Midnight's Children Festival Events: "A Dialogue with Edward Said"

and now to this evenings discussion with Edward Sayid and akhil McGraw me dr. Bob Rami is the John Sounion professor of philosophy here at Columbia and taught at University of Michigan before coming here where he has been teaching since the mid 80s dr. Moog Rami is the author of belief and meaning and has two more books coming out with Harvard University Press next year self-knowledge and resentment and politics and the moral psychology of identity which focuses in particular on Islamic identity dr. Saeed is University professor of English and comparative literature here at Columbia he is the author of more than 20 books including Orientalism covering Islam and culture and imperialism his most recent publications include the end of the peace process Oslo and after reflections on Exile and other essays power politics and culture and parallels and paradoxes explorations in music and society which is co-authored with Daniel Barenboim dr. Syed's Freud and the non European will be published by verso in April of 2003 we're very very happy to see you all here thank you very much for coming and now Akhil big Rami and Edward Saeed Thank You Jimmy it's really very nice to have the chance to talk about Salman Rushdie Edward is a good friend of his it's been a friend of his for a long time and has many common themes of interests so it will be a very good opportunity to smoke him out on some of them I I don't know someone like Edward does but it's hard for an Indian especially an Indian with a Muslim background not to admire him greatly and really to think of him as sort of elderly member of one's own family with that kind of affection though he might protest the elderly Edward I thought we'd start with me asking you to to sort of say something about the trajectory of his writing I know you loved Midnight's room and it first came out and and have been reading it as avidly since then especially as novels so so do you want to to start by saying yeah well I will be happy to I met Salman Rushdie at somebody's house in the early 80s and I must have it about 1982 I hadn't at the time read Midnight's Children which came out two years before but I had it which is a important first step obviously and I recall our exchange was was about that he had read Orientalism but I hadn't read Midnight's Children I said that I would do so after we went home Tom and I did and I was mightily impressed with it because it struck me as the novel of a of a man with the gifts of genius first of all linguistic gifts of a terrifyingly fertile and almost Joycean sword turning you know the most humdrum things into fireworks verbal and intellectual fireworks he was also you know a man who understood and was interested in dealing with the history of his own country from a perspective that I thought at the time was really quite unique I really haven't met anybody or read anybody quite like him that is to say he was a he was an Indian who was very English at the same time I remember when we met he talked about his having been a student at was it rugby I mean English public sorry yeah and then he studied oriental studies at Cambridge aslam was his field then and he had been in in London for several years during the time that he was writing Midnight's Children which I said appeared in 1980 but he had worked as an actor he had been a writer of advertising copy which which you've actually seen in some of the passages in Midnight's Children and some of the later novels are he's great at what you know might be called squibs or you know jingles which turn up obviously in this tannic verses in other places and was was in it in his accent and manner not the way he looked obviously but in Saxon man it was extremely English at the same time that he was also a mistakenly Indian so it was a melange that fascinated me and I'd never really encountered it and I thought that Midnight's Children is a great sort of anti epic epic of the birth of modern India after the part after the independence 1940 August 1947 with which the hero of the novel is associated he's born on the night when the British seed India to the Indians was a work of the most extraordinary power and wit and insight particularly in something we may come back to in that the book is impregnated with British imperialism I mean even though it's the end of imperialism the Empire still lives on in in so many ways in characters and rituals and memories and buildings and occasions and of course above all in this language which like Joyce and outsider Rushdie makes his own thereafter I saw quite a bit of him both in England and in America he would keep he's always had a very great interest in popular culture and particularly American popular culture you know and but his subsequent books you know shame which deals with the india-pakistan or of the middle 60s Satanic Verses later the Satanic Verses yeah but he also published in the middle 80s a book that was I think very very interesting a collection of essays which came out just before the fatwa which was eight 1989 so this one must have come out 87 88 called imaginary homelands which gives a very interesting idea of his essay istic scope I mean he was very very prolific in writing reviews and appreciations and polemics particularly about something we'll come back to about British racism multicultural Britain and racism in it and what he called I mean a phenomenon that he identified as Roth revivalism and the return to you know in the jewel in the crown in the making of the film Gandhi and things of that sort where you look back at Empire with a certain kind of sentiment sentimental nostalgia he was merciless in dealing with that but he also dealt rather prophetically with the role of writers and politics and his biggest essay in the book is called outside the whale which is a kind of rejoinder to Orwell's essay which begins with Henry Miller called inside the whale and the argument is there that there is no outside to the whale the whale being society that you know we're all we're all involved and there's no such thing as a non-political uninvolved writer but if you read those words now I mean they have a kind of eerie you know quality to them because in a couple of years he was going to be immersed in this terrible direct quandary right and then of course the Satanic Verses appeared and I recall very well that in the no but my and my wife and I spent July the 4th I think it was in 1987 with Salman and his then second wife an American novelist called Mary Ann Wiggins they are just bored and it was July the 4th yes the weekend and they had just bought this new house in Islington and you know and someone was very excited about July the 4th and we had fireworks in the garden I mean can you believe it was but I remember I remember I remember with great clarity a moment that took place early on in our visit where he took us on a tour of the house and we went to his study and there on his desk was this gigantic manuscript you know like that it was in those days it wasn't quite the period of computers I'm gonna keep is all tight and he said this is my new novel and I said oh really what's it he said it's about Islam I said oh really he said but I said in a way you know your other novels have been about this lab - he said oh now Edward don't get me wrong the direct quote the Muslims are gonna be very angry I said really why he said because I talked about Gabriel I talked about the Prophet Mohammed and so on and so forth he said it's a comic novel I said oh well that sounds fascinating could I read it he said of course but it was so big I couldn't carry it so he said I'll send it to you and indeed about a week later or two weeks later when I came back to America the book arrived at my doorstep and I and I had in fact that very valuable saying a manuscript copy of The Satanic Verses and then we moved that very year and from one house to another and away I mean having read you gave me a copy of it I actually have it so so you just discarded it I mean I take it I tell him yeah but but you know I remember an occasion in your flat when you were here in Morningside Drive Vedek bar yes and your mother was visiting from DC and and he was telling us Salman was there as Karen was there and he was telling us about what was in The Satanic Verses and I think you had received it but you hadn't read it and it was said you know they're gonna kill you and but he knew that he would make a lot of people angry but I don't think he realized this is a polymer it was a very dear friend of mine who died about three years ago four years ago actually and who news I mean who met so man through me yeah so I mean I don't think anybody expected I don't know whether you read it shortly thereafter and I mean I I looked through it I must confess not to have read every single word of it at that time I did later and I was you know aware you know of what sort of dynamite was in the book yeah but not I had no idea of what was going to happen to hold on but just get him back to