The Autumn of Discontent

It seemed like an innocuous enough idea: bring together the writers and readers in one of India’s most beautiful places to talk about literature. But the Harud Literature Festival, which was supposed to be held in Kashmir later this month — Harud means autumn — has become the subject of a bitter dispute that has played out in the pages of India’s best newspapers, magazines and blogs.

This bitterness arises from one of the most complex and sensitive issues in India: the identity of a disputed region claimed by both India and Pakistan. Some of Kashmir’s most prominent literary voices declined to attend: Basharat Peer, author of an acclaimed memoir of growing up during the insurgency in the 1990s, and Mirza Waheed, a BBC journalist and writer of a novel called The Collaborator, about a young Kashmiri who secretly works with the Indian army.

They and several other writers and activists sent an open letter to the festival’s organizers:

“A literary festival, by definition, is an event that celebrates the free flow of ideas and opinions,” they wrote. “To hold it in a context where some basic fundamental rights are markedly absent, indeed, denied to the population, is to commit a travesty.”

Full report here NYT blogs

Peer escalates Kashmir LitFest row

Celebrated Kashmir writer Basharat Peer has escalated the debate over the canceled Kashmir literary festival with this piece Wednesday in The Hindu.

Celebrated Kashmir writer Basharat Peer has escalated the debate over the canceled Kashmir literary festival with his editorial piece. The festival’s organizers canned the festival last month after Mr. Peer and other writers, journalists and academics wrote an open letter opposing it.

Mr. Peer in his piece in The Hindu elaborated on his reasons for taking such a stance against the festival.

In a way, Mr. Peer’s objections show the intractable nature of the Kashmir problem.

In their open letter, those opposing the festival said it would have helped New Delhi create a fake sense of normalcy in Kashmir, where Indian troops continue to commit human rights abuses and free speech for separatists is curtailed. The signatories said they were worried the government was behind the festival but gave no evidence.

Full report here WSJ blogs

An autumn of silence

Autumn was to have been the season of hope; a time for words and ideas, listening and learning. A time for the Harud (autumn) literature festival which would have made Srinagar join that membership of cities in the region that host litfests - Jaipur, Kovalam, Karachi, Galle and Thimpu.

Kashmir is a long way from Jaipur where the same organisers, Teamwork Films have managed to achieve such iconic status that hardboiled journalists like Tina Brown call it the 'greatest literary show on earth'. It was also at Jaipur this year where the organisers attempted a tentative test-drive with two sessions on Kashmir including one that featured Basharat Peer (Curfewed Night), Mirza Waheed (The Collaborator) and Kashmir-born journalist and author Rahul Pandita.

But Harud was doomed to be an autumn of discontent. Even before the authors could be announced, Facebook went viral with innuendo. Some reports suggested, erroneously, that Salman Rushdie had been invited, leading to the creation of a Facebook page that called for a boycott, hate mail and death threats. Now that the festival is off, the Facebook page has mysteriously disappeared.

That was just one of the problems. Earlier this month, Peer and Waheed wrote an open letter, signed by over 200 other writers, journalists and citizens listing various misgivings. To hold a literature festival in a state where 'basic fundamental rights are markedly absent' would be a travesty, they said. Moreover, the use of the word 'apolitical' by festival adviser Namita Gokhale (to whom I am related) became a red flag. In a state where 'political reality is denied, even criminalised' how could a literature festival be apolitical? The choice of venue, DPS School and Kashmir University, became contentious. And finally, there was apprehension that the festival was part of the 'state's concerted attempt to portray that all is normal in Kashmir'. The organisers said there was no state-funding or patronage, to no avail.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Vicious Facebook campaign hijacks J-K litfest

Jammu & Kashmir’s first All-India Literature Festival, scheduled for September, has been put off indefinitely. The decision followed a vicious campaign on Facebook describing the Litfest as ‘Indian propaganda’ and calling upon the people to disrupt the festival by throwing stones.

The organisers’ plans to keep the festival ‘apolitical’ boomeranged, because some elements in the valley saw it as a ‘government agenda’ to tom tom normalcy in the Valley. The political campaign was spearheaded by a couple of Kashmiri writers settled abroad.

Ironically, New York based author Basharat Peer (author of Curfewed Night) and London based Mirza Waheed (author of The Collaborator), both of whom declined to attend the festival on the ground that their writing is political, have received acclaim in various literature festivals including the one in Jaipur.

“It is bizarre; first a national daily claiming to be the ‘masthead of India’ erroneously reported that Salman Rushdie will be attending the festival, then writers like Mirza and Basharat denounced the festival,” exclaimed one of the organisers on Tuesday.

