The quibble over Man Asia

From Tahelka.com

The first prize has not been awarded yet and you would have probably heard that Nury Vittachi, co-founder of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and initiator of the prize, has been reportedly sacked from the festival's board due to his 'vociferous' opposition at the way the judges have been chosen - while the judges include men and women of Asian origin living in the West, few are Asia-bred and none live in Asia.

Another quibble: large parts of Asia have been excluded from the prize - Mongolia, Iran, the former Soviet republics and the Middle East have been excluded from the list. The comments by Peter Gordon, head of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival was quoted in the report: "Lines need to be drawn somewhere. If West Asia were included, wherever one draws the line - for example at the Red Sea - it would go through the middle of the Arabic-speaking world. It didn't make sense to have Jordan but not Egypt. As for the Central Asian countries, their literary traditions had ties to the Russian literary tradition and the current geopolitical borders might also cut across literary borders. Russia itself is geographically, and to some extent ethnically, as much Asian as European. We felt that a strict adherence to geography led to more inconsistencies than a partial adherence would."

Fascinating doