We’re not talking about some pavement artist
Salman Rushdie isn’t having it.
“I don’t make my decisions based on 25 goondas at the gate,” says Salman Rushdie tartly…Whether it’s India or England or America, he says, “we cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought”. This, he says, is as true about the American religious right as it is about the Sikh mobs in Birmingham that prevented the production of a play. “It’s not specific to any religion or any place,” he adds. “Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic…it’s really a decision about what kind of culture we want to be in.”
Quite. And that kind is the kind that allows a wide range of thought, as opposed to the kind that squashes the allowable range of thought into a narrow airless little channel. It’s the choice between breadth on the one hand and choking confinement on the other.
He recounts his meeting with India’s most famous contemporary exile, the artist M F Husain, who he recently met in New York. “This is the grand old master of contemporary Indian painting,” Rushdie declares, his well modulated voice rising with outrage. “We’re not talking about some pavement artist. The idea that this man in his nineties should be forced into exile by his own country is a national disgrace. This is somebody who should be given the highest state honours instead of being treated like a pariah.” If India wishes to seem like a cultured country by the rest of the world, he says emphatically, it cannot treat its artists thus—”this has to stop”. So, too, in the case of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen…”I think we are in a dangerous position now in India where we accept censorship by very small numbers of violent people. Two things form the bedrock of any open society – freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.”
Censorship by very small numbers of violent (or sometimes merely noisy) people – that’s what more and more of the world looks like these days, and what a horrible appearance it is. Let’s not have it.
We now have a serious presidential candidate proposing we scrap that pesky godless constitution:
“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do – to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”
See the video:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_Amend_Constitution_to_meet_Gods_0115.html
Oh christallfuckingmighty.
And people wonder why we find theocrats alarming!
Some wit proposed the following questions for President Huckabee to answer:
a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in
Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price
for her?
c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how
do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and
female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of
mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you
clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to
kill him myself?
f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an
Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I
don’t agree. Can you settle this?
g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have
a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does
my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair
around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev
19:27. How should they die?
i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of
two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends
to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all
the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev
24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair
like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you
can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
“I don’t make my decisions based on 25 goondas at the gate,”
I liked the above sentence. And in my ignorance, I had first assumed ‘goondas’ meant something like rupees or such other. Upon googling I see now that ‘goonda’: n. [Hindi] is a member of a crime gang; hired muscle; thug; troublemaker. I like the sentence even better now! Gangsters are called dadas. The singular form dada (father) usually denotes the gang leader. O mein Papa!
“Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent & iconoclastic –
it’s really a decision about what kind of culture we want to be in.”
Original thinkers, like SR, should not, under any circumstances, by the likes of the world’s goonda’s/dada’s be oppressed. The pen of one free thinker such as him – is indeed, more powerful than all the placards/open-jaws of the world’s rageboy goondas/dada’s put together.
I wish SR all the best with his forthcoming book!
O.B Huckabee is just pandering he knows full well that the U.S constitution cant be changed without super majorities in both houses and ratification by at least 38 states this is just empty rhetoric for the R.R and that is all they ever get.
Interesting to hear someone talk about actually changing the Constitution, though, rather than just filling the Supreme Court with people who will ‘interpret’ it the way you want… US public life does seem so infrequently to remember that the Constitution isn’t, actually, Holy Writ…
We might actually applaud Huckabee,(yeah, I know, stay with me here), for being honest enough to propose openly what an unpleasantly large number of folk in the US (and some of the other candidates in this, and previous elections) genuinely want.
The guy is, after all, an ordained Baptist minister, and their stance on the separation of church & state has been pretty clear for a while, so if he wanted to be perceived as ‘truthful’, his position was inevitably going to be a theocratic one.
I’m a bit surprised that some of the more “shocked” commentators were, in fact, quite so “shocked” at his revelations…
Ho hum.
There is ‘shocked’, and then there is ‘shocked, shocked to discover….’
Da-dum-da-dum-dum dum-dum daaa-da-dum…
I rather thought ‘pavement artists’ and the rest of us hoi polloi are equally deserving of freedom from the goondas.
Sure – but Rushdie didn’t say otherwise. I don’t think it’s too invidious to add some extra outrage if the person being censored is a giant of art. Apart from anything else, censoring giants of art deprives everyone.
I looked up ‘goon’ in MSN Encarta dictionary [as in Spike Milligan]
1. thug: a professional gangster whose work is beating up or terrorizing people [informal)
2. clumsy person: somebody regarded as clumsy or uncouth (informal insult)
[Mid-19th century. Origin ?]
As ‘goonda’: n. [Hindi] is a member of a crime gang; & it tallies with goon – whould this not be the obvious source as to the origination of the word. MSN Encarta has a ? as to its origin.
I was wondering that yesterday – I think ‘goomba’ is another slang word for thug, enforcer, etc – and ‘thug’ itself is borrowed from Hindi.
It’s interesting to note that thug-words were used for union-busting private security people in the past. The guys who beat up the Reuther brothers were ‘[Sombody’s] goons.’ (I forget who ‘Somebody’ was – whether it was Ford or someone else.)
Almost certainly British military slang, like doolally (Deolali).
Harry Bennett’s goons, that’s it.
There are a lot more references (if you Google Reuther brothers goons) to Ford goons and company goons, but it was Harry Bennett I was trying to think of.
Goomba is Italian, which is what I thought – I kept hearing it in a New York-Italian accent – via Mean Streets, no doubt.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=goomba
“I think ‘goomba’ is another slang word for thug, enforcer, etc -”
A Gombeen Man is a Hiberno-English term used in Ireland for a shady, small-time “wheeler-dealer” or businessman who is always looking to make a quick profit.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombeen_man
Also;
Gombeen: Originally, a gombeen man was a sort of rural loan-shark. Nowadays, it has come to mean just about any sort of petty underhand or corrupt activity.
http://www.beerandloathing.com/glos_g.htm
If goomba really means “cumpà” is it not just coincidental that it has a similar connotation with goonda. I think – goombeen, is also applicable in this sphere?!
At first glance I read goondas as gonads for some reason. As slang it still works in a way, although the odd number is troubling.
Jawohl, it is a mighty genesis ball game?
An odd number, inseed, would be very worrying.
:-/ “wry face”
Just heard the ‘Go on Show’, a reunion Goon Show recording. The disk refers to earlier usage of ‘goon’ from the faceless violent goons in ‘Popeye’, and from the WWII prisoners of war in Germany calling the guards ‘goons’.
Sounds like the Indian word could have been the source for English.