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Don't Box Me in, says Shazia Ilmi, in Response to Questions About Her Participation in the Jaipur Lit Fest.

on Sep 19, 2022

Days after the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) in New York concluded, a controversy erupted over claims that some of its panelists withdrew due to the organizers' inclusion of BJP national spokesperson Shazia Ilmi as one of the speakers.

Ilmi is listed as a panelist on the JLF New York website for a session titled Intersections: Searching Equity on September 14 — the festival's final day.

Author Aatish Taseer claimed in a series of tweets that the festival was under pressure to include Ilmi as a panelist. "I understand the pressures on @JLFLitfest to bend the knee, but you cannot dupe serious writers into legitimizing Modi's abhorrent @BJP4India."

"All we did was tell them who and what @shaziailmi was, and they were shocked," Taseer tweeted.

"Wrong to impose a hateful ideology like Hindutva on unsuspecting members of the New York intelligentsia by stealth... Let people know if you want to make fascism more acceptable," he added.

None of the speakers who allegedly resigned have come forward.

Ilmi, who claimed six people had withdrawn from the festival because of her presence, retaliated, dubbing Taseer "Instigator-In-Chief" and praising JLF for "standing up to bullying."

"There was tacit pressure on the organizers to drop me from the festival even before I boarded the flight to New York." They even wrote to the participants and sponsors, requesting that they withdraw.

At the festival, I had two speaking engagements. The first was a panel discussion on Dalit identity and intersectionality with Guru Prakash Paswan, also from my party, and Prashant Jha. The second was at the closing ceremony, which coincided with an art exhibition featuring a very dear friend's work," Ilmi told The Indian Express.

"When I was speaking at the latter," she continued, "there were protestors there, mostly students, who had very little idea about my views on issues like the hijab and corruption, which have remained unchanged throughout my political career." The problem is that the Left's semantics and jargon have become so pervasive that they have eclipsed the mind.

"It's not even their own hatred; it's borrowed hatred and mortgaged rage," Ilmi explained.

"They will never directly ask me why I am a member of the BJP." They'll put me in a box after looking at me through their prism. My lived experience, however, has been very different from theirs. My family owned an old Urdu newspaper in Kanpur, where I grew up. You could accuse me of privilege, but I have had my own struggles as one of many siblings and a girl child. I don't want to be confined. They accuse the BJP of restricting free speech and of gaslighting. "How are you different if you don't allow the free exchange of ideas at a literary festival meant to showcase different voices?" She continued.

Taseer claimed that JLF failed to inform the other participants about Ilmi. "... when you enter the territory of honoring the official spokesperson of a political party by making her the keynote speaker, it is only fair to inform other participants... JLF committed a deception in which facts were purposefully concealed. We suggested that, at a time when the BJP has proven to be one of the world's leading jailors of journalists, PEN host a discussion on why so many are imprisoned.

"Sanjoy Roy (one of the JLF's organizers) told us that this is not a debating society," Taseer told The Indian Express.

"There is a world of difference between an RW thinker or writer and an official representative of a despicable political organization," he added.

Protests erupted when Ilmi attended a closing reception at the invitation of fellow speaker Myna Mukherjee, curator of the art exhibition Techné Disruptors.

Mukherjee stated that she had received requests to withdraw Ilmi's invitation, but she had refused. "A squabble erupted at the festival over her panel on restorative justice... "I saw no reason to give in to cancel culture, no matter how tenuous her value as a speaker on reparative justice," she said.

Among those who supported the JLF was writer Chitra Banerjee Divakurni, who also attended the festival this year. "Over the years, the JLF has provided a valuable platform for many writers from various backgrounds to express and engage in dialogue." "As a writer and educator, I believe that such discussions and dialogue are necessary and valuable, and I applaud the JLF for their efforts," she said.

In response to questions from The Indian Express about the panel selection criteria, a top JLF organizer who did not want to be identified said, "At JLF, we always look forward to strengthening our core values — to create a platform that celebrates inclusivity and freedom of speech with free access to knowledge and education reaching out to a global audience." Every year, we try to present a diverse set of speakers in a broad and kaleidoscopic program."

However, the organizer refused to comment on the withdrawals or the accusations that inviting speakers such as Ilmi gave ideological propaganda a larger platform. "We are unable to speak for speakers who have canceled, and we are also unaware of the reason for their cancellation," the team said.

Ilmi attended the JLF as a speaker in January 2014, when she was the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). At the time, the AAP was in power in Delhi for the first time.

Other BJP members, such as Pinky Anand, have previously participated in the festival as panelists and speakers.

Raghu Karnad, a journalist and author, and CPM leader M A Baby left the JLF in 2017 after RSS ideologues Manmohan Vaidya and Dattatreya Hosabale were added to the list of speakers. The event with Vaidya and Hosabale had gone ahead.

However, the JLF canceled an event featuring author Salman Rushdie a decade ago after Muslim organizations protested the author's participation.

After Rushdie was unable to attend the 2012 edition, the festival attempted to hold a conversation via video link. However, the organizers and venue owners were reportedly told by the administration of the state's then-Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government that the event could spark violence.

Even as four authors — Hari Kunzru, Ruchir Joshi, Amitava Kumar, and Jeet Thayil — read from his controversial book The Satanic Verses at the festival, Rushdie condemned the "stifling" of free speech.