Also, today, in Germany (I wish I could be at two places at the same time, like a Rushdie character!) my friend @meenakandasamy gets honored by @PEN_Deutschland:
My understanding is that the ceremony in Germany and our event at Ann Arbor will both be available online, or through a recording later.
Writers should be read, agreed or argued with, debated, challenged; writers should never be jailed, tortured, beaten, attacked, or killed.
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The lesson from the Chomsky hospitalisation for social media is simple: do what the much-reviled 'mainstream' media is supposed to do as a matter of routine: verify facts before posting/commenting/offering tributes. A salutary lesson for everyone who uses social media.
Commentators on social media who ridicule the mainstream media for being 'late' with a story, or 'not reporting' a story will, I hope, realise now, that sometimes the mainstream media is slow precisely because it is trying to get the facts right.
It doesn't mean that the mainstream media always gets it right--but it has checks and balances, incentives and disincentives, and laws and codes, with accountability mechanisms.
When @Mint_Lounge editor @shalinimb asked some of us to name any work in our mothertongue that inspired us and our thinking about democracy (as India goes to polls), 12 of us responded.
I picked the Gujarati novel Socrates (1974) by Manubhai Pancholi "Darshak." Today, on my LinkedIn page, Mrinmayee Ranade asked about the absence of Marathi writers on the list. Fair question; there has been excellent writing about democracy and freedom in Marathi. 2/n
I was born in the city once known as Bombay, can understand Marathi well, read it slowly, and speak it though not always grammatically. I've read some Marathi poetry in the original and some in translation, and some prose in translation. 3/n
This is a wonderful refrain about freedom (azadi), popular in India during the moment when brave students of JNU took on the Indian state. It is nice to see Indian revolutionary fervor getting exported to other campuses. 1/2
Those students faced a crackdown: some wilted, some remain in jail, some are now opposition politicians using democratic means to bring about change, as fine universities teach. 2/3
The real problem on US campuses and in the US (and German and some European) public discourse today is that any criticism of Israel, Netanyahu, or Zionism is described as 'anti-semitism' or "hatred of Jews" to shut debate. 3/4
@timesofindia yesterday carried a video which showed an event "in the British parliament" celebrating the opening of the temple in Ayodhya. The story also has a video: 1/5
@timesofindia A few things: this is most likely what's called a 'sponsored event," which is permitted in the committee rooms of the House of Commons and requires an MP to sponsor it. It has costs of renting, which presumably the Hindu organisations paid. There are non-sponsored events too. 3/5