Salman Rushdie on Bombay
Salman
Rushdie spoke at the Asia society, and here is a transcript from Outlook. He spoke out Bombay, the media coverage, Pakistan and the shadow of Partition.
Well, first of all, I think, it is very difficult, as you said in the beginning, to articulate exactly how deeply we were affected by what we saw. I think there were many days when it was almost impossible to think, let alone to speak about what was happening, specially I think to those of us who grew up on those streets. And by the way, I think we have all agreed before hand that we are going to call the city by its proper name, which is Bombay. It is Bombay that was attacked and not Mumbai. And, by the way, I cannot say, and this is the only time I will say it, the words "Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus". This railway station is and always will be VT. And so, because these are the names of love, the others are the artificial names imposed by the politicians. But these are the names of the city that we love.
I think it was something like a perfect storm that happened in Bombay, that you put together the incredible brutality of the killers, fuelled as we now know by industrial quantities of cocaine and other drugs that were found in their bodies and in their possessions. Combine that with, what I think is generally seen as a collapse of the Indian response, the Indian security response really was negligible. Three hours to get a fire engine to the Taj, a hotel that stands right next to the water. Twelve hours before the commandos were able to go in because they didn't have a plane to get to Bombay. Etc Etc
So that's the second part of it.
But I think the third part of it that has become increasingly clear is perhaps the dominant element and that is the absolute duplicity and hypocrisy of the Pakistani state. So much so that even today, the President of Pakistan, inteviwed by the BBC said there is no evidence that Pakistan was involved in this. Even when the father of the surviving terrorist has identified his son as being a Pakistani, the President of Pakistan says that is not evidence.
So here you have these three forces coming together: Brutality, incompetence and cynical duplicity and what that did was to create this horror.
I wanted to read just a brief passage about -- since we are talking about our beloved place, so let's talk about that.
This is a passage I wrote in my novel, "the Moor's Last Sigh" and it was written actually after another series of atrocities in 1993 explosions in Bombay which themselves were in the aftermath of the destruction of Babri Masjid and so it's in that context. But I think it applies, and it certainly applies to what I think about, about the city...
"Bombay was central, had been so from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay was North India, everything south of it was the South. To the east lay India's East, and to the west, the world's West. Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and everybody talked at once.
See here for complete audio coverage of the event.
Rushdie spoke at the Asia society, and here is a transcript from Outlook. He spoke out Bombay, the media coverage, Pakistan and the shadow of Partition.
Well, first of all, I think, it is very difficult, as you said in the beginning, to articulate exactly how deeply we were affected by what we saw. I think there were many days when it was almost impossible to think, let alone to speak about what was happening, specially I think to those of us who grew up on those streets. And by the way, I think we have all agreed before hand that we are going to call the city by its proper name, which is Bombay. It is Bombay that was attacked and not Mumbai. And, by the way, I cannot say, and this is the only time I will say it, the words "Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus". This railway station is and always will be VT. And so, because these are the names of love, the others are the artificial names imposed by the politicians. But these are the names of the city that we love.
I think it was something like a perfect storm that happened in Bombay, that you put together the incredible brutality of the killers, fuelled as we now know by industrial quantities of cocaine and other drugs that were found in their bodies and in their possessions. Combine that with, what I think is generally seen as a collapse of the Indian response, the Indian security response really was negligible. Three hours to get a fire engine to the Taj, a hotel that stands right next to the water. Twelve hours before the commandos were able to go in because they didn't have a plane to get to Bombay. Etc Etc
So that's the second part of it.
But I think the third part of it that has become increasingly clear is perhaps the dominant element and that is the absolute duplicity and hypocrisy of the Pakistani state. So much so that even today, the President of Pakistan, inteviwed by the BBC said there is no evidence that Pakistan was involved in this. Even when the father of the surviving terrorist has identified his son as being a Pakistani, the President of Pakistan says that is not evidence.
So here you have these three forces coming together: Brutality, incompetence and cynical duplicity and what that did was to create this horror.
I wanted to read just a brief passage about -- since we are talking about our beloved place, so let's talk about that.
This is a passage I wrote in my novel, "the Moor's Last Sigh" and it was written actually after another series of atrocities in 1993 explosions in Bombay which themselves were in the aftermath of the destruction of Babri Masjid and so it's in that context. But I think it applies, and it certainly applies to what I think about, about the city...
"Bombay was central, had been so from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay was North India, everything south of it was the South. To the east lay India's East, and to the west, the world's West. Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and everybody talked at once.
See here for complete audio coverage of the event.
Comments