FREEDOM? REALLY?

FREEDOM, REALLY?

Khaliqur Rahman

Freedom of a slave from the master, freedom of children during vacations from school work, freedom of certain rights given to persons as honour or compliment like free travel or free occupation of a house or hotel room or freedom of expression are different freedoms. President Roosevelt in 1941 spoke of four freedoms. Two of which are the freedom of speech and freedom of religion. He also spoke of freedom from fear. Gandhiji in his discourse on Truth and Fearlessness and Tagore, too, have spoken on freedom from fear.

 There’s another word liberty. Voltaire and Rousseau, the ideologues of the French Revolution have given the world the famous slogan: liberty, equality and fraternity.

While freedom refers to totality, liberty is limited to relativity.

Think of liberty and certain oppressive government or foreign rule comes to mind. You have liberty to smoke in the smoking zone. You have liberty to speak or write or behave in a manner so that it might not be regarded as rude. He is at liberty means he’s free from prison or control.  You know he’s free and you are at liberty to go and see him.

In all of these contexts, the contrasting element is some control or restriction or even captivity.

If we look at life from inception, we’ll realise that it is a wonderful mix of liberty and captivity. In the womb, Life is free to breathe and perhaps move but within certain limitations. What happens if Life chooses to break free? Abortion!

The total span of Life, right from inception, has its own freedom and restrictions built into and imposed by Nature. The very health of Life depends on the right proportion of restriction and freedom. Ironically, complete freedom, in life, from life, is death.

These generalizations normally pertain to Life that includes animal life and perhaps plant life, as well, and of course, human life.

Man, they say, is a social animal. Unquestionably, then, Man’s freedom is restricted by social codes. Apart from society, Man has religion, culture and law. Therefore, life, in the form of Man, is bound by social norms, religious codes, community ethics and jurisprudence.

The natural instinct of a captive has always been to break free. In the history of mankind, in my observation, there have been two categories of people who have transgressed the normal codes, social, religious and legal, to break free from the top and those who have decided to escape through the bottom. In the top category are people like the Joan of Arc, Mansoor, Sarmad and the like. They were driven by a passionate urge to tell the truth, no matter what. Perhaps they didn’t care, perhaps they didn’t know, the billion dollar dictum put down by the wisest counsel on earth and later supported by all the religions and ethics: Satyam bruyaat, priyam bruyaat, naa bruyaat apriyam satyam (Speak the Truth, speak sweet, Speak not the bitter Truth).

In the second category, I find the lesser human beings like Salman Rushdie, M F Hussain and Taslima Nasreen. I am not too sure about Taslima but Salman and MF would have been greater without the controversies in the name of freedom of expression. How much hurt and loss and hate-speak have they spread? What is more ridiculous is ‘some’ celebration by the so called ‘outellectual’ elite at Lit Fest and Conclave.

The question is: would these self-demeaning exponents of freedom of expression have carried on without market-dependence and audience-dependence? Haven’t they very cleverly sold themselves or mortgaged individual good sense, individual pride and individual freedom to these nouveau riche posh market bosses and elitists?

FREEDOM HIJACKED

FREEDOM HIJACKED

Khaliqur Rahman

I was in Britain in 1988, when two forbidden fruits were available for the taking: Satanic Verses and The Last Temptations of Christ. I could have taken both but  took neither, knowing full well that the forbidden fruits taste sweeter because of the extra effervescence in the taste buds of the mind besides the fizz in the mouth.

I also knew that behind a forbidden fruit is always hidden a Satan’s helping hand and conspiracy to subvert an Adam, if possible, with an Eve’s  charmed temptations to bring about the inevitable fall.

The Satanic advances, thus, failed and since then I’ve always thought, I must thank my stars that good sense has been my faithful companion all along.

What is now not amusing at all, even after good 25 years, is a covert attempt to hijack freedom. The Literary Festival at Jaipur would have been graceful and decently sublime in aesthetics and high taste, if only it hadn’t been mercilessly hijacked by one man, even in absentia. The Satan was away but the Beelzebubs and the Lucifers and the Devils were there, inside and outside, to bring down the high spirits and good intentioned ‘pious’ people like William Dalrymple and Namita Bhandare.

But this was not enough. The Devils were not satiated. They planned a secret sequel to Jaipur Fest in the garb of Conclave 2012.

Salman Rushdie arrived! Imran Khan didn’t! Salman Rushdie exploited the situation. He took the ladder of lowliness to climb down well below even Nadir to spray the muck. Astonishingly, the so called august gathering of elite intellectuals – who I endearingly call ‘outellectuals’ – lapped the muck with relishing applause. Some celebration of the concept of freedom of expression!

Poor Salman didn’t know he was indulging in some of the lowest levels of self-demeaning exercises. Knowing very well, Imran wasn’t there at the batting crease, he hurled bouncers, one after the other and celebrated the feat with shameless, audacious giggles, as if of triumph. The gathering clapped!

He likened Imran’s face to Gaddafi’s. He recalled the London days, Imran’s playboy image and his famous ‘im the Dim’ epithet.

I wondered in total bewilderment how Conclave 2012 or India or the World order benefited from such an event.

It is not in my grains to write or speak in such terms but I went to twitter and posted some of the nastiest tweats. Unashamedly, I called him ‘headless egghead’ and asked if he didn’t look like ‘a white Caliban’ and why in the name of freedom of expression of his parents, Anis and Nageen, of Kashmiri descent and origin, he didn’t come to the conclave ‘streaking’.

One of his countless ardent fans ( a young immigrant in Europe, running all the time for cover to defend himself from the Al Qaida/Taliban threats, must have been ‘hurt’ by the nastiness of my tweats, must have ’found’ me out from the facebook) sent me a one-to-one fb message asking me, “Professor, don’t you look like a well-dressed Taliban?”.

I liked the Caliban/Taliban rhyme and messaged to him so. I also wrote to him that I have always been an admirer of Rushdie’s prose and prose style. I also told him how much I like his ‘Irresistibubble’, the Ogilvy Mather copywrite line for bubblegum advertisement that gave Rushdie the breakthrough in the world of literary writing.

I also wrote to him about my stance against violence of any kind, including that of the Taliban or any such group.

Understanding my position, he apologized.

Whither freedom of speech sans market-dependence and Outellectuals india inc?

I don’t know why we waste so much time, so much money and energy on meanest of non-issues.