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Sharing personal memories of the brilliant Sara Suleri whose genre-defying book Meatless Days inspired generations of writers, feminists, memoirists and dislocated Southasians. Thanks Ailia Zehra at The Friday Times for asking me to write this piece.Published as a Sapan syndicated feature in TFT, The Wire, Geo TV blog, South Asia Monitor and The Print – shared here with additional pix and links.
February 2018: Sara Suleri pays tribute to Asma Jahangir. Photo: Beena Sarwar.
PERSONAL-POLITICAL
By Beena Sarwar
March 25, 2022, Sapan News Service:
“Aur bataiye” – tell me more, a polite invitation to keep talking. I can hear her voice, perhaps naturally husky, made deeper with years of cigarette smoking and perhaps more recently with pain and other medications.
She’d send her love to Pakistan whenever I’d call before flying out from Boston, where we had both ended up around ten years ago – she after retiring as Professor Emeritus of English from Yale University. I had transplanted myself from my home city Karachi where I was editing Aman Ki Asha, hope for peace – between India and Pakistan.
“Dream on!” I hear Sara say. And yet, she agrees, it’s important to keep going. She’s also a hundred percent supportive of our push for a regional approach – the South Asia Peace Action Network, or Sapan, the more recent endeavour, launched last year with a wonderful group of inter-generational, cross-border peacemongers.
UPDATE 5.45 PST: Journalists Amir Mir and Imran Shafqat released on bail. Federal Investigation Agency says they were arrested for their alleged contempt against Judiciary, Army and some “women”…
FIA just announced that they released journalists Amir Mir and Imran Shafqat on bail. According to FIA press release both journalists were arrested for their alleged contempt against Judiciary, Army and some “women” but FIA never mentioned the names of the “women” pic.twitter.com/9WDBRkHxKd
Tweet from Amir Mir’s brother journalist Hamid Mir
————————-
I don’t normally post back-to-back but the situation warrants it. Hours after my last blogpost Stand in solidarity with journalists, two more journalists have been picked up. What is this andher nagari, land in darkness…?
Image of HRCP tweet – Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
Pakistan Federal Union of Journalist (PFUJ) has strongly condemned abduction of two senior journalists Syed Imran Shafqat and Amir Mir from Lahore from their residences in Lahore on Saturday and demanded their immediate release.
The PFUJ also announced to hold countrywide protest from Monday against growing incidents of journalists’ abductions in Pakistan.
The abductors were reportedly from Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) which, PFUJ, believes is involved in taking actions against the journalists at the behest of the government.
As the newly-sworn in United States President Joseph Biden begins his tenure, he has a lot of salvaging to do from the wreckage left by his predecessor.
One of the more disturbing messages arising out of the attack by violent pro-Trump insurrectionists at the US Capitol on January 6 involved frightening threats to a free press. Scrawled on a door at the building were the words: “Murder the Media.”
That pithy, vile phrase represented the raw culmination of five years of rhetorical attacks by Donald Trump and his political allies against critical media coverage.
The doors to the U.S. Capitol right now, as members of the mob that stormed it a couple of hours ago file out, without police escorts or handcuffs: "Murder the Media." They don't like that we've been watching and reporting, and will continue to do so. pic.twitter.com/qtqNR26uMd
Updated screenshot of my piece in Washington Post. Editors replaced the earlier photo after…
…I conveyed the feedback that he doesn’t normally wear a ‘topi’ (religious skull cap) and this photo highlighted religiosity in Pakistan which is not relevant to the topic.
But even if he is granted bail now – after over 100 days of being denied his liberty and that too at a time of Covid — this will be a minor victory achieved at a huge cost, not only for Rahman, but also for media freedom and democracy in Pakistan.
It is outrageous that for nearly a month now, chief editor and owner of the country’s largest media group has been behind bars. Mir Shakilur Rahman was arrested by Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau on March 12, in connection with a 34-year old land case.
Leading lawyers agree that the case is baseless. They are among the many voices – journalists, international human rights organisations and media platforms, rival media groups, civil society organisations at home and abroad – outraged by this travesty of justice and urging MSR’s release #FreeMirShakilurRehman.
Amnesty International is deeply concerned with the arrest of Jang group editor-in-chief Mir Shakilur Rehman in what appears to be yet another incident of harassment of journalists in Pakistan. He must be guaranteed a fair trial and access to legal representation.
