Of Gods and Men: The JLF story (Rushdie, Hari Kunzru, Amitava Kumar, Satanic Verses)

[Published in Book Link, Feb 2012 issue -- forthcoming]



Hari Kunzru, JLF 2012

 When Amitava Kumar began the session with Hari Kunzru at Durbar Hall packed to capacity on 20th January, he began with the declaration that they were going to start the discussion about gods and men, but slightly different kinds of god and different kinds of men.

The confirmation of Salman Rushdie’s cancelled visit to Jaipur had  had a predictable impact on all author-participants. Most of them were livid at the organizers’ ‘pusillanimity’ at allowing a handful of religious conservatives to get away with murder – almost literally. To express their solidarity with the victim, Amitava and Kunzru then began to read out certain lines from the Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s contentious book, unfortunately, still banned in India.

They had barely read out about four lines, and were commenting upon the beauty of Rushdie’s prose when the festival director, Sanjoy Roy, stepped in broke the trance – a trance created by those simple four lines of Rushdie’s exquisite prose that made no reference to religion.

Sitting in the front row, bang opposite the speakers when they started, my first thoughts were about what must be going through the minds of all the audience sitting in the same hall. While most had cheered the move with an ear-defying applause, there were some who’d come particularly for Kunzru and not Rushdie and weren’t happy about it. Regardless, the atmosphere was electric for those few moments. There was that unexpected excitement at being allowed a glimpse into what had so far been unfamiliar and forbidden, accompanied by various notches of tension at the same privilege. And, with Sanjoy Roy’s intervention at that juncture, the same performance suddenly somersaulted to low-voltage and did not pick up again for the rest of the session though both the brilliant authors sitting at the helm tried their best to recreate the magic. Sadly, they had to make their quick exits soon after, fearing arrest.

It would be pointless to deny, the organizers’ stance notwithstanding, that this year’s JLF has been revolving around the Rushdie sun. The forced cancellation of his visit perhaps lent more weight to words like dissent, censorship, absolute freedom of expression, strategic silence, oppression and, more importantly, ‘Talibanization of Literature’ and ‘cultural fundamentalism’ – topics mentioned, skimmed over, or chewed upon – in almost all the sessions across the venues or genres.

A session titled ‘Creativity, Censorship, and Dissent’ with participation from well-known writers such as Tahmima Anam, Siddharth Gigoo, Prasoon Joshi, Charu Nivedita, Cheran, moderated by Shoma Chaudhury of Tehelka, took up these very threads on day two of the festival. Ironically, the discussion threw up the interesting idea that in present-day India, there isn’t enough subversive or provocative writing happening. No boundaries being pushed; no power structures being questioned, even by serious writers. Authors have begun to play it safe. And, indeed, it may be true that ours has become a land of the Lotus Eaters – a worrying fact for those who still feel that Literature has a rationale and purpose to serve beyond entertainment.

In Rushdie’s case in particular, two issues have inadvertently, if inevitably, been fused together – hurting or offending sentiments of some members of a certain clan (by allowing a certain author to attend the festival), and ‘illegal activity’ as a form of protest (i.e., reading a couple of lines from his banned book).

With regard to the former, another question strikes me: What about the sentiments of the other party? Do they count for nothing? And, as far as the latter case in concerned, much has been said and written about censorship and book banning by all of us already.

Shoma had a significant observation to make – that the majority of the people so passionately supporting the ban of Satanic Verses haven’t even read the book, but then so haven’t the majority of the people opposing it.

And yet many amongst them would have liked to, but were never allowed an opportunity simply because someone else had already made the decision for them without ever bothering to consult them about the matter. What is that if not an arbitrary act? What is it if not a dictatorship of sorts that allows no voice to the other?

The intelligentsia was open to a face-to-face discussion/debate with the ‘hurt’ party. Most rued the fact that the offended party wasn’t willing to engage in one. It was a deliberate and obdurate opaqueness no one could penetrate, and the state government went along with them.


Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru: JLF 2012


At one point during the discussion, Tahmima Anam, whose novel, The Good Muslim appeared last year, condemned censorship. She said, ‘There is no Muslim community, but many Muslim communities.’ And, to elucidate her point, she mentioned a magazine in the UK called The Critical Muslim that has been started by one such community to discuss/debate/challenge differences in ideologies, views, and beliefs, by various intellectuals/philosophers/thinkers. 

Of late the issue of censorship has risen again and again in different contexts, whether it’s Rushdie's work or Taslima Nasreen’s, Lelyveld’s book on Gandhi, or Ramanujan’s essay.

Yes, Section 19 (1) (A) of the Indian Constitution allows freedom of speech, and then perhaps immediately qualifies it. It’s somewhat like being taught ‘the more the merrier’ while simultaneously being warned about what too many cooks do to the broth. As Cherian pointed out, the responsibility that accompanies freedom cannot be legislated or ‘constitutionalized’. In spite of modernization and paradigm shifts in modern thought, even today authors can either opt for ‘strategic silence’ and play it safe in their writings; choose to go into exile before they call a spade a spade; or simply articulate dissent when and where they are and risk getting killed.

