Q&A: Amitava on Rushdie, and Outlook's Sheela Reddy

Amitava Kumar, Vassar prof and author of Passport Photos and Husband of a Fanatic, has been having something on an online tussle with Salman Rushdie. This after Rushdie balked at appearing offline, ie., on the same stage as Kumar at Vassar. The high point may have been a comment left by Rushdie on Kumar's blog post ("Mr Rushdie and I"), chiding Kumar for making the episode public. The other comments have alternately berated Rushdie and wondered what exactly Kumar is so worked up about.

For those who fret over the incestuousness of the desi literary scene, the episode has been highly refreshing.

I asked Amitava how he was ever going to get a Rushdie blurb now. He wasn't too amused, but he did have this to say:

If I have a concern, it is this: that he has interpreted this exchange as a narrow attack on him, and that he has chosen to ignore anything and everything in my piece that is either considered or complimetary.

Following the Rushdie episode, Kumar wrote in defense of Vikram Seth (or rather, in sympathy for) who was recently interviewed in Outlook by Sheela Reddy. As we posted here, Seth recently championed a high-profile petition against India's code against homosexuality. Reddy's lengthy interview focused almost entirely on Seth's sexuality, in a way and to a degree that Kumar finds reprehensible, starting with her choice of questions:

• I’m not sure I quite understand what bisexual means?
• But if you can be straight, and life is so difficult as a gay, isn’t it simpler to just be straight?
• This is something that people often snigger about: has boarding school anything to do with you being gay?
• Are you in a relationship just now?

I asked Kumar a few questions about this...

You called Sheela Reddy's interview 'smutty' and 'shallow'. What do mean when you refer to her penchant for such things?

Sheela Reddy is the editor who compiles the Bibliophile section of Outlook magazine. In my opinion, the tone in that column is semi-literate and cynical--very, very different from columns like "Short Cuts" in the London Review of Books and "NB" in the Times Literary Supplement. Given that history, "shallow" is a kind word. I used the word "smutty" for the Vikram Seth review because I caught a strong sense of prurience in her questions.

Do you think, though, that Seth's setting himself up for these kinds of questions, given the 377 campaign and his visibility?

Any reader of Seth will find a rich exploration of issues of sexual alterity in his writings. "Setting himself up" is therefore a wrong way to describe this process of questioning--unless you identify yourself with a person who asks, as Reddy does, if being gay is difficult why not be straight.

Do you think it's inevitable that the literary and intellectual will be tabloid-ized in India? Is there anything to stop that from happening?

Is endless tabloidization our inevitable fate? I hope not. A more intelligent discussion of books and writers will only come as a result of debate. I have no problem at all with any other writer or critic who opposes everything I have said on this issue, and if he or she articulates that opposing view in a way that promotes our understanding of how we can best discuss such topics in our culture.