— Amnesty International South Asia (@amnestysasia) March 16, 2020
Leading international organisations have called for MSR’s release
The detention is widely seen as part of an ongoing attack on media freedom in Pakistan. The case, clearly motivated by vendetta, is particularly disturbing at a time when everyone needs to be on the same page in fighting the global COVID-19 pandemic. See my story in Naya Daur, also posted below with updates, about a maverick poet and intellectual with no affiliation to the Jang/Geo media group, on hunger strike since March 29 for MSR’s release.
Demonstrators at MIT, part of a series of peaceful world-wide protests in solidarity with Kashmir on the weekend of 21 September, International Peace Day. Photo: Beena Sarwar
Sunday, 22 September, Cambridge MA: “Resist to exist” proclaimed a placard on the steps of MIT. The placard featured the picture of a woman in a red pheran, the long woolen tunic traditionally worn by Kashmiris from the Himalayan region in India’s north-west tip.
Visual by Zarina Teli, based on a photograph by Sumaya Teli.
The woman holding the placard also wore a red pheran, her mouth taped shut like the others in the pheran-clad group she stood with to symbolize the communications blackout in her home state since 5 August this year. The pheran reflects an iconic image that has become integral to the Kashmiris’ resistance movement, as covered by NPR news recently (Finding resistance in fashion, Kashmiri creator turns to the pheran).
The color red, taken up by thousands in their social media profile
images, has come to symbolize the Kashmiris’ spirit of resistance and defiance.
The woman and her companions stood with other peace-loving South
Asians and friends on the steps of MIT this past Sunday at noon, to demand that
the Indian government “immediately restore communication in Kashmir, remove the
draconian measures enforced in the name of security and order, and respect
Kashmiris’ right of self-determination”.
Boston event – Global Standout for Peace in South Asia. Photo: Beena Sarwar
The next day, Monday 23 September, marked Day 50 of “the
unprecedented and total communications blackout for 8 million Kashmiris
enforced on them by the Indian government. Kashmiris, living in the most
militarized region on earth, now fear that the present communications blackout
is part of a larger plan to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Kashmir,” according to the
statement read out at the event.
The event at MIT was part of a series of peaceful protests that weekend in solidarity with the Kashmiri people, coordinated by a small coalition called the Global Standout for Peace in South Asia.
Besides Boston, the Standouts took place in the San Francisco Bay
area, Kolkata (India), Gotenburg (Sweden), Islamabad (Pakistan), and Kathmandu
(Nepal), on the same weekend as Indian Prime Minister Modi shared the stage
with U.S. President Trump in Houston. Solidarity with Kashmir protests took
place in Houston also, as well as Seattle WA.
Standout for Peace in solidarity with Kashmir, Goteburg, Sweden
Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan both lay claim to
Kashmir. The Global Standout protestors showed their rejection of these
territorial claims by not carrying the flags of any nation or state.
Supporting organizations in Boston included Massachusetts Peace
Action, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, MIT Students Against War, Stand With
Kashmir, Coalition for Democratic India, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic
South Asia, and Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine.
Addressing the participants,
Cambridge City Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui encouraged them to keep ‘speaking out
for justice’.
The event ended with a drum sounding 50 beats, one for each day since the communications lockdown up to that point.
Another marvelous poem by Badri Raina in Delhi, published in ZNet, referencing Prof. Henry Higgins’ famous line in the musical My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I will differ from Badri ji only to humbly offer that far from being dead, the ‘Equality idea’ is alive and kicking. It is in fact the growing prevalence of this idea that so threatens the beneficiaries of oppressive systems that they feel compelled to churn up fascism and bigotry, that get amplified in the news and social media. Am I wrong?
Remembering Professor Higgins
By Badri Raina
We raised eyebrows when Higgins asked
“why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
Look how whole nations now build upon
That thought in the Professor’s brain. Continue reading →
Something I wrote about sexual harassment and abuse, published in The News on Sunday. It was a difficult piece to write, took a lot of thought, time, and research, and forced me to introspect on uncomfortable ideas. I went through a learning process that I’ve have tried to share. One idea links to the concept of restorative justice. Another is that, regardless of whether or not guilt is proven, such cases are forcing society to re-evaluate acceptable behaviour. This, in fact, may be the #MeToo movement’s most enduring contribution.
Thanks to friends who initiated this statement in solidarity with the artists, thinkers and people of Sri Lanka, that I have signed along with over 250 other activists, academics and journalists from across South Asia. Please feel free to endorse and share. Signatories include human rights activists from Afghanistan and Bangladesh, journalists from Nepal, Pakistan and India, and historians and feminists from India and Pakistan, among others who have been at the forefront of facing similar realities in their respective nation-states for decades. Full text below, updated from the version published earlier in TheWire.in.
Journeys to democracy 