Full report here Tribune 

Chinese, Pak, African authors at Kovalam

Chinese writer Lijian Zhang along with Pakistani writers Mohammed Haneef and Ali Sethi will be the prime attractions of the Kovalam Literature Festival early next month in Thiruvanthapuram.

Zhang, who is visiting India for the first time would speak about her bestseller Socialism is Great, a memoir of her growing up years in China of the 1980s, at the third edition of the festival, scheduled to be held on October 2-3 at the Kanakakunnu Place in Kerala's capital city.

Mohammed Haneef who wrote A Case of the Exploding Mangoes along with Ali Sethi whose debut novel The Wish Maker and H M Naqvi's The Home boy form the authors from Pakistan who will read out and discuss their books at the festival.

"We also have Debrah Baker, the wife of Amitav Ghosh reading out from her yet to be released book on Islam and Pakistan," says an organiser of the festival.

Baker''s book The Convert: A Parable of Islam and America, is scheduled to be released next year in India.

Among other invitees include poet lyricist ONV Kurup, writer Paul Zachariah, Kashmiri author Basharat Peer, graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee, Amish Tripathi, Mridula Koshy and Manu Joseph. Capt Gopinath, talks about his autobiography "simply fly.in" with Amit Baruah.

Full report here MSN

‘My Nationality a Matter of Dispute’: Basharat Peer

Basharat Peer always felt that Kashmiris living under Indian rule needed to tell their story like the Palestinians, Bosnians, Kurds and other people in conflict zones around the world. That led to his first book “Curfewed Night,” an evocative account of Mr. Peer’s years growing up in Kashmir as an armed insurgency against the Indian government gradually took root from the late 1980s. In that book, he writes of friends crossing the Line of Control to train in Pakistan for azaadi [freedom], of his identification card becoming a part of his being, of schools being turned into army camps, of lost childhoods.

In the early years of the new millennium the region seemed calmer but now nearly two decades after the conflict erupted, the youth of Kashmir have taken to the streets and about 50 people have died over the past two months. The aspirations remain same, the protest mode is now different—it’s the most primitive form—stone pelting.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an address Tuesday tried to reach out to the Kashmiri youth, urging them to give peace a chance.

Mr. Peer, a fellow of the Open Society Institute in New York, a George Soros initiative, is now working on his second book which deals with Indian Muslims. In an e-mail interview to India Real Time, he talks about Kashmir—a land of immeasurable beauty where “homecomings are fraught with danger.” Edited excerpts:

Your book deals extensively with the rise of the armed movement in the 1990s. How are today’s protests different?
Mr. Peer: The main question remains unchanged. Militancy was a political response to the erosion of Kashmir’s autonomy and democratic political space by the Indian government and hence the demand for azaadi. The stone throwing is a continuation of that demand and also a reaction to the excessive militarization of Kashmir and the unabated human rights violations by the forces, mostly civilian killings in the name of counter-insurgency.

What do you think of stone-pelting as a form of protest?
Mr. Peer: Stone-pelting is an old form of political protest in Kashmir and elsewhere. Although today’s Kashmiri boys are inspired by the Palestinian intifada, the historic precedent is the protests against the despotic rule of the monarch Hari Singh in the 1930s. My job as a writer is to write about it, place it in a context, explain what motivates the stone throwers and where do they come from. I have a long piece on the subject forthcoming in the next issue of Granta.

Full interview here WSJ

A frontline memoir of life, love and war in Kashmir

In February 1990, Basharat Peer saw a procession moving through his Kashmiri village towards a Sufi shrine. The bookish 13-year-old felt a rush of joy as he heard the men chanting for freedom: Aazadi! Aazadi!
They were protesting against the killing of Kashmiri demonstrators by Indian soldiers; but they were also calling for the disputed region to be allowed a plebiscite on its own sovereignty, as the UN had once promised.

Although Kashmir is Muslim-dominated, this idyllic land with snow-capped mountains and gorgeous lakes was divided between India and Pakistan in 1948. Since then various groups have campaigned – peacefully and violently – for the whole of Kashmir either to join Pakistan or to become an independent state. The Indian army, in response, has fought the rebels and carried out atrocities which, in turn, have further fuelled the rebellion.

Curfewed Night is an exceptional personal account of the conflict. Peer has a superb feel for language and incident. Words such as “frisking, crackdown, bunker, search, identity card, arrest and torture,” he tells us, formed the lexicon of his childhood. His village is shadowed by militants showing off their Kalashnikovs; Peer and his school friends carry their cricket bats like guns, “in imitation and preparation”. But though he was tempted, like one of his cousins, to join the militants, Peer grew increasingly suspicious of their tactics.

Full report here Telegraph