Re-Markings Vol. 22 No. 2 September 2023 Announcements: Call for Papers & Invitation to Share

 

Re-Markings Vol. 22 No. 2 September 2023  

Editorial

On 25 August 1944, while the Allied forces were entering the French territory to liberate France from German occupation during World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered his generals occupying the French capital to reduce the city of Paris to a pile of ruins before they departed. He asked in authoritative desperation "Brennt Paris?" ("Is Paris Burning?"). The words in Hitler’s anxiety-ridden question provided the title to the 1965 best seller Is Paris Burning written by acclaimed journalists and writers, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. A year later in 1966 came the film by the same name directed by René Clément.

With all the satanic powers that Hitler had at his command – a well-knit, hard-working population of 70,000,000 who stood ideologically inspired, physically trained, and materially equipped for the supreme business of making war and causing the genocide of millions of Jews – he could not have the privilege of seeing the spectacle of Paris burning.

Ironically, what the tyrannous German dictator could not attain in the August of 1944 became a gruesome reality on 27 June 2023 when a French policeman shot and killed Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy at a traffic checkpoint in Nantarre, a suburb of Paris. Nahel, of Moroccan and Algerian descent and the only child of his mother, was a "kid who used rugby to get by"…and who “was someone who had the will to fit in socially and professionally, not some kid who dealt in drugs or got fun out of juvenile crime" according to Jeff Puech, president of the Ovale Citoyen group in France. He was remembered as a kind, helpful child who had never raised a hand to anyone and was never violent. According to the testimony of his beloved mother, the police officer who shot him "saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life." The killing of Nahel for not stopping at the checkpoint while driving his Mercedes provoked unprecedented violence resulting in vandalization, torching of government property and vehicles, rioting and destruction. Paris indeed was burning and so were many other towns caught in the flare of outrage that spilled onto the streets of France against organized officialdom.

For those who have known France as the land that venerates in its constitution and practice the avowed ideals of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” the Nahel incident brings to the fore once again the ambivalence of power equations in dem-ocracies by reminding us of a similar event in Minneapolis, Minnesota where George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer, on 25 May 2020. Besides the scenes of rioting, loot and arson, witnessed in many cities of the U.S., Floyd’s death led to widespread international protests in various countries including France.

In what is believed to be the world’s most powerful democracy, the Statue of Liberty stands majestically welcoming immigrants from all parts of the globe to try their fortune in the United States of America. However, when we see Frederick Douglas in his 1852 speech asking, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July” and Ralph Ellison describing in his 1951 novel, Invisible Man, the Statue of Liberty “lost in the fog,” we can visualize how democratic principles and democratic practices are constantly at variance.

Likewise, we are reminded of the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian girl of Kurdish origin, in police custody on 16 September 2022. The self-proclaimed guardians of morality found her guilty of violating the sacred rules requiring women to cover their hair when in public. The death of Mahsa led to massive protests and rioting that saw Iran burning for months.

Events related to Nahel M., Floyd George, and Mahisa Amini have one thing in common: they were all victims of systemic police brutality. It is quite likely that the practitioners of power in unform perceived a threat to their existence when they came across an Arab face, or a man with black skin, or the hair of a young girl uncovered with a scarf. Even in professed democracies it is not unusual to see law-enforcing agencies or institutions place a curb on civil liberties for the suppression of dissent in any form. In this context, I find it pertinent to mention a remark made by Aung San Suu Kyi, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, in her essay entitled “Freedom from Fear” (1990): “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Against the backdrop of incidents and situations that reveal the state of endangered freedom and civil liberties, it is appropriate to place in perspective the current edition of Re-Markings that showcases issues and concerns bordering on oppression, discrimination and exploitation on grounds of nation, class, race, caste, gender, colour, creed, religion, language etc. The global outreach of the scholarly contributions in the volume brings together the efforts of historians, writers, academics and scholars to question and challenge the status quo created by centres of power to keep those on the margins in their ‘place’. While burning cities have become emblematic of the collective rage of suppressed dissent against authoritarian approaches to the basic needs of common people, be it in France, U.S., Iran or Manipur, we cannot insensitively turn our heads away and remain unconcerned.

When we get passionately involved in what and how we write, we are automatically transformed from mere spectators to participants in better causes. George Orwell had pointed out: “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” It is, therefore, incumbent upon each one of us to think for ourselves rather than allow others to do our part of the thinking.

