[Reader-list] On Sarai postings

Shuddhabrata Sengupta shuddha at sarai.net
Tue Sep 30 14:16:14 IST 2008


Dear Radhakrishan,

Many thanks for your mail, and apologies for the delay in responding  
to you, as I have been travelling and unable to access mail for the  
last week. This response (overdue) takes on board what you have said,  
but is equally relevant, I hope to much of what others, especially  
Nazneen Ahmed Shamsie and Iram Ghufran have raised in their recent  
exchanges on list protocol and the general health of the list.

I am totally in agreement with all the points that you  
(Radhakrishnan) have raised in your mail. I happen to be associated  
with this list as just another ordinary subscriber since its  
inception in the spring of 2001 and though I work at Sarai, like  
anyone else with a sarai.net address, who posts on this list, I  
cannot claim to have any 'ownership' of this list. This list is yours  
as much as it is mine. No more, no less. And it will be shaped as  
much by what you do, what others do, as it will be what I, or anyone  
else from Sarai does. That is why, I am very happy (as an ordinary  
fellow list member) that you, and some others (Nazneen, Iram, Aarti,  
Inder, Kshmendra, Vivek, Monica and others) have recently voiced a  
timely concern (in different ways and in different voices) at the  
place this list finds itself in today. I would like to thank you all  
for this. And I would like to thank you personally for in some ways  
setting the ball rolling by pointing out the issues so succintly in  
your recent post 'On Sarai Postings'.

Like you, I believe that there should be no hierarchy of 'issues' on  
this list. I also believe that the discussions on the list do  
unfortunately tend to get fixated on Kashmir, and on what is going on  
in Delhi. (though both of these  need to be spoken of, because  
silence on these issues is much more lethal in the long run than an  
occasional excess of speech, and we have been silent about Kashmir  
for a far longer time than we have had an excess of speech about  
Kashmir). In fact, I remember a time when I was asked (accusingly)  
why we were so 'silent' on Kashmir on the Reader List. That question  
was just as relevant then, as yours is today.

Having said that, I do believe, like you, that the reader list must  
not become a 'Delhi-Centric' , 'Kashmir-Centric' or 'Anything- 
Centric' list. It would be wonderful it the list were a living  
example of the refusal to be 'centripetal' in any way. We do need to  
hear a lot more from different parts of South Asia, and from the  
world in general. We need to hear, as you rightly point out, voices  
that come from and speak to the 'North East' (where, in my opinion,  
an occupation as brutal as the one in Indian held Kashmir continues  
unreflected upon), voices south of the Vindhyas, voices that embody  
Dalit and Adivasi perspectives, voices that speak thoughtfully,  
joyously and in celebration of  queer experiences, voices that speak  
of discriminations too banal or too complex to be neatly tagged with  
any straightforward marker of identity. Then, even the discussion on  
Kashmir on this list will be placed in a better and more complex  
perspective than it is at present. And yes, then, the discussion on  
issues to do with 'nations, nationalism, the state, etc.' will be  
more nuanced and complex.

We do hear sometimes from Shambhu Rahmat and Naeem Mohaiemen in  
Bangladesh, we do hear from Anivar Arvind on the situation in Kerala,  
we have heard in recent days from Lawrence Liang of the courtroom  
farce performed by the counsel for the Ministry of Home Affairs of  
the Government of India in relation to the proceedings regarding the  
criminalization of Homosexualiy under section 377 of the Indian Penal  
Code and I am learning a lot from the recent discussions on the  
financial crises in the United States from the postings that took  
place yesterday (thanks Madhumita, Isaac, and others) .

And I wish that Yasir, who posts from Pakistan, would post more  
often. And we actually need to actively canvas more subscribers from  
other parts of the world, other parts of India, other parts of South  
Asia, with other interests. If you are a list member who wants to  
save this list from being monopolized by any one kind of discussion,  
why not invite friends who might live in, or be concerned about, say,  
the 'North East',  to subscibe, to post, or to post more. Why not  
invite a friend who is a musician, or an architect, or a scientist to  
share their concerns. Why not post stuff that you might find  
interesting about Iran, or China, or about Dalit poetry or about  
Queer science? (this is just a random list of things and issues that  
might be of interest, others will have other interests)

  In the long history of this list (which is publicly archived) we  
had discussions on Iraq, on free software, on piracy, on demolitions  
in cities like Delhi, on town planning, on contemporary art  
exhibitions, on surveillance, on poetry, on performance and on  
censorship. I remember vividly, for instance, Yoginder Sikand's  
postings from his travels in Iran, Aman Sethi's postings on the  
working people of Delhi's streets, Zainab Bawa's postings from the  
local trains of Mumbai and Rajesh Kamat's postings on Theyyam  
performers in Kerala (and many more, particularly from the large body  
of Sarai Independent Research Fellows). More recently, we have had  
intense discussions on Nandigram, on Tibet, on software patents, and  
the beginnings of discussions on whether or how to reclaim the  
streets of our cities with 'critical mass' cycling. I particularly  
enjoyed reading the forwards on the 'particle accelerator' experiment  
in CERN. But we need more.

