[During a question-and-answer session, an audience member asked Ms. Devi if the rape of a tribal or a low-caste woman would have garnered the same degree of national attention. She dismissed the question, saying, "I don't know why have you asked this question at all" because the issue surpassed the issue of caste or religion.]
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| Courtesy of Jaipur Literature FestivalA panel discussion on the theme, “Imagine: Resistance, Protest, Assertion,” at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2013. |
The recently concluded Jaipur Literature Festival was the
scene of some dissent during free-wheeling debates, but one thing virtually
everyone agreed on was the need to pay more attention to women's rights.
The national outrage over the gang rape of a young woman
in Delhi reverberated through many of the events during the five-day festival,
which ended Monday, as participants discussed gender issues through the lens of
theology, philosophy, cinema and, of course, literature. Disagreements on the
definition of rape and the punishment for rape mirrored conversations happening
around the country.
The tone was set by the rousing opening speech by Mahasweta Devi, the octogenarian
Bengali writer and social activist, in which she reflected upon her life and
her struggle to create an identity in a patriarchal society.
During a question-and-answer session, an audience member
asked Ms. Devi if the rape of a tribal or a low-caste woman would have garnered
the same degree of national attention. She dismissed the question, saying,
"I don't know why have you asked this question at all" because the
issue surpassed the issue of caste or religion.
"We should protest against all inhuman action,"
she said.
Michael Sandel, a political philosopher at Harvard
University, led an interactive audience session about philosophical questions
raised by sexual violence. He posed a range of questions, exploring the moral
status of rape as opposed to other forms of violent physical assault, and
asking whether couples should have the right to prenatal sex selection and
whether that led to violence against women.
During this session, one male audience member said that
he puts the women in his life on pedestals. A young woman responded, "I'm
not a child; I don't need to be taken care of. The protection is demeaning to
me."
The Delhi rape case featured repeatedly in discussions
even in sessions that weren't specifically addressing the subject of sexual
violence.
For instance, at a session titled "'The Vanishing
Present: Post Colonial Critiques," Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a
postmodern and postcolonial theorist from Columbia University, spoke about how
class-based education had caused people to internalize the culture of rape and
corruption. When asked how one can imagine a victim or perpetrator of a crime
in human terms, she stressed the importance of reading and learning new
languages in order to create understanding.
"Reading - that is hanging out in someone else's
space - makes you move out of yourself, and that is practice for the
ethical," Ms. Spivak said.
In an interview with India Ink, she also said that along
the Indian frontiers in the states of Kashmir or Assam, rape was not unusual.
"It comes to the metropolis, and we started jumping -- that is also a
question."
Pointing to the youth protests that were held across
India in the wake of the gang rape, she said that those demonstrations were an
urban phenomenon and that "urban radicals are not the only young" in
the country.
There was "no outrage, but panic," among
people, she said, noting how women were being asked not to stay out late.
"What is that -- blaming the victim?" she exclaimed.
In a session that discussed the role of women in cinema,
Shabana Azmi, a veteran Bollywood actress, urged the film fraternity to
practice some introspection. Lewd language and voyeuristic scenes in
contemporary movies had reduced a woman's body to an object of a man's gaze,
she said.
She advised young actresses to make informed choices
about the roles they selected and to take small steps like asking movie
directors to depict them as working women.
There was a resounding consensus among the festival's
participants that women themselves had to be the agents of the change they
wanted in society.
During the session "Women on the Path," which
explored the role of women in Buddhism, panelists said that even Buddha was
hesitant to ordain women at first. It is said that he lamented the presence of
women, saying that without women, his dharma would have lasted a 1,000 years.
Citing her own experiences, Ani Choying, a Tibetan
Buddhist nun who is also a singer and writer, said that women were treated as
subordinate and were not allowed to lead religious ceremonies. And it was only
after she voiced dissent against the practice was she allowed to lead. Her
message to the audience was: "Ask for your rights."
A more vociferous iteration of that advice came during a
panel discussion in Hindi that challenged the notion of suppressing a woman's
right to raise questions in the Indian society. Moderated by a man, the session
was led by female writers and poets, including Preeta Bhargava, who earned the
distinction of being the first female jail officer of Rajasthan state.
"Women need to aggressively demand their rights if
they are not given to them," said Lata Sharma, a lecturer who has
published extensively in Hindi.
The feminist debate at the literary festival culminated
in the session titled "Imagine: Resistance, Protest, Assertion." Female authors read aloud selected
portions of published works, in some cases their own and in others that of
other writers, with each narrative highlighting the struggle of women in
society.
Aminatta Forna, a Commonwealth prize winner from Sierra
Leone, quoted from the Canadian author Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's
Tale," which explores the theme of women's subjugation. Sharmeen
Obaid-Chinoy, the Pakistani documentary filmmaker who won an Oscar for
"Saving Face," read poetry written by an Afghan woman who was beaten
to death by her husband. Nirupama Dutt, who writes in Punjabi and English,
recited her own poem, written during the days of militancy in Punjab, about a
group of women enjoying an evening drink.