Midnight's Children you know it had a tremendous impact on Indian riders I mean this suddenly or you know all sorts of people began to write novels in that vein and with politics being very central to the writing into the themes in fact a friend of mine Michael K Sherman was a novelist - in a scholar of Islamic history presented richly with his first novel saying an inscription saying thanks for the four-minute mile yeah because really it was it was it was as if he broke a barrier and then everybody started just sort of you know doing much the same thing and and the different things sort of rifts on it and so on and did it have an impact on on writers in the Middle East very much so yeah I mean I think I think it brought home too many of them the the the sort of combination of magic realism and nationalism that was quite unique to the novel and that and that you know some of the writers well I mean the Lebanese novelist silly-ass Hui who - my introduced seven or the other way around to the South map has always found him a very interesting novelist for that reason that is a it's a it's a it's a new way of dealing with with nationalism in a way you know it's kind of irreverent right and yet mythic at the same time with with tremendous sort of Verve and and and above all something like we must insist on with a tremendous comic sense yes I mean you know the the I mean for example that great scene where the doctor examines the mother of the hero through that hole in the in the sheet and and all the business about hiding under the under the doorstep either under the floor you know which was actually a recollection of fast I've met fast as he told me later what you know is what had a great and tonic effect on young especially young right and especially those who were likes a man who are expatriates you couldn't say that he was at that time I said he write an exile he chose sort of an insurer not sure and he had one other point which I didn't I've found out early on but I never read it he wrote a novel before when that children she's called Primus which is English but but but yeah I think I think the the the appearance of Midnight's Children produced of a whole library of Anglo Indian books and a whole you know like ministry and they have not liked him right well try to imitate him but he certainly opened the way for really a new mode of writing and and also the last point certainly a new not a new but I mean a kind of jealousy I mean he became the person whom everybody either tried to emulate or kill or I mean I don't mean you know actually kill although that the last happened but but you know he became the figure that you had to measure yourself against for young writers and resentments you know from writers who were not as well known as the a who had been around for a while etcetera right so a governing theme of Midnight's Children is is the sort of legacy of colonial rule in India and so that's a lifelong theme theme of yours do you do you think that that really gets a lot right in Midnight's Children that I mean apart from the brilliance of the writing and so on other is there a sort of perceptiveness about post-colonial I mean not India necessarily but but the sort of ethos that comes from myself I mean I you know sort of embarrassed to talk about India India's past as reflected at the colonial past as reflected in something like Midnight's Children in the presence of yourself and Nick Dirk's and others who know much more about it than I do but it but I thought was really quite unique and and and ingenious about Rusty's work what was the sense that he gave you of it of the two histories that of pre and post colonial India is really in two overlapping I mean that they couldn't be thought of as just two separate things yeah but that one continues in the other and and then the other the newer history of you know post 47 India constantly is involved with and looks back to the past and that invents its own past I mean so that sort of modern India idaite invents an identity for itself that is based on on British India I don't think he's particularly kind to imperialism I mean certainly not in his essays and other things that he writes at the same time but but there is a sense in which imperialism is part of Indian history and can't be thought of as you know as a thing that ended in I mean that I think it's a point of the novel in a way that all those things began anew on August whatever it is 1947 you can't say that everything just stopped and Roman world began and I think that's the major theme really of the of the kind of post-colonial world as I see it and I think Midnight's Children reflects as well yeah you know I always find my nature to be a book actually which is very very saddening and pessimistic anywhere just and really sort of one is distracted from that from that kind of response only by the brilliance of its writing and what you discovers the comic the sort of unstoppable comic element from beginning to end and the reason for that and this is something that I wanted to ask you really because it's so much the trajectory of colonized peoples and of people like yours who are still colonized but who one expects and hopes will cease to be soon that they begin their lives at midnight in on independence with such great hopes and they have futures in their minds really as you know the protagonists of Midnight's Children the children and those futures which are in their minds never become I mean they become pasts before they were ever in the present you know they it's the by the end of the novel and and so I think it seems very much the the experience of people of the X colonies that that independence came with with such hopes and nothing seems to have been redeemed in in history yeah I I think it's I think it's a the case with his generation he's a younger one than mine I mean they're references in the novel as I recall not having you read it in yours but I mean there are references to modern post-independence history for example the Bannerman period the Suez Crisis of 1956 is referred to but that's all you know in a sense part of history and you know the disappointments and the and the absence of the kind of enthusiasm that was associated with the early period with Nehru and talk is over I mean this is the period of of Indira Gandhi and and I think it's a different post-colonial period one with with without much sentimentality for the past right it's not heroic you know some lines novels on the whole of generally tend to be anti-heroic and there there is a certain tall it bitterness but there's a critical edge to it about well certainly you see it in shape I mean about the contemporary institutions the military the the kind of the kind of posturing of nationalist leaders who have in a sense stayed on too long yeah I mean it's I wouldn't call it quite pessimistic the way you do but I think the flush of enthusiasm I mean that's what the novel is about it's about growing older and shedding illusions about you know the great new dawn of independence that you know the character is born into on the first page because there's also that famous you know exchange of babies that takes place so that from its very start history is displaced and and must be in a certain sense a kind of mock history rather than a networked history in that sense I think it's very clever you done yeah and but by the time he comes to shame but the time you die shame that I mean there's hardly an appealing character in the whole novel it's the N system and and really it's about the the tremendous corruption among power elite especially the leaders and you must have in in the context of being colonized and you know when I've read your criticisms of some Palestinian leaders and so on it seems so very deep-seated in in and Seamus is a corrosive sort of look at at that and that must ring very true for you yeah no I mean I yeah I mean these are i mean shame in particular is it all really about sort of stay I mean it you'll get you'll cast our efforts it's about staying on too long I mean people who have stayed in power too long and who have corrupted the contempt contemporary society were there we're there how much I call it with their obsessions and with their petty concerns and and above all was met with militarism I mean there's a lot of that also my own history I mean you know the and the history of modern Pakistan I mean you know the numbers of coos you know the emergence of a kind of core sort of cabal almost which I he's very good about them you know within governments but but I think the difference between between Midnight's Children and shame is that I think shame is a much more sober novel for me yes sure therefore less less interesting less enjoyable I mean it doesn't have the reach and the you know tremendous energies of Maronites children which is also I mean I suppose it's apt for this soon to take place opening of the see I'm it's very theatrical in many ways you know and reflects his own experience in the theatre and has a lot of mimicry in it and so on and it's very