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Writers
against Self-censorship: “We have to fight against hounding writers into self-censorship with
every word we have…”
The thugs
policing our cultural fraternity have struck again. In response to
the violent threats against his family, Malayalam writer S Hareesh
has now withdrawn his novel Meesa (Moustache) being serialised by
Mathrubhumi, stating that he will publish it when “the climate is
congenial”. Meesa is the
first novel written by Hareesh, winner of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi
award for short fiction. The first three chapters of this novel were
published in serial form by Mathrubhumi weekly, raising great
expectations among readers.
Then right-wing groups began a campaign
of intimidation that has become only too familiar in recent years. Hareesh was
accused of “hurting religious sentiments” and “maligning Hindus”. He
was threatened that his hand would be chopped off to “teach him a
lesson”. He was abused and threatened on social media, forcing him to
deactivate his accounts. Members of his family were viciously
trolled. Copies of the weekly were burnt, prompting the editor to
tweet that literature is being mob lynched.
Hareesh has
been attacked for a reference one of the characters in the novel
makes to women's visits to the temple. It was a character speaking,
not the author; the serialisation of the novel had just begun and the
characters were getting established. Such disintegrated reading would
make all of literature, cinema and art vulnerable to similar
dastardly attacks. Moreover, disagreement with and disapproval of a
novel cannot take the form of harassment or threats.
The goons who
attack expressions of our multiple cultures want us to lose more than
one novel.
Several
writers in Kerala have already expressed their solidarity with
Hareesh. As writers and readers, as citizens of a democracy, we
cannot wait for “the climate” to change. It is we writers and artists
who create the cultural climate and not communal politicians. We
have to insist that we have the freedom of expression essential for a
diverse society to express itself; the critical imagination required
to examine the divisions in our society, past and present; and to
exercise the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution.
We cannot
have a repeat of the Perumal Murugan story where the writer was
hounded into declaring himself dead as a writer. We cannot have more
attacks like the recent one on poet Kureeppuzha Sreekumar in Kerala
or other writers in different parts of the country. The list is
growing. We appeal to all our colleagues in the cultural fraternity
to resist being hounded by the right-wing groups into
self-censorship. We call on the central government and state governments
to commit to a safe milieu for writers and artists to do their work.
No writer
should be hounded into putting down his or her pen. No democracy,
indeed no culture, can live if its writers are silent. This is why we
have to fight against this hounding of writers into self-censorship
with every word we have.
K Satchidanandan
Githa Hariharan
Romila Thapar
Paul Zacharia
Nayantara Sahgal
NS Madhavan
TM Krishna
Perumal Murugan
Shashi
Deshpande
Kiran Nagarkar
Ganesh Devy
Keki
Daruwalla
Sunil P Elayidom
KP Ramanunni
Sethu
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar Ritu Menon
Jerry Pinto
Chandan Gowda
Atamjit Singh
Arshia Sattar
Damodar Mauzo
Rafeeq Ahammed
Meena Alexander
Manoj Kuroor
Rubin D’Cruz
Dona Mayoora
Megha Pansare
Shekhar Pathak
Sandesh Bhandare
Banani Chakravarty Ajit
Magdum
Madhav Palshikar
Vinu Abraham
Pramod Munghate
Pramod Nigudkar
Srilata K
Arundhati
Ghosh
Kavitha Murlidharan
Shanta
Gokhale
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