We need to return to that wide spectrum of issues, (and to make it  
wider) so that those who seek to utilize this list for the  
perpetuation of their narrowly political or ideological agendas or  
pet personal peeves are overwhelmed by the vibrancy and depth of our  
discussion. For this to happen, you, I,  and everyone else on this  
list will need to do a little bit of work now and then. We will need  
to bring our worlds, the worlds that intrigue us, make us curious,  
make us wonder, the things that make us interesting men and women,  
come alive on this list. We need to forward and write things about  
books we read, blogs we visit, places we discover, music we listen to  
and about encounters with strangers in buses and trains. Let the  
staged and hollow violence of police 'encounters' not govern all our  
reflections on the randomness, unpredictability and uncertainty (all  
of which can also be wonderful) of daily life.

And though I often find myself entangled in political discussions on  
this list, I also personally feel the need for discussions that are  
not solely about politics. And sometimes, I want to just listen, or  
read.  Our lives are much richer than the crises that are  
manufactured on a daily basis by the state and its shadowy hirlings,  
or by insurgents ready and waiting to promulgate repressive state  
apparatuses of their own at the earliest opportunity. This list was  
originally intended to be a forum for discussion, reflection,  
speculation on a whole host of matters - from everday life in our  
cities (and the recent postings from Jamia Nagar (by Shakeb, Ambarien  
and Yusuf) in the wake of the so called 'encounter' are, in my view,  
excellent examples of one kind of writing about 'everyday urban  
life') , to software, to technology, contemporary culture and  
contemporary art.

Politics, terrorism, the nation-state, nationalism - these are all  
important issues, but it would be a great pity if they came to  
represent a strangling of the imagination and discursive vigour of  
this list. And yes, you are right, even these need to be discussed  
from more than a set of easily binary vantage points. So please, (and  
this is an appeal and a request to everyone on this list) please do  
not let this list be monopolized by any one set of concerns, no  
matter what they may be. If you see the 'Hindu Right' (or any other  
political tendency inimical to liberty, it could be Muslim or  
Christian Fundamentalism, or an authoritarian and paranoiac variety  
of Maoism or Stalinism, or the dull conformity of neo-liberal thought  
tomorrow just as easily as it is the Hindutva and Indian nationalist  
agenda today making a concerted effort to monopolize this list, or to  
intimidate others with their tone and the frequency of their  
outpourings, then outwit and outsmart them with dispersed but  
passionate energy, with lively discursive variety. If you (and I and  
all of us) don't, this list, like so much else that is valuable in  
our part of the world, will be poisoned, most of all, by the monotony  
of one dimensional men (and they are, in the main, men with a capital  
'M') of one kind or another.

Finally, I would like to share my feelings on the matter of tone,  
language and registers of speech. I have maintained, and maintain,  
that censoring speech is ultimately a sign of our weakness and  
defeat. I accept, with sadness, that under certain circumstances,  
when slander and attacks, especially of a personalized, misogynist  
and racist nature are made, the overall consensus of the list may  
seek to censor an individual, and that under these most exceptional  
of circumstances, this may be necessary for the sake of the  
discursive health of the list. And I hope that though we may have to,  
on occasion, 'censure', we can avoid, as far as is possible,  
'censoring' in the future.

This naturally means that when expressing (even antagonistic)  
positions, the participants on the list maintain a degree of  decorum  
and restraint about the tone and language they use, without  
compromising on the substance of their argument. Perhaps we can have  
a 'three strikes and out' kind of system, when warnings and the final  
exclusion can be decided upon by the administrator on the basis of  
complaints regarding ad hominem, racist, misogynist, homophobic,  
defamatory or libellious speech acts. I am not certain if this can be  
a solution, but I would welcome us all to think carefully regarding  
this question. All creative suggestions are more than welcome.  
Perhaps there can be a better modus than what immediately springs to  
mind, and hopefully, we will not have to censor anyone at all.

