Dr. Brahma Prakash In Conversation With Anchal Soni

AS: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. It is a pleasure to have you with Usawa Literary Review. 

BP: Thank you for having me for this conversation.

AS: I want to begin by asking that in the past few decades, there has been a shift in the kind of future we as a society have been dreaming of. There is a movement towards homogeneity, and the rhetoric of decolonization is leading to othering and dispossession. Where do you think we went wrong in this whole construct? 

BP: This is huge. I don’t think we can fully comprehend such a complex issue in this short conversation about where we went wrong. It also depends on whose vantage point you are asking this question. If you go to talk to many communities, they might say that nothing much has changed from the previous regime. The situation is almost the same. On the other side, we can see the tectonic shift that has been happening at various levels. We are witnessing fascism like situation with deep erosion of constitutional values, curtailment of rights, freedom, and so on. So for the communities who were at the margins, things were already difficult. But even that has gone worse.

Drawing from Babasaheb Ambedkar, I would say that we are in the age of counter-revolution. Whatever we have achieved as a nation and society has been facing a deep setback. Whatever India as a Republic has achieved in the last 75 years, including basic constitutional rights, democratisation of institutions, and some norms of equality, are facing a serious crisis. There is a clear backlash from the Brahmanical ideology and the broader ideology of the social elites, who were on the backfoot after the rise of social justice discourse. In general, the situation of human rights has worsened. Think about what is happening in Palestine. It is unbelievable to see another Holocaust unfold in front of our eyes. 

As far as the question of decolonization in India is concerned, while the genuine struggle is still going on, at the level of discourse, it has been appropriated by the elites. Decolonization has been reduced to syllabus-making exercises or putting one book and a few articles from the erstwhile colonized countries, or making a room for one Black and Brown scholar at the level of representations.  Decolonization, which Frantz Fanon saw as a violent act, has become a comfortable negotiation. The language of sophisticated disagreement has reduced the whole gravity of decolonial discourses to the rhetoric of language, ethnicity, and culture. Yet I would like to reiterate that this was not a problem of cultural turn that emptied decolonial perspective from its gravity. The problem is not cultural, as scholars like Vivek Chibber have pointed out, but not being cultural enough, not pushing the boundaries enough. Nobody can teach us decolonization better than Palestinians or indigenous communities who are facing massive displacement; for them, decolonization is still a matter of life and death, it still carries the fundamentals of freedom, and it is still about the question of land and dignity.

AS: An idea that I see emerging strongly in your writings is that of debris. Debris of popular notions of justice, secularism, and even universal notions of humanity. It seems that it is just the debris of counter-hegemonic discourses that we are left with. Do you agree with this?

BP: I am not sure if we should understand them as debris or rubble, but you are also right, as what we are facing is the raw evidence of dispossessions and destruction in the form of the bulldozing of homes to the demolition of mosques and other symbolic places. What gives the sense of justice to majoritarian politics is seeing the homes turning into rubble. This is not dissociated from your questions of debris of popular justice in a very positive term. But in the same way, we cannot perhaps read the debris of counter-hegemonic discourses.

To an extent, one can read that debris in relation to secularism and nostalgia but that is perhaps not enough. While dominant powers move by producing debris and rubble or terming them as abstract, valuing them at the level of uselessness, not even extraction. The only value it creates is the destruction for “good” or “development”. But the rubble has life, the debris can be assumed to have a concrete and had proper identity at a point of time. They are broken parts of our bodies and homes. When their meanings and histories are getting flattened, we need to activate them and turn them into spectral stones that still carry the faces and feeling as Yahya Sinwar did by throwing Debris on the Zionist machine or as helpless people throw stones and debris as part of their last resistance. These acts with the materials cannot be read as the debris of counter-hegemonic discourse, but rather the debris that hides the history and potential of the future.

AS: The last rupture, the very recent one, is the pandemic in all our memories. And Arundhati Roy wrote this beautiful essay, which described the pandemic as a portal with an alternate world in its aftermath. The post-pandemic world is certainly not any better, if not worse. But it seems normality keeps getting snatched away with the strengthening right regimes and continued acts of dispossession around the world. How do you see this rupture?

