JAIPUR, 26 Jan 2013 [PTI] --- The Jaipur literature festival today witnessed fireworks after political critic Ashis Nandy made a controversial comment on corruption and people belonging to OBC, SC and ST communities which drew a strong response from the audience.
At a panel discussion at the festival, Nandy said, "Most corrupt people come from OBC, SC and ST communities".
Journalist Ashutosh, who was among the panelists, and most members from the audience took strong exception to the statement.
"This is the most bizarre statement I have heard. The Brahmins and the upper cast can do away with all the corruption but when a low caste person emulates the same thing it becomes so wrong. Such statement is not right," he said.
"Most of the people who are doing corruption are people from OBC, SC and ST communities and as long as it remains Indian republic will survive," Nandy said. His comments were met with boos from the audience.
However, Nandy later clarified that what he meant was that most of the people getting caught are people from OBC, SC and ST communities as they don't have the means to save themselves unlike people from upper castes.
"You catch a poor person selling a black ticket for Rs 20 and say corruption but rich people with corruption of millions get away," he said.
Speaking at the first session here, on 'Republic of Ideas' which discussed the idea of Indian Republic, author-journalist Tarun Tejpal said corruption is a class equalizer.
"Many people who came from wrong side of society subvert the rules and move ahead using loopholes. That is the only way they have as we made such class barriers," he said.
However, a member from the audience said that "corruption is the most abusive power. We can't agree to what you said".
Indian Constitution, the panelists observed has tried to do very well to safeguard the freedom of speech by compromising on certain aspects.
Richard Sorabji, an author with around 120 books to his credit said, "Compromise is very important for a Constitution. Indian Constitution tried to do very well with safeguarding of freedom of speech. People should be free to say what they want to say against religion but not with deliberate malice. This is a compromise missing in us".
"America will do well to adopt India's idea of free speech," he added.
Patrick French, whose latest book focuses on India, said that the problems India is facing today are not the creation of Constitution but by problem of bureaucracy.
Talking on the idea of India, he said, which neighbouring country you look upto and say you want to live in it. That's the idea of India. The fact that you can't read does not stop you from voting. It was a great idea of Indian Constitution"
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Ashis Nandy clarifies stand on dalit corruption remark, cites 'misunderstanding'
JAIPUR, 26 Jan 2013 [IANS] --- Leading political psychologist, scholar and social scientist Ashis Nandy clarified on Saturday that he did not mean to hurt the sentiments of the country's disempowered groups with his comment about the equalizing force of corruption and that the scourge was rampant among the backward and dalit communities as well.
"I do believe that a zero corruption society will be despotic society. I also said that if people like Richard Sorabjee and I want to be corrupt, I shall possibly send his son to Harvard and give him a fellowship and he can send my daughter to Oxford," Nandy told the media following protests by dalit groups.
"No one will think it as corruption. Indeed it will look like supporting talent. But when dalits, tribals and the OBCs are corrupt, it looks very corrupt indeed. However, this second corruption equalizes. It gives them access to top their entitlements As long as this equation persists, I have hope for the republic," he said.
Nandy said he was sorry that he had been misunderstood. "As should be clear, there was neither any intention nor any attempt to hurt any community," he said.
The scholar said he had been supporting the cause of the marginalized and dispossessed in the last 40 years of his academic and intellectual life.
Earlier in the day, Nandy had stirred a hornet's nest at a panel discourse, "Republic of Ideas" when he said: "It will be an undignified and vulgar statement but the fact is that most of the corrupt come from the OBC, the scheduled castes and now increasingly STs. As long as it was the case, the Indian republic would survive."
"I will give an example. The state of least corruption is West Bengal. In the last 100 years, nobody from the backward classes and the SC and ST groups have come anywhere near power in West Bengal. It is an absolutely clean state," Nandy said.
Later Nandy set the record straight saying that he had meant to endorse fellow panelist Tarun Tejpal's statement that "corruption in India was an equalizing force" after dalit activists descended on the venue to protest Nandy's remarks.
Late in the evening dalit leader Kirorilal Meena filed an FIR against Nandy at the Ashok Nagar police station. This was despite festival producer Sanjoy K Roy explaining the import of Nandy's comments to Meena and other dalit leaders.
"They have clarified their position and have understood that it was a misunderstanding. Controversies are easily created. Please be responsible," Roy said.
A trained clinical psychologist and sociologist, Nandy works cover a variety of topics like politics, public conscience and dialogues of civilizations. Nandy has been honoured with the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize and has been named as one of top 100 public intellectuals by the Carnegie Foreign Policy magazine.
Panelist Tarun Tejpal, the editor in chief and publisher of Tehelka said: "It is sad that in a literary festival, people should be attacking the finest intellectual. When you come to literature festival, you are coming to play with ideas."
