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New York Literature Festival saw panelists leave due to BJP Presence

on Sep 14, 2022

Following disclosures that a senior from India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be attending this year's JLF events in New York City, activists and authors have informed Middle East Eye that the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) is normalizing Hindutva in the United States.

At least three panelists, including authors Marie Brenner and Amy Waldman, have allegedly withdrawn from the JLF as of Tuesday morning, in response to requests by activists and writers to boycott the event due to the participation of Shazia Ilmi, a national spokeswoman for the BJP.

The JLF is the world's largest free literature festival, with events held outside of India, including one in New York on September 12-14.

Brenner and Waldman have yet to respond to MEE's request for comment, and festival organizers have declined to say whether or not panelists have withdrawn. However, while Brenner and Waldman are still listed as speakers on the festival website, they were no longer on the schedule as of Tuesday.

Manash Pratim Deka from JLF New York wouldn't reveal to MEE whether anyone had pulled out, but he said: "JLF celebrates the written word and ideas and is representative of diverse views and thoughts."

British-Indian author Aatish Taseer told MEE that he knew at least three people had pulled out of the festival. Taseer said the writers had decided not to make public statements because “they have relationships with people in the festival".

”They're afraid to make a political statement,” Taseer said.

Taseer, whose overseas citizenship of India was revoked in 2019 - shortly after he published an article criticizing Indian PM Narendra Modi - said that many panelists were duped into believing they were attending a festival with “respectable, intellectual people with bodies of work behind them".

Taseer, whose Indian passport was revoked in 2019 after he published an essay critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, claimed that many panelists were misled into thinking they were attending a festival with "respectable, intelligent individuals with bodies of work behind them."

He stated that South Asian activists and authors more familiar with India's contemporary political atmosphere needed to be mobilized to inform attendees that "these are full-on right-wing ideologues, including card-carrying members of the BJP.

"These liberals from New York who are appearing would never be caught dead with these [BJP] folks," he claimed. "So the JLF leaders have done something very, truly devious and sneaky."

Cancel Culture

Ilmi, a Muslim leader in the BJP, told MEE that she was unaware that speakers had withdrawn owing to her presence. Ilmi is slated to speak on a panel on Wednesday afternoon and to make the keynote address at the closing ceremony that evening.

"If you claim these folks left because of my presence, it is absolutely their choice," Ilmi remarked.

"And if they are against freedom of expression, of others, or dissenting voices, a voice that is different from theirs, [then] they must address the prejudice and bias that they have inside themselves against individuals who represent a different point of view."

"And this entire cancel culture and self-cancellation culture that they are bringing to the table reflects and stinks of the worst type of bigotry."

Similarly, Mahmood Mamdani, a prominent Ugandan writer and scholar who was due to participate in a session on Wednesday evening, notified activists and MEE that he would not be withdrawing from the event.

"I have never before contemplated leaving from an event because I disagreed, however strongly, with the opinions of a participant - as long as the event itself was not being hijacked by this person or their organization, therefore closing it to competing or diverging perspectives," he stated.

"My intention is not to normalize the ideas of individuals with whom I vehemently disagree." "My intention is to open up discussion, not close it," said Mamdani, who will talk at one of the festival's main sessions on the essence of the nation-state and the way to a reimagined, decolonized future.

However, Suchitra Vijayan, director of the Polis Project in New York, was disappointed with Mamdani's reaction.

"At a time when India is on the verge of becoming an apartheid state, it's intellectual dishonesty at its worst and terribly saddening for those of us who grew up with his work," Vijayan told MEE.

‘Climate of genocide’

According to Taseer, Mamdani has a lot to account for because he takes a strong stance against Israel.

"You have a party spokesman who is systematically fostering a genocidal environment in a nation where the demographics are much more combustible, even more volatile," he added. "If Mamdani thinks what he believes about Israel, he should have the courage to hold the same view regarding India."

JLF is regarded as one of the most prominent literature festivals on the globe, but it has also been chastised for its tight collaboration with corporate sponsors and readiness to incorporate the Hindu right wing in its programming.

In 2020, activists opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act, which helps create tiered citizenship in India based on faith, said they were beaten by private security hired by the event.

South Asia Solidarity Initiative (Sasi) activists and others stated they will organize a demonstration outside the city's festival on Wednesday.

Activists and Indian Muslims in particular claim that Hindu nationalist speech has grown bolder in the United States in recent years, particularly under Donald Trump's administration.

Last month's events in Edison, New Jersey, where organizers of an Indian Independence Day parade included a bulldozer at the rally, a symbol synonymous with anti-Muslim and anti-minority hatred in India, have also concerned the community about the rate at which Hindu nationalism is becoming normalized in the US.

"This is a very typical, peculiar feature of the Modi regime that they seek legitimacy from the West," Taseer stated.

"What they want are respectable folks who write for the New York Times and Vanity Fair." And what the JLF has evolved into is a type of operation that aids in that."