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.