28 Dec 2012 | India
The film of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is set to be released on 1 February. If the team behind the movie adaptation is at all nervous about screening the film they have good reason. Rushdie, who wrote the screenplay, and has been the literary face for freedom of expression for years, has a tumultuous history of censorship with India.
The Booker prize-winning book is about two children, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence. Their lives become intertwined with the life of this new country.
One of the figures in the book, The Widow, was based on former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In the book, the character, through genocide and several wars, helps destroy Midnight’s Children. Gandhi had imposed a widely-criticised State of Emergency in India.
In an interesting turn of events, Gandhi threatened Rushdie libel over a single line. That line suggested that Gandhi’s son Sanjay had accused his mother of bringing about his father’s heart attack through neglect. Rushdie settled out of court, and the single line was removed from the book.
The movie adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
The real controversy that followed, the one that changed Rushdie’s life completely, came after the 1988 release of his book The Satanic Verses. While the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa against Rushdie and called for his execution (citing the book as blasphemous), the author saw many countries, including India, indulge in their own brand of censorship.
As has been revealed in Rushdie’s memoir Joseph Anton, the author felt the Indian government banned his book without much scrutiny. The Finance Ministry banned the book under section 11 of the Customs Act, and in that order stated that this ban did not detract from the literary and artistic merit of his work. Rushdie, appalled at the logic penned a letter to the then prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, stating:
Apparently, my book is not deemed blasphemous or objectionable in itself, but is being proscribed for, so to speak, its own good… From where I sit, Mr Gandhi, it looks very much as if your government has become unable or unwilling to resist pressure from more or less any extremist religious grouping; that, in short, it’s the fundamentalists who now control the political agenda.
Rushdie was right, of course. Years later, in 2007, he attended the first Jaipur Literary Festival in India unnoticed. Without any security or fuss, he arrived unannounced, mingling with the crowd. Things had changed dramatically by 2012, when Rushdie’s arrival to the now must-attend literary festival was much publicised, and predictably attracted controversy.
Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani, vice-chancellor at India’s Muslim Deoband School, called for the government to cancel Rusdie’s visa for the event as he had annoyed the religious sentiments of Muslims in the past. (Incidentally, Rushdie does not need a visa to enter India as he holds a PIO — “Person of Indian Origin” — card.)
The controversy escalated quickly, with the organisers first attempting to link Rushdie via video instead of having him physically present, but then cancelling the arrangement when the Festival came under graver physical threat. It was a sad day for freedom of expression in India, especially considering the fact that many, including Rushdie felt these moves were politically motivated because of upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh, where the Muslim vote is very important. The government vehemently denied these claims.
Liberals in India were shocked at the illiberal values that the modern India state espoused, feigning to not be able to protect a writer and a festival against the threats of protestors. Shoma Chaudhary of Tehelka wrote:
The trouble is nobody any longer knows what Rushdie was doing in The Satanic Verses: neither those who are offended by him, nor those who defend him. Almost no one, including this writer, was given a chance to read the book.
Later in the year, initial press reports around Midnight’s Children revealed that the film could not find a distributor in India. The production team thought it might be a case of self-censorship as the film featured a controversial portrayal of Indira Gandhi. However, PVR Pictures, a major distributor in India, has plans to release the film in the country in February 2013.
31 years after the Midnight’s Children hit the stands, and the same year as he was bullied into cancelling a visit to a literary festival, it seems Salman Rushdie will yet again challenge Indian society. It remains to be seen if he will, yet again, become a pawn in the internal politics of the country.
6 Dec 2011 | China
An urgent appeal from Chinese writer Yan Lianke to the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Prime Minister
Esteemed General Secretary and Prime Minister:
I am a writer and a university professor. Before deciding to write this letter to you, my conscience was buffeted by a storm of hesitation. It was your encouraging and heartfelt speech, General Secretary, delivered a week ago at the opening ceremony of the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Writers’ Association that has emboldened me to report to you about the forced eviction and demolition of homes that I have witnessed.
Three years ago, I bought a property in Flower City World Garden using royalties from my books and borrowed money. In July this year, 39 families in the compound, including mine, were formally given eviction notices because of the road-widening project on Wanshou Road in Beijing. A few days after receiving the eviction notices, the wall of our compound was demolished at dawn.