It is shameful indeed that the world’s largest democracy cannot stand by its own people.

Why are we still banning books?

(Published as 'In Defence of Books' in The Hindu Literary Review -- June 5, 2011: http://www.hindu.com/lr/2011/06/05/stories/2011060550210500.htm )

So Great Soul, the mahatma’s new biography by Joseph Lelyveld, happens to be the latest entrant in the Indian hall of ‘shame’ following a whole series of other books, the recent ones including Jaishree Mishra’s Rani, and Rohinston Mistry’s Such a Long Journey. A little earlier, OUP had to face the music for Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India (2003); and Penguin’s publication of Mitrokhin archive II saw huge demands for bans from outraged political parties as well as anonymous phoned-in threats (2005)

.

Yes, this list doesn’t feature several other ‘confusibles’, objectionables, and unmentionables that suffered the same fate in the land of free speech. The most controversial was, of course, Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (hammered for sacrilege); and Nabokov’s Lolita is still on the barred-books list.

Some of the bans were lifted later. Great Soul, however, has been banned in Gujarat, labelled as ‘insulting’, since it talks about Gandhi’s possible liaison with a part-German part-Jewish man. The ban has been met with severe criticism by general readers (and non-readers), authors, and academics all over India and abroad.

One passionate and incisive voice recently rose in The Book Beast, saying that ‘The latest controversy over Gandhi's sexuality ignores his true legacy as the ultimate symbol of Indian manhood.’ This was Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger. ‘This grinning old man with the missing teeth had been sent to jail by the British again and again: but he had never been broken. If this wasn’t manliness, what was?’

‘Come on, India. Grow up!’ said Shobha De in her column. ‘If the Great Soul was indeed attracted to another man, is that so hard to accept or understand? Which century are we living in?’

I agree with both Adiga and De here as, I’m sure, most of the new generation of Indians does.

Rani, Jaishree Mishra’s historical fantasy, was similarly banned by the UP government sometime back, because the book depicted the queen’s more human aspect, presenting her as a woman who believed in love rather than war.

The point is – it’s not about Gandhi, or Lakshmi Bai, or others who share the pedestal. And it is not about being ‘insulted’.  To begin with there was no offence intended, and none taken – at least not by the majority of mature, adult Indians when these books were released.

It is bizarre that we, grown-up people in our own democratic sphere, even need to come up with such arguments in the defence of books that perhaps reveal a different (but plausible) dimension of these luminaries. They make them more complex, more intriguing, more real; in a word – more human.

Why do the lawmakers insist upon such an apotheosis of these figures that they lose their humanness altogether? Instead of inspiring awe and deference, they are reduced to 2-D characters most people begin to look upon with contempt.

For instance, Adiga points out in the same article, ‘Stamped on our currency notes, embossed on government notices, framed on the walls of our police stations, Gandhi’s face is now as an instrument of social control. This is why many young men – and I was one of them – regard Gandhi with something like hatred.’

It is easy to understand and empathise with that. We belong to the same generation – the generation that was taught to see and think 3-D. The angst is about a set of conservative and tunnel-visioned lawmakers trying to drill into us what is good or bad, allowing us no say in the matter.

To see the list of books banned in India, you need go no further than Wikipedia. The list and the reasons for most bans are amazing, with the exception of a few (threat to national security being a relevant example).

The reasons cited broadly fall into three categories – (perceived) blasphemy, insult, and obscenity. The question is: who decides what’s blasphemous, insulting, or obscene?

It becomes an even more significant question now since India’s been going through a transition phase for about a decade and a half. Indian culture itself has changed fifteen times over in the last fifteen years.

Divorce is no longer a taboo subject. Women no longer believe in the pati-parmeshwar customs. MTV has not only survived, but continues to thrive. Post section- 377, attitudes to homosexuality have changed. Plus, people can download all the hard porn they want from the Net; children happily watch adult reality shows; You-Tube beats edited news videos; and the virtual world has destroyed all boundaries. One could extend this contrail here, but the point has been made.

When it comes to books, what do the lawmakers fear? Moral corruption? Violence? Sentiments being hurt? Then they should be barking up the right tree!

When they choose to ban these books, aren’t they being rather presumptuous? They believe for instance that a huge majority of the population reads/buys books; that the people who buy these books actually read /analyse them; that those who do analyse them get corrupted/ motivated enough to act against the state. (Most of those who do make the grade are academics and literateurs by the way, denied the opportunity to even discuss/debate the subject.)

A populace that read so much would be any Indian publisher’s dream. Unfortunately, we’re talking about a country where a fraction of the whole population is educated, and a fraction of a fraction reads for pleasure. A fraction of them spends on books. And, forget not, some out of that fraction have books on their shelves simply because their interior designer thought they would go well with the décor in their drawing room.

