Ziauddin Sardar, a prolific left-leaning political writer based in London, has been going after Salman Rushdie lately, calling him a “brown sahib” — the postcolonial equivalent of an Uncle Tom. I find Sardar’s attacks upsetting (I side with Rushdie here, as I’ll explain below), but more generally I am so over this habit of brown intellectuals tearing each other to shreds on the question of their loyalty to the “cause.” Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they are a traitor or a coconut, needing to be “flushed,” as a certain desi blogger is fond of saying. There’s something pathological and deeply self-destructive about the way minority writers do this to each other, and I wish it would stop.
The current feud is a bit of a convoluted story, starting most recently with Sardar’s review of a book on Islam/terrorism by Anthony McRoy called From Rushdie to 7/7: The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain. It looks like your basic, “Watch out, Muslims in Britain have become very radicalized!” type book.
In the review, Sardar says some harsh things about McRoy’s book that might or might not be accurate, as he tends to argue more from insinuation than evidence. I don’t know, as I haven’t read McRoy’s book. But he says this about Rushdie:
For example, he suggests I labelled Rushdie as a “brown sahib” because I feared that the new generation of Muslims would become “contaminated” with “infidel ideas”. This is laughably absurd. The “brown sahib” is a recognisable sociological type on the Subcontinent: an uncritical Anglophile. My point was that Muslims should not be surprised by what Rushdie had done. A brown sahib, somewhere, sometime, was bound to do just that. (link)
Now when this story broke last week, I searched the papers looking for what Sardar had originally said about Rushdie, and why. I couldn’t find it — it could either have been Rushdie’s approving noises on the War in Iraq, or the act of writing The Satanic Verses itself. (But do you ever need substantial justification to call someone a race traitor? No — you just do it, and you expect it will stick.) Rushdie wrote an incensed reply to the Independent here:
There is much in this review that is, to use terms of which Sardar himself is fond, “skewed”, “ludicrous” and “half-baked”. His assertion that “jihad is never offensive” will come as a surprise to those of us who live in the real world, not the ideological fantasy-universe he prefers, in which language loses its meaning, aggression becomes “defence”, and aggressors become victims. His claim that “all Muslims see themselves as part of the ummah” could have been uttered by a dedicated clash-of-civilisations hawk, and blithely ignores the profound divisions, political, intellectual, tribal, nationalist and theological, within the Muslim world, and the struggles of genuinely courageous Muslim writers and intellectuals against the repressive Islam that is so much in the ascendant everywhere in that world.
As for his cheap shots at me for being a “brown Sahib”, something I have never been called, to my knowledge, by anyone in India, where, Sardar tells us, it is a “recognisable sociological type”, I wonder if you would so readily publish an attack on a well-known black writer which used the term “Uncle Tom”?>
Sardar describes me, bizarrely, as an “uncritical Anglophile”, which suggests that it is he, not Mr McRoy, who “needs to read much more widely”. By the immoderation of his tone and his argument, he goes some way to proving McRoy’s point that “Islamic radicalism has become mainstream”, which was not, presumably, his intention. (link)
To my eye, Rushdie is ‘housing’ Sardar here, calling him on the doublespeak of victimization as an excuse for random violence (Jihad can never be offensive, because that’s not what the Quran says, so terrorism in the name of religion is by definition defensive); on the pathological use of “brown sahib”; and on his refusal to distance himself from radical Islamist positions. (Sardar, incidentally, has published several books pleading for a “moderate” interpretation of Sharia.)
Ah, but it isn’t done yet, is it? Nope. Sardar then writes another column, this time in the New Statesman, replying to Rushdie’s letter. This column spends about five paragraphs defining the “brown sahib” along the lines laid out by Sri Lankan journalist V. T. Vittachi in his 1962 book The Brown Sahib. In brief: cooperation with colonialism out of self-interest, gymkhanas, English mission schools, acceptance of the superiority of European civilization, lingering colonial mentality after independence. There’s your brown sahib.
On how this applies to Rushdie, Sardar has only an assertion, not an explanation:
Now, I put to you this simple thesis: Rushdie fits the bill.
Alas, Rushdie is not the most prominent brown sahib on the planet. The top dog is the even more legendary V S Naipaul. One of the principal characteristics of brown sahibs is that each one considers himself to be the only authentic article, the true representative of the ideology of the colonial masters. So they direct most of their venom at each other. As Vittachi put it, the brown sahibs love nothing better than to indulge their fancy for “tearing their own kind apart, limb from limb, skin from bone, with finger-licking tooth-sucking glee”. (link)
I can’t imagine that Sardar is aware of the irony of his own perpetuation of this cycle of desi intellectuals destroying each other to get ahead. It’s also deeply unfortunate that he doesn’t acknowledge all the ways in which Rushdie’s novels do challenge the “ideology of the colonial masters,” and critique (gently) the “Chamcha” position that Vittachi and Sardar are ridiculing. It’s as if he hasn’t read The Satanic Verses, and so is forced to repeat it — he as Gibreel, and Rushdie as Chamcha. (Guess who survives the fight?)