much oh but what important point if I might just one of the interesting themes in his career during the 80s that has said before the before the fatwa was a kind of I wouldn't call it rivalry but there was a quiet attempt to distance himself from the other major Indian writer writing in English name you VS Naipaul I mean there's a sense you know in which is a great competition between rich T is much younger than night but my poll was the man who you know I represented not only not you know not only the business about you know writing about the third world which of course Rushdie does too but but but also about the disillusionment which is one of seven themes as well but nightfall was there was disillusionment and a kind of bitterness and I kind of you know especially these books about travels in the Islamic world like among the believers which which someone wrote a review of and it appears in imaginary homelands that is to say he doesn't he doesn't take the same tone there's still a great deal of affection and compassion in in rust-eze view that isn't to be found in eyebrows and I think what's also interesting I mean this is really I shouldn't say this but I remember once or twice actually once here on the corner of 116th and Broadway saying that you know it was kind of strange that night Paul's writings you know not call having written much more nonfiction than he wrote fiction lots of essays on books and obviously travel and so he never once mentions not rusty at all you know paid no attention to deliberately I mean you can't not pay attention to Rusty during it during the 80s but night Paul did and the bitterness I mean he did not pay attention and the build earnest and the kind of thing and the kind of attack on the myths about colonialism by the formerly colonized hmm was a subject that that Rushdie dealt with it an entirely different much more as I say compassionate and much more humane way than Naipaul it was always eager to deflate the the past and say not that colonialism lasted too long it didn't last long enough I mean look what happened after the white man left was his name you know they all and and particularly in I Paul's work the kind of bitterness in in the post-independence world what you don't I don't think although he treats it in shame I mean if you look at a novel like a bend in the river of night Paul you know that kind of you know how Conrad's Africa after Lumumba and and and in the independence periods they characterized by Sean Bay and some of the others is really worse than under King Leopold you don't get you don't get that sense in Rushdie where the past has looked at you know with criticism you know the imperial past looked at with criticism but not with a kind of you know acceptance and you know which they had stayed a bit longer and we should have him back etc he makes fun about the monthly right and part of that I think is because in novels case there's a very sort of deliberate and cultivated ignorance right I mean I don't about things like real history I mean real historical knowledge of all ages he's writing about political economies of the places writing about I mean it's a very deliberate attempt to say I'm going to observe the surface culture and give an incisive which he does sort of set of observations and critique of it but it's somebody like Bruce Lee actually for instance in the Satanic Verses he really studied Islamic history and and its early period of Islam that's why it goes for the jugular really because it understands it very well and and has a sympathy for the possible progressive turn the monetary in Islam and so on and and the sympathies he has for a socialist India at India where where the nationalism is subdued by a kind of multicultural set of sympathies and so on those are things that emerge because he sort of understands the recent history he knows his bonding as you say he knows the leaders and what they stood for where they came from what and all that is whether he knows it or not it seems almost as if he's deliberately shut it out in the case of 991 you know in order to well not only set it out but I mean he really writes out of a deep antipathy to Islam I mean the second book I can't remember the name of it among the believers was the first one where he goes to Malaysia Pakistan Iran and I think Pakistan and writes these sort of devastating portraits of society official portraits of Iran after the Islamic Revolution and so on and then he then ten years later he writes the same book he goes back to the same guy kept under the name with that book but there's a kind of visceral dislike of Islam yes which you don't get in in Rusty's book because he writes from the interior I mean for him you know Islam and Hinduism and you know the religions of India you know a flurry religious direct society are very much what he wants was in the case of Naipaul he regrets yes the mongrelization wrote of the world which is which is Sal man's world and subjective fact that the world is made up of these hyphenated people you know and and he celebrates them and there's a great energy in the writing he does and he's very interested also I mean one has to also say that one of the books he wrote in the 80s also before this time was a book called the Jaguar smile which I reviewed actually which is a book about his voyage to Nicaragua it's important to remember all these things because Salmons political views have changed over time no but I mean he was a he went he went and he was a visitor to the to the to the Sandinistas you know he was taken around and wrote very sympathetically about them and about Nicaragua as it was being attacked and subverted by the United States you know and and it was a quite I mean it was a quite courageous bullying to do and you know it didn't it didn't get a tremendous number of sales but I think it made him you know an important contribution to the struggle against Empire I mean the new Empire of which he was very much a you know an opponent in those days right you know I was thinking when you talked about Islam in that sort of mongrel sense it's interesting that for an Indian Muslim no it's LOM came to India via pressure and Turkey and Central Asia and sort of kept acquiring some local accretions in that journey and so it became a very much more local phenomenon you know syncretic continues with with the Hindu culture and life and yet there was also a sort of double movement because there was this sort of differential gaze to Arab lands and and the sort of normative in and scriptural elements you know the transcendental elements of the religion you know was another side of it and and there's the sort of interesting double movement and in Indian Islam and really his the links between Midnight's Children and Satanic Verses is to actually play those two against each other oh absolutely I mean not only that but I mean they're out right they're out right how should I say for castings you know things in the Satanic Verses in Midnight's Children for example the father of the hero I mean Sinai your father wants to be left alone in his later years why because he wants to rewrite rearrange the Quran but she says it's very badly sort of math yeah put together book and his idea is to retire quietly to rearrange the the book in such a way as to give it a new kind of order well that's a scene you know that comes back at me and the whole idea also of inventing traditions is very much the way he he treats Islam I think in in Midnight's Children as something that people constantly talk about and revise because precisely it's not I mean this is something that night Paul attacked was where's misty you know has a great affection for it is it it's not in a sense our native religion therefore we can we have to give it a native face a native version here in India and it's much more playful I mean so there's even in those in those early books there's a sense in which Islam is not too severe ascetic you know kind of unpleasant it's a puritanical fundamentalist thing but rather you know it it blends quite well with some of the you know some of the aspects of Hinduism for example the Muslims would ordinarily not be congenial right feel congealing you know about but in this case are really quite attractive and Islam is seen through that prism rather than through that of 7th century Mecca she parodies of course in the Islamic in the Islamic you know yeah and yet now when when he writes about Islam that this does the constant I mean you know now talking about just eat mark to the this is constant since you have with with him that it's it's become a fundamentalist religion in many parts of the world and and it's foolish in a way well it is all right you know and that it's foolish in a way to to say things like well people turn to it because of genuine grievances and so on he's much cleaner to say its name really is tyranny this is just fooling ourselves we must fight it even if with the war if necessary right I you know a little time to go over I mean I I agree with what you're saying in general but because