What, therefore, does a book ban achieve?  Unwarranted rules have scourged modern-day India enough, clamping the freedom of educated adults. Will it take another Anna, and another revolution, to convince the lawmakers that we, the people, have the right to make our own judgements?

***

Publishers have a Right to Protect their Territory: 2(m) – Parallel Importation, Copyright Law, and More

(Published by Indo-Asian News Service; March 11, 2011 [2m debate]: 

http://www.sify.com/news/publishers-have-right-to-protect-their-territory-comment-news-national-ldllkliieij.html,
http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5020742,
http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/Publishers-right-protect-ians-2393629535.html?x=0)


Orig:

The proposed copyright amendment bill, 2010, contains a proviso  2(m) stating that ‘a copy of a work published in any country outside India with the permission of the author of the work and imported from that country into India shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy’. 

The proposal has thrown the publishing industry in India out of gear, giving rise to heated debates between publishers and a coterie of  IPR lawyers (in favour of an abstract theory of what they think copyright should rightfully be) on various forums – newspapers and online, turning them into blog warriors overnight.

Though they were not consulted in detail, towards the later stages publishers have made representations to the powers that be. However, they have seen neither engagement nor any detailing of the reasoning. Ironically, it seems to be the lPR lawyers generating the debates, but discount everything their interlocutors have to say, with remarkable callousness and no verification.

True they are not the lawmakers; and true too that they have no concrete evidence to buttress the claims they’ve been making. The publishers don’t really need to counter them, but are doing so only so that people will not be misled by warped ideas and theories.

This inherent ‘because-we-say-so’ attitude from these lawyers in any conversation so far has been rather irksome, especially since they are so blatantly blind to facts and deaf to logic. Some gross misconceptions:

• The authors will benefit (because we say so)
• The remainders will not flood the market (because we say so)
• Exports will not be affected (because we say so)
• Publishers are resistant to competition (because we say so)
• Publishers are being protectionist (because we say so)
• All publishers are villains; they offer a raw deal to their authors  (because we say so)
• Parallel importation will bring down the prices of books (because we say so)
• This must be about foreign publishers gaining (because we say so)

These men are ‘not convinced’ by the publishers’ arguments simply because they refuse to be convinced. We seem to be pitted against legal jargonauts and amazing new levels of jargonautery every day. And, ironically, it’s the publishers who’re accused of being ‘sanctimonious’.  

There are two levels where 2m poses a problem: parallel imports, and parallel exports. The way the clause has been worded, the meaning is ambiguous. One set of lawyers believes allowing parallel importation does not imply allowing parallel exportation as well. The other set of lawyers believes it does.

And, if that happens, it’ll be a huge blow to educational textbooks, most of which are marked down by 70-90% especially for India, while trade books are marked down by 30-35%. At the moment there is an illegal trickle of low-priced-editions (LPEs) to the US and the UK (the countries that license these special editions to Indian companies).

Abroad, educational textbooks are sold by a more scattered network ranging from campus stores to wholesalers, to jobbers, to a large chunk online. The huge price differential (cost arbitrage) incites leakage – both here and there. It’s against the law in the UK and US, so the original publishers can sue the people infringing, once they find them.

If this law is passed, the trickle will become a flood because it’ll legalise this activity. A catastrophe really, because those countries will certainly not welcome LPEs of their own titles into their own territories. And, even if they find the infringing editions, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it because it would be legal in India.

So – they’ll do the easiest thing. They’ll simply cancel the licences to India.

Who’s the loser here?

No, they will not make the effort to do an edition for India directly, simply because it’s not worth the effort. The Indian market on an average is still only 2-3% of any major foreign educational publisher. Why would they jeopardise their home market for the sake of a 2-3% Indian market? Pearson UK is already threatening to do that if this law takes effect.

And, oh, we know what the lawyers will say – yet again!

‘It will not happen (because we say so).’

The fact is it will, in spite of all their claims.

There is a certain difference between protection and protectionism. The publishers are well within their rights to protect their territory. All the ‘competition’ is already here. Infringing editions do not qualify as ‘competition’.

A jaundiced view is a travesty of justice, fairness, and democracy the lawyers and policymakers claim to uphold.   

***

Book Link cover story (and editorial): Why hurry on copyright law? 2m should be reciprocal, says BJP

(With permission from) Book Link (March 2011 issue)

Why hurry on copyright law? 2m should be reciprocal, says BJP

Will this budget session of Parliament take up consideration and passing of the copyright amendment bill 2010? Although the standing committee of HRD has given its opinion enabling the government to take up a stand, there are various facets that need to be debated.

 A number of parliamentarians, including the main Opposition, hold that there is a need to rethink since the proposed amendments have failed to satisfy the section it wishes to address. The standing Committee chairman, Oscar Fernandes, preferred not to commit either way. “We have done our work and now it is up to the minister to accept or reject or put it for discussion in the House,” he said.