Nibir K. Ghosh

Chief Editor

CONTENTS

 

Viewpoints from California - Jonah Raskin     - Walt Whitman & T. S. Eliot: A Personal Engagement / 7 The U.S. Supreme Court: A Primer / 10

Reconstructing and Demythologizing America’s Story: An Interview with Professor Kermit Roosevelt III on The Nation That Never Was - Robin Lindley / 13

Not Writing in the Mother Tongue - Miho Kinnas / 25

Krishna Baldev Vaid’s Hindi Ibārat and My Malayalam Pāṭhaṁ - K. Narayana Chandran / 31

 South Asia as a Literary Category - Anisur Rahman / 42

Blended Learning in Educational Technology: Challenges and Opportunities – India’s Perspective - Shanker Ashish Dutt / 47

Melody of the Blues and the American Racial Dilemma:  August Wilson’s Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Nibir K. Ghosh / 54

 The Cracked Mirror: An Examination of  A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams - Shernavaz Buhariwala / 67

Re-telling (her) Stories: Sorties, Texts and - Contexts from Northeast India  Sukalpa Bhattacharjee / 75

R. K. Narayan’s The Dark Room: A Story of Lost Opportunities -Yashu Rai / 89

Ecology, Spirituality and Sankaradeva - Nityananda Pattanayak / 96

 Decolonising the Novel: A Study of Wilson Harris’ The Palace of the Peacock - Melissa Helen / 103

 Arundhati Roy’s Azadi and My India - Pallavi Sharma Goyal / 110

 Dalit Feminism and Meena Kandasamy’s Writings - Ruchi Singh / 117

 Debt, an Eternal Curse in Kota Neelima’s Shoes of the Dead - Vikram Singh & Reshma Devi / 125

Single Indian Women as the Other in Eunice de Souza’s Novels: Dangerlok and Dev & Simran - Barsha Sahoo / 129  

The Ontological Perspective of “Self” in Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence - Rajeev Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty / 136

Women and War: Redefining Historical Discourse in Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomaly Face of War - Amandeep Kaur / 143

Modes of Representation in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh - Paramba Dadhich / 151

The Final Confession (Short Story) - Sin Keong Tong / 157

Announcements / 160

Announcements

Call for Papers

Scholarly contributions are invited from members of Re-Markings for a proposed Special Number/Section on the theme “Transforming Lives in an Age of Artificial Intelligence: Orientations and Challenges.” Papers may address any of the following areas:

1.     Literature-Technology Interface.

2.     The Digital Divide.

3.     ChatGPT and Human Communication.

4.     Where do we go from here?

5.     Impact of artificial intelligence on upward mobility.

6.     Is Orwellian ‘Big Brother’ watching us?

7.     Emerging Utopian and Dystopian views of change.

8.     Social Media: Boon or Bane?

9.     Short films and OTT platforms.

10.  Any other aspect related to the basic theme.

Interested contributors should submit an abstract of 150 words along with contact details and professional affiliation to remarkings@hotmail.com by 20 September, 2023. Authors of selected entries will be notified by 10 October, 2023. Thereafter, the complete paper (2000-2500 words in MS Word format, MLA Style 9^th edition) will be required by 15 November, 2023.

***

Invitation to share

Re-Markings’ readers and contributors are welcome to share their unique academic/professional achievements on the Panorama section of the journal website www.re-markings.com by sending details of the same with pictures/images to the Chief Editor at ghoshnk@hotmail.com

***

 

FREEDOM FROM FEAR: LITERATURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS - KEYNOTE ADDRESS By NIBIR K. GHOSH International Multidisciplinary Conference on Posthumanism, Cybernetics and Human Rights

 

Jagat Guru Nanak Dev Punjab State Open University Patiala

International Multidisciplinary Conference on

Posthumanism, Cybernetics and Human Rights

25-26 July 2023 

 

FREEDOM FROM FEAR: LITERATURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Nibir K. Ghosh

 

Dr. Karamjeet Singh, Hon’ble VC, Dignitaries of the University, Dr. Navleen Multani, distinguished guests, worthy participants, students, friends, ladies and gentlemen:

I deem it a pleasure to greet you all from the city of the Taj at the inaugural session of this two-day international conference on a topic of supreme contemporary relevance. I am thankful to Dr. Karamjeet Singh and his team for the invitation to contribute to this conference as a Keynote speaker. Since a Keynote speech is not likely to be followed by question-answer session, I can easily feel reassured that no one would take the trouble of listening to me. 

Friends, Today I wish to share with you a collage of impressions based on my experiences as a passionate lover of literature on the topic “Freedom from Fear: Literature and Human Rights.” But before I talk about ‘Freedom from Fear’, I find it imperative to share my anxiety and dread about the impact of apocalyptic high-sounding terms like Posthumanism and Cybernetics on the current academia and general intellectual perception. Rather than take up your valuable time defining such terminology, I would prefer to give two examples of human evolution in posthuman and cybernetics times.

An astronomer once declared in a scientific meeting: “To an astronomer man is nothing more than an insignificant dot in the infinite universe’. Einstein, who was present at the meeting, is reported to have observed: ‘I have often felt that, but then I realize that the insignificant dot, who is man, is also the astronomer.”