Having been told the eviction was for the development of Beijing, the residents initially were cooperative. However, the Demolition and Relocation Office told the residents that regardless of the size or value of their properties, the compensation per household was set at 500,000 yuan, approximately US$ 78,000, and that whoever cooperated would be further awarded 700,000 yuan. Since then, there has been growing discontent among the residents with the local government and the demolition crew. You can imagine how the conflict and confusion surrounding the forced eviction was intensified by quarrels, fighting, theft and bloodshed.
In August this year, the Demolition and Relocation Office stopped mentioning the 700,000 yuan incentive and instead offered each household a one-off compensation package of 1.6 million yuan, or approximately US$250,000. At the same time, the office initiated a countdown to the demolition.
I visited the Demolition and Relocation Office three times and spoke to the person in charge. During each visit, I made it clear that as a citizen, a writer and a university lecturer, I would take the lead and vacate my property to support the development of Beijing. However, as a citizen whose property is about to be demolished, I requested to view the official documents relating to the road-widening project. I simply wanted to know a few things: how much of the residential zone would be required for the road-widening and how many properties would really need to be demolished. I wanted to know how the compensation was calculated and why the compensation was set at a flat 1.6 million yuan rather than based the area of the properties. In short, all I wanted to see was that the demolition process would more or less follow government regulations and legal procedures and that property owners would be provided with some information. The response I received was along the lines of “everything has already been decided by higher authorities” and “it’s confidential”.
Other residents also made numerous trips to city and district governments to appeal and seek resolution through legal channels but for various reasons the local courts declined to hear the case.
On 24 November, things took an even more bizarre turn. The government of Huaxiang in Fengtai District issued a document to all owners who had received eviction notices. The document stated that on 23 September, law enforcement officials discovered houses with no registered occupants as well as houses without their addresses registered with local authorities. Therefore, these houses were deemed illegal structures and would be forcibly demolished at 8 am on the 30th of November. (In fact, Flower City World Garden has existed for six years.)
I went to the compound this morning where I saw crowds of people and groups of uniformed men and many vehicles blocking access. I saw banners hanging in front of all the houses facing demolition proclaiming, “We pledge to sacrifice our blood and lives to defend our homes!” I saw emotional residents who were indeed ready to sacrifice their lives.
No one knew what would happen during a forced demolition. No local government official was there to mediate with the residents. It appeared that blood could be shed at any moment in this game of cat-and-mouse—if not today, then surely tomorrow. Many residents are determined to live and die with their homes.
Esteemed General Secretary and Prime Minister, as a citizen who is about to lose his home, as a university lecturer and a well-known writer, I have to say this was a shocking scene to witness and experience for myself. The administrators of the People’s University of China where I am employed also attempted to communicate on my behalf with the local government. They were told that the demolition must proceed. You can imagine the distress felt by residents who have nowhere else to go.
As a Chinese citizen, I love my country dearly. As a writer, I am willing to give all I have to promote Chinese culture. As a university professor, I hope to see my students able to study and grow up in a loving and harmonious environment. It is because of my foolish dream of bearing the weight of our nation on my shoulders that I am writing this urgent appeal to you.
I hope the local government will stop playing this game of cat-and-mouse with people whose houses they want to demolish.
I hope this matter can be resolved in a timely manner, in a more rational and a humane way.
I hope all parties will learn from this incident, so that in future there will be fewer farcical forced demolition cases like this, and the Chinese people will live a more dignified life, as Premier Wen frequently stresses.
I hope Chinese people—citizens of China—are given more access to information and can enjoy a greater sense of security and happiness.
My apologies for taking up your time.
Sincerely yours,
Yan Lianke
30 November, 2011
17 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Local papers in Albemarle County, Virginia, have reported that Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, has been removed from sixth-grade reading lists after a parent complained that it was “our young students’ first inaccurate introduction to an American religion.” In the book, in which a father and daughter are rescued by Mormons on condition they adopt the Mormon faith, Conan Doyle wrote that Mormons were “persecutors of the most terrible description”.
28 Apr 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The Chinese government has refused author Liao Yiwu an exit visa to attend the PEN World Voices Festival in New York. Authors at the event, led by Salman Rushdie, issued a protest on Friday (22 April) and called on the Chinese authority to overturn their ban. Liao is best known for his poem Massacre about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown for which he spent four years in jail. The festival has vowed to set up an empty chair to represent Liao.