 Expressing his reservations, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar, who is also a member of the standing committee, said, “It has many faults and no stakeholders are happy. HRD committee has listened to all the stakeholders, their suggestions, details and recovery. It will be good, if their suggestions and claims are accepted.” However, uncertain about the future events, he said, “I don’t know whether our recommendationswill be accepted, unless new bill comes we won’t be able to comment.” 

“The basic point is the interest of our authors and the Indian publishing industry. It would be unjustified and unethical to succumb to the pressure of international business interests and lobbyists. Indian publishing industry and authors should get the level playing field enjoyed by their foreign counterparts”, Amitabh Sinha, head of the BJP intellectual cell and a member of the party’s national executive, said. Why should we show our haste, he asked.

While there is awareness about how the bill could impact the film industry (the main reason for the amendment) not much has been spoken about its adverse fallout on the book industry. Experts in the publishing industry have slammed the original bill as well as recommendations of the parliamentary standing committee as something that would give a lethal blow to Indian publishers, authors and book lovers.

 Some well-known authors, including Gurcharan Das, Jaishree Mista and William Dalrymple, publishing houses and associations have already launched a signature campaign to oppose the proposed amendment. A strong voice on this was heard at the recently held Jaipur literary festival.

Such an amendment is bad in law and should not be incorporated, Association of Publishing Industry (API) said.

“The amendment should mean a win-win-win situation wherein publishers, authors and customers emerge as beneficiaries. But it will do exactly the opposite and everyone potentially loses out,”opines Anand Bhushan of FIP.”

 “The amendment threatens to dismantle the very fabric of Indian writing in English. The act is capable of setting India back a hundred years,” Thomas Abraham, MD of Hachette forecasted.

 “I am sure they have relevance in other applicable areas. I know for a fact that many performing artists are happy with some of the proposals but many proposed amendments (2m) don’t make sense to publishing,”  MD & CEO of Sage Publication, Vivek Mehra opined.

 The Copyright (amendment) Bill, 2010 proposes to amend Section 2(m) of the Copyright Act, 1957 by inserting a Proviso stating that ‘a copy of a work published in any country outside India with the permission of the author of the work and imported from that country into India shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy’.

 Editor-in-chief of Random House Chiki Sarkar explains: “2m allows the import of all editions of books into the country, making India an open market. This means that the Indian edition of a book will cease to exist as it will no longer be the only edition available in India. This means that many authors, particularly those who are also published internationally, will simply be distributed into the country but not published. An author won’t just lose out on being published properly but will also receive less income since royalties on books published in India are much higher than the royalties on high discounted imported copies which are on net receipts.”

 Legal opinion seems to believe the same. “The proposed amendment appears not to have been carefully considered,” advocate Nandita Saikai said. “If this amendment is passed, it would adversely affect all the stakeholders in the publishing industry whether they are authors, readers or publishers,” she added.

 While major developed countries do not allow parallel importation, there are some that do allow such as Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong. These countries “are basically trading hubs with no substantial domestic publishing that can be damaged by parallel importation. More importantly, there are no low priced edition programmes in these countries, unlike India which allow consumers to access low-priced content”, explained Saikia.

Many publishers argue that India is already the lowest priced market in the world. The amendment would rather shrink Indian publishing industry and replace the bookstores with big international bestsellers eventually leading to an increase in the price of books once the competing Indian publishers are out.

Divya Dubey, author and publisher of Gyaana Books explained, “if we legalize this import, the foreign editions will soon lower their prices to kill the Indian original edition of the same book. With no territorial protection, it will be the death of every Indian edition”. Her blog is making best attempts to educate people on the adverse impact of parallel importation.

(with inputs from Maharishi Kant Singh)

A death knell for Indian books (Editorial): Sudesh Verma

When the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, the three leading countries publishing English books, do not allow parallel imports, what is the hurry for India to argue in its favour?  There seems a lobby at work, or else she would not be contemplating one-way traffic when bilateralism is a key to international trade policy.

 Publishers based in these countries will naturally be happy since they would get the vast Indian market without the pains of opening up their own markets to their books published in India. The foreign books published in India cost less than one tenth of the price in the US, the UK or Germany. The much hyped amendment to the Copyright Act (because of the film industry related provisions) has dangerous consequences for the book industry in India but there are few who are actually aware of these.

The bill has been considered in detail by the standing committee after it was introduced in the Rajya Sabha. The committee headed by senior parliamentarian Oscar Fernandes has recommended parallel importation. Now the same is likely to be taken up for consideration in this budget session of Parliament.

 Parallel importation is nothing but violation of the territoriality of the copyright. If this is legalized, the industry will collapse even before it has learnt to crawl. As of today, the copyright owner sells rights to different publishers on the condition that the sale would be limited to the territories mentioned in the agreement. Indian publishers buy rights from foreign publishers on the same basis. None violates this arrangement.