Urvashi Butalia, a writer and co-publisher of India's
first feminist publishing house, read a poignant first-person account by
Sohaila Abdulali, a gang rape survivor. Ambai, a Tamil feminist writer also on
the panel, read an excerpt from her novel that described protests in Mumbai
after the rape of a woman.
A concluding performance by the artist Maya Krishna Rao
numbed the audience. Through a powerful monologue, she urged that women be
given their basic rights: freedom to walk the streets without being harassed
and access to police officers who will listen and politicians who will act.
"I want to walk the streets, sit on a bus, lie in a
park," she chanted. "I try not to be afraid of the dark."
[A spokesman for the
Singaporean company declined to comment, as did the Chinese government.
However, at a news briefing in Beijing on Thursday, a Foreign Ministry
spokesman noted that China would “actively support anything that is beneficial
to the China-Pakistan friendship.”]
By Declan Walsh
 |
The New York Times
Control of the port at Gwadar would be handed over from Port of Singapore
Authority, Pakistan’s information minister said.
|
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is handing management control of a
strategic but commercially troubled deep-sea port to a Chinese company, the
information minister confirmed Thursday.
The minister, Qamar
Zaman Kaira, said that control of the port at Gwadar, near Pakistan’s border
with Iran,
would pass from the Port of Singapore
Authority to a company he identified as China Overseas
Port Holdings, in a move that had been anticipated for some time.
Mr. Kaira said the
Chinese company would inject money into the Gwadar port, which has failed to
meet the lofty goals set by the military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf on its completion
in late 2006 and now lies largely unused.
“We hope that the
Chinese company will invest to make the port operational,” Mr. Kaira said,
according to Reuters.
A spokesman for the
Singaporean company declined to comment, as did the Chinese government.
However, at a news briefing in Beijing on Thursday, a Foreign Ministry
spokesman noted that China would “actively support anything that is beneficial
to the China-Pakistan friendship.”
The fate of Gwadar, once
billed as Pakistan’s answer to the bustling port city of Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, has been a focus of speculation about China’s military and economic
ambitions in South Asia for the past decade. Some American strategists have
described it as the westernmost link in the “string of pearls,” a line of
China-friendly ports stretching from mainland China to the Persian Gulf, that
could ultimately ease expansion by the Chinese Navy in the region. Gwadar is
close to the Strait of Hormuz, an important oil-shipping lane.
But other analysts note
that Gwadar is many years from reaching its potential, and they suggest that
fears of creeping Chinese influence might be overblown. “There may be a
strategic dimension to this, where the Chinese want to mark their presence in
an important part of the world,” said Hasan Karrar, an assistant professor of
Asian history at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, referring to the
management transfer at Gwadar. “But I wouldn’t go so far as saying this implies
a military projection in the region.”
The supply lines for the
American-led coalition forces in Afghanistan mainly pass through ports farther
east in Pakistan and do not involve Gwadar.
Of greater likely
concern to Washington was another announcement Pakistan made on Wednesday,
saying that it was pressing ahead with a joint energy project with Iran that
the United States strongly opposes.
Mr. Kaira said the
cabinet had approved an Iranian offer to partly finance the 490-mile-long
Pakistan segment of a planned gas pipeline between the two countries. Last
year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that the project could
lead to possible sanctions against Pakistan.
But political analysts
in Pakistan saw the announcement as part of Pakistani election politics, and
there is wider skepticism that Pakistan can bring the $1.6 billion project to
completion. At present Pakistan is suffering from a major energy crisis,
including a severe gas shortage that has caused lengthy lines outside fuel
stations.
The gas pipeline, which
enjoys broad public support, represents positive news for the government of
President Asif Ali Zardari before it dissolves in preparation for elections
that are expected to take place in May. And although Iran has offered a $500
million finance deal to help Pakistan build its part of the pipeline, Western
officials say the Zardari government will still struggle to meet its part of
the deal.
Both the Gwadar port and
the pipeline to Iran offer the potential of reducing Pakistan’s strategic
dependence on the United States, but as yet have failed to deliver.
Commissioned by General
Musharraf, the Gwadar port project initially set off a flurry of excited
property speculation in what was once a quiet fishing village. Developers
presented flashy plans for luxury apartment blocks amid talk the port could
rival Dubai.
China paid for 75
percent of the $248 million construction costs, while the Port of Singapore
Authority won a 40-year contract to manage the facility, which started in early
2007. General Musharraf assuaged critics of the Chinese involvement by saying
the port would not be put to any military use.
But Pakistan has failed
to build the port or transportation infrastructure needed to develop the port,
the property bubble has burst and, according to the port management Web site, the last ship to
dock there arrived in November. “The government never built the infrastructure
that the port needed — roads, rail or storage depots,” said Khurram Husain, a
freelance business journalist. “Why would any shipping company come to the port
if it has no service to offer?”
According to reports in
the Pakistani news media, the Port of Singapore Authority sought to withdraw
from the management contract after the Pakistani government failed to hand over
land needed to develop the facility.
Mr. Kaira said Wednesday
that both the Singaporean and Chinese companies had agreed to transfer the
contract for control of the port, but he did not give a timetable.
Bree Feng contributed research from Beijing.