I have two concluding thoughts:
First, can we get over the idea that to establish yourself, you have to go after a brown figure who has become successful before you, and accuse him or her of being a sell-out?
And secondly, people, can we just flat-out stop using “brown sahib”/”uncle tom” as a kind of in-house racial slur? Can we actually accept diversity of opinion within the South Asian/ diasporic intellectual world?
This is a really good idea. Unfortunately, very few people have the security or maturity of stating an idea without putting another down. Disrespect or intolerance towards something that may be different from one’s viewpoint is a malaise of a deeper kind. This will take time, is my educated guess. Its not impossible.
I think so. However, diversity of opinion requires that one acknowledge that there may be more than one way of viewing a situation. Its not “us vs them.” To allow diversity of opinion, a great deal of respect and restriant in language and communication is an underlying requirement. Not to speak of emotional maturity. However, all these issues fade into insignificance when the issue of identity comes up. What is brown? And how is different from “white? “
The moment one identifies oneself by color, there a whole lot of unsaid assumptions and historical constructs of ideas that enter this mix-up. Whether that definition is positive or negative, the fact remains the attribute of color, affects all such discussion.
My instinctive resitance hence to this issue of “brown identity”
I wince each time I have to type the word “brown” while posting here. It is an interesting choice of word to define authenticity of posts, but somehow I wish there was a better choice such a group of people as those who define this space would make.
Sumita
I see your point, and I think some of my colleages at Sepia Mutiny agree with you. But I think you’re oversimplifying things a little.
In this post at least I’m using “brown” out of expediency — to describe the social positions of these two writers (Sardar is I believe of Pakistani descent, while Rushdie is Indian). It’s not irrelevant to this debate, since one of the key issues is this phrase “brown sahib.” And whether we like it or not, we are all marked by our ethno-cultural background in some way (not necessarily in one way).
To refuse to use the word “brown” (or “South Asian”) out of fear that it will tilt the discussion would make it impossible to actually have the discussion.
Brilliant post. Ostracizing Rushdie has been at the tip of every Ziauddin Sardar-type political/intellectual figure’s tongue. But does Sardar truly see himself as a South Asian? Surely he is a muslim first and a south asian second (if not punjabi second and south asian third). Can this really be considered a brown on brown attack?
Moreover, could Sardar be doing this to establish himself as better political muslim? He is considered a “liberal modernist….” (all adjectives with a negative connotation) by the majority of my Pakistani friends – both first and non-first generation immgrants mind you. It very well could be that he is re-surfacing in the news to sustain or improve his image…..or maybe his upcoming book How Do You Know…?
Why are they tearing each other apart over “race” I dont like rushdie as a writer. But he has been correct to point out that on most issues recently its been about islam. So that appears to have irked an unknown writer Sardar who sees that as being an islamic traitor of sort.
I disagree with Amardeep. You can also simply ignore the word brown or South Asian and still have this discussion. (just for kicks see mr perez in the news section) It will be appropriate(indian/pakistani muslim). I agree with Sumita that there again is an attempt at conflation when in reality identities are spliting.
If rushdie had not been a muslim i doubt it sardar would attack him for taking those position.
wonderful post, Amardeep!
I usually WANT to like Sardar. I bought my little brother “Why Do People Hate America?” one xmas, and I mostly enjoyed his “Journeys of a Skeptical Muslim” book, for being so seemingly open-minded, modern, and critical of problems within the Muslim community. And then I got to his chapter about “The Satanic Verses,” and he completely lost me. He went from being a sensible, inquisitive intellectual to a foaming-at-the-mouth “victim” Muslim who felt like no punishment was great enough for Rushdie’s blasphemy. No free speech or art for him, nosirree. The Prophet had been insulted! Justice must be served! It really caught me by surprise, to have read that far and then have him do a U-turn like that. So I figure this latest media tussle is mostly something personal for Sardar, who still hasn’t gotten over the feeling that his mother had been raped. (I think that’s how he phrased it in that chapter)
What’s also funny is that I asked a fairly secular Brit Pakistani lawyer friend of mine what he thought about Sardar when I was reading that book, and he basically said Sardar was too Westernized! So I can’t keep track of who’s supposed to be a brown sahib and who’s not. 😉
Brilliant post, amardeep.
From the New Statesman article, I could surmise that a Brown Sahib must be a liberal, have contempt for religion and have nothing to do with indigenous literature. Could Sardar, being Pakistani, simply be mistaking a liberal Indian anglophile muslim for a Brown Sahib. Now,I don’t think anglophile is necessarily a bad word, nor is it equivalent to a Brown Sahib. He’s not the only one, he quotes another…
Rasudha, yes he’s conflating liberal South Asian “hybrids” who happen to be acculturated to the western lifestyle with full-on “mimic men,” who devoted their lives to out-Britishing the British. The latter are, like “Brown Sahibs,” pretty much extinct at this point. These types of terms might have meant something up through the 1960s, but I think they are just lazy slurs today.