If territoriality is violated there would be a free for all situation. For example, a foreign publisher can buy the rights of best selling Indian books and print the same in mass, say in China, and export the same for sale in India. What will happen to the Indian publisher who invested in the author? It would not be able to compete with its own product. In the long run, this would discourage the copyright owner from selling rights to foreign publishers which would in turn mean less exposure of Indian authors to the international markets.

Sample this:  A foreign publisher buys rights of  an Indian title and prints it in bulk. It exhausts some stock that earns him profit in the international market and then dumps the books in the Indian market. Since it would be printed in bulk it would achieve economies of scale. The same books by Indian publisher would suffer since the cycle may be one year in mature market but three to five years in India.

The author who should have earned royalty from the sale of the books in India on the cover price would not do so if the books do not sell. He/She would earn only a marginal royalty on books published by a foreign publisher and brought to India cheap since the royalty is on net price and the net price may be much less. As of today, they can theoretically earn by selling rights to all countries individually without infringing on other territories.

 That the buyer would benefit is fiction. The buyer would eventually stop getting to read new authors since publishers would lose the incentive to invest in an author. The author and publisher market relationship would suffer immensely.

 If the foreign publisher establishes an Indian author, it may have just a token Indian publishing and would publish the same through the international chain and then dump the books in India through the official route. The Indian subsidiary of the foreign publisher would end up distributing these titles rather than creating an independent publishing programme. The worst scenario in case of competition between a foreign publisher and its Indian subsidiary would be that those transacting in remainders sale will benefit the most. One must remember that books do not attract duty etc.

Comic Conned

[India's first Comic Con at New Delhi, February 19-20, 2011]

Apologies for using a clichéd pun, but hundreds of people who landed up at Dilli Haat on the 19^th of Feb for India’s very first comic con, must’ve shared my sentiments.

No, none of us really expected to see a San Diego Xerox – you can literally count the number of major comic-book players in India on your fingers – but we certainly expected some action.

To begin with, there was nothing at all to indicate any event going on anywhere in the precincts – no banners, no flyers, no placards, not even pamphlets.

You entered Dilli Haat as usual, and craned your neck in every possible direction to spot anything that looked like an ‘event’. You saw nothing. So you ambled, and toddled, and waddled ahead, wondering if you had got the day wrong by any chance. But no. You did pay for the ticket, right?

Karan Vir from Vimanika

At the end of the long walk, when you’d almost crossed over the arena, you finally spotted – right at the very end – something. One tall, yellow tower announcing India’s first comic con!

And now ... there are about six stalls to your left, six stalls to your right, and a stage in the centre at the back. 

Okay, freeze! And frame. 

That’s the solo-panel grand event we’re really talking about – never mind the hype. Yes, that’s the scene that made the nucleus of the entire comic con over the two days.

All right, there were a few stalls ‘inside’ – the back of beyond, that is – but had no takers! Obviously. And yes, you saw about three or four comic-book figures in all doing the rounds.

No exaggeration. Ask the eager beavers who landed up at the venue with their childhood days (or children) in tow to ‘witness the spectacle’.  I’ve worked with graphic novels earlier, and I had seriously been looking forward to a great experience, if on a miniature scale. I was terribly disappointed.   

Kshitish Padhy

As a child I was never a part of the Superman-Batman-fan brigade (though I loved the Spiderman movies), but I remember being fed on Indrajal (Phantom – The Ghost who Walks, and whose face must never be seen by a mortal or he’d meet a terrible death; Mandrake – the striking magician with a mysterious half-brother; Bahadur – the very Indian hero, and several others ), and loads and loads of Archies, Richie Rich, Casper, besides Chacha Choudhary, Billu, Pinki, Amar Chitra Katha, and Tinkle.

Those days, many parents like ours took the comic-books route to initiate their children into the world of English.

It was sad that there seemed to be hardly anything substantial for the pleasure of children. Not that there were better wares on offer for adults.

Between, where were the children? I barely saw any.

It took me all of ten minutes to see everything there was see (I had three and a half hours to kill before heading to another venue for another programme). Then I sat down for the workshops. The first was conducted by a former colleague, as an introduction to writing a script for a graphic novel in the genre of mythology. It was a decent though tepid beginning. But the ones that followed were a series of exercises in self-promotion, sans any concrete substance. Dry attempts at humour fell flat. Bored audience left their chairs mid-session and headed for the routine attractions of Dilli Haat instead.

Frankly, we could have done better. We organise Bookaroo every year, we do numerous book fairs, we boast of grand literary festivals in Jaipur and Kolkata, and poetry festivals in Hyderabad et al. Then why couldn’t we organise a simple thing like a respectable comic convention?

The response was overwhelming both from participation and footfall front.

Really?

There were fifty participants, thirty-five companies, and over thirty workshops.

Invisible? Did they need magic ink to materialise? How come I never saw them? I was there in person for a full three and a half hours – peak time.

