Speaking freely in Dhaka

Dhaka Literary Festival (DLF), now in its sixth year, is a flagship public event for Anglo-Bengali literature, arts and ideas in Bangladesh, held annually in Dhaka, the capital of the country. 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 Karwanbajar, 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 received. Gently, it forbade me to step out of the hotel the next day due to the hartaal (shutdown) sponsored by radical Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami. The note asked me 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 Global South has a pattern of being amplified in the Northern world. And that had been the case here too. There had been 19 cancellations from foreign participants. But life in Dhaka for a Bengali like me on the hartaal day was quite normal. Dhaka citizens didn’t care much about the hartaal call and neither did I. May be it was foolish. May be it was not. But in that difference lies the choice of an individual to provide legitimacy and validity to a concocted ambience of siege and terror, or to break out of that - into the mundane. I told myself that when the reaction of a brown man is same as a white man to such a situation, then perhaps 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.

The note forbade me to step out of the hotel next day due to the hartaal (shutdown) by the Jamaat-e-Islami

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 instead. However, what had happened in Bangladesh in the meantime since the 2015 Lit Fest would make one expect another, probably bigger, pink note. For in the meanwhile, the list of those killed by specific targeting had expanded to include foreigners, religious minorities, queer people, Baul fakirs (belonging to a syncretic tradition between Islam and Hinduism), non-extremist Muslim divines and more free-thinkers and bloggers. But this time, as 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 V.S. Naipaul, arguably the only living Nobel laureate in literature with such deep connections to South Asia and as I learnt later, to Dhaka in particular: 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 1, the least attended day, the footfall was over ten thousand.

What sets apart the Dhaka Literary Festival from others in the Subcontinent is its connect and relevance to city and citizens

And this is precisely what sets apart the Dhaka Lit Fest from most other such festivals for literature, arts and ideas in the subcontinent: 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 surrounding areas 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 active participation by the citizens. And above all, it had a crowd that knew it had a right to be there.

All of this was happening in the backdrop of dogged questions around restrictions on freedom of speech in Bangladesh. The most high-profile case was that of the arrest of Mahmudur Rahman, the editor of the Bangla language daily Amar Desh, considered politically aligned with the political Islamist camp. Charges against him included “sedition and unlawful publication 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 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 or arrested 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 aspects of a general crackdown have brought into question press freedom in Bangladesh. Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act 2006, popularly called ‘57 Dhara’ in Bangladesh, has received particular criticism for 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 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 offence”. The sheer vagueness and breadth of this section leaves it open to be used as a political tool. Many have argued 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.

On the third day of the fest, the panel ‘Ruddhoshor’ specifically focused on the conditions of free speech in Bangladesh. The panelists were free speech advocates, including a blogger at risk for his life, whose name is doing the rounds in several Islamist ‘hit-lists’. The discussion was explosive; at one point, the floor asked if the panel agreed that Article 57 of the ICT Act should be canceled and the panel in turn asked the house. The house “passed” that resolution in a resounding voice-vote. One of the festival directors commented from stage that he believed free speech was now more restricted than at any time since the advent of democracy (except during the 1/11 crisis from 2006 to 2008) and also called for the rescinding of Article 57. This was part of the “Literature: Everything Is Political” panel. Bauls or syncretic spiritual mendicants of the Baul-Fakir tradition of Bengal have come under systematic attack from hardline Islamist groups, suffering various forms of violence including murder, tonsure, beatings and intimidation. A panel specifically discussed these issues. It is clear that the issues of freedom of speech in Bangladesh are quite complex, even if blame does rest with the government of the day as well as various political actors opposed to the government of the day. How to apportion the blame depends on one’s vision for society but it is undeniable that at the end of the day, the buck stops with the government.

The government was one of the minor sponsors of the event, in addition to providing security cover for an event of this profile. This is routine for the Jaipur Lit Fest or the Lahore Lit Fest, where the governments are providers of security and the arrangements happen in close coordination with them. Thus, in all three major South Asian states, each with dismal reputations when it comes to freedom of speech, the long shadow of the government of the day is ever present. To what extent this influences the proceedings and content of the events is what should be scrutinised closely. The clear denunciation of Article 57 shows that sentiments very critical of government policy in Bangladesh were expressed. Could there have been yet more criticisms of the government? Surely, but it is debatable whether the extent of criticism of the government of the host country is the only lens through which one may evaluate the standards for freedom of speech at an event of global arts and letters. In this regard, it is important to mention that in attendance as invitees at Dhaka Lit Fest were two top officials of PEN International (Carles Torner and Romana Cacchiolli) as well as bureau chiefs of BBC and the Economist, who were under no obligation - one would believe - to live up to Article 57 norms or worry about sullying Bangladesh’s image. One imagines that they were free to make their own inferences about the festival and its context - or to act as agents of whitewashing the very real press freedom violations in Bangladesh.

Reporters Without Borders sums up the Bangladesh scenario quite succinctly in its country brief where it states, “In Bangladesh, it is a bad idea to criticise the constitution or Islam, the state religion. Journalists and bloggers who refuse to submit to censorship or to censor themselves on these subjects risk life imprisonment or the death penalty. Islamist militants have also targeted outspoken secularists. The media are nonetheless quite diverse and fairly outspoken on less sensitive issues”.

The Dhaka Lit Fest represented a part - but not all - of that outspokenness and diversity. Bangladesh’s World Press Freedom Index rank of 144 is dismal and not too far away from India’s 133: both countries are classified as “Red”. For comparison, Mexico is at 149, Venezuela is at 139 and Turkey is at 151. These are bleak times when in these ‘Red’-zone states, every forum - such as a literature festival - can be looked upon as being at the crossroads of cooption and resistance at the same time, At the end of the day, the broader political realities on the ground determine which of those tendencies dominate and not the other way round.

Garga Chatterjee is a Kolkata-based commentator on South Asian politics and culture. He received his PhD from Harvard and is a member of faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He blogs at hajarduari.wordpress.com