Incidentally, he’s totally distorting Sara Suleri’s book (The Rhetoric of English India). As I recall, she likes Rushdie — and she also doesn’t hate the British. Her point is that our current Anglophone postcolonial tradition (Rushdie, Naipaul, etc.) depends more than a little on the legacy of colonial writing, from Burke to Kipling to Forster. They are a part of a continuum. She too is critical of crude identity politics (British=bad, Indian=good) thinking.
Dr. Singh:
I don’t think Mr. Sardar’s ad hominem attack on Mr. Rushdie is an attempt “…to go after a brown figure who has become successful before you…” It’s just that Mr. Sardar is reaching for the handiest stick with which to beat Mr. Rushdie. His outrage over Mr. Rushdie seems to go deeper (probably stemming from the publication of ‘Satanic Verses’).
In any case, even if Mr. Rushdie were a bona-fide ‘brown sahib’ (more along the line of, say, Nirad Chaudhri), it wouldn’t be reason enough to dismiss his work. After all, self-loathing can also sharpen one’s perception and thought.
Going somewhat off-topic, such “lazy slurs” (as you wrote above) tend to stop people from examining the reasons for the ‘Europeanization of the planet’ (I’m ripping off Halbfass, who writes that the phrase is from Heidegger, I think). Brown sahibs weren’t responsible for that phenomenon.
Regards, Kumar
This is not to side with Sardar (whose books I’ve read), but I do remember the striking difference between Rushdie’s first book “Imaginary Homelands” and “Step Across This Line”. I loved the first book; I thought his social and political commentaries were right on the target. In contrast, some of the essays in the second book took positions that I felt were backtracking.
It seemed as if when Rushdie had been attacked and villified for having written “The Satanic Verses”, he was much more… how shall I say it? Perceptive and insightful…? Instead, his second book gave off the tone that now because he was had been embraced as a poster boy for “secular” Muslims, critics of Islam, or atheists, he saw no need to be as vigilant about prevailing attitudes as before.
Another thing: I had seen a television interview of him in Italy, on a talk show hosted by a person of extremely right-ring politics (I don’t know if Rushdie knew this prior to conceding to the interview) and he had said the much hackneyed expression, “Not all Muslims are terrorists; but all terrorists are Muslims”. WTF? I was under the impression that thoughtful and well-informed individuals would keep distance from such generalizations. He also brought up suicide bombings, but hello, most of the suicide bombings actually come from Sri Lanka.
He had written in his book that the best stuff produced by a writer is when he/she is under attack. You can definately see that in his own writing.
Oh, how I heart thee after reading this. Coruscating, necessary post.
Another thing: I had seen a television interview of him in Italy, on a talk show hosted by a person of extremely right-ring politics (I don’t know if Rushdie knew this prior to conceding to the interview) and he had said the much hackneyed expression, “Not all Muslims are terrorists; but all terrorists are Muslims”. WTF? I was under the impression that thoughtful and well-informed individuals would keep distance from such generalizations. He also brought up suicide bombings, but hello, most of the suicide bombings actually come from Sri Lanka.
There is nothing really WTF about that observation. It was first put into print by an Arab journalist. And while due credit should be given to the Tamil Tigers for developing the suicide bomber, the keep their fighting to the island of Sri Lanka, and do not attack overseas. And this may be a grisly difference – Tamil suicide bombers do not blow up other Tamils (they merely threaten them and extort money), but Islamic suicide bombers do blow up other Muslims.
Hey, now, easy, we’re not entirely gone, just a little confused, and trying to find our identities again.
And, perhaps, can we ourselves get away from oversimplifying Colonialist politics? What have the Romans ever given us, after all? “The aqueducts.”
Anyhow, it seems that Sardar’s blind assertion could be supported by Rushdie’s education and inclinations – but – he’s guilty of confusing background with belief system. By this logic every Southerner is a slave-master and every German a Nazi. I hope this system is sillier than it is dangerous.
Apologies to Dr. Singh for this thoroughly off-topic comment (and, yeah, I know I’ve been doing too much of that lately at SM, but….).
Anandos:
The metaphor you use is common among defenders of Empire, and thoroughly misleading since it denies the ‘agency’ of the natives. Consider, for example, parliamentary demcocracy. Democracy is not a monument which was left by the British, as a gift, to benefit the natives. Rather, it was something constructed by Indians (and, surely, the construction hasn’t ended, in fact it’s never-ending).
I would argue that British reign acted as a conduit for a number of Western ideas, some of which were eagerly adapted by Indians (democracy, for example). It is not the case that the British deliberately set out to create a democractic legacy in India.