 

In the Zoo at Lusaka, Zambia, there is a cage where the notice reads “The world’s most dangerous animal.” Inside the cage there is no animal but a mirror where you see yourself.

In the context of the above instances, I wish to ask my young friends present here, “what happens to the cultural politics of human rights when atrocities are rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become vectors?” It is imperative that in answering this question we are bound to re-think about what is truly ‘human’ about human rights.

Freedom from Fear

'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights, remarked Dag Hammarskjold, the former secretary general of the UNO.

After the creation of the United Nations, the international community strongly felt that the human rights to life, dignity, integrity, and to other necessary things for a meaningful survival needed to be preserved and propagated by rule of law. The U.N.'s blue flag came forth as a banner of hope. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentions freedom more than twenty times. Human rights are praised more than ever -- and violated as much as ever.

Let me quickly take you to an excursion around some recent happenings. Let us begin with Paris, the capital of the nation that is known as the cradle of democracy where ideals like “liberty, equality and fraternity” resonate not merely as principles of governance but as a way of life.

On 27 June 2023, i.e. less than a month ago, a French police officer shot and killed a 17-year-old named Nahel.  His death led to widespread protests that saw many parts of the country in flames. Nahel’s mother said that the police officer who pulled the trigger "saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life." On 16 September 2022, in Iran, 22-year old Mahsa Amini, was killed in police custody for not covering her head with a hijab. Iran burned as hundreds of girls and women lost their lives protesting against the self-proclaimed guardians of morality. We may not have forgotten the case of George Floyd, the Black man murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 25 May 2020. And, as we engage ourselves in deliberations on Human rights, haunting us is the recent video of two women who were paraded naked and raped in Manipur.

These episodes remind us of what Alfred Hitchcock said about fear: 

“Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.”

“Apna Apna Bhagya”

When we discuss the issue of Freedom from fear it may not be restricted to abuse of human rights by those in power. In fact, it could be related to something less complicated than that. I would like to share excerpts from “Apna Apna Bhagya” by Jainendra Kumar Jain.

तीन गज की दूरी से दीख पड़ा, एक लड़का सिर के बड़े-बड़े बालों को खुजलाता चला आ रहा है. नंगे पैर है, नंगा सिर. एक मैली-सी कमीज़ लटकाए है. पैर उसके न जाने कहां पड़ रहे हैं, और वह न जाने कहां जा रहा है- कहां जाना चाहता है. उसके कदमों में जैसे कोई न अगला है, न पिछला है, न दायां है, न बायां है.

कोई दस बरस का होगा. गोरे रंग का है, पर मैल से काला पड़ गया है. आंखें अच्छी बड़ी पर रूखी हैं. माथा जैसे अभी से झुर्रियां खा गया है. वह हमें न देख पाया. वह जैसे कुछ भी नहीं देख रहा था. न नीचे की धरती, न ऊपर चारों तरफ फैला हुआ कुहरा, न सामने का तालाब और न बाकी दुनिया. वह बस, अपने विकट वर्तमान को देख रहा था.

मित्र ने आवाज दी- “ए!”

उसने जैसे जागकर देखा और पास आ गया.

“तू कहां जा रहा है?”

उसने अपनी सूनी आंखें फाड़ दीं.

“दुनिया सो गई, तू ही क्यों घूम रहा है?”

बालक मौन-मूक, फिर भी बोलता हुआ चेहरा लेकर खड़ा रहा.

“कहां सोएगा?”

“यहीं कहीं.”

“कल कहां सोया था?”

“दुकान पर.”

“आज वहां क्यों नहीं?”

“नौकरी से हटा दिया.”

“क्या नौकरी थी?”

“सब काम. एक रुपया और जूठा खाना!”

“फिर नौकरी करेगा?”

“हां.”

“बाहर चलेगा?”

“हां.”

“आज क्या खाना खाया?”

“कुछ नहीं.”

“अब खाना मिलेगा?”

“नहीं मिलेगा!”

“यों ही सो जाएगा?”

“हां.”

“कहां.”

“यहीं कहीं.”

“इन्हीं कपड़ों में?”

बालक फिर आंखों से बोलकर मूक खड़ा रहा. आंखें मानो बोलती थीं- यह भी कैसा मूर्ख प्रश्न!

“माँ-बाप हैं?”

“हैं.”

“कहां?”

“पन्द्रह कोस दूर गाँव में.”

“तू भाग आया?”

“हां!”

“क्यों?”

“मेरे कई छोटे भाई-बहिन हैं- सो भाग आया वहां काम नहीं, रोटी नहीं. बाप भूखा रहता था और मारता था, माँ भूखी रहती थी और रोती थी. सो भाग आया. एक साथी और था. उसी गाँव का. मुझसे बड़ा था. दोनों साथ यहां आए. वह अब नहीं हैं.

