In this Idea Exchange moderated by The Indian Express film critic Shubhra Gupta, Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie, who were in India to promote their film Midnight?s Children, speak about free speech, what counts as ?controversial? and their connection with India
Shubhra Gupta: The film Midnight?s Children received a tumultuous reception in Toronto. Are you surprised that it had such a smooth passage in India?
Mehta: When we screened the film at the Telluride festival, the first time the film was screened, the reaction was very positive. It was the same in Toronto. But many people expressed sadness that the film would never be seen in India. There was a presumption that there was something in the film which meant it would never be screened in India. We looked at each other and replied that we had always assumed the film would be screened here.
Rushdie: It?s not a surprise. You make a film, you release it. It?s not a very big deal. Several Indian distributors were interested in the film. In the end, we got a very good distributor?PVR. So, it was never an issue but the media made it one. And sometimes, those become self-fulfilling prophecies?you create a scare and then it scares people. I worry about that because of the albatross of being controversial that we both have?people invent a problem when the problem isn?t there. And that creates the problem. Fortunately, in this case, it didn?t. That?s true about the censors as well. The Censor Board could not have been more reasonable.
Coomi Kapoor: Deepa Mehta, how does it feel to be working with Salman Rushdie because judging from his book, he is not an easy person to get along with?
Mehta: It was such a difficult time, I was so miserable! No, really, it wasn?t easy initially, but I had known Salman. We had been friends for a few years. However, working together is a different thing. You can work with friends and it can fall apart. The whole process is about discourse, the integrity of the film, the cinema experience. What I most enjoyed while working with Salman was that throughout, he trusted me, he trusted me with his book.
Rushdie: The advantage we had is that we liked each other?s work. I thought very highly of her work. Fortunately, we both are quite direct, we say what we think. You can?t make a film if you are trying to tiptoe around people?s feelings. You have to be able to say this is what will work, that won?t work. If you can?t do that, you can?t work. Fortunately, we are both like that, so it was quite easy.
Dilip Bobb: You wrote this book many years ago. How did you feel when you first saw it translated into a movie?
Rushdie: It wasn?t like that because I was there at every step, starting with the rushes, going through to the final rough cut. There wasn?t a moment when they unveiled the movie for me. The film came together slowly over a year. One thing about Midnight?s Children, the look of the film was quite extraordinary, the kind of work done by the lighting cameraman was unbelievably good and the performances were extraordinary.
Rakesh Sinha: To what extent is the fear of reprisal affecting free speech in India? We saw a little bit of that at the Jaipur Literary Festival last year.
Rushdie: I think it is very bad. There?s something in India about offending people?s sensitivities. I am a sensitive person, I am offended every day. It doesn?t occur to me to take violent reprisals. The festival organisers had given a written undertaking that they would not offend anyone?s religious sensitivities. So, in this country, where religion is such an important subject, you cannot talk religion at a literary festival. That is a shame.
Subhomoy Bhattacharjee: It?s more than three decades since Midnight?s Children was written. Have these decades produced anything exciting in Indian history for you to write about?
Rushdie: I always thought of The Moor?s Last Sigh as a sort of counterpart novel to Midnight?s Children. The spirit of Midnight?s Children came out of growing up in Bombay as a child. I kept going back to that city and saw that transformation of Bombay into Mumbai, the transformation from that old, secular, liberal city into the much more sectarian environment there now is. And The Moor?s Last Sigh was born out of a kind of adult knowledge of the city. I have written about India on and off all the time. I never know what I am going do next. I remember saying to a journalist once that I am never going to write about India again and my next novel was The Ground Beneath Her Feet that has 250 pages about India.
Muzamil Jaleel: In your book Shalimar the Clown, you have you have talked about Kashmir and used the Kashmiri language. What do you think should happen in Kashmir?