Oh, all right; I wasn’t there on day two (I had sincerely hoped it would showcase something better) – but there were others who were. And they reported pretty much a similar scenario, if better attendance. 

As luck would have it, it began to pour heavily at about four in the afternoon the second day (the stage was outside in the open). So, half of the workshops must’ve been washed out – literally!

It wasn’t all bad though. There were at least two positives: a fancy-dress contest – which did see some interesting participants; and comic book sales.

India does have a lot to showcase – not only for children, but also for adults. Take the creator of Kari, or Corridor, or the forthcoming Kalpa. Why weren’t they all there?

Let me grant that something was better than nothing. But I certainly hope that that ‘something’ would translate into something scintillating next year. We’re sure capable of it. 

A Suitable Book: Vikram Seth in Conversation with Somnath Batabyal at the Jaipur Literature Festival

(Published in Pravasi Bharatiya, IANS, February 2011)

I-Witness: A Peek into the Future 

For the fans of Vikram Seth, the Jaipur tryst with the author was a special one indeed. The very name of the session stemmed from the title of his extremely popular and successful novel, A Suitable Boy.

Not only did Seth speak of his novel, and its Hindi avatar, Koi Achcha sa Ladka (Seth mentioned he decidedly hadn’t been in favour of Ek Suyogya Var – the title suggested earlier), he also gripped the audience with his thoughts on the much awaited sequel to the original English version, which is going to be called A Suitable Girl – of course.

At no point did Seth seem to shy away from revealing his thoughts about the sequel he is yet to begin.

‘I haven’t started writing it yet,’ he said.

When he should really be focusing on writing the sequel, he said, he has been preoccupied with other things instead: sculpture for one. He went on to describe sculpture and the properties of glass for a few deliberate moments to an amused audience, before cleverly reverting to the discussion at hand.

‘As you can see, I easily get distracted,’ he grinned, while his equally clever and entertaining interviewer, Somnath Batabyal, sat back and smiled with the audience before jumping back again with the next question at the opportune moment.

The audience wanted to know how Seth felt about Lata Mehra – the protagonist of the earlier novel: whether she had made the right choice, and whether she was happy.

‘I wish I knew,’ he replied. ‘I really wish I did, but I don’t. I hope she is.’

Well, there’s a good author all right – letting his characters live their own lives in peace!

So what’s A Suitable Girl going to be about?

Erm … it will be about our dear Lata Mehra’s grandson seeking a girl. One could make out Seth was thinking aloud as he went on with his almost-soliloquy, allowing the audience a peep into his thoughts. For those few moments the thoughts were out there for everybody to enjoy – cinemascope.

‘Lata would now probably be eighty,’ he said. ‘About sixty years would have elapsed since then. And I might set the story in modern times instead of immediately after Partition. The research would also have to be different. I might travel and visit places.’

The parent novel had been set in post-Partition India and, as everybody is probably aware, the research that went into the book was exhaustive!

Talking about the length of the book, he said with another smile, ‘Well … it could be a slim book, or it may turn out to be another monstrous, big book.’

A Suitable Boy had indeed been one such, running into1488 pages in paperback, released in 1993. A manuscript of that length would have been enough to unsettle the best of publishers! Of course, it did go on to become brilliantly successful in spite of its thousand characters and their extended families or friends, simply because Seth knew his craft so well!

He read extracts from his poetry, and the complete poem, ‘The Frog and the Nightingale’ on special request from a university student, who apparently had the poem in the syllabus. 

In the middle of the session Seth switched places with Batabyal upon a whim, because he said he couldn’t see the audience on the other side properly. (Hence the confusing photographs!)

A young woman put a question to him about what to do about a writer’s block when it comes to poetry.

Seth’s reply: ‘The point is to write a poem you can’t not write. There are some things that can’t be written. Life is not all about writing. It is better to store up experiences and return to them when you have found clarity of expression.’

To my own question about whether he believes in creative writing courses, he said, ‘I wouldn’t cut off the hand that has fed me.’ Translated, it means that he believes writing skills can be honed if not quite ‘acquired’, and he did get some guidance for a brief period at Columbia himself, which he found useful.

A Suitable Girl is scheduled for release in 2013, and the world waits for Seth’s magic to strike once again. Lots of mays and mights and ifs and buts at the moment – but it’s sure to be a feast!

What's Wrong with Correct English?

Published in The Hindu Literary Review (Feb 6, 2011): http://www.hindu.com/lr/2011/02/06/stories/2011020650330600.htm

Original, uncut version: 

Indian English Today : Evolution or Disease?

David Crystal says in his book, The Fight for English, ‘To many people in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the language was seriously unwell. It was suffering from a raging disease of uncontrolled usage. And it needed help if it was to get better […] People needed to know who they were talking to. Snap judgements were everything, when it came to social position. And things are not much different today. We make immediate judgements on how people dress, how they do their hair, decorate their bodies – and how they speak and write. It is the first bit of discourse that counts.’

