This is an interesting comment from “Mircea” who blogs at Just Speculations, who was at first willing to reject Gita Sahgal’s claims regarding Cageprisoners and Amnesty’s decision to partner with them, not because the accusations lacked veracity but because some people, or often a single person, they loathed had chosen to publicly champion Sahgal, because, of course, their concerns for human rights were highly suspect. In this writer’s case, the bête noire happens to be the “evil” Salman Rushdie:
My reaction, especially after seeing Salman Rushdie’s spirited defence of Sahgal, was suspicion. I remember seeing Rushdie speak ca. 2004, just as my own views on the invasion of Iraq were changing, and realising with some chagrin that he had become in some important ways an apologist for neo-conservative neo-imperialism. But is Sahgal another Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an “establishment feminist” championed by the “enlightened” anti-Muslim literati, hiding a sinister agenda? A glance at the petition supporting her should dispel such doubts:
http://www.human-rights-for-all.org/spip.php?article15
This blogger clearly does not fit the description of the prejudiced, doctrinaire, “liberal” I made above, the kind of person who is willing to reject Sahgal’s carefully considered claims or support (or remain ambivalent to) Amnesty’s apologia of jihadism, simply because of the public endorsement of celebrity x, y or z , who if they are to be believed, have invariably “hijacked” Sahgal’s cause and care little for human rights. Because this blogger looked into the list of signatories of the petition in support of Gita Sahgal and found a bunch of names he respected:
Sumit and Tanika Sarkar, Romila Thapar, Amitav Ghosh, Gayatri Spivak, Ramachandra Guha, Dilip Simeon, Chitra Joshi, Sumit Guha, Suvir Kaul, Raka Ray, Zoya Hasan, Amita Baviskar, Madhu Sarin, Priyamvada Gopal, and more.
One astonishing thing about this list is that it includes both mainstream liberals and various shades of Left-Marxist academics and activists. The even more astonishing thing is that almost all are fierce critics of communalism and imperialism.
And he has the wisdom to change his mind and to articulate why.
This event shows that opposing the formulation of a Muslim problem with the potential of disrupting peaceful co-existence in India and beyond (which I have written about in my previous posts on the legacy of Gujarat and the controversy at the Jaipur Lit Festival) does not, should not, and can never imply fear or retreat from criticising Islamic Right ideologies. The strongest weapon in the hands of people like Hirsi Ali, Rushdie, Hitchens, Pascal Bruckner and the whole “new Enlightenment” intelligentsia is the idea that Left intellectuals are “soft on Muslims.” This also forces us (I humbly include myself in the latter category) to desperately contemplate the impossibility of ethical action in the space between the Taliban and the neo-con. What Gita Saghal can teach us, apart from how to bravely go about doing this, is that there are points of commonality and even solidarity between these two factions of “late liberalism.” Being vigilant about the dangers of extremisms of all kinds, and yes, still ever-conscious of the vast challenges facing women under various regimes of patriarchal oppression, is quite simply the right thing to do. Convergence on this point has the potential to restructure the intellectual and political field away from the many harmful complicities of the 2000s, and just maybe salvage the integrity of “human rights.”
Quite right.
Any fool can reject Sahgal’s claims because Salman Rushdie or Christopher Hitchens or Nick Cohen said she was OK. Not many change their minds when they realise, “wait a minute, so does Gayatri Spivak, Sumit Guha and Amita Baviskar and more”. The issue here is too big to be supporting or rejecting Sahgal on the basis of her celebrity endorsements. It’s time we converged these disparate points of view. And if you can’t see that, you can’t really be serious about the integrity of human rights.
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Yes, I saw the post. But isn’t it exceptionally sad, that interventions of people like Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens are dismissed because of their alleged “rock star” status? Rushdie did not seek the fatwa; Hitchens did not ask to be beaten up by pro-Assad goons in Damascus. Their record in defending civil liberties is far superior to that of some alleged friends of human rights, like Noam Chomsky. And yet, because of Rushdie’s fame, and Hitchens’s willingness to call a spade a spade, and because of their alleged positions on specific wars – I say this because their position on Iraq and Afghanistan is sophisticated and nuanced – they are dismissed by many, as celebrities who should not be taken seriously. That shows a certain infantilisation of thinking; a process accentuated, when someone is unwilling to take Sahgal seriously because X endorses her, but changes the mind because other thoughtful people – Thapar, Baviskar, Guha, etc – back her claims. That doesn’t show independence, I’m afraid. But Mircea is to be commended for his candor, and willingness to change his mind. The same can’t be said about many who are willing to lump Sahgal with “Hirsi Ali” – that is, assuming that what Hirsi Ali stands for is necessarily bad.
There’s a space – wide enough – where there are many who love freedoms can be found – from Hirsi Ali and Cohen, to Rushdie and Hitchens, to Thapar and Spivak. There’s more in common between them, and that space is large; what they disagree on are relatively few things. If those become a litmus test for some people, that’s a separate issue. But that litmus test is not, in any way, consistent with supporting universal human rights.
Brilliantly put, that litmus test is diversionary irrelevance.