Taslima’s Lies, Ismat’s Truth

t:
What do you mean it is such a daunting task to transcribe a tape of such relevance? Instead of wasting your time on silly `Unplugged` threads, you must get down to this. It ought not to be merely for anyone who is interested, but should reach a wider audience. And if you are lazy, get some kid to transcribe it and then edit and post it as a proper interview. (I personally like to do my own transcriptions because listening to the voice and inflections adds so much more to the words.)

I must add here that interviewing writers of regional literature and getting them published in mainsteram English media is not always easy, especially if it is only their work and ideology you are concentrating on and not the hype surrounding them.

nasahsaab:
Yes I did interview Ismat Chugtai, thrice. Amrita Pritam too. And a host of off-beat literary figures, including a Dalit writer who worked as a peon by day and wrote the most searing prose and poetry at night. A play based on his work was staged at the posh Tata Theatre. I love the ironies of life... I will share as much as I can in good time.

#71 by nasah on November 24, 2003 10:17pm PT

Agreed! I also recite it with my heart- not intellect!! That is why I avoid wasting time on theological discourses . Any way that is the end of this issue for me.

Ballukhan sahib -- please -- just recite or hear the Quran Sharif with Qiraat -- for your spiritual uplifting --

NOT as a Geological Handbook --

be glad -- that it is in incomprehensible lyrical Arabic -- that sends a hair raising CHILL thru the spine when heard from an Egytian or a Malaysian classical Qaaree -- not in terse Urdu or in alien English....

take it from Maulana Nasah -- want to save your Imaan -- don`t touch the Turjumaa...

regards

#56 by temporal on November 24, 2003 3:59am PT

On what is a sufficient proof for being considered as a ``courageous`` person?--

...i would acknowledge it readily if she returns and faces her adversaries head on…that would be courage....

10 million mullahs against 1 Atheist Woman

---

The odds of surviving are none- you also know this and so does Taslima- hence this conditionality suggested as a necessary pre-condition for her being considered ``courageous`` is just an attempt to down grade Taslima`s contribution to the feminist voices of this sub-continent.

``i taped a session…with ismat chughtai in her Bombay flat…chowk wants me to transcribe that conversation… i will transcribe and translate it for you and olthers interested…what a incredible woman ismat was``

Temporal Sahib -- you have Ismet`s voice on tape!! -- incredible -- and you are sitting on this nayaab gem -- please do take the trouble of transcribing and publishing it on Chowk -- if you can clean the tape digitally please let`s us hear portions of it --

it is the most exciting news I`ve heard in decades -- lucky man temporal sahib

Farzana bi -- did you also interview Ismet? -- can you write the gist of it in another article

---

we would love to hear her views in contemporay times.... it has been such a long time

best regards to both of you

I do not want to digress from the main issue and start theological debate on the sciences and Quran. But would like some more enlightening interpretation for these translations of A. Yusufali:

[al-Hijr 15:19] And the earth We have spread out (like a carpet); set thereon mountains firm and immovable; and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance.

[Ta Ha 20:53] ``He Who has, made for you the earth like a carpet spread out; has enabled you to go about therein by roads (and channels); and has sent down water from the sky.`` With it have We produced diverse pairs of plants each separate from the others.

[az-Zukhruf 43:10] (Yea, the same that) has made for you the earth (like a carpet) spread out, and has made for you roads (and channels) therein, in order that ye may find guidance (on the way);

[Qaf 50:7] And the earth- We have spread it out, and set thereon mountains standing firm, and produced therein every kind of beautiful growth (in pairs)-

[adh-Dhariyat 51:48] And We have spread out the (spacious) earth: How excellently We do spread out!

[Nuh 71:19] ```And God has made the earth for you as a carpet (spread out),

[an-Naba` 78:6] Have We not made the earth as a wide expanse,


[al-Anbiya` 21:31] And We have set on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with them, and We have made therein broad highways (between mountains) for them to pass through: that they may receive Guidance.

In ``real`` virtual world of relevance for 2003..(impartial google hits method)

taslima nasrin 8330 hits
ismat chugtai 470 hits

and this is very important.. unless one disregards correlational data such as words like sex causing so many hits due to its porportional relevance

I find it very hard to comment on someone`s work when I have not read it. I have read about such outright lies By Taslima such as ````Koranic teaching still insists that the sun moves around the earth. How can we advance when they teach things like that?`` [Taslima Nasrin, `Time`` magazine, Jan 31, 1994] ``, but these are mere quotes. Elsewhere she writes about the Quranic injunctions on inheritence claiming that Allah has actually erred doing arithmatic because fractions don`t add up - therefore Qura`n is wrong. Even an elementary level child who can do fractions can prove Taslima wrong. But West uses such ``voices of dissent`` to further its own agenda. Shame on them too. However, such non-sense does put Muslims in a tight corner. I think Taslima could have accomplisghed more for women`s rights and all if she kept herself honest and objective.

