haz speech? haz art? will censor.

Even as the Smithsonian's sponsors are insisting it restore David Wojnarowicz's video "A Fire in My Belly", the Gujarat Urdu Sahitya Academy has asked poet Aquaal Shatir to return money he was given to publish his anthology, where the following words appeared in an opinion piece:

"Ho Narendra Modi ka ke iqtedar men aate hi us ne is riyasat se Urdu ka safaya hi kar diya, Modi ne sirf itne par he iktefa nahin kiya, balke 2002 men ek soche-samjhe mansoobe ke tehat poore Gujarat men firqawaranh fasadat aur haiveaniyat ka wo nanga khel khela ke poori insaniyat he sharmsar ho kar rah gaee. Har taraf loot mar, qatl o gharatgiri, ismat dari, aatish zani aur aqliyati nasl kushi jaisi sangeen wardaar karva kar oos ne poore mulk men khauf o hirass paid kar diya tha."

Translated into English (quoted from Indian Express):

"May good come the way of Narendra Modi, who has finished off Urdu in this State on coming to power and did not stop at that, but under a well thought-out plan, (he) played such a naked game of communal riots and barbarism which put to shame the entire humanity. By spreading terrific incidents of loot, murder and mayhem, rape, burning and genocide of the minority community, he created an atmosphere of terror in the whole country."

Shatir's 'crime' prima facie is that he faciliated anti-Narendra Modi remarks, making it 'desirable' to censor his anthology in order to protect the 'clean' image of Gujarat's Chief Minister. And, perhaps, to honour the CM's followers' protective instincts towards the CM.

"He has been told that the piece in question amounted to showing the Chief Minister in a poor light, with a potential to “spread misgivings about him in the society”."

Enough here already to foam at the mouth, no?, if you've been one of the many people appalled that Modi won the elections after the Gujarat genocide, and that he's still in power, and that the media and the corporations (of course) seem to have forgotten all about 2002 and present him as a demi-god and economic messiah.

But of course, Shatir's real 'crime' could be something else entirely. The Indian Express report ends:

"Interestingly, the notice was issued after Shatir filed a slew of RTI queries about the functioning and state of accounts of the Urdu Sahitya Academy, which according to him, reeked of many irregularities."

Such reprehensible manipulativeness, if this is true. It also confirms that there is something deeply wrong with Gujarat's 'love' for Modi.