BP: The pandemic COVID-19 came as a shock and surprise for all of us. It got etched in our memory. We can say that we are a generation who have survived the pandemic the way the older generation used to talk about plague and Spanish Flu. The pandemic has exposed the neoliberal world order. Remember, patients not getting beds and bodies are falling from ambulances. It shows human vulnerability as well as the precarious situations we are in. But you are right to say that the post-pandemic world is certainly not great. It appears that we have not learnt anything from the pandemic. The post-pandemic world is facing further curtailments of rights and freedom, the formation of precarious workers and war going on. This shows that the neoliberal regime can mobilize the risk and crisis.

This is what I have discussed in my book, Body on the Barricades. I would like to quote from the book.

Risk is central to thinking about totalitarian regimes and freedom. The ultimate defence that works in favour of the state and the authoritarian regime is the ideology of risk—attack, threat, emergency. The threat of COVID-19 was very much there. The collapse of the health system was very much there; the precariousness of lives was very much there. Indeed, it threatened the capitalist world order. That stands exposed. Yet, neoliberal capitalism soon contained the virus in favour of the ideology of risk. As the virus spread, the regimes across the world performed the risk to curb rights and dissent. Let us note that the market ideology of risk always favours the authorities and their securitarian apparatus. Therefore, they keep giving us rhetoric: life without risk, love without risk, sex without risk. Unsurprisingly, the coronavirus soon became the ally of neoliberal and authoritarian regimes. While the disease exposed the medical system of the market regime, this same regime sold the risk and bought consent to augment the authorities’ power. It is not surprising that, amidst the pandemic, the authoritarian regimes of the world became more powerful. 

AS: Pandemic and themes of death and mourning are something you closely work with towards the end of Body on the Barricades, especially the idea of how mourning is politically potent to become a resistance. I want to link it with your other essays on Palestine. Is the mourning of those dying in the colonised Palestine by the global community not strong enough to be transformed into a solidarity movement?

BP: We are talking about the extreme forms of curtailments. Let me say that, with mourning getting curtailed, people are not allowed to mourn, and bodies are not allowed to get buried. Earlier, it happened in Kashmir; it happened recently in Bastar. The state and authorities did not allow the funeral of rebel leaders. The colonial government did the same with the dead body of Bhagat Singh and the same happened with the dead body of Rosa Luxemburg.

There is a long history, but such cases have increased in recent years. This shows the authorities’ fear of the dead who can symbolically lead the procession protest. We are talking about the extreme sense of curtailment and the extreme sense of courage. It is ultimately a fight between two forces, one that wants to end the basic sense of humanity, and the others who want to defend it at any cost. Finding courage and solidarity even in the situation of death and destruction makes us human. We often find deepest courage, strength and solidarity in those situations. 

You are to an extent, right to say that Palestinians are perhaps not getting the global solidarity even in their mourning and death. Many times, as a poet, as a writer, we talk about these connections in an idealized sense. And that has its own power. But we should be also need to be aware that even in those situations hierarchies played out. Whose life is more precious and whose life is more vulnerable becomes the question. Whether you talk about the apartheid situation or the caste society, the sense of mourning and dignity carries the hierarchies. At the same time, I also feel that people across the world have stood with Palestinians and they are morally standing with them, even though their military/ the regimes are actively supporting the genocidal project.

The same concerns come around solidarity. Who gets solidarity? We do not see solidarity for the people who are getting lynched in the streets; in fact, a more aggressive sense of solidarity is coming for the violent mobs and rapists. It becomes more difficult to generate solidarity when minority and marginalised communities are already criminalised. Their identities are already branded and framed in the language of terrorism. It happens with nomadic communities who are perceived as the “born criminals”. It happens with dalit communities whose lives are considered not that grievable or valuable. It increasigly happening with minorities whose living itself is considered a threat. In these situations, neither mourning nor solidarity remain generic term. In an ideal situation, solidarity should have happened across the sections—a solidarity not based on who you are but the solidarity based on transformative vulnerability. Turning vulnerability as a source of transformation.

AS: In your essays on Palestine, the act of resistance is discussed as a linguistic-political act, but there is also a romanticisation of this defiance. Have academics gotten somewhere settled on this romanticisation?  Is there a risk of diluting the political urgency of resistance through academic discourse?

BP: I agree but also disagree with you. First, when in some cases, I discuss resistance as a linguistic-political act, I am not saying that other points are not important. In other words, we should read it as “resistance is also a linguistic-political act” besides so many other things. It cannot be reduced to one. The beauty and power of resistance and protest lies, more than knowing, in their unknowability. 