Like in 2012, the Jaipur Literature Festival this year too has lived up its reputation as a platform for free speech and diverse voices with Saturday's controversy over Nandy remarks and a heated exchange between lyricist-MP Javed Akhtar and dalit writer Kancha Ilaiah from Andhra Pradesh over religion.
Protests by hardline Muslim groups following speculation that author of "Satanic Verses" Salman Rushdie would attend the festival last year had kept the heat on for five days.
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Grounded in earlier remarks
JAIPUR, 28 Jan 2013 [The Hindu] --- Subsequent remarks made by Ashis Nandy need to be read and understood in the context of what Tarun Tejpal said speaking before Nandy did. Agreeing with Tejpal, Nandy went on to argue that such "corruption" of the excluded — the Dalits, tribals, Other Backward Classes (OBC) and minorities — is inevitable if they are to break out from the bonds of an oppressive web of rules and regulations. He went on to say, referring to both himself and Richard Sorabji, that if they "arranged" to get fellowships for their children at Harvard or Oxford, as part of a trade in mutual and selective favours, none will comment about that, as if it is axiomatic that the fellowship was awarded on the basis of merit. Politicians or leaders of the oppressed strata, being new to the game and relatively untutored in the skills of manipulation, are unlikely to seek academic fellowships as a form of graft, and are more likely to covet and corner licences to operate petrol pumps. These pumps are publicly noticeable and can provoke outrage. Their licensees are linked to their "corrupt" benefactors, who are then condemned by the chattering classes in metropolitan cities.
So far so good. Nandy then went on to more provocatively stretch the argument, asserting that it is precisely this kind of "corruption" that has "saved" the Republic and democracy by enabling a degree of social and economic mobility and pluralising the composition of India's elite. Furthermore, he argued, that it is most likely the list of "corrupt" could be inordinately dominated by Dalits, tribals, minorities and OBCs. Despite his prefacing his last remarks, saying that what he was about to say may shock many people, and that he nevertheless wished to stress the point about how we understand corruption, many in the audience (and one on the panel) completely missed Nandy's point, and immediately accused him of casteist bias, calling upon him to withdraw his remarks and tender an apology. Some in the audience demanded that he should be charged under the Protection of Civil Rights Act for hurting the sentiments of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
Competitive outrage follows
Nandy's protestations that what he said and meant was completely the opposite of what he was being charged with were not persuasive once the atmosphere was charged with heightened emotions. Competitive outrage, taking on the familiar form favoured by some overly strident and aggressive TV anchors, evidently gives no quarter to nuanced arguments, any irony, or even black humour. When Nandy characterised the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda (now in jail), as India's first dollar billionaire, he was hardly extolling the virtues of corruption or turning a blind eye to the "perfidies" of upper caste politicians. At best, in an underhand and sly way, he was expressing admiration for the abilities of a tribal leader in matching up to what has hitherto been an exclusive preserve of India's upper caste elite.
Accusations of Nandy of being anti-Dalit/tribal/minority groups, the calls for registering a FIR against him, and demanding that he should be arrested would, in our better days, have been dismissed as an irrelevant, if not comic, aside. Such innocent days have faded, unfortunately, into a distant past. So quick are we now to take offence and demand immediate retributory action against alleged offenders that we almost never take a moment to pause, to ascertain the facts, understand what was said and meant, in what context, and to what ends. All we want is action, and now!
Signals shrinking discourse
Subsequent demands by the Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati, by the chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes P.L. Punia, and others, to arrest Ashis Nandy, even though none of them was present during the discussion, illustrates the danger of a growing kind of prickliness and intolerance. Worse still, such occasions are used by politicians to signal their commitment to their constituencies and shore up their images. In the process we are left with a diminished public discourse. Even liberals, usually quick to defend "freedom of speech," advocate caution and temperance in the expression of reactions to intemperate allegations of the kind made against Nandy. Is this stance, one wonders, a compensatory guilt, marking what is politically correct, an obverse privileging of the erstwhile dispossessed?
Ashis Nandy's choice of words, phrases, and examples can be questioned. He is not an organised and scintillating public speaker. One can also differ with his argument and analysis, for instance, his failure to distinguish between "corruption of the poor" and the "corruption of their leaders," whose subversion of rules often results in them robbing the very poor who are also their constituents. Nevertheless, Nandy's argument that the "rules of the game" have been set by an elite class to which he belongs, which remains a privileged lot, and therefore, that the deliberate subversion of those rules is an inevitable strategy for those striving for survival and upward mobility, certainly has merit. Clamping down on nuanced utterances and elliptical statements of the kind Nandy made will only make us a poorer democracy and Republic.
*Harsh Sethi is Consulting Editor, Seminar magazine.
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