Whenever this (censorship) happens, wherever it happens, I am  
personally saddened. I am saddened because it is an indication of the  
fact that no matter how hard we may try to maintain and secure a  
space for freedom of expression, all it takes is one callous,  
thoughtless, selfish outburst to destroy, what is, frankly, for some  
of us, many years of work. We are not here to indulge in our personal  
fantasies of self aggrandisement, we are here because we take the  
matter and business of a democratic space for discourse very  
seriously. We are here, because we live in societies where freedom of  
expression is under daily assault by self appointed busybodies who  
impose their all too quickly hurt sentiments with great aggression on  
sensible discursive practices. We are here because over time, this  
list has acquired a character that would be a pity to sacrifice to  
the narcissism of a few.

It hurts me that we have to resort to the extremity of exclusion and  
banning to maintain the health of a list, but it also hurts me that  
the person who has been censored, or censured, brought the list to a  
situation, by their needlessly provocative and personalized form of  
speech, despite repeated prior warnings that misogyny (hateful speech  
against women on account of their sex) and enraged communal speech is  
not acceptable, and that it does not help any argument, or any cause.

I find it especially intriguing that those who take great pride in  
their culture, in their civilizational ethos, in their 'national  
identity' are often the first to fling the lowest of blows. As if all  
their hallowed 'values' were bought at a discount in some jumble sale  
of sham and counterfeit goods. When faced by a depleting stock of  
reason, or of simple citable facts, some of our proud patriots do  
what comes easiest in a street corner brawl, bring out a long and  
monotonous line of abuse, ad-hominem remarks and usually,  
unadulterated misogyny. Nine times out of ten, I am sorry to say, the  
face of the pervert lurks uncomfortably close to the mask of the  
patriot, exposing by default, the pathological inner core of so much  
that seeks to flaunt itself in the name of Indian nationalism . I  
really wish it were otherwise. I would have enjoyed a better class of  
adversary to joust with.

And so, we are subjected to accusations and insinuations. To slander  
and unwanted, unwarranted speculation about our personal lives,  
political motivations and sexual preferences. I have been called a  
terrorist and a procurer on this list, and others have been called  
worse, and though I have nothing against procuring, I do have a great  
deal against terrorism of any kind, including the one that displays  
its machismo on a keyboard with as much sick intensity as other kinds  
do in throwing bombs at crowded marketplaces. Destroying, or  
attempting to destroy a carefully, diligently cultivated democratic  
and open form of free expression is as heinous an act of terror as  
throwing bombs at people. I see little difference in principle,  
between the masked bomb thrower on a motorcycle, the policeman who  
pumps bullets into an unarmed individual at their mercy and a person  
who terrorizes an online community such as ours with misogyny or  
unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable accusations of 'terrorism'. If  
the earlier two forms of violence are instances of the terrorism of  
the deed, than the last is an example of terrorism of discourse. I  
say this with reluctance, with some thought, and with some  
deliberation, especially because I hate the loose, casual and  
cavalier usage of words like 'terrorism' in our public life.

I believe, that in the end, it is only an open, deeply public,  
profoundly diverse form of imaginative, engaged everyday politics  
that can defeat terrorism and state terror. For the same reasons I  
believe that this list needs your active engagement, and the active  
engagement of every sensible list member, with a variety of postings,  
on different subjects, on a regular basis, and not only in times of  
perceived 'crisis',  so that those who want to hold our minds and  
attention hostage on this list are not allowed to prevail. Let's all  
make sure that this list is not 'hijacked' by anyone. So make a  
beginning Radhakrishan, (and everyone else), post something on an  
issue completely unrelated to the shadows that have hung over this  
list for so long. Dazzle us and surprise us with ordinary words,  
extra-ordinary thoughts and the pleasant hum of a good conversation.  
Let us not forget, evade or gloss over anything, no matter how  
painful, but let us not be ruled and be tyrannized by the things that  
cause us pain.

thanks for your post, once again,

yours

Shuddha

On 24-Sep-08, at 10:18 PM, Radhakrishnan wrote:

> Dear Folks!
> I want to express my anguish about the level of debate and  
> unwarranted personal attacks and slander. in fact I had raised  
> similar issues through an email to Shuddha. I am making these  
> observations with with deep regret, since I have high regard for  
> Sarai as a platform for raising and debating significant issues.  
> But since some months there has been a tendency to mock, and even  
> write responses which at times very patronizing and condescending.  
> They are not only Delhi centric but remain impervious towards the  
> site of conflict – perhaps it’s an urban centric perspective which  
> doesn’t take the real India in account while pontificating on such  
> issues. So there is a greater need to exercise caution and as well  
> display sensitivity while debating issues significant to our day to  
> day existence.
>
>


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