Crystal is not really arguing for ‘standard’ English in his book, or the ‘prescriptive’ rules that, he says, a bunch of pedants laid for the usage of the English language. Rather, he is arguing for the several languages English becomes in the hands of different people, in different settings, and in different cultures.

That’s indisputable. However, the new generation of Indians speaking and writing in English today seems to have taken those words quite literally, leading to a complete deterioration of the art of speaking and writing. Why is it that if you speak about correct English today, you’re immediately branded as an ‘elitist’, and looked upon as ‘the other’?

Once upon a time English was a language to which few people had access. People, who mastered it, spoke and wrote well, respecting the language for its beauty, fluidity, and nuances.

It’s no longer so. With the ‘Indianisation’ of the language, the attitude of the people towards English seems to be changing completely. If you belong to the ‘elitist’ group of Indians, (that is, if you’re particular about correct usage and grammar), you have the option of sending your child to a board that does teach grammar and literature. Otherwise, you have a problem with Indian English, not the rest of the country.

How did this happen? Does the problem lie right at school-level teaching, and treatment of the language? That, after all, is the time when foundations are laid. Over the years, English has been stripped to its skeleton, focusing more and more on function, and less and less on the finer points that exercise the intellect and enhance creativity.

While it’s a debatable issue whether the switch over from the structural approach to communicative has played villain, most people agree that little attention is given to the art of creative writing these days. The earlier emphasis on essay or story writing is absent in most schools now.

Ever since the functional approach has taken over in some schools, thumbing its nose at grammar, English seems to have become a hapless marionette in the hands of the young learners. Syntax and structure are no longer vital. And where there are no rules, chaos is of course the new czarina. Heavy blinds have been drawn over the pursuit of literature.

Worse, we seem to be promoting this culture every day, encouraging redundancies such as pleonasms and tautology, and locking essentials like sentence construction and punctuation into oblivion. Removing emphasis on correct usage or grammar is like removing the vertebral column of a language.

It’s a different matter when learners learn the rules first and then break them with their skill, creating something new and artistic. However, if we leave them in a chaotic world to begin with, where are they supposed to end up?

‘I don’t think languages are given importance in our schools, which is a pity. The so called subject teachers usually lack language skills. It is made to seem as if information is all, and language isn't important to convey or learn this information,’ says Dr GJV Prasad, Chairperson, Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. ‘There can be no education without a strong basis in language. We should teach languages well in our schools rather than teach absurd levels of science and other subjects. Our students can't enter intellectual exploration without a strong grounding in language.’

One always gets to hear that, since students are already overloaded with their science and math courses, it is best to go easy on English. Hence, most students land up not taking the subject seriously at all, and laugh at those who do. There is a dearth of schools that still make the effort to expose their students to nuances of the language, or go a step ahead and initiate them into the magnificent world of literature.

Language – the vehicle of thought and expression, and comprehension of the world we live in – sacrificed completely to the study of facts and figures, mass and matter!

These decisions at school level often cause more damage than one can imagine. Is it surprising that we eventually manufacture unthinking semi-automatons, who can only react arrogantly to what they do not know and haven’t learnt to value?

Dorothy Tressler, director, Somerville schools, says, ‘In India, we teach classes consisting of more than forty students. There is mayhem if you try to make these children learn a language using the communicative approach. You cannot make them read, speak, or spell individually every day. The weak ones are forgotten. They end up learning nothing. The traditional methods worked well for large classes.’

Vivek Govil, president, Pearson Education, India, doesn’t think the communicative approach is necessarily a bad thing. He says, ‘It is certainly a better way for people, for whom English is a second language, to acquire the language. My concern is that we are teaching the same courses to children regardless of whether English is a native language, a second language, or a foreign language. This is going to be an even larger issue when the Right to Education Act comes into play, and you have less homogeneous groups in school. And it is certainly destroying the language for those who should be learning at higher levels.’

That indeed is a crucial point. English is suffering at various levels, and this is perhaps the first casualty.

Dr Mita Bose, professor of English, Delhi University, believes that English cannot be taught either by trying to drill rules into the students (structural approach), or by switching over to functional English (communicative approach). ‘Once you’ve explained the rules to them, you need to teach them to look out for them while they read, speak, or hear the language,’ she says. ‘Constant exposure is important.’

The focus on a working knowledge of English nowadays is perhaps responsible for another significant development – ‘Indianisation’ of the language. ‘Indian English' seems to be the justification for all the errors that these speakers or writers in English make. Instead of accepting a mistake and correcting it, they brazenly defend themselves using ‘Indian English’ as their breastplate. Perhaps because English has suddenly become accessible to everybody, now that they don’t have to worry about the fundamentals, people don’t find it worthy of regard any longer.