Quite the contrary, even those British-Indian institutions most nearly democractic (assemblies, etc.) were hollow, given that power ultimately rested in the non-democratic hands of the British. Such ‘mixed’ systems are unstable and can easily slide towards more overtly authoritarian forms of govt. It’s not surprising, then, that a number of former British colonies (Kenya, India’s neighbor to the West, etc.) are not models of democratic govt.
Mere darshana of the British is not sufficient to establish ‘monuments’ such as democracy. The British ‘legacy’ to India could well have gone the authoritarian route. It is entirely to the credit of the Indian people that this did not happen.
Regards, Kumar
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In one sense you are absolutely correct, in that any benefits India derived from colonization were accidental, and the British hardly deserve any credit for spreading democracy as if they actually set out to do so. However, it is to the credit of the British that they evolved the kind of society that provided “aqueducts” in the first place. This isn’t a defense of imperialism, but given that India was going to get conquered by someone it was probably good luck that it was the British that did it.
Speedy
Lads, I was being a bit silly with the aqueducts business. However, the “conduit of ideas” is an interesting phrase; perhaps trade is a better motivator, as now, than imperialism?
OK, I’ll stop with the off-topic.
Well, even more off-topic….
Speedy:
I have no interest in denying the British ‘credit’ for their democratic achievements, though I don’t think democracy is a uniquely British invention. Certainly, as a matter of historical fact, the British were the conduit to India for (their version of) democracy. I want to reiterate, however, that the full-bore adoption of democractic ideals was very much an Indian choice.
Well, counter-factual speculation is very risky but fun! I agree that had the entire subcontinent been conquered by, say, the Spanish or Portugese, people in the subcontinent would have been worse off. However, I don’t think this is the most likely alternative: The conquest of some portions of the subcontinent may well have been inevitable, but I think the conquest of the entire subcontinent was not similarly inevitable.
So I think that a patchwork of Western-dominated territories (say, by the Portugese & the Brits etc.), coupled with truly independent ‘native’ kingdoms would have been more likely. And here, I’m not so sure that one can say that this arrangement would have been necessarily worse than British rule. The Western-dominated areas would still have been a conduit for Western ideas (including democracy), but the independent kingdoms might well have allowed an Indian version of ‘modernity’ to fluorish.
I think that the tenative seeds of a distinctively Indian ‘modernity’ was manifested in such movements as Navya-Nyaya (outlined by Sheldon Pollock, among others). This Indian ‘modernity’ or ‘pre-modernity’ was basically extinguished with the growth and expansion of British rule. I should make clear that this wasn’t due to any sort of active British effort, but was simply a (perhaps unintended) consequence of British rule.
Regards, Kumar
anandos, for Queen and country:
Yeah, I agree with your idea about trade. As for your earlier comment, I thought it an interesting one (hence my off-topic comment). In any case, I’ll end my off-topic commentary also.
Regards, Kumar
I agree that this post was instructive–especially on the psychological analysis–and at the same time fair (i.e. I could hear it). So thanks.
This is complicated, but I think it’s important that we remain free to criticize (in more nuanced ways) those we disagree with–including people who use their membership in a social group for their own benefit and then turn around and do things that assist in discrimination against that group. Maybe that means more precision, but to be realistic, people aren’t always going to have that in the heat of a discussion.
hmmm the worst thing a lefty can do is be intolerant because it’s the flag of tolerance that sardar thinks he’s flying…but he’s creating his own little literary axis of evil right there!
i agree with amardeep that crude identity politics has been taken too far to the point where intra-community relations are framed by an overbearing duty to ‘reprazent’ and not be ‘white’ and stand up for ‘your people’ 24/7.
Salman Rushdie is an individual who happens to be a highly original writer. He’s also spent a considerable part of his life in the West, and obviously things like the fatwa along with this own personal/political leanings have led him to choose the beliefs he has today.
so what? is sardar really feeling that overpowered and in his ‘shadow’ that he has to scapegoat rushdie like he’s some national mascot that’s run amok? get over it.
rushdie, while i bow down like the dutiful reader of contemporary literature that i am to his early stuff, lost his touch a loooong time ago. his recent work is full of overwritten, trite phrases, caricatured characters and ironically the very ‘white people bad, me good’ theme that sardar loves (just read ‘fury’, his novel about evil america and an ageing indian writer (hmmm) who tries to fill his spiritual void by sleeping with hot young girlies and you’ll see what i mean). and recent reviews for ‘shalimar the clown’ were cringe-worthy in their politeness.
so let him say whatever he wants because there is more than enough room for one talented brown writer to represent whatever/whoever they want to.
the whole point of postcolonial identity is its focus on diversity, so why are people so focussed on creating one mould for talented south asians?
So I think that a patchwork of Western-dominated territories (say, by the Portugese & the Brits etc.), coupled with truly independent ‘native’ kingdoms would have been more likely. And here, I’m not so sure that one can say that this arrangement would have been necessarily worse than British rule. The Western-dominated areas would still have been a conduit for Western ideas (including democracy), but the independent kingdoms might well have allowed an Indian version of ‘modernity’ to fluorish.