I write in Body on the Barricades how a protest does not end in immediacy. It travels unknown paths. It leaves footprints. It leaves its shadow. […] A protest [and resistance] is the name of the folding, unfolding and holding of bodies together. It is the name of the assembly that exists outside of the parliament. […] It is about reclaiming the past, not the glory of war and conquests, but of the dissents and discontents.

Of course, there is a sense of romanticization, but in the prevailing condition of passivity, immobilizing ideology, and permanent loss, words become the redeemer. When a great resistance leader, Yahya Sinwar, was being portrayed as the figure of terrorist by the Western media, I tried to situate him in the legacy of Frantz Fanon. This is what The Times reported after the death of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar: “Last Gesture of Defiance that Condemned Yahya Sinwar to Death”. What was commendable was read as condemned. We need to defend when resistance figures are getting demonized. When protests are getting criminalized, when the Palestinian resistance movement is seen as terrorist acts, when our debates about resistance are criminalized through linguistic-political acts, it is our duty to idealize them, romanticize them, and humanize them. We also need to romanticize them in their very ontological existence.

As a writer, as an artist, I also feel that we necessarily need to idealize them to create a utopia and hope. We cannot always measure the protests and resistance to what they are in their real empirical sense. They are the dreams of life that cannot be measured down. Whether we lose or we win, we should not get defeated in our imagination. Fear should not kill our dream. While I agree with your concerns, we cannot completely dismiss it as an idealism.

Ultimately, it is the romantics, it is the sufferers who become the rebels; they are the ones who lead the resistance. Many times, it also depends on the genres you are writing in. I am neither a historian nor a war strategist; my language is the language of art and poetry. The sense of idealization also comes from there. Let me reiterate that hope and utopia are not privileges here. We do not have the privilege of not having hope. When our all ideals are getting shattered, when romance is getting shrouded, we need be idealistic and romantic. While one needs to be wary about romanticization of history and resistance, we cannot be unromantic in resistance. We need utopia, we need ideals, we need to defend the language of life and resistance that is getting demonized. 

AS: Incarceration, as you’ve noted, does not affect all bodies equally. Do you see a contemporary echo of this in the way carceral systems target subaltern bodies today? How do they resist? 

BP: Yes. Let’s talk about Gulfisa Fatima, Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and so many others. Such an open and shameless violation of justice. We all know that they are simply facing incarceration because they come from Muslim communities. They are getting targeted precisely because of their identity. Some of them have been written from prison. What we see is that while Sharjeel’s words are becoming prophetic and poetic, Gulfisa has come with poetry, and Umar is finding solace in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s words. They are facing an enormous sense of injustice, their experiences are profound, their words poetic and prophetic on the questions of hope, life and injustice.

Father Stan Swamy, who died in prison and G.N. Saibaba who came out and died because of severe illness in imprisonment too came with poetry. But why, ultimately, poetry? What is poetry doing to incarceration? Poetry still provides you hope in one way, but also a language of urgency to not feel hopeless. As any authoritarian regime pervades and rides by spreading fear and a sense of hopelessness, it tries to become the ultimate savior. This is where hope becomes precious, almost as precious as life. Who will understand and bring this connection better than Mahmoud Darwish! He writes: I’ve spent all my life trying, trying not to lose my last hope.

What will be left after losing hope, what will be left without having that poetry without hope in prison? What will be left in resistance without having the hope for a better world? I agree with you that not all bodies are getting incarcerated in the same ways. The state and authorities maintain differential treatment of the bodies. Punishment carries the social and cultural logic. The power is very much interested in knowing of which form of punishment is going to hurt you more. How it should not only break your limbs but also your confidence. For example, Adivasis are not getting treated or punished the same way Muslims are getting punished. 

AS: You have to give us five recommendations for our readers. Anything you want to, books or movies, or podcasts. Anything you want to recommend to our readers?

BP: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o who passed away recently, has remained one of the favourites. Besides his novels, his essays are also powerful. His books, Decolonizing the Mind, Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams are indeed powerful. I really like Ernaux’s writings, Simple Passion and A Frozen Woman. I also like lyrical essays and poetry: Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, the poetry of  Mahmood Darwish, and the poetry of Namdev Dhasal.

My new favourites are Maumita Alam, Jacinta Kerketta and Meena Kandsamy. From old, my all-time favourite is Phanishwar Nath Renu, Susan Sontag and Arundhati Roy. I do not watch so many movies and TV shows, but I love music and songs. I listen to Jazz, Blues, or Bhojpuri and Magahi songs but also folk songs from different regions.