Rushdie: I always knew Kashmir is waiting as a subject for me because my mother?s family is 100 per cent from Kashmir. My father?s family was also originally Kashmiri but they had moved to old Delhi. Other than the opening of Midnight?s Children and the kind of fairy tale of Kashmir that is Haroon and the Sea of Stories, I have not written on Kashmir.But, Kashmiris, for as long as I have known Kashmir, have always said the same thing: Kashmir for the Kashmiris. Of course, that?s the solution that nobody considers. But, if you want the answer, that is something like the answer. For a long time, Kashmir was caught between two forces, neither of which were pleasant. The choice between the Indian armed security forces and the jihadists from across the border in Pakistan is no choice at all.
Archna Shukla: You have said that India has become a lot more intolerant than it was at the time of Independence. What could be the reason for this?
Rushdie: I feel it has become very easy to attack cultural artefacts in India. This is not only an Indian problem. This idea of identity politics has become so prevalent now that people define their identity not by the things they love but by the things they hate. The things that offend you are the things that define you. What happened to The 300 Ramayanas essay (A.K. Ramanujan?s essay was removed from the Delhi University B.A. syllabus) is particularly scandalous. The treatment of M F Hussain is outrageous, not to mention Deepa Mehta?s film and my book. It?s a spreading problem?the use of culture as a target, as a way of defining identity of this or that group. And the public is apathetic and the state does not protect free expression. If there was a strong will in the state to defend liberty, then that could shape public opinion. At present, the state does not protect free expression; quite often, it does the opposite?of blaming the people who are targeted. And the public doesn?t seem to be bothered. That allows relatively small groups of people to impose their will on all kinds of artistic and intellectual activity.
Seema Chishti: The fatwa came from Iran, from Ayatollah Khomeini, but in India it was Rajiv Gandhi who banned The Satanic Verses. As a writer and as an Indian, which upset you more?
Rushdie: It is a tough choice. It began here. This was the first country to ban the book. That was very upsetting. One of the pleasures of the world we now live in is that you cannot ban a book any longer, you can download it. Theoretically, The Satanic Verses is banned in India but you can download it. That is one of the achievements of the information age.
Paromita Chakravarty: How would both of you define controversial? And is there any piece of art?books, films?you consider controversial?
Mehta: When I hear the word ?controversial?, I want to throw up because it is the most demeaning, depressing word in the English dictionary. What?s worse is when people say, ?Why do you ?court? controversy?? It?s like asking somebody, ?Why do you want to be miserable?? Your work is never judged on its own merit. It is seen through the lens of what people think you are trying to do, which is to evoke an emotion that is negative.
Rushdie: There is a time when writers and artists deliberately confront some form of orthodoxy or some form of power. When that happens, it is easy to call it controversial because there is a disagreement about it. I always thought that of all the books I had written, Satanic Verses was the least political. I thought Shame was the most directly political, controversial book that I ever wrote. It took on a military dictatorship when that military dictatorship was still in power in Pakistan. There, I could see a book that had a real argument with the society. A lot of what is called controversial is just called that because of the actions of other people. What the Ayatollah Khomeini did was controversial but the attack on the book is where people should have focused their criticism. To label the book as the thing that created the problem is a moral inversion. It is blaming the victim.
Seema Chishti: Is there something like perfect free speech?
Mehta: To express oneself with full honesty, which is always very subjective, is imperative. That does exist. Is that possible? Yes, it is. But I am also open to attack. That also is possible. If you don?t want to see the movie, that?s freedom.
Rushdie: I think that people who want to limit free speech always talk about the dangers of speaking freely. I have, to an extent, changed my mind about this because I lived for a long time in England in which there are limits put, for instance, on hate speech. One of the effects of living in USA for the last dozen years is that I have thought very hard about the First Amendment. The point about the First Amendment is that it allows hate speech. This is why groups like the Ku Klux Klan are able to exist and to say what they have to say and not be prosecuted. I came to think that the great strength of the First Amendment is that by allowing even hateful things to be said, it allows you to see where the enemy is, it allows you to demolish arguments. There is also the powerful argument which is that you do not remove from society terrible ideas by banning them. You increase their power by giving them the power of taboo. I would rather know that that guy is a racist than to not know.
