DT e-Paper, Friday, Decdember 13, 2017

22
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2017
DT
Long-form
Words and the city
The Dhaka Lit Fest was a celebration of freedom. This is the first part of a two-part long-form
VS Naipaul always had deep connections to South Asia
SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN
of a conversation that led to the
resignation of the head judge of
a war crimes tribunal.” He was
released on bail a few days after
the Dhaka Lit Fest, after spending
three years in jail.
At the same time, senior
ministers have taken ambivalent
and unhelpful positions on the
issue of blogger killings with some
bloggers being detained for short
periods and others calling into
question the content of blogs more
than the issue of serial murder of
bloggers.
These and various other curb
downs have brought into question
press freedom in Bangladesh.
The Section 57 of the Information
and Communication Technology
(ICT) Act-2006, popularly called 57
Dhara in Bangladesh, has received
particular criticism as being
draconian with regards to freedom
of speech and expression.
Section 57(1) says: “If any
person deliberately publishes
or transmits or causes to be
published or transmitted in the
website or in any other electronic
form any material which is false
and obscene and if anyone sees,
hears, or reads it having regard
to all relevant circumstances, its
• Garga Chatterjee
Dhaka Lit Fest is the
flagship Anglo-Bengali
literature, arts, and
ideas public event in
Bangladesh, held annually in
Dhaka. In last year’s Dhaka Lit
Fest, the day I checked into the
hotel Pan Pacific Sonargaon,
situated bang in the middle of
the media district in Dhaka near
Karwan Bazar, I was greeted by a
pink note on my bed.
It was not a personal note
but a note that all participants
who had checked into that hotel
had received. In a gentle note,
it forbade me to step out of the
hotel the next day due to the
radical Islamist political party
Jamaat-e-Islami-sponsored hartal
(shutdown) and to be careful
about security.
The organisers had good reason
to be jittery. Due to the war crime
trials, senior functionaries of
the Jamaat had received capital
punishments. Bloggers and
free-thinkers had been slain
in crowded public places with
particular brutality. All this
negative publicity in a country of
the southern world has a pattern
of being amplified in the northern
white world.
There had been 19 cancellations
from foreign participants. But life
in Dhaka for a Bengali like me on
the hartal day was quite normal.
Dhaka citizens didn’t care much
about the hartal call and neither
did I. Maybe it was foolish. Maybe
it was not.
But in that difference lies the
choice of an individual to provide
legitimacy and validity to a
concocted ambiance of siege and
terror, or to break out of that into
mundaneness.
When the reaction of a brown
man is the same as a white man
to such situations, then it is time
for the brown man to re-examine
his conviction, location, and
mindscape. I chose to remain
brown. Dhaka Lit Fest 2015 was
a success. The footfalls made it a
success.
Cut to 2016. I checked into the
same Pan Pacific Sonargaon for
the Dhaka Lit Fest. There was
no pink note on my bed but a
welcome card. However, what had
happened in Bangladesh in the
meantime since the 2015 Dhaka
Lit Fest would make one expect
another, probably bigger, pink
note.
For, in the meantime, the list
of those killed by targeting had
expanded to include foreigners,
religious minorities, queer people,
baul-fakirs, non-extremist Muslim
divines, and more free-thinkers
and bloggers. But this time, as
This is precisely what sets apart the Dhaka Lit Fest from most other
such literature, arts, and ideas festivals in the sub-continent. That is the
increasing connect and relevance of this festival in the city to its citizens,
as a part of Dhaka’s annual cultural calendar
the organisers told me later, there
were only five cancellations.
And to top it all, the primary
draw of the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016
was none other than VS Naipaul,
arguably the only living Nobel
laureate in literature with the
deepest connections to South Asia,
and as I learned later, to Dhaka in
particular, as Lady Naipaul had
spent a few good years of her life
in East Bengal.
He was wheelchair-bound but
his spirit was flying. And to see
him, the people of Dhaka and
beyond came in huge numbers.
On day one, the least attended
day, the footfall was over ten
thousand. And this is precisely
what sets apart the Dhaka Lit Fest
from most other such literature,
arts, and ideas festivals in the subcontinent.
That is the increasing connect
and relevance of this festival in
the city to its citizens, as a part of
Dhaka’s annual cultural calendar.
It is a festival of Dhaka where
the location is not incidental but
fundamental to the identity of the
festival.
Some other fests have more
events, some have larger crowds
drawn in from the surrounds in a
site that was chosen for stoking
oriental fantasies of the mystic
east, some have a bigger list of big
names.
Dhaka had the right mix of
names and events, and an active
participation of the citizens; and
a crowd that knows they have a
right to be there. All of this was
happening in the backdrop of
dogged questions of freedom of
speech restrictions in Bangladesh.
The most high profile case was
that of the arrest of Mahmudur
Rahman, the editor of the Banglalanguage
newspaper Amar Desh,
considered politically aligned with
the political Islamist camp.
Charges against him included
“sedition and unlawful publication
effect is such as to influence the
reader to become dishonest or
corrupt, or causes to deteriorate or
creates possibility to deteriorate
law and order, prejudice the image
of the state or person or causes to
hurt or may hurt religious belief
or instigate against any person or
organisation, then this activity will
be regarded as an offense.”
The sheer vagueness and
breadth of this section makes it
open to be used as a political tool.
Many have asked for its repeal.
A festival that celebrates and
engages with words and freedom
elsewhere has to engage with the
same concepts at home. And the
Dhaka Lit Fest did that in its own
ambit. •
The concluding part of this long
form will be published tomorrow.
Garga Chatterjee is a political and
cultural commentator. He can be
followed on twitter @gargac.