In the long term this may hamper professional development, regardless of whether one is looking at a career in writing or not. Eventually, correct communication skills are critical in getting ahead, whether it’s email or spoken English. Sloppiness sets in under the skin and is almost impossible to get rid of. That’s why the top MBA courses in Ivy League often have refresher courses in the liberal arts – both for free thinking and exposure to quality language, which, in turn, is an exposure to quality minds. That is why many interview panelists ask their candidates what books they read.

The revised dictum today?

Saare niyam tod do; niyam pe chalna chhod do. Inqalab zindabad. (Do away with all the rules. Long live the revolution.)

Mediocrity has become the latest status symbol. Courtesy: the free-for-all, the new breed of speakers and writers is creating its own version of English – sans elegance, sans structure, sans finer nuances.

Correct English isn’t simply about avoiding splitting infinitives or putting a preposition at the end of a sentence. It’s about eloquence, clarity of thought and expression, and beauty.

Sometimes these young authors do have stories to tell, but lack the requisite skills; at other times they have neither a story, nor the skills. Yet, they get published. Yet, they sell. This happens to be another ‘casualty’ for the English language.

‘Most readers have always read pulp, but there’s disrespect for the written language now that I think is new,’ says Udayan Mitra, publishing director, Penguin Books India. ‘People can’t tell the difference between its and it’s, for instance, and don’t care what the difference is either. This disrespect – and nonchalance – is certainly reflected in a lot of the manuscripts we receive. A lot of people send in manuscripts now, who would not even have thought of writing some years ago.’

These changing trends now seem to be riding roughshod over the publishing industry that initially welcomed the boom (of pulp fiction) by and large from college-going writers. Many of these authors today are using this mongrel language in their novels and books without restraint. They justify their writing saying that they don’t pretend to be literary writers anyway. Their writing supposedly helps ‘bridge the gap’ between the literary elite and the general masses.

The question is – is it really so? Are they really bridging the gap by pandering to the latter in this manner? Is it a good enough rationale for the dumbing down of Indian writing in English at international level?

Ironically, this trend, rather than bridging the gap between the ‘elite’ and the ‘masses’, is widening it instead. The readers for whom English is a second language, or a foreign language, will never acquire the skills or the finesse of the ‘elite’ (or first-language learners) if they never strive to learn the correct language. The gap will never be bridged. Indian English might work for them in India but, outside India, or while interacting with non-Indians, they would always struggle with their home-produced potpourri.

Publishers are not against the genre of non-serious writing or pulp fiction per se. (In fact this is crucial for the development of the larger reading habit).What they are concerned about is the way this genre is being dealt with today.

‘There is obviously a demand for these books,’ says Thomas Abraham, managing director, Hachette India. 'There's both a plus and a minus to this. The plus was that there was, at least in the beginning a sense of liberation (India has been locked into the literary midlist mindset for the past five decades) with promise of a new genre of commercial writing that one thought would emerge – vibrant, innovative, contemporary. The minus is that this has not happened. Most publishers do have a whole slew of new manuscripts pouring in every day, but hardly any are of quality.’

Most publishers agree that, of late, the quality of submissions from young writers has been steadily sliding downhill.

‘Despite the much touted fact that English is dynamic and constantly evolving, there are still standards of correct grammar and syntax whether you are a believer in Wren & Martin or Noam Chomsky. Even ‘Hinglish’ brought in for character authenticity has to be located within a narrative framework of grammar and usage. However, a lot of today’s writing seems to eschew the need for correct English completely,’ adds Abraham.

‘I am simply disappointed. As a publisher it hurts to see such books,’ says Saugata Mukherjee, managing editor and rights manager, HarperCollins India. ‘I am all for commercial/mass market books, but can't quite believe there are only badly written ones. I guess publishers need to be a little more discerning and not compromise basic quality.’

Nobody can deny that language is ever-evolving. From feather quills to ball points, from Remingtons to VAIOs, writers have woven rich word tapestries, using different forms of English.

Where has the craft disappeared today? Where is the art? Where is the finesse?

Dr Bose puts it across beautifully. ‘If you want to offer your audience a dish, would you scatter it haphazardly on the table and expect them to dip a finger here and there and lick it to get a taste, or would you serve it nicely in a pretty bowl? Shape and structure are essential for a wholesome experience.’

There is a serious danger that we may never stop entering shops from their ‘backside’, looking for ‘loosepoles’ instead of loopholes, singing songs with ‘feel’ rather than feeling, going to the market ‘by walk’, or arriving at office ‘from inside-inside the colony only’.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to be concerned. For most people, ‘Indian English’ is simply ‘evolving’. It’s a disconcerting thought that tomorrow, some of these very people might land up in positions of authority – as English teachers, editors in publishing houses or even at newspaper offices – judging other people’s language skills, or writing our editorials.

It is not merely idle whining by another bunch of snobbish linguistic fundamentalists, but a genuine concern of a handful of those who still love the language for its grace, and admire orators and writers for their true genius. Hopefully, lovers of English will take some notice, for the industry-wallas will surely be watching, wary of 'bowing to the ineluctable pressures of what-happens-nextism’.