What do you think pre-1947 Indian subcontinent was?.. It is exactly like you said, a patchwork of British ruled territories (called British India) and independent ‘native’ kingdoms (called the princely states, though they are not entirely independent, foreign affairs/communications/defence were controlled by Brits while entire internal administration is left to the fancy of kings). You’d be surprised to know that 1/3rd of modern India (a fairly large portion) was not ruled by Brits directly, but by the kings/princes/Nizams/Nawabs etc.. Anyone would laugh if you say those “native” kingdoms allowed the Indian version of modernity to flourish.. You had this Nizam of Hyderabad who was the richest man in the world at that time (a.k.a Bill Gates of now) while his people were in the worst of poverty.. and similar stories in almost all the princely states..
I’m not arguing that Brits are the benevolent rulers.. Everyone had their “self-interest” in mind.. Atleast the Brit rulers needed to answer back to the Brit voters, many of whom had conscience..
I’m enjoying the discussion of the benefits of colonialism here — don’t worry if it’s off topic, people. (It makes me think there should be a post on Niall Ferguson…)
But Saurav:
I guess I want terms like these to be made into a last resort, when one really has lost faith in one’s interlocutor. “Brown sahib” shuts down the conversation and aims to shame the person you’re talking to. It’s also a historical relic (at the present time, and with settled immigrants and second gens, the word “hypocrite” is probably sufficient to express what you’re describing).
Aha .. the benevolence of a “race” (or social construct) proven. If the race is benevolent than the rulers coming out have to be “benevolent”.
This is the basis of the British claim of them being the “benevolent empire” and hats off to the British in inculcating in Indian minds this as a fact.
Atleast the Brit rulers needed to answer back to the Brit voters, many of whom had conscience.
Aha .. the benevolence of a “race” (or social construct) proven. If the race is benevolent than the rulers coming out have to be “benevolent”.
Don’t know why you tried to merge my statement with another.. And that too after cutting the relevant preceding statements..
which is
“I’m not arguing that Brits are the benevolent rulers.. Everyone had their “self-interest” in mind.. Atleast the Brit rulers needed to answer back to the Brit voters, many of whom had conscience.”
Read it in full.. Compare the British rule with the “other princely states” and you’d find the difference..
We have had this debate here sometime back. (Debate about what would have happened if the British wouldnt have blessed India by their ‘benevolent‘ rule 🙂 )
From the previous debate here’s a link about Bengal Famine and British
Here’s Manish making a suggestion about One of the possible millions of scenarios had the British not occupied India.
RC,
Again, This is what I said
I’m not arguing that Brits are the benevolent rulers.. Everyone had their “self-interest” in mind.. Atleast the Brit rulers needed to answer back to the Brit voters, many of whom had conscience.
It would be helpful to let me know what part you don’t agree with and what’s the reason for the links you are throwing at me.. 🙂
The reason I didnt quote all of your statement is that to me the two parts of the statement appeared contradictory. On one had you said that British werent benevolent rulers and on other hand you say that their people had conscience. But with all due respect conscience dont mean shit.
Even this days British get all mad when I say that they are “War-mongers” who attacked another nation (Iraq) for quasi-Empirial reasons. Their argument is …. Did you see the huge anti-war rallys?? 70% people in England are against the war. …… To that I say the war rallys dont mean shit. 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands innocents got killed while the people were rallying and their “benevolent rulers” were killing others.
I should qualify my above rant with this …. The people in the anti-war rallys are all well meaning decent people who dont want to harm innocent civilians be they Iraqi or any one else. But what I was trying to show that even with this supposedly superior system of “democracy”, the British government went against majority opinion and did engage in killing of innocents.
The reason I didnt quote all of your statement is that to me the two parts of the statement appeared contradictory. On one had you said that British werent benevolent rulers and on other hand you say that their people had conscience. But with all due respect conscience dont mean shit.
The problem is not that my statement is contradictory which it is not, but because of your assumption that their citizen’s conscience would naturally turn into good foreign policies of the rulers..
You should note that I was comparing the Brit rulers in India to the other “supposedly” native rulers (I doubt that Nizam of Hyderabad thought of himself to be native to India)..
Let’s also not forget that the British didn’t seem come and overrun the entire subcontinent wholly on their own–though they did forcefully impose a firm imperial hand to grip our watan. There were plenty of natives– or “brown sahebs”, if you will– who collaborated with the British so as to retain and/or advance their own interests. Example: the local rulers who signed agreements and treaties with the Britsh East India Company, which then paved the way for an even more penetrative control, allowing for further consolidation of the Pink Empire.
Re: above post– this is not to overlook or dismiss the very real resistence of Desis– like Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan.
There’s always resistence to empire, but on the other hand, there is always someone who is willing to collaborate as well.
I think it is better to study Indian history as pre-democratic and post democratic periods..