you know I have followed his career quite closely and at times you know soil quite a bit of him and was involved in a very very peripheral way in the struggle about the Satanic Verses it's actually it's it's a very painful story his relationship with Osama because we mustn't forget for example that in the early 90s it must have been in a year or two after the fatwa he wrote an essay which were appeared in the New York Times and which is the concluding essay in this wonderful collection of his that I referred to called imaginary homelands it's entitled why I have become a Muslim and where he converted a Baptist ma'am I think to be honest with you that I don't know anybody who wouldn't have had a tremendous sense of disorientation showed he was under new orders yeah I mean after the onslaught against his book when it appeared in 89 sure and he went through a tremendous number of phases obviously of confusion of resistance of wanting to be you know welcome back in to be accepted then of denial and anger I never forget the year he came here when I invited and he came twice I think but the last time you came which was about four or five years ago I think you we had a conversation at the Miller Theatre the first question I asked him was of course after he was able now to travel and whatnot 99 I think it was and I said to him it's like sir man do you how do you feel about being a member of the Islamic Ummah you know the community and he said I don't feel I'm a member of it at all it's something you know I hate it it's you know and for him Islam was Iran at that point right but if you look back to his other writing I mean earlier writing than that particular moment it was a much more modulated view that was the sense in which his system was was a complex and interesting religion which had many parts to it you know Indian and Persian and whatnot that there was a British Islam but then the whole thing fell on his head with the with with the fatwa and you know I I we communicated in those first few months and even years what he was in hiding most of the time I mean you couldn't reach him except through let's say a third that sometimes a fourth person and I recall as a matter of fact it I think it was in 1990 anyway she's not here oh there you are was at 1990 that we saw him yes in London he was in Heidi at the time and he was surrounded by these policemen and Scotland Yard and you have to make the arrangements the day before and they come and they sticks we were staying in the houses the house of a friend who wasn't there so they given us a house and so the the the Scotland Yard people come to day before and then they come an hour before the appointed time and then one of them comes in and then he comes in and in disguise or wearing some thing and the policemen were always in the house I mean they were on the second floor in this case and you know there was he he looked terribly unhealthy he was always indoors you know he got fat his skin was pasty and yellow he looked awful and he was a man who was suffering and as I think I'm just not trying to flesh out what it must have been like the sense that you know that his own people and religion had turned against him because here they were the English Pakistanis and English Muslims were the most vehement in a way you know Bradford where they burnt his book and he was the subject of sermons and then all through the world yeah the Islamic world agrees you know so that I think it's a very what I'm trying to say almost impossible to handle I don't think anybody could have done it right yeah any better really yeah and the lesson is that persecution doesn't make people say sensible things very often yeah but but they don't you know here's my thought and and I'd really like to know how let's explore this for a moment you see it's absolutely right there's no gainsaying that the fact that there are fundamentalist elements in Islam all over Iran us here and in the Middle East in South Asia and so on and Bradford but I think it's sort of ubiquitously true nevertheless that most people most Muslims are not like that no I agree with so now so here's a thought a question if most people are not like that it's still nevertheless true that for reasons that you've written about at lengthen and depth they nevertheless find it very hard to openly and strongly criticize the fundamentalists in their midst even though they are not fundamentalist they propose the fundamentalist they can't easily come out and say sir not necessarily out of fear of the fundamentalist because to do so would be in their own perception of things to capitulate to a whole colonial history of saturation of continuing subjugation in Muslim lands not in the guise of standard forms of colonialism but new forms of and to come out and openly be critical is innocence a bind for them because it would be as if one is just sort of capitulating to that history and to its present manifestation right right so so one of the pressing questions for somebody who's so deeply interested in Islam is as rich the is is how should we give these people who are not fundamentalist who are basically either indifferent fundamentalism or opposed to it the confidence right to say this is not Islam we don't have to do this and and so on how should they have the confidence to be able to do that well I think it certainly won't they won't get the confidence if one takes the kinds of stances that Salman is now start to take yeah I think and oh I see your point I see your point I think because he's been so embattled and because in a way he was trying to well to save his own life who can blame him for that he he wasn't perhaps as aware as he could have been of the many people in the Muslim world who defended him and in fact really spoke out I'll give you an example and it must have been in the early 90s he was still you know underground a Moroccan woman in Paris but there were two women decided that they would put together a book which was called in French poor rusty for in which they would get a hundred testimonials to Rusty from the Islamic world from prominent practice you know from Turkey from West Africa from India from the Arab world all over the Arab world you know and put it together as a book to show that the Islamic world was not made up essentially a fundamentalist search if raving fanatics and and the book appeared I contributed to it and the book appeared and it was then published in English by George Brazil er you know I think it may have sold five copies no I mean I think it's very significant that this is a book that really was you know frayed it with an enormous amount of significance for the people who took this position which is a very unpopular as you say position here and and in the sense made Rushdie's cause their cause as a way of fighting battles in their own countries in their own societies first of all it immediately established the fact that Islam is not monolithic you know there isn't just one vast bodies of people you know wearing turbans and waving scimitars and saying kill the infidel that kind of thing and that there were different different Islam and there were different situations in each of the cultures were silent each of the countries of Islam and that there were many people of whom this was a symbolic hundred who were willing to stand up for freedom of expression and and the freedom of the writer and you know using aesthetics as a as a means of expression against fanaticism and dogmatism in authority well I mean that but I mean that hasn't been recognized you know I'm not sure that he recognized it I mean why should he but I mean I'm just saying you know there are things like that and that and that and and and though there has always been you know unlike the diatribes of people like Huntington who have tended to talk about the clash of civilizations or the clash of cultures there have been lots of people who have crossed from one realm or the other you know including our friend a trial himself you know was a Muslim and myself I'm not a Muslim I mean I grew up in a Muslim children world surroundings but but I consider it my culture even though I happen to been born in a Christian but in an Islamic culture where the language the lingua franca is Arabic and so one can live in a world like that and of course one also has to make the point which he tried to I think in the mores last saw hmm in the Andalusia novel that come after the Satanic Verses that the culture of islam particularly if you look at it in spain and you know 13th to 14th century was a plura cultural one yeah that islam was much more tolerant than europe I happen to be reading now a book by the Israeli writer I'm a see Lorna mm-hmm about the fate of the Jews in Germany I can't remember the title it just came out a few months ago and I know a Lord he's a Issa Disraeli who's very very critical of the Israeli government and is very depressed about the current situation in any case in the early part of the book he talks about the strictures against Jews in Europe hmm you know until the French