`The accusations against Rushdie, quite frankly, are getting old, esp. when its cited by people who havent read him. `

tell me all about it! people have written books just to denounce rushdie and perhaps even to prevent people from reading his books. some of my friends get all-too-rancorous when it`s rushdie( and they haven`t read any of his works as far as i know).
they obstinately refused to read anything by him when i offered them to. kind of funny. heh

Saminasha

~~I`m nonplussed that you think my post merits more than one response...~~

- Sorry. Every time I submitted a post something else occurred to me.

~~I cannot ignore the aesthetic value of art- however I find that there is much art out there that engages both the political and the aesthetic in rigorous and powerful manners. In addition, any text can be researched for its political resonances-it depends on what the researcher is willing and able to explore~~

- Re: Aesthetics & Politics

Are the two mutually exclusive? Is there a risk that we focus on one to the detriment of the other in our engagement with writers and our critical discourse with them today?
Can this lead to neglect or unfair criteria in our judgments?

I tend to agree with what you say, but I am sometimes a little uneasy that literature has become the battle ground over which ideological battles are sometimes being fought, often to the detriment of the ethos of the aesthetic.


~~No, the point of my, Ballukhan, and Hasan`s posts are that criteria of comparision as constructed by this piece is questionable for reasons that have been expressed in our posts. They are different writers with different ideological positions (that have not been fixed at one point), differing contexts, different genres (to my knowledge...has Chugtai written poetry?). The crux of this piece seems to be that Nasrin was foolish/Western/attention grabbing enough to write a memoir of her relationships and is thus unworthy to be considered Everyone`s Favorite South Asian/Muslim Woman writer, even though she has never expressed the desire to be so~~

Thanks for the explication. I tend to agree with you on this point about the benefit of juxtaposing two different writers like this in order to make a (sometimes) crude ideological/political point.

{To the author of this article I am not necessarily accusing your piece of this, rather the potential of this methodology}

In such a case, instead of the critical discourse uncovering and making things clear it can have the opposite effect to what good criticism should do; render obscure what should be made plain, muddy the waters rather than clearing them.


~~``Is this not a form of cultural relativism that risks neglecting writers who do not accord with the critical (either individual or establishment) view of what is acceptable and permissible, and does it not risk constructing an ideological critical tyranny of approval?``
Well, this is an interesting sentence...can you unpack it and try writing it again?~~

In blunt terms…Is there a risk of the critical discourse that concentrates purely on the sociological and political insight/value of a writers work becoming an Establishment, and becoming itself a kind of critical tyranny that accords value to texts only in line with their (and I hate this phrase but have to use it here) Political Correctness?


If you are non-plussed please note that I am not an academic nor have I studied literature to a higher level, but I am interested in issues of literary theory and the debate surrounding these issues. Hence I am asking you, as an academic and a critic.

(I was trying to pick your brain)

PunjabiZulu,

I`m nonplussed that you think my post merits more than one response...

re:
~~Nasrin is there because she seems to answer the question a majority of my students (working class, women of color) ask: Why don’t South Asian women speak out against their oppression?~~

``This makes me consider another issue, somewhat wider than the immediate one. You say you teach Nasrin but not Chugtai...``

No. I wrote that the anthology that many profs use at my college includes Nasrin and not Chugtai. If I were to teach South Asian literature one day, I would most certainly include Chugtai in my course work.

`` (I have not read either), on the basis of the former being more alive to contemporaneous issues that you wish to discuss on your course. The overarching criteria of your pedagogy being, therefore, a political one. Is there still room for the study of literature on a purely aesthetic level in this day and age? Where does the artistic/aesthetic value judgment come into play? What do you think?``

I cannot ignore the aesthetic value of art- however I find that there is much art out there that engages both the political and the aesthetic in rigorous and powerful manners. In addition, any text can be researched for its political resonances-it depends on what the researcher is willing and able to explore.


``By all accounts, Chugtai is the better and more skilled writer of the two.``

No, the point of my, Ballukhan, and Hasan`s posts are that criteria of comparision as constructed by this piece is questionable for reasons that have been expressed in our posts. They are different writers with different ideological positions (that have not been fixed at one point), differing contexts, different genres (to my knowledge...has Chugtai written poetry?). The crux of this piece seems to be that Nasrin was foolish/Western/attention grabbing enough to write a memoir of her relationships and is thus unworthy to be considered Everyone`s Favorite South Asian/Muslim Woman writer, even though she has never expressed the desire to be so.

