Arise, Sir Salman!

Priyamvada Gopal has an insightful perspective on Sir Salman.

Is America a shining example of a multi-party political system and accountable government? Rushdie's list of 'what matters' pays pious lip service to 'a more equitable distribution of resources' while stressing 'kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches and cutting-edge fashion' priorities rather specifc to upper-class metropolitan glitterati. (Could cutting-edge fashion be connected to an inequitable distribution of the world's resources, one wonders?). The Muslim diaspora, Rushdie then opines, have values that are at odds 'with the Christian, Hindu, non-believing or Jewish cultures among which they live'.

Had Rushdie not compromised himself so severely, it would be easier for us to acknowledge the continuing relevance of some of what he says. He has rightly called for a fast-growing version of 'a self-exculpatory paranoid Islam' which blames 'outsiders' for all the ills of Muslim societies to be examined and resisted. He has also called for the 'restoration of religion to the sphere of the personal', a call he might have extended more widely and forcefully to the driving forces in American politics today. Trouble is, what he once undertook in the name of shared human values and goals, he now identifies largely with the West, using culture-specific, parochial terms like 'The Enlightenment' and 'Reformation' to call for change in non-Western contexts and cultures.

Rushdie and his allies in the West need to return to a more wide-ranging critical engagement with the present and with the cultures outside the West which shaped him as a young writer. Equally, so-called representatives of Islam who find only books and images--not poverty, intra-faith violence, shame killings and dictatorial regimes--a source of offense need to stop being such willing puppets for every provocateur, real or imagined, who comes their way. Until this happens, the only winner will be those who espouse the specious but self-fulfilling prophecy of the 'clash of civilisations'.

Anti-Racist Politics

Priyamvada Gopal analyzes Shilpa Shetty's big brother win in terms of the politics of British Asian identity in the Guardian.

For British Asians, the public display of familiar battles poked at raw wounds, inspiring large numbers to protest. I would feel a lot more excited about this apparent resurgence of anti-racist awareness if recent years had shown more evidence of a genuine activist spirit among us. Where were these tens of thousands of protesting voices when young Zahid Mubarak died at the hands of a white racist cellmate with whom he should not have been made to share a cell? When a few hundred Sikh women protested alone at discriminatory treatment by British Airways meal supplier Gate Gourmet? When British Asian Muslims are confined illegally and tortured in Guantánamo Bay with the acquiescence of the Blair government? Why did only a small minority of British Asians speak up when "Hindu" criminals in the Indian state of Gujarat, to which many are linked by familial ties, raped and killed thousands of Muslims in February 2002 in an attempt at ethnic cleansing?

Too many of us have been busy unhooking ourselves from the collective term "British Asians" and dividing ourselves into Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The terms "Asian" and "black" were rallying points in the anti-racist organising of the 70s and 80s, whereas "British Asians" as a category has been largely absent from recent political discourse. Few displayed the outrage CBB has elicited when institutional racism in police forces was exposed. I can't help wondering where these angry voices were when a Sikh playwright, Gurpreet Bhatti, was bullied by loud voices within her own community and even subjected to death threats. Why is racial profiling seen as a Muslim issue? Where were the custodians of Asian dignity when crews filming Monica Ali's eponymous novel were hounded out of Brick Lane? When artist MF Hussain's exhibition was shut down because of vandalism by goons apparently representing hurt Hindu sentiments?

A large part of the problem is that, apart from the sterling work done by a few dedicated individuals and organisations, anti-racist politics has become a facile "representation" game that involves appeasing the fragile sensitivities of a vocal few claiming to represent the whole community. It is about harassing artists and writers, demanding that they conform to "right" ways of representing the community. Meanwhile, India's favourite cultural pastime is "representing the nation", the very task Shilpa announced for herself as she entered the BB compound. As India anxiously finds its place within the community of big global players and tries to reconcile its economic successes with the glaring (and often deepening) inequalities that still mar its social landscape and self-image, it is increasingly obsessed with disseminating the myth of the nation as fundamentally middle-class, professional and successful. The task has partly fallen on the feminine shoulders of India's flourishing glamour industry.