Cross Talk
Deadlier than the sword
A popular writer has been recently clobbered because he claimed that writers enjoyed freedom in this country. Other things he said were incidental to the same line of logic. He slighted a writer who was brutally hacked for his writing. He claimed that the sedition charge brought against a prominent activist was stage-managed. Then he made insensitive comments on the food prices and showed his weakness for the current "army-backed" caretaker government. On all those counts, the critics argued, the writer who made those remarks during an interview with a Bengali newspaper put his foot in his mouth.
The news didn't make headlines, but created ripples in literary circles. It's possible the showdown won't go far, or will continue a few more rounds, before it fizzles out. Maybe the writer who made those comments will change his mind. Maybe those who are attacking him will forgive and forget.
Well, writers write for the same reason a rodent has to chew. If the rodent doesn't wear down its teeth by continuous chewing, then the teeth grow too big and cause pain. For a writer, writing is a talent in the first nature, a skill in the second. A lot of people feel the urge, but only the writer can urge the feel. He goes beyond where others stop seeking; sees beyond where others stop looking. The writer is more than a scribe because he has an uncanny sense of being.
But what sense of being has set off this contention? How could one side be so wrong that the other brands him with invectives like "ignorant," "ridiculous" or "pro-establishment?" In fact, there is no incomprehension between them, but only lack of agreement. Was the book by the assailed author a vulgar one? Was the sedition charge against the activist real? Are people really okay with the price hikes? Is the caretaker government on the right track?
The answer is a Bosnian joke. A man named Ivek goes to a local tavern, and the moment he hears that the name of the man standing next to him is Moshe he kills him without thinking twice. When asked, he said that he had taken revenge for what the Jews had done to Jesus. The police inspector reminded him that it had happened two thousand years ago, and a nonchalant Ivek replied that he had only heard about it the day before he met Moshe.
The fact is that the ghost of the past doesn't go away, since for us its important not when something happens, but when something is remembered. What the writer said about the book of another writer, and the sedition charge against an activist, is memory. What he said about prices and the government is contemporary. The irony is that the past always overlaps the present and haunts us like a spirit.
W.B. Yeats tells us that we make poetry out of our quarrels with ourselves, and politics out of our quarrels with others. Somehow, the latest quarrel amongst writers is a bizarre one. It sets them against each other, a poetic settlement of political scores. Between fighting to write and writing to fight, this writers' spat is dipped not in ink but in blood.
It's not that writers never fight. They take sides and fiercely fight as defenders of truth and custodians of conscience. American writer Norman Mailer used his influence to win parole for a murderer named Jack Henry Abott because he was impressed by the quality of the prisoner's writing. But Jack went on to commit another murder within weeks of his parole, which marked one of the lowest points of Mailer's life.
On the contrary, French writer Emile Zola put his life on the line defending Alfred Dreyfus, and proved that this captain of the French army was falsely accused and convicted. The writers of conscience write out of considerations for right and wrong. They don't write for gain and loss.
Throughout history writers have been persecuted, yet they enjoyed freedom as much as they wished to exercise it. A writer's freedom exists in his mind. He must be liberal in thinking, progressive in outlook, unbiased in judgment, courageous in expression, unabashed in honesty, thorough in knowledge and uncompromising in intellectual pursuit. His freedom lies in the opportunity of expression, not in the result of that expression.
In our case, the freedom of writers is undermined by the threat of religious fanatics and the failure of governments to keep them on leash. Daud Haider fled the country during the government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Taslima Nasreen went into exile during the government of Khaleda Zia. A cartoonist went to jail during the tenure of this government. All of these happened because, in each case, the target was the religious sentiment of the people in this country.
While we are compelled to think of freedom, we are also compelled to think of its limits. Does a writer have the moral authority to hurt the feelings of people? When a person can get slapped for insulting another person or hurling obscenities at him, how could one expect to go unscratched if one is rude to the emotions of many? Freedom doesn't mean immunity. There is hazard in every profession. The writers can't stay above it.
Needless to say, a writer's freedom ought to be defined by his environment. Yes, a writer has the freedom to criticise that environment. But he must criticise it as a "critical insider," not with an aim to undermine it. In India, the great 12th-century poet-mystic Basava, who rebelled against ritualistic and superstitious temple worship and caste system, was a critical insider. So were the Marathi poet Tukaram and the Hindi poet Kabir.
"Freedom means there's nothing left to lose," Janis Joplin sang in her song Me and Bobby McGee. When the pen writes in that spirit, it's mightier than the sword. But when it ingratiates with power, the pen is deadlier than the sword.
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