Revolution basically and there is simply nothing like that in the history of Islamic of the Islamic world where Jews of course constituted a fairly important minority in places like Iraq and Yemen and stuff where Jews were not allowed into this we're not allowed to wear shoes in cities like Frankfurt for example we're not allowed into the main part of the city without a Christian who will come I mean the most barbaric persecution and invidious sort of discrimination against them you know by the exactly the great enlightenment countries of Europe Germany and France and so on and so forth well I mean some I think some awareness of that is very important I think when you contrast with Indonesia in contrast with the millet system under the article which is but I think what what what has now happened in in the world after 9/11 is that there there has been you know a kind of polarizing struggle between the whole Islamic world misrepresented my you know a salad bin ladin etc etc and you know the world has represented by George Bush and I think that I mean both her equally or in my in my opinion are equally false you know and therefore can't be taken as symbols of yeah but now I want to talk about you and everybody minute because that way to agree that we're gonna do now I you know in these last words you you've been distancing yourself from some of his positions on recent political developments and I just want to ask you since since you don't take that view and I don't and many people here I'm sure don't does anybody know anybody here who is for the war at this moment I don't know I haven't met a single person who is but anyway that's another subject go ahead guys so good so will you please preach to the converted over the next two well how should we sort of live and think with hope now if we don't well III think the main hope derives the fact that there are a lot of people who are prepared to speak out against you know against massive Wars at the same time that they are very critical of you know terrorism in the name or violence in the name of religion but who understand I think at the same time that you know that we have to live I think the way the Europeans have come to terms with it partly because there are so many Muslims in Europe today I mean they're you know the second largest religion in France today is Muslim so and in Germany has a huge number of Muslims you know Turks and Kurds and Arabs and so on who live there that that that Islam has become not some outside force as it has has become for Americans understandably because of 9/11 horrible the site of these planes crashing into the World Trade Center and causing such havoc and such senseless suffering but even in Europe like the the formal apparatus of democracy it's completely divorced no that's what I was coming from another way in other words there's a sense here in some parts of Europe leaving us out England for a moment and in parts of Europe where where you know whether there's a there's a sense that the future has to be based upon a sense you might say of international community what kind of glory of an integrated world in some way which fosters coexistence and in exchange between cultures that may not like or or accept each other but who have to live in a small planet and in a sustainable and humane way I don't think that's the case here alas I mean in this coordinate or England or know what I mean those governments I mean no I mean England is it's quite dramatic it's a little there's a major failure of democracy in in some of the Western democracies including ours I mean right the I don't care what the polls say and how the questions are asked but I there is a major feeling of unrest in this country about the mobilisation of war which has nothing to do with in the end being for Saddam Husein nobody's forces are and etc the same in England when when 85% of the population is against the war in Italy you know something like 90 percent in Spain 94 percent are against the government's position but what I'm talking about is how a relatively small cabal of people for their own purposes I mean have really have really mounted the barricades and are leading a ruinous crusade to destroy and redo the world in in the Middle East for reasons that have nothing to do with democracy that have to do with the preservation of of access to cheap oil the preservation of Israel and very much at the corpus which isn't mentioned today at all in the media and talking about the Middle East people like pearl and Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith and all these other people where advisors to Netanyahu in his prime ministerial campaign in 1996 in which they advocated the annexation of the West Bank the end of the peace process to stop Oslo whatever it was doing and to attack Iraq and now this has become the official for seven years ladies become the official policy of the US government it doesn't represent the policy of the vast majority of people in this country who are ill informed by the media and so on and have a sense in which the world of Islam as I don't know who calls it that somebody is this this ridiculously demonized thing nuclear weapons right yeah and and you know we have to fight against it with more now unfortunately in this battle in the last few months Salman has to me inexplicably turned up on the side advocating war I mean I I'll never forget it hunk ago I don't want to make it sound as if it was you know forty years ago it was about two months ago mmm I I picked up a copy of the Guardian I was in England or yeah it was a thinking exactly it was about the 24th the 25th of January and there was an article in The Guardian and saying who are the British Hawks and there was of course Tony Blair I mean at the top of the list pictures of each of these people and Michael Howard and Willie Shawcross and Christopher Hitchens and they're under Christopher is already above him was a little picture of Salman Rushdie also an advocate of the war against Saddam Hussein well for all the right reasons I mean sometimes there was a terrible dictator he had done horrible things to his people he's threatening the world it's a well I could say the same things about Sharon for God's sake or bush or both sure and I mean a lot of people but does that mean that I want to go to war that's what surprises me I mean that there's a turn there for which I don't find really your evidence in his work at all right and for that kind of for that kind of yeah and the amazing thing is that we don't even know how to theorize about the fact that these people nevertheless get reelected and so the the the formal elements of democracy so don't seem to be have much to do with the demos which what they're supposed to be for and I don't think liberal democratic political theory has an account reduce that this can happen repeatedly as it does in this country and okay I I think we're pledged to to raise to allow the audience to to ask you questions I know that you've been very keen on actually talking about as other novels the world of rock and roll and know that what about the theory with what about love and money and six in New York I know you want to talk about that in all right so we the discussion two questions from the floor I will and I will urge you not to get up and make a speech but to to put a pointed and brief question all right Christians yes no I can't I'm afraid I don't know enough about what his views on Kashmir are and you I'll say just a word I I mean the question should really be directed to Edward but but I just my own view on this is that the US has put a fair amount of pressure on Pakistan to to curtail its support of militant Islamic groups in Kashmir with some success but it has put absolutely no pressure on India to come to the negotiating table and come to a political solution on this this is just an utterly inexplicable and unjustified asymmetrical approach and that is because they are in the present climate India is an ally and India as a country in which over 2000 Muslims were killed in the matter of 10 days in the US government didn't say a word about it so it doesn't look very optimistic sitting in this country yes well does not I mean that's basically it I mean he was part of a group that was put together to help Netanyahu gain the Prime Minister's position during the election campaign of 1996 during the period when the Oslo process had been supported of course by the Clinton administration had been from one point of view going forward you know for the past day in plain view is a rather more complicated situation because there were very few concrete changes on the ground and in fact immiseration of the Palestinian population under Oslo had really quite seriously taken hold there were this 96 was the year of the closures the beginning of the closures by the Labour government of Paris at the time and the amount of land conceded to the Palestinians in the peace process had had gone up to about maybe 12% of the West Bank and about 60% of Gaza which was never desirable by the Israelis at that time there was a strong feeling in this country represented by people like Norman Podhoretz I mean the people on the extreme right and the neoconservatives in this country that there should be no concessions to the past at all and that the whole peace process and the whole emphasis of the Clinton administration on trying to settle the problem between the Palestinians and the and Israel was a was a mistake that what Israel should do would be to just as I said earlier to annex the West Bank in Gaza to stop the discussions between themselves and these and the Palestinians and to take a hard line on on the general situation in the Middle East in effect aggravating aggravating the tension between Israel and its Arab name Arab and Muslim neighbors in which you know for example Lebanon was thought of as not the place that should be retained the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon was then in its 18th year and they were losing a lot of troops at the time but the position of the Likud at the time was that this should continue and so the question was either to press forward with negotiation or to take a very hard position inside Israel and recommend that Israel basically continue the settlement policy that it should be increased which it was and that that one of the ways of relieving pressure on Israel is was to turn a parallel is absolutely right about this Reni that you know that potentially the greatest enemy for Israel in the Arab world was not the Palestinians from a military point of view but in Betty Rock because Iraq was the was the only country in the Middle East that was not overpopulated that had immense resources both oil probably greater oil reserves in Saudi Arabia now subscribe as the second largest proven oil reserves but it also had water the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates which was unusual in the Middle East whether you look at the other oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia of course the Arab most of them are just arid desert and desalinization is a major you know major project it's very costly and its results are not very good because I mean the land is not it's not fertile and so in this memorandum that these people wrote for Netanyahu which is available on the internet you can get it they recommended all these things including attacking Iraq which you remember Israel had done already in the early summer of 1981 when they attacked the Aussie rock reactor nuclear reactor which was supplied to the to the to the to the Iraqis by France so you can see the seeds of what's been happening now already back then and a position of this sort of hard right group which included as I say Wolfowitz it included Rumsfeld you know many of the protagonist some of the major figures in the current Bush administration was you know pressing Israel to take positions that are very similar to the positions the United States has now taken in the Middle East it stopped a peace process it's has let Jerome do what he wants in the last two years since the Second Intifada again thousands of Palestinians have been injured you know 40 50 thousand its major injuries in Palestinians many many many have been killed you know four or five times more Palestinians and Israelis have been killed and of course the settlements have continued and this is US policy I mean when in June of last year Bush got up and said that Sharon is a man of peace every I mean the world I mean I'm sure including Sheryl and these the people whose policies now are you know guiding US politics and and and military moves in the in the Middle East because of anything I think the idea is to put Iraq out of commission not because it's a threat to the United States I mean obviously it's not but it's a threat a potential threat to Israel which according to this policy must retain you know unquestioned dominance military dominance over the whole Middle East said he's right in another thing that the new axis of power in the Middle East would include Turkey which is performed very well in my opinion by not going along but the idea was Turkey Israel and India instead of Pakistan Iraq the Gulf and so on and this non arrow axis would would assure you know continued supplies of oil and mr. geostrategic dominance in this area of the world and that's what the basis of the wars in my opinion is about it's not about the threat of Saddam Hussein and he's a deeply unpopular horrible dictator who they supported you know their 15 years ago you know in the last up to the last year or so before the first second belvoir of 1991 so this is transformational falls and if there's a war the people who will itself I mean the people who never had any responsibilities people of Iraq we've never had any responsibility for the rise of said though I mean the US has a responsibility from the kaisers number those rounds are going to software and Ralph Nader said the other day we know that he has had these things because we have the receipts in the first big report supplied by the Iraqis to Blix in the latter part of last year of 2002 there was an appendix which was not published in this country was published in Europe which listed the companies the mostly American companies that supplied the Iraqi regime the lastly regime with the elements of nuke oh yes nuclear and biological chemical warfare these were simply deleted from the report which you remember the State Department said was just confection of Lies and Counting people's characters rather than the influence as literature and entertainment values them we all talk about but have the people in various countries where the colonialism has finished become somewhat more cognizant and proud and aware of their rights in a different manner than pre that's it I don't know if I could answer that but certainly I you know it's important to remember that he was one of the great champions of sort of post-colonial people in Britain you know in his various essays against you know people like Enoch Powell and the racism and discrimination against Indians in West Africa in sit in Satanic Verses half of it is not about Islam at all it's about tachi right yeah exactly that's right with me so he was he now I don't know whether many people would recognize themselves but certainly in in the post-colonial world will recognize themselves in novels like Midnight's Children and the Moors last sigh because obviously these are fictional characters and are you know much more imaginative and sort of playful creatures than they are supposed to be portraits of actual people living today but where I think he's quite you know spot-on in his depictions of say contemporary India is that you know certain way colonialism never ended I mean I think that's a very important point that it isn't as people say like Naik will say well they the white man is left you know in fact the white man doesn't there's a wonderful scene in Midnight's Children which I always remember quite it's a very brilliantly done I can't possibly reproduce its wit and and humor here but there's a there's a famous estate in Bombay owned by some English people do remember they call the MEK furs or methyl ethyl each candy yeah and and and it's sold to the to the to an Indian family by the Netherlands right right but they stipulate that that everything that they did yes the Indians who bought it have to do also trance that includes having martinis and high tea at five o'clock and this is a hilarious scene where he comes back my father called the McCauley's bastards well there's a kind of slavish imitation of the British which continues in a way but there's also I think another thing that he does very brilliantly is that he he he in in in his literature he depicts characters who are extremely aware of their own history I mean that they understand that their history is a part of their living reality is not something in the past I mean I think that's the great difference between him and an i poll because Naipaul portrays the post-colonial person in a way in novels like gorillas for instance or in his essays you know Eva Peron and and Trinidad and so on that these are people who are just sort of imitators of the white man and they're to be treated with a great deal of contempt whereas which these characters are self created I mean they are characters who are created out of the self conscious acceptance of their history and who look forward to the new with with a rather more complex awareness of the past and of the present and of the and of the new conflicts of society such as that he explores in shame you know between India and Pakistan between Indians and Hindus and so on and so forth so I think on the whole his his literature I mean the characters in his literature as they reflect the characters of the present I think are much more accurate and much more aging and much more optimistic you know then they're not I say I think and you know Conti they're the minor characters in Midnight's Children the sorts of characters you use of wanting us to talk about but the character of Mia of the love for instance who's who's really you know a sort of low profile equivalent of the kinds of things that Maulana Azad stood for for instance you know Muslims who believe in a composite culture and and there's something very touching about rich these sort of understanding of that and sort of smuggling them into the narrative in those ways the magician's and and they're sort of social sympathies and so on which are so removed from you know Indira Gandhi and characters like that so but you're absolutely right to to raise a question about characters like that because it's really what makes the novel such an affectionate book on Bombay in India yeah the back there can you tell can either of you tell us if any of Rusty's work has been translated into either Urdu or Hindi or any of the Indian languages or Arabic oh oh yes yes do any number of translations of an Indian or do an Arabic to assume no Satanic yes Shan was - and then when he came and spoke here when you invited him he was rather annoyed about pirated translations and editions of it available all over the South Asia and Southeast Asia and some yeah there was a question yeah Tibet and then I I think which is sorry listen is immediately related to the question of translation but you must forget that in now about two years ago he went back to India after the whole fatwa thing and rotors long piece for The New Yorker but his return to India with his son so he I mean he can go to India and and although the filming of Midnight's Children which was to have been done on British television I remember talking to me but he won a legal case and got his house he got his house exactly but they wouldn't allow them to film there and they got permission to do it in Sri Lanka and that was also yeah taken away I mean it was felt that you know he's the presence of it you know for a big project like that associated with Russia in countries with with large Muslim populations was still it was still yeah but Bruce is redeeming all that over here in the Apollo Theater yeah I'm taking us back to only because of times and one of the things that is this notion that Naipaul there's a recent article at believers in The New Yorker about night polls hold up bringing in the West Indies and his relationship to Plus being Indian Indian s in a society which was black and white and blackness as a as the other and one of these things playing into his portrayal of West Indian lesson colonialism whereas Russia I think never went through those kinds of being as it were and that would partially probably account for his being far more comfortable with the kind of multiculturalism that he's advocating what do you think of that I'm really particularly thinking of this recent I think you probably right but I think it's also a matter of temperament I got yeah I mean I think I think night Paul's feeling about the world in general I've only met him once at a Conrad conference many years ago he was he's a great you know fan of Conrad's but and I'm of course wasn't seen him on television and so on and so forth but he he's a much more I think abrasive and and as I put it he's a much more judgmental writer I think then then he is rush I mean in his style is much more ascetic it's a much more pared down and you know kind of English style in the in the classical sense of the word the diversities which is tumultuous and turbulent and full of importations and full of slang from the vernacular monocular yarn sighing and lots of I mean no it's a totally different personality so you could say that maybe my poles upbringing was rather more challenging and more Rushdie's but that doesn't explain it I think cuz I think I think at heart just the last point I think that heart nightfall is is much much more conservative and you know his feelings about modernity are deeply Midland whereas my impression in general of Rusty's writings are that that modernity and I mean he's a he's a postmodern novelist is really full of you know of energy and newness and old nurse sort of mixed up together he's not he doesn't care so much about the proper way of doing things in fact most of his novels really parodies of that and so that there's a whole difference between the two of them and as I said I think not Paul's feeling about colonialism is much more forgiving and and much more tolerant and and he's very very very he's very severe with with the emanations of in the world after I mean you know I mean I mean in a novel like Ben in the river he's merciless about what is today the present-day Congo really you know and and very little is said about the depredations of King Leopold's rule which was horrendous I mean you know millions of people were killed and that forever distorts the country as Congo has been a Connor I'd understood it much better than I Paul did I think yeah it doesn't explain it but it isn't also entirely true because because Risty talks about the terrible time he had rugby and so on and similar sorts of experience maybe not the same scale yeah at times which I guess you can sort of use a quasi position paper for the current Bush administration I wonder if you could talk about that in terms of or maybe in relation to some of those previous regs and thinking more specifically of the mores left side when he really just viciously Lampoon's Hindu nationalism and that sort of rise that has a very similar ideology I guess currently of a very sort of anti Islam ideology and how sort of those yeah I mean I really can't talk about the times shortly after September 11th I read it but I can't remember I'm sorry but I but I do remember one that came later in which which I think the title and maybe a year after that in which he writes an essay in The Times which is called Islam is the problem I think something like that and then his view is that you know which i think is it's true I agree with it that is that in large areas of the Islamic world Islam has been captured by you know the worst elements of dogmatism and fanaticism and you know kind of an absence of tolerance and so on and so forth but what I I mean I don't disagree with that you know but i but i but again as I said earlier I don't think he pays enough attention to the varieties of Islam it's a much more monolithic view of it then than I would volunteer that's the one and number two it's quite invidious because he doesn't talk about the other monotheistic fundamentalists and crazies that populate this world not all of them are Muslim I mean there are Christian fundamentalists who one of whom is our president you know I'm sure I'm really quite serious about this these are people who are at least I mean people who don't believe in evolution for example I mean there's a lot made about the schools in places like Saudi Arabia and the my dresses as they call them in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's will charge the plural he said I mean there are places in this country where you still can't eat I mean where it's a the legal issue as to whether you can teach Darwinism you could you can teach evolution it's not surprising and creationism has a very strong constituency and the same I'm sorry just one last point and the same is true of Judaism I mean there's a lot of fanaticism in Judaism today and the people who go around killing Palestinians on the West Bank I mean I've had experiences of this where people I've seen Israeli soldiers and and settlers taking over Palestinian lands and bulldozing the farm just wiping out the work of faith of families who live off the land and when I asked the law offices to stop their land he's told me the Israeli soldier in 1998 I said whose land is that he says it's the land of the people of Israel well I mean you know he said what about that I mean I think the phenomenon the monotheistic well and I suppose they Hindu nationalists to all of this kind of fundamentalism and my opinion has to be treated together that these are sick Creed's that feed off each other but to single out one say the problems are all there is I think terrible I think one really has to be and that's where I feel you know Salman hasn't really been forceful enough in in talking about this that all of these religious I mean the politics of religion of especially of religious fanaticism are really dependent on each other and you and really have to be dealt with and opposed together not you say well we want to oppose this and not that I couldn't resist saying that it's not surprising that Bush doesn't believe in evolution he's a living instance of its falsity but but you know I just wanted to say one thing you're absolutely right to point out that the Moors last sigh is is tremendously it's tremendously critical of of Hindu fundamentalism so there's a sense in which he is a little even-handed but when it comes to that but no I was just talking I was just talking about his writing after 9/11 the nonfiction architecture but you know really it does seem to me that it's not as if he is not seeing it mean he's against religious fanaticism of any kind but what he needs to focus on is the kind of Muslim