The night I was arrested/MRIDULA GARG

From The Hindu:Literary Review/November 7, 2010.

 

IN FIRST PERSON

The night I was arrested

MRIDULA GARG

In the context of Mumbai University’s withdrawal of Rohington Mistry’s book Such A Long Journey from its syllabus, well-known author MRIDULA GARG recalls the travails that followed the publication of her novel, Chittacobra.

Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Raising serious questions: Mridula Garg.

 

There was a knock on my door one Friday evening around 9.30 in 1980. My husband was out of town, servant on leave and two teenage sons expected back soon from the movies. The knock was followed by an impatient ring. I went to the door, leaving the vegetables simmering on the stove.

Knock at night

 

Two grown men stood outside. I was about to inform them of my husband’s absence, when one of them rasped, “Mridula Garg!”

“Yes.”

“You wrote this book?” he asked waving my novel Chittacobra at me.

“Why, yes,” I exclaimed elated to have my book flashed at me by total strangers. Ah, the ego of a writer!

“Police,” said he waving his identity card now. “We are here to arrest you.”

“What?”

“Arrest,” he repeated, then translated in Hindi for my benefit, “Giraftar.”

“I know what arrest means,” I said testily, “But what for?”

“The book.” He waved it at me again. “Pages 110-112 are obscene.”

“They most certainly are not!” I said so vehemently that he amended his statement to “Legally actionable under The Obscenity Act (U/S 292 IPC).” Obscene? Chittacobra!

I recalled the editor of Saptahik Hindustan admonishing me for not dwelling more graphically on the sexual act. Also Jainendra, the doyen of Hindi literature, declaring that while reading the novel one ceased to be of the body. I relived the ecstatic state in which I had written the novel in 26 days flat. The three “legally actionable” pages dealt with the anguish of a woman, who was a mechanical participant in the sexual act with her husband. It was imperative to give a graphic account to emphasise the dichotomy between the mind and the body during intercourse and orgasm. The graphic treatment, in fact, robbed it of erotica, rendering it tedious perhaps but not titillating.

“What’s obscene about them?” I snapped.

“We don’t know,” moaned the watchdogs of public morality.

“What about scores of other novels dealing with similar subjects?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t read books, do you?”

“You don’t know how hard it is to arrest a woman when alone”

“I am alone,” I said on an impulse.

They blanched and looked at each other. “My God!” I screamed and ran into the kitchen. They followed me, cajoling, “Please, please there is no cause for alarm.”

“It’s easy for you to say. The vegetable is burnt to cinders and the boys will be home any minute. Guess I’ll boil potatoes in the pressure cooker, the quickest thing I can think of.” They looked at each other for a long while in silence, then said in unison, quite like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, “Madam, would you kindly get a witness so we can arrest you.”

“Just how do you intend to do it?” They went back to looking at each other. “Why don’t you go to the living room and work it out while I make tea.” By the time I went in with the tea, my boys had returned so we were quite a party.

“Who are they?” asked my 16-year-old.

“Policemen. They have come to arrest me.”

“Have you killed someone?” asked the 14-year-old hopefully.

“No, written a book.”

“They can’t arrest you for that. What about freedom of expression.” Alas our schools insist on harping on democracy. “Apparently they can. They find it obscene.”

“Which one?”

“ Chittacobra.” At that both of them jumped up. “Are they out of their meagre senses?” They must have looked menacing because the guardians of law cringed as they sang in unison, “Now-now. Please get a witness.”

“Here,” I pointed to my sons, “are my witnesses.”

“They are not adults.”

“Nor are those who find literature obscene,” said my sons.

“Please,” they pleaded, “Get an adult.”

“Ok,” I said,” I’ll call my sister.”

“No!” they almost shrieked, “Not another woman. Get a man.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Assault and battery. You complaining of them. We mean women say things and courts believe them. We don’t want to arrest you. Our superior officer was after us for a year to get your book but we kept stalling. Finally he got it from the Parliament library and here we are,” recited one.

“You are wrong about our not reading books. I have read your stories and don’t like the idea of arresting you. But we are helpless,” added the other.

“Are you?”

He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Well…actually…we have…er…the discretion to give you bail.”

“Here and now?”

“Yes…get an adult male to stand surety and we will bail you. When it goes to court, it’s between you, the Delhi Administration and the magistrate.”

The aftermath

The adult male was secured, surety signed and I was released on bail. The whole thing had been so farcical that I did not expect it to come up in court. I was wrong. It did and dragged on for two years. Sales of the book were suspended, stocks frozen. That was one of their objectives; the other was to thwart my creative work by causing me mental anguish. Books and writers are persecuted not to stop people from reading but to stop writers from writing freely.

I met the eminent lawyer L.M. Singhvi and asked him two questions: If they considered a part of the book legally actionable, why did they not ban it instead of arresting the author? How was a work singled for action when hundreds could fall under the purview of “legally actionable?”

His answers were eye-openers. If a book is banned, he said, the author goes to court and, in case of literary work of unquestioned merit, the ban is usually revoked. An arrest is a greater deterrent as it causes more mental anguish. As for action, it was taken only when a complaint was lodged. The rest was silence, as the administrative officers were not expected to read literature! He also warned me that I was likely to be convicted because I was a woman, perceived as a keeper of public morality.

Delhi administration confirmed that a complaint had been lodged. The contrite, but calm, Chief Secretary assured me that the case had been withdrawn but the police continued to haunt me. I realised that oversight, misplacement, inadvertence were fancy names for inaction. Their eagerness to act and inability to act quickly were so perfectly balanced that the matter remained in perpetual suspension for two years. I must add that before the arrest, a leading Hindi weekly Sarika had published the three pages, with a letter declaring them obscene and invited “similar” letters. While my male/female colleagues regaled themselves at my expense for a year, as a flurry of scurrilous letters poured in, I was busy writing a historical/political novel, Anitya. It was published in 1980. So their second objective that I stop writing was not achieved.

The episode drew to a lingering close in December 1982, the night before it was to come to court, with L.M. Singhvi petitioning the Lt. Governor of Delhi, Jagmohan to withdraw it, which he did. One may treat the episode as a farce but it raises serious questions, as relevant in 2010 as in 1980s.

Does it befit a democracy to entertain complaints smacking of professional vendetta and act upon them? What kind of law allows unlettered sentinels to witch hunt literary authors? Why did most of the literary community remain a silent spectator? Was it because the hunted was a young woman without a male patron?

I firmly believe its silence in 1979 was partly responsible for the latter day witch-hunt of eminent artists, theatre persons and writers. We are quick to blame the right wing political parties but the rot started much earlier in the bastion of the left.