``Is the prevailing paradigm of literary criticism (at least the school to which you tend towards), guilty of constructing a moral/political criteria that overlooks the aesthetic, the transcendent and the intimate in its placing of value on a writers work?``

Again, you`ve misread my post. But for the sake of argument, in non judgemental hands, an exploration of an author`s political/personal arc can yield fascinating results.

``Is this not a form of cultural relativism that risks neglecting writers who do not accord with the critical (either individual or establishment) view of what is acceptable and permissible, and does it not risk constructing an ideological critical tyranny of approval?``

Well, this is an interesting sentence...can you unpack it and try writing it again?

Thanks for your feedback on Sen, Lahiri and Ali.

Saminashah No45,

I really liked reading this post, especially this paragraph.


~~What is the purpose of these kinds of comparisons? What do we hope to gain by them? I agree that mainstream debates on Naipaul and Rushdie have been particularly unilluminating. If I compare Rushdie or Naipaul, I would not ask which writer is a “better” South Asian-American or South Asian Brit…I mean, how does one reasonably prove that without wading into dangerous territory? And yet we get discussions on why Rushdie is a sell out or why Naipaul is an Uncle Ram….these kinds of debates wilfully ignore the role of these two writers and their interrogations of certain diasporas-and certainly not of ALL South Asians. Rather than looking at how Naipaul and Rushdie render dislocation in their work, a majority of hyphen South Asians would rather play games of Desi Deficiency-as if one can innoculate themselves from the challenges of life and the reality of multiplicity. Its easy to take Naipaul and Rushdie to task for lampooning our frantic efforts at Desi Retention-its much more difficult to ask ourselves what identity/identities means and how the relationships between ideologies.~~

Saminashah,

Can I reccomend a book to you? Something tells me you will love it. It is a written by an excellent young British-Indian critic called Sukhdev Sandhu. Lots on Kureishi, Naipaul and a whole range of African/Carribean writers...

It is called ``London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City``

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/000257182X/qid=1069670857/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/202-7389085-7323050

(Ignore the bad review given by a reader on this page, it is pure BS)

Saminasha

~~Nasrin is there because she seems to answer the question a majority of my students (working class, women of color) ask: Why don’t South Asian women speak out against their oppression?~~

You must have heard of Mala Sen?

Incidentally, do you believe that within the liberal pardigm (I use the word advisedly, please note I have not used the word ``left``) we sometimes (not always) find a degree of cultural relativism that discourages or turns a blind eye to that opression in the name of not criticisng those from other cultures?

Saminasha

~~Nasrin is there because she seems to answer the question a majority of my students (working class, women of color) ask: Why don’t South Asian women speak out against their oppression?~~

This makes me consider another issue, somewhat wider than the immediate one. You say you teach Nasrin but not Chugtai (I have not read either), on the basis of the former being more alive to contemporaneous issues that you wish to discuss on your course. The overarching criteria of your pedagogy being, therefore, a political one. Is there still room for the study of literature on a purely aesthetic level in this day and age? Where does the artistic/aesthetic value judgment come into play? What do you think?

By all accounts, Chugtai is the better and more skilled writer of the two. Is the prevailing paradigm of literary criticism (at least the school to which you tend towards), guilty of constructing a moral/political criteria that overlooks the aesthetic, the transcendent and the intimate in its placing of value on a writers work?

Is this not a form of cultural relativism that risks neglecting writers who do not accord with the critical (either individual or establishment) view of what is acceptable and permissible, and does it not risk constructing an ideological critical tyranny of approval?

Saminasha

~~And I myself am comparing Lahiri and Monica Ali in my thesis on ideology in South Asian diaspora writing~~

That sounds really interesting. I would love to read it when it is complete :)

Incidentally, have you thought about the Bengali angle on this? One from East Bengal, one from West Bengal, both major diasporic writers. It may be fruitful to do a google search on the influence of the Bengali renaissance and the long tradition of literary innovation and writers in that langauge, not just Tagore but writers like Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee, Buddhadev Bose, and Nazrul Islam. The point being the existence of a long established Bengali literary culture characterised by its engagement both with the locality and the outer world, its engagement with the modernist movement as well as the more traditional modes of vernacular fiction. Amit Chaudhri has written some interesting stuff on this. It may be a blind alley, but it might also place them in the context of a literature and literary culture which, even though they write in English, they may be seen to belong to, being the children of Bengali academics.

It is worth thinking about.

:)