Thiruvananthapuram: Three weeks after Arundhati Roy criticised Gandhi at a seminar here, the controversy has refused to die down with the police seeking the video footage of Roy’s speech.
Mr Suresh Jnaneswaran, director of the Ayyankali chair of the Kerala University which organised the seminar, has questioned the police move saying that there was no provision for registering a case against the writer as the event was not part of public discourse but an academic exercise.
During her speech, she had termed Gandhi’s stand on “caste” as retrograde and even accused him of portraying the blacks in South Africa in a wrong manner. City Police Commissioner H.Venkitesh said that they had not registered a case, but only asked for the video to examine whether anything in the speech was objectionable.
Sources said the only case that can be registered against Roy was for defamation, that too in case her remarks about Gandhi were false. The writer’s remarks did not go down well with prominent Congress leaders here and Assembly Speaker G.Karthekeyan even wrote an article seeking an apology from her.
Meanwhile, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala said in Delhi that he had forwarded a complaint to the state police chief K.S. Balasubramanium against Roy on the issue submitted by Congress (S) leader Ramachandran Kadanappally.
The Mahatma Ayyankali lecture was part of the discussions on ‘Re-imagining struggles at the margins: A history of the unconquered and oppressed.’ Mr Jnaneswaran told someone from the police, who did not bother to introduce himself, had called him up and demanded the complete footage of her speech.
“I replied that it was the property of Kerala University and can be given if a request is submitted through the registrar. I also said that I was going for an academic seminar and that any statement can be given only after I returned. The caller asked how can I leave without giving the statement. I later confirmed that the call was from the special branch,” Mr Jnaneswaran said.
Roy attacks Gandhi’s ‘bias’
So, while Mahatma Ayyankali was fighting for education of Dalit children here, Gandhi was in South Africa and I want to read to you what he said about Dalit peoples in South Africa. In South Africa at that time there were two kinds of Indians. One were the Passenger Indians who went there to do business, and the other was indentured labour who mostly came from subordinated classes and castes and here is what Gandhi said about the bonded labour.
“Whether they are Hindus or Mahommedans, they are absolutely without any moral or religious instruction worthy of the name. They have not learned enough to educate themselves without any outside help. Placed thus, they are apt to yield to the slightest temptation to tell a lie. After some time, lying with them becomes a habit and a disease. They reach a stage in life when their moral faculties have completely collapsed owing to neglect.”
Ms Roy also quoted another reference by Gandhi about blacks in South Africa which stated that “Kaffirs as a rule are uncivilized, the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, and dirty and live like animals… and I have resolved in my mind on an agitation to ensure that Indian prisoners are not lodged with kaffirs or others. I will read to you an essay Mahatma Gandhi wrote called The Ideal Bhangi, the ideal scavenger. So, my question is, do we need to name our universities after a person like Gandhi or do we need to name our universities after someone like Ayyankali?"