“कहां गया?”

“मर गया.”

“मर गया?”

“हां, साहब ने मारा, मर गया.”

 

Here are the concluding lines from the story:

 

मोटर में सवार होते ही यह समाचार मिली कि पिछली रात, एक पहाड़ी बालक सड़क के किनारे, पेड़के नीचे, ठिठुरकर मर गया! मरने के लिए उसे वही जगह, वही दस बरस की उम्र और वही काले चीथड़ों की कमीज मिली।

 

आदमियों की दुनिया ने बस यही उपहार उसके पास छोड़ा था।

 

पर बताने वाले ने बताया कि गरीब के मुँह पर, छाती मुठ्ठी और पैरों पर बरफ की हलकी-सी चादर चिपक गई थी। मानो दुनिया की बेहयाई ढ़कने के लिए प्रकृति ने शव के लिए सफेद और ठण्डे कफ़न का प्रबंध कर दिया था।

 

सब सूना और सोचा, अपना-अपना भाग्य।

 

This story written in 1931 shows the face of poverty and misery under an alien rule. 92 years later, in 2023, as we celebrate the Amritotsav of our Independence, we cannot say with any certainty that the scene has changed much. However, it is significant to point out the impact this simple story has in sensitizing us to the poverty and misery of the millions of such children who inhabit this great land. Though I first read this unforgettable story as a child in school, I can never forget the impact it left on me. This is the power of literature.

 

It is not insignificant that Mr. Kailash Satyarthi mentions in his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance speech how in the foothills of the Himalayas, he met a small, skinny boy who asked him: "Is the world so poor that it cannot give me a toy and a book, instead of forcing me to take a tool or gun?"

 

Once I was invited to talk to the English PG students at a premium women’s college in Hyderabad. The topic that was given to me was Women Empowerment. Before turning to the theme, I asked the audience comprising 125+girls and women teachers how many among them would still feel the truth expressed in the line from the famous song, “Abke janam mohe bitiya na kijo…ro bhi na paye aisi gudiya na kijo.” I was amazed to see all the hands rise up except of just two students. I immediately understood the challenges are a part of a woman’s destiny despite all the changes we see around us.

I would also like to share the travails of a woman under the brutal Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania:

“One day, on the way to the hairdresser, somebody suddenly grabbed me by the arm: it was a policeman who took me to the basement of a nearby block of flats, where three men lay in wait for me. The one who seemed to be the boss accused me, amongst others, of being a prostitute of Arab students and that I was doing it to be paid for in kind for cosmetics (under communism beauty products considered inessential were absent from shops). I answered that I knew no Arab students to which he retorted that if he wanted to he could find twenty Arab students to testify against me. Then the slender policeman opened the door to let me out and threw my ID card on the ground. As I bent he kicked me hard in the back: I fell face down on the grass, behind some bushes.”

This woman who underwent ceaseless persecution and torture for refusing to conform to the government ideology and diktat, is none other than Herta Müller, the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. In The Land of Green Plums Herta Müller, writes: 

“I sang without hearing my voice. I fell from a fear full of doubt into a fear full of absolute certainty. I could sing the way water sings. Maybe the tune came from my singing grandmother’s dementia. Perhaps I knew tunes she lost when she lost her reason. Perhaps things that lay fallow in her brain had to pass to my lips.”

This is what literature can do and what Artificial Intelligence and all the posthuman creations can’t.

It was Socrates in ancient Greece who taught us that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” In modern times, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reiterated that “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It is literature that helps us in examining the reasons we live for and the sense and meaning that we can impart to our lives. How right is George Orwell when he says, “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

To me the success of this great conference lies not to what extent it will enhance your API scores but in how you approach your own human instincts to work for creating a space where everyone, without discrimination in any form, can work together, without fear, for the common good characterized by tolerance, respect for freedom, compassion and progressive democracy.

You may ask: what can one person do? Let me tell you a Buddhist tale:

A terrible fire had broken out in the forest. All the animals were running away, including the lion, king of the forest. Suddenly, the lion saw a tiny bird rushing towards the fire. He asked the bird, "what are you doing?" To the lion's surprise, the bird replied "I am on my way to extinguish the fire." He laughed and said, "how can you kill the fire with just one drop of water, in your beak?" The bird was adamant, and said, "But I am doing my bit."

Let us, then, do our bit, like the tiny bird in the fable, and show with compassion what Wordsworth pointed out in “Tintern Abbey”: “that best portion of a good man's life,/ His little, nameless, unremembered, acts/ Of kindness and of love.”

While deliberating on the theme of the Conference, I am optimistic that you will not miss the value of the “little, nameless, unremembered, acts/ Of kindness and of love” that will help you become a truly good, compassionate and fearless human being.

With these words, I wish you and the conference all success!

Valedictory Session Pictures

 

Thank You!