Somya Lakhani: Do you both feel like victims?
Mehta: Do I look like a victim? I never felt like a victim. I have been angry, furious, felt helpless, felt a touch of self-pity at some point or the other but never felt like a victim.
Rushdie: I don?t like that kind of mentality. We also live in an age of victim culture where lots of different groups like to present themselves as victims of this or that and I?ve always disliked it when I see it in other people. Certainly, there was a period in the months immediately following the fatwa when, for a long time, it was impossible for me to speak. Everyone else had something to say about me, my book, but I was told my speaking would make matters worse. That felt very bad. Eventually, I told myself that I was not going to be a victim, I was going to be a protagonist. My instinct is not victimhood.
Shalini Langer: This visit of yours coincides with the Jaipur Literature Festival. Is that deliberate?At last year?s Jaipur Literature Festival, four writers read out from The Satanic Verses and they were asked to leave by the festival organisers.
Rushdie: You know, when I make my plans, the first thing I think is when is the Jaipur Literature Festival and how can I make some mischief there! I was very grateful to the writers who spoke up last year. The way in which they were treated by the festival was very poor. This year, it seems that the festival has managed to hold its nerve a little better. The serious question is, are we going to create spaces in which ideas can be openly exchanged because that?s what a literature festival is for?
Rakesh Sinha: Not many writers stood up for those who spoke out.
Rushdie: Well, writers are used to sitting down.
Shubhra Gupta: Both of you have been in India and then out of India. How much of a connection do you still feel with the country?
Mehta: I was born in India, I grew up here. I went to school and university here, I got married here. A large part of my life was in Delhi and in Dehra Dun. When I got married and moved to Canada, I was very young?21 years old. And I started making films in Canada but somehow my stories always came from India?Fire, Earth Water. During Water,we went to Benaras. We started shooting and all hell broke loose. We were not allowed to make the film in Varanasi and I was really upset. People came in hordes, threw the sets into the Ganga, one man tried to commit suicide. Something at that point broke for me in my relationship with India. What broke were the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia. I accepted what I had never accepted earlier when the press would say I made films like Fire Water or Earth because I was an NRI. I would say, no, I am not an NRI, I am an Indian. Then I realised that, of course, I am an NRI. When I look at India, it inspires me with its many stories. Canada gives me the freedom to express them. But I love India, it has broken my heart but it is also a country which I can?t help having great affection for.
Rushdie: When I started thinking about Midnight?s Children, I was living in London and I had become worried about my connection to India. I had begun to feel that I was losing my grip on that connection. I didn?t like it. I thought I had to write something as an act of reclamation. This book grew out of that spirit. Bombay city is a city in which the subject of land reclamation is very important. The whole city is built on reclaimed land or a lot of it is. And so that became the metaphor of the book I was writing. Once written, there was the question of its reception in India. Had it been thought by people here to be a foreigner?s novel, another kind of Paul Scott or John Masters?that would have been very depressing. The fact that people in India at that time took the novel to their hearts, in a way, reclaimed me. Over the years, that has waxed and waned. There is no question about the fact that the long period of nine years when I was forbidden to come to India was incredibly damaging to that relationship. I have been trying to get it back, I am not sure if I fully have.
Amrita Dutta: Who were the first storytellers in your life?
Rushdie: My father was very well read, not just in literature but also in the so-called wonder tales?Arabian Nights, Panchtantra, Katha Sagar. He would tell my sisters and me these stories as bedtime stories. That coloured my way of thinking about stories. My mother was the keeper of family stories. She was an encyclopedia of gossip. There was a point when she said that she was going to stop telling me things because I would put them in books and she?d get into trouble.
Transcribed by Sumegha Gulati and Aditi Vatsa