If some rulers (whether Hindu/Muslim/Brit) fought against some other rulers (Again Hindu/Muslim/Brit) it is mostly for petty reasons like holding on to their kingdoms or coveting extra space.. There is no use treating some rulers as heroes and some others as villains.. These rulers actually had very little in mind for their people’s welfare (other than a few exceptions) ..
Than what was the point of saying that …. “Many of whom have consceince” …. >??? If its not contradictory, its irrelevant.
You give one example of the Nizam who ruled a little bity town and extrapolate it to the whole India. In comparing British to the Nizam you are clearly making the call that you prefer the British over Nizam. That shows that you thought that the British were “benevolent”. There is a contradiction right there.
The thing is you are stuck in Nizam or British scenarios. There could be a million different scenarios.
I basically agree with you, but I think my point above is just that there are numerous instances “when one really has lost faith in one’s interlocutor” for a number of reasons. The reason I felt compelled to raise this point is the same impetus behind the daily show–in the name of balance and respect, nobody wants to get their hands dirty by raising important questions.
That said, yes, preemptive race-baiting is usually not a very solid tactic. As for whether it’s a “historical relic”–I think the point is arguable, but it’s probably better to take the time to use a whole phrase than one quick and dirty label most of the time 🙂
I think the conscience and democratic tradition of the the British voter probably manifested itself in ways that weren’t entirely good for the Indian citizen. I’m tired and probably misreading posts, so forgive me if I’m just being stupid 🙂 To me, it seemed like the British gave two reasons to justify empire: the economic and the moral. Most Britons were complicit in the economics, the country certainly benefited economically but in order to justify this economic success, there had to be a moral reason to occupy another country and drain its resources. We gave them democracy! but we won’t let them practice it just yet. We’re freeing them from superstition! by positing Christianity as the far superior religion. We’re freeing the women! without actually asking the women what they want. It reminds me of a political science class in which one guy said “look at how much better the Iraqi women have it now, and they still criticize us. I guess you never win.” No, you don’t ever win when you ignore the fact that the other country might actually have something to say about its future. Hopefully this made sense 🙂 p.s. Has anyone read Tariq Ramadan’s “Clash of Fundamentalisms.” I vaguely remember him critiquing Rushdie. I doubt its related to this but I’ve been trying to remember ever since I read this post.
By Tariq Ali, sorry 🙂 Tariq Ramadan used to be in class with me.
Aside from Fury, which recent work, specifically? Did you not dig The Ground Beneath Her Feet? Was it not nifty?
Actually, there were plenty of glowing reviews, and the book was quite good. A notch below The Moor’s Last Sigh but far above Fury. Be wary of relying on reviewers alone.
Sardar’s position is self-evidently idiotic. Rushdie’s entire focus, his writing’s raison d’etre, has been the richness of desi civ.
Rushdie’s family took him to Pakistan for a few years, and he rebelled against it.
Manish:
you’re right, it’s not like he’s gotten terrible. like i said i do bow down because the man is a literary genius. i was just comparing new rushdie to old rushdie, ie comparing him by his own v high standards. and no i still don’t think his later work is as good as his earlier stuff. so even if ‘shalimar’ is quite good, because i fell in love with his early stuff it was just a disappointment to lil old moi and might as well have been bad.
i guess it’s better to look at rushdie as a mere mortal and then i’ll stop finding his later stuff so bad. and his detractors can stop seeing him as the cause of ‘rushdie-itis’ and now the brown sahib complex.
i stand corrected. and will now go reread ‘ground beneath her feet.’
A question – has Rushdie written anything that may criticism western policy, western govts or something critical of the west with regards to imperialism, foreign policy etc.?
This was the first thought that came to my mind after reading this because while Zia Sardar (who I’m a great fan of admittedly) is critical of western policy, he is also critical of Muslims and British Asians.
So I want to know if Rushdie does the same too judge whether he is willing to swallow anything that the western govts that have (rightly) protected him since Verses.
Sunny, I remember that Rushdie’s politics started coming up during the time leading up to the war in Iraq. He was in support of it but also stated that he was supporting it for reasons provided by Bush. It’s all a little fuzzy but I think he was grouped in with Christopher Hitchens 🙂 So I don’t know if he has written anything that would be so controversially critical of western policy. So could Sardar be criticizing him based upon this support for the war? Here’s his article on Iraq though. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A49220-2002Oct31¬Found=true
Sunny:
I recall Rushdie as a stanch critic of reagan’s cold war policies, especially the financing of the contras in Nicaragua (re; “the jaguar smile”). He was something of an apologist for Sandinista atrocities but his views have since become more nuanced and generally more sympathetic to “western”, ie anti-communist and later pro-free market doctrines.
His evolution seems to be similar to many former leftists, like say christopher hitchens (whose support for the Iraqi war comes from the left, ie anti-fascism), but he is not as clear cut…poets like to keep things vague.
Sardar is just pissed off because Rushdie offended him big time by depicting a man having a fevered dream in which representations of the Prophet’s wives were prostitutes. Sardar has a weak spot and this is it. As liberal as he is, the craziness unleashed amongst British Muslims by the Satanic Verses, and the aftermath in which Muslims were depicted as crazy neanderthals and backward and intolerant brutes scarred him. He quite rightly pointed out that Islam is a much richer and complex culture and religion than that. He hates Rushdie for being an apostate, but also for as he sees it ‘provoking’ the crisis in British Islam. It is a major weakness in his work, that and a belief in the metaphysical existential all encompassing evil of America as an ontological source of unmediated satanism. It’s fascinating to see such irrationality and knee jerk idiocy beside the sensible and brave things he says about the bad things that afflict Islam today. But hey I guess that’s what it means to be a conflicted Muslim in the modern world.
Poet ?? try a fu$%ing nutcase … See here Hitches railing against Cindy Sheehan The bastar@ just wont relent. Here being an apologist for Haditha If Hitchen is left … then I hope that I never become “left” in my 82000 rebirths.
RC:
read the whole sentance again. I was calling Rushdie a poet. (read “ground beneath her feet”)
Re Hitch. He’s been “left” his whole life (I belive a trotskyist) and he is quite a free-thinker. He’s also railed against Ronald Reagan and Moter Theresa (both were Obits, to make matters worse).
“Pakistani” descent and “Indian” descent are not all that different!!
Compare and contrast his book of essays “Imaginery Homlands” and “Step Across This Line”, which also contain articles and essays published in newspapers and magazines. His earlier essays were critical of the West in general (societies, racism, politics, etc), but after he published “Step Across This Line”, he seems to have taken a U-turn. In fact, the last essays, having to do with Sept. 11th and the war in Afghanistan, were going in the opposite direction of his earlier essays. I remember feeling a bit disappointed, even sad, that he had changed his positions so dramatically. For instance, he states that the Americans are going to have to deal with the entirely justifiable public outcry over bombing a poor, shattered country into even more smitterins; and he took that position as well. The following essay says the exact opposite: the bombing of Afghanistan was good, and the Americans did their work well. Didn’t his editor read this and point it out the stark differences between his contradictory stands in one essay as opposed to the other?
I think this volte face was a combination of factors: 1) he had been very traumatized by the whole fatwa-ish atmosphere (which I completely understand); and 2) as I indicated in my previous above, he has been embraced by the Euro American West as a Muslim who is “secular”, “moderate”, blah blah blah and now he is just running with the ball that had been tossed to him. Maybe he got a little giddy with too much success going to his head. I still reread his old books, I enjoy them a lot; but I am not liking him so much anymore these days.
CAD, I guess I haven’t read as much about Rushdie’s politics so I wasn’t seeing such a U-turn until Iraq. I only ever read his fiction and a few political pieces. One of my friends mentioned that he had come out in support of the war and I was a little disapointed as well. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I understand that but it just seemed like this support came out of nowhere. The reasons he gave for supporting it were also a little shoddy. It seemed he was saying I oppose the Bush government philosophically but in reality, we all have to support them. I also agree with you about the abrupt changes of opinion. It seems as if Rushdie (and Hitchens) have kind of created this extreme centrist position. Say one thing and then say another but make sure they balance out in the end. For example Hitchens supported the war wholeheartedly and now he occasionally writes a short little half-hearted piece as if to say, well I’m not entirely a lapdog. Sorry, I keep on going back to Hitchens just because I’m a little more familiar with him, but their similarities on Iraq always struck me.
I may have given the impression in post #40 that “The Jaguar Smile” was some sort of knee-jerk pro-Sandinista apologist tract. In fact, although it was certainly anti-US, I think it was subtle enough to mark the beginning of RushdieÂ’s transformationÂ…and it was published almost 3 years before the Fatwa.
Before visiting Nicaragua, I remember Rushdie as more of a conventional leftist. After the visit, he was deeply haunted by, among other things, the Sandinistas brutal treatment of the Miskito Indians; a brutality he later admitted he failed to adequately acknowledge in the book. For those of you not alive at the time, the Sandinistas were held in a cult-like high regard among the left, and their totalitarian leanings were almost completely ignored. I mean, this was 1986 and many leftists still denied the existence of the Ukrainian Famine.
I think Rushdie saw his comrades making the same mistake they did with Castro. He was unique in seeing the human cost of collectivization while still admiring its ends. The Fatwa obviously made the values of the capitalist West dearer to him, but I think this insight began much earlier. Rushdie is not an ideologue, at the end of the day he was just too human to be seduced by the left and its subordination of individual will to the collectiveÂ…a sort of secular Fatwa.
I also remember his first wife, Marianne Wiggins, saying she was divorcing him for “ideological” reasons (leave it to intellectuals to get divorced for such reasons). I think it would be more accurate for her to say she was divorcing him for his lack thereof.
You give one example of the Nizam who ruled a little bity town and extrapolate it to the whole India. In comparing British to the Nizam you are clearly making the call that you prefer the British over Nizam. That shows that you thought that the British were “benevolent”. There is a contradiction right there.
The thing is you are stuck in Nizam or British scenarios. There could be a million different scenarios.
I think you have very little knowledge of history or geography..
Hyderabad is not a little bity town.. and as I said Princely states constituted close to a third (or even more than that) of the current geographical area of India.. Read this,
… The seniormost (21-gun) princely state in British India, Hyderabad was an 82,000 square mile (212,000 km²) region in the Deccan ruled by the Asif Jah dynasty of Muslim rulers, who had the title of Nizam and style of His Exalted Highness. The Nizams ruled over the wealthiest state in India at that time, controlling some 16,500,000 people. During the height of Hyderabad’s wealth in the 1930s the Nizam was the world’s richest man, famous for employing 11,000 servants and using the Jacob Diamond as a paperweight…
The thing is you are stuck in Nizam or British scenarios. There could be a million different scenarios.
Kindly let us know if one of those million scenarios that offered the people right to vote and select their governments (albeit local) in the princely states of pre-Independence India. Remember the Brits allowed atleast a sham democracy through election of local governments (in 1935) though they had some screwed up concepts like separate electorates etc..
You give one example of the Nizam who ruled a little bity town and extrapolate it to the whole India. In comparing British to the Nizam you are clearly making the call that you prefer the British over Nizam. That shows that you thought that the British were “benevolent”. There is a contradiction right there.
One more lesson in history and geography..
… The British stationed a Resident at Hyderabad and their own troops at Secunderabad, but the state continued to be ruled by the Nizam. Hyderabad, under the Nizams, was the largest princely state in India, with an area larger than England, Scotland and Wales combined. …
So you do feel that the British were better. There !!! was it hard to admit? Now the only thing left to admit is that they were ‘benevolent’ too. Its not that hard.
The maps that you are linking are during the time of British India, which on the west spanned from Afghanistan to the east Bangladesh and some part of Myanmar (Burma). In this expansive area, Hyderabad is a little bity town.
I did link to an older discussion about what could have happened if the British didnt occupy India. But if you are convinced that British came as messiah to save India from the Nizam, you are entitled to your view.
Step Across This Line is a balanced book. A book written by a man who has had to revise the “truth” after reality came knocking on his door. Rushdie’s main thrust throughout the book is pro free speech and anti religious fundamenatalism – all over the world. What is wrong with that stance? He admits that his life was saved during the fatwa days by the same British government which he had bitterly criticized. He therefore admits the benefits and level headed character of western style democracies which respect the rights of an individual. He would have to be a shameless ingrate not to do so. That is so unlike the Egyptian, Saudi and Pakistani mullahs who are given refuge from their own governments in western Europe, Canada and perhaps even here in the US and then continue to preach poisonous hatred and destruction of infidel, western societies.
Hitchens’ current stance is a bit more bewildering. Until Iraq, he had been pretty consistent in the nature of his criticism of fascistic tendencies everywhere. Hitchens was also the loudest in denouncing the “fatwa” against Rushdie and had railed against Saddam Hussein’s human rights violation, just as he had against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. In the case of Iraq though, he seems to have really sold out. He has now redirected his sharp vitriol against the critics of the war – the famous break with the columnists of The Nation was the first in that series. I feel that in the beginning he did it out of true conviction. Some of his Iraqi journalist friends had endured unspeakable horror at Saddam’s hands. But now I think it is dogged ego and anger at having been proven wrong in supporting the dastardly Bush administration that is driving Hitchens’ rants against his critics. It almost appears that he is on the payroll of the AIPAC, so wrongheaded is his neo-con stance. But did you notice that he came out “against” a US strike against Iran although he chews out the mullahs and Ahmadinejad? I guess he doesn’t want his signature on another disastrous war.
As for those of us who are over sensitive to being labeled “Brown Sahibs or Mems”, let us not lose sight of the forest on account of the tree. We owe no allegiance to wrong headed “brown” policies just as we must speak up against all western racist ones. Trite as Rushdie’s statement “Not all Muslims are terrorist but all terrorists are Muslims” may sound, it happens to be true in the current world stage. Having said that, it is perfectly legitimate to criticize Bush & Blair for their cynical and mischievous conflation of Iraq and Al Qaida. I am just as sick of Islamic terrorism as I am of Bush’s reign of terror. Where is the contradiction here? I am not obliged to keep my mouth shut just because the Muslim terrorists happen to be “brown.” Nor has it escaped my attention that Bush and his murderous brigade found it so easy to invade a country which had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism precisely because its people are “brown.” The world is indeed more complex than “white” and “brown.”
I know nothing about the Sardar. But he is wrong in calling Rushdie a “Brown Sahib.” Unlike Nirad Choudhury and V.S Naipaul who find nothing but putrescence and shame in being “brown,” Rushdie exuberantly celebrates his Indian background. A “Saheb” of any hue wouldn’t do that.