b) they and their compatriots would have a chance to do bad things to him.
Having discovered this, it became easier to understand the abrupt cancellation of the festival. In a Newtonian way, everything has its hate group on Facebook these days, but the decision on when online vitriol crosses the border into an actual physical threat is the organisers’ to make, and ours to respect. I’m sorry that the hate exists and condemn it.
I continue to be puzzled by the conflation of a “vocal minority” questioning Harud, and “the enemies of free speech” trying to keep cultural expression to themselves, as I read it in the organisers’ statement.
Conflations and counter-conflations of criticism with censorship form a hall of mirrors that seem to distort every discussion about cultural expression in India lately. It amazes me that an objection, even a strong objection, even an objection couched in a call to boycott some aspect of culture, is considered the same thing as clamping down on that culture. The right to free speech also includes the right of others to object to that speech. Failing to recognise that is the other side of the coin whose face we see every time a political outfit bans a book because they have heard that it insults someone’s sentiments.
My own island paradise of 18 million is having a literature festival later this year. As I paged wearily through the puerile threats to Rushdie’s life on that Facebook page, I found them familiar. Time was when all it would take to shut down a festival in Mumbai would be for its resident critics of Rohinton Mistry to hear a rumour that an author they disliked was coming to town.
The difference is that in Bombay, an appeal for police protection would just be an appeal for police protection. As Peer and Mirza would explain, that is not the case in Kashmir.
