She sets stones on fire. She wakes the dead history up. Her
words bust crawling maps. She is Githa Hariharan. A prolific writer Githa has
mapped the world through her journalistic pieces that mirror back from
innumerable short stories, books and essays she has written. In an interview
with Saima Afreen she talks briefly about the new non-fiction book of essays
that she has edited and co-authored with other writers, journalists and
authors.
Tell us about your new book 'From India to Palestine: Essays
in Solidarity' that contains political essays from other writers as well.
The idea was to renew, revisit an old relationship between
India and not only Palestine but that region where India has had historically
strong ties and in West Asian region in particular. When it comes to Palestine
there are two things; one is that it is a product of movement against
colonization. The second is that Palestine is the last bastion of colonialism.
It is a particular form that we have taken a stand on as in the case of South
Africa. There are certain apartheid policies. And what does apartheid mean? It
means separate unequal! And this is just happening in the occupied West Bank
where it is in a way bit more flagrant because it is occupied by military, but
also within Israel which is not only doing injustice to the Palestinians over
there but to the Israelis as well. As we know in India that if somebody attacks
on Muslims and Christians you don't have to be a Muslim or a Christian to take
a stand on that. This is the logic that the book began with.
Interesting things about the theme of the book...
Some of us who have been to Palestine, it was also a
curiosity to know what was occupation like in the lives of people on a day to
day basis. With colonialism, we know there are different strategies of attack.
If you want to attack religion the target is Jerusalem, for commerce it is
Hebron - the commercial centre. At the check points you see walls that grab
land on both sides. It could be in the middle of olive groves. It could be in
front of somebody's house. The other aspect we had is the analysis of India's
relationship. There are essays by Nayantara Sahgal, there are also analyses as
to what happened in early nineties despite India's lip service in support of
Palestine. NAM was not meant to be a passive movement. It was an active policy
to support decolonization talking of independence in economic and foreign
policy. What is discussed in the essays in the book is that when your economic
policies give up the independence it's surprising that your seeding the foreign
policy matters is co-terminus in seeding the economic space.
What is your idea of India today?
If we talk about Palestine, it is also one of the many ways
through which we can talk about as to what is our idea of India today. We have
to see what was the idea of India we began with! Both Gandhi and Golwalkar
wrote about Israel and Palestine crisis. There is a contrast there. For
Golwalkar, it made sense. Because that model of a nation is a homogenized
model. Jews have the right to return to Israel, but the Palestinians who were
displaced in 1948 and late 60s do not have the right to return! Today our idea
of India is different from what it used to be. What is this new emphasis on
strategic relations with the U.S.? And what does that tell about us and what
kind of a nation we want to become?
What does solidarity mean as it has been discussed a lot in
the book?
First, we have to redefine words like 'secular' and
'democracy'. We hardly know what they mean! Solidarity, today in the
international context, means putting pressure on your own government, your own
media, your own industries, your own academic and culture practitioners. And
there are levels of solidarity. There are real people and real political forces
at work.
Do you see a new form of colonialism rising?
There is no question about of new colonialism! It is there.
Though I am not a historian or an expert on the same, colonialism has visited
different parts of the world in different ways and in different times. In some
places it was secular colonialism. Our own experience of colonialism was quite
different from that of Africa. With Palestine, of course, it is its
specificities that mark it. The question is now that it continues to manifest
itself not only as occupation but also in this kind of almost impossible
situation where there has to be a two state solution, but then what sort of two
state solution? And there is an essay in the book by economist Prabhat Patnaik
who asks if there are going to be two states are they going to be 'states' with
democratic framework in both? It must not fall under the propaganda that
'Israel has working democracy'!
I met Geetha Hariharan at Hyderabad LitFest, 2014.
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