who is going to possibly believe what he's saying and that kind of Muslim is not going to believe what he's saying if he or she is constantly having to fight off wars fight off talk about how they don't believe in modernity and freedom and so on and so forth and and he's playing into that by supporting the small and and so on so it's not as if he's not even handed he just hasn't he's confused about what his own targets are and how to hit them or approach them I think there's a just one more point about this I think there's a in my opinion there's a greater disconnect or disparity between his prose non-fictional prose and his fiction now than there was during the period of the you know of the decade of the 80s which produced Midnight's silver and shame and the Jaguar smile and now I think he's caught up in in a world of you know much much greater media magnification and of course he's become a great celebrity there's no question he's probably the most famous writer in the world and he went through a harrowing experience during the years he was in hiding and sought out to be killed you know during those four or five years when he was underground and you know persecuted and unable to travel really you know that I remember when he came here actually nineteen whatever it was 1998 or 1999 he told me that British Airways would still not take him on a plane I mean he he had to come on some other airline I mean coming from London that would you know one of the logical things would be to take British Airways but they wouldn't they still wouldn't take him around but he can't have to come on another and so that kind of thing I think in the end you know changes and perhaps confuses as they say the individual yeah yes set forth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez of magical realism and national allegory how does he what oh I'm sorry what was a lot o you've spoken about who he influenced with his writing how how would you say that he reacted to his influences people have shown parallels between Midnight's Children and One Hundred Years of Solitude but for example this there's a great deal of appreciation in him for writers who are more conventional in years but who treat similar themes of displacement and discrimination Mateen a collection of her short stories that I recall quite well and in general he seems to be very interested in novelists who are like him you know migratory who you know like the South African writers in exile during that period couldn't there uh you know an East European writer also an exile living in Paris I mean transplanted expatriated and so on I mean those are the people who mean a great deal to and I have to say it I mean it's it's because it's it was very flattering to me he wrote very well about some of my work and I mean it made a great difference to me that he did about for example my book on the after the last guy which he and I did a YA dialogue about in at the ICA in London which is published also an imaginary homeland and then in his latest book whose name I can't remember collection also of essays published by Random House there's a there's a very terrific essay by him on my book of memoirs after I'm out of place so I think he has a very sharp eye for people that he can identify with in the modern world and they are in many ways you know share a similar fate perhaps you know which is out of being not at home but abroad yeah doctors say that someone who studied Islam for many many years I was hoping you could enlighten sort of Muslims that are in this room as well as elsewhere about these two questions that I have first is what do you see is the sort of the future of Islam in the West in the post 9/11 environment when we see it's not being polarized in married to opposite ways especially here in the West and the second question was how can miss limbs create and proliferate a progressive employers division of Islam that respects basic human rights in the culture of democracy in the Muslim world what it's not going to be done by America my view is first of all I'm not an expert on Islam I mean that's a kind of ridiculous over simplification and I don't you know myself have any particularly expert knowledge of of it as such but but what has always impressed me is that it seems to be much more diverse and much more complex in its manifestations then then similar I mean so I I find it very difficult to talk about the world of Islam which is what often comes up in the in the in the poem and I'm much happier with you know political and historical experiences that have occurred in to Muslims in countries that have large Muslim populations or majorities and I think I think it's also true to say that you know words that have become highly demagogic like but leaving aside the main one which is terrorism for which no one has found an answer except that it's always associated with Islam but I mean most of the discussions that take place today about the word terrorism I mean there was a big debate in the United Nations during the seventies trying to define terrorism and they failed they just were unable to do it nobody could agree on it one of the reasons being is that terrorism is always associated now with non-state apparatuses you know individual groups like the gladdened etc and there I think there's a very important component of state terrorism which has simply never talked about that states perform acts of terror I mean the modern world I mean look at look at Germany you could describe all of that as state terrorism in in the in the Nazi period any in any event what what I wanted to say was this the vocabulary of describing Muslims in talking about moderates and modern and modernizing you know this kind of rubbish that somebody like Thomas Friedman trades it you know they have to reform and you know I I just find it inconceivable that anybody could talk about as vast the phenomenon is this with as little knowledge first of all before you can talk about the whole world of Islam in these general waves you have to know the languages and he's now he's never demonstrated people like him I mean I've never demonstrated they have any knowledge of what takes place I mean immediate knowledge of what takes place in universities and so on and schools all over the Islamic world and second and most important who says that the that the modernizing trend is set by the West I mean cuz that would include you know that would include having to pass through the experience of genocide you know which is which is not one of the happier X experiments or results of modernization I mean modernization is is not an you know adequate yardstick you know there was that wonderful exchange between Muhammad Ali the boxer Ali as they call him here and and somebody down at the World Trade Center after 9/11 when he said the guy said to Haddad he said how does it feel to the religion that did this and he said how does it feel to the religion to be a member of the religion that brought us Hitler I mean so you can play that game you know and and come out with absolutely ridiculous results but I what I'm trying to say is in fact that if you take off all of these labels and these phony counters like democracy and modernization and so on and so forth you'll find that there is dynamism and change taking place everywhere and that I've written about this I think one ought to be able to regard cultures is going through a period of of trying to define themselves I mean I think that's really the major phenomenon of the present period that we're passing through whether in Islam or in the West or elsewhere that that there's been such seismic change not because of the end of the Cold War although that's important enough and not because of the nuclear and the technological revolutions and all of that stuff but because of immigration but because of the vast movements of populations that the nature of a national identity has changed so much that all these countries like Germany like Pakistan which is a relatively new country like Israel like America are going through processes of self definitions which which are which are not over yet and which will are beginning to redefine the terms of how we think about the past how we think about the present how we study history what history do we study every major culture every major society and minor society on earth is going through that period now and I think that's the way to look at it not to use the invidious terms that say well they're backward and they are really pre-modern and they haven't quite achieved this and we are the more we are going to in the manner of Rumsfeld and the other so we're going to bring democracy there you know you don't you don't import these things from the outside or if you do you cause a lot of damage thanks Todd okay they rotate

Channel: Columbia University

Views: 21,578

Rating: 4.8340249 out of 5

Keywords: education, columbiauniversity, midnightschildren, salmanrushdie, Islam, stanicverses

Id: gb9Ny-41C_I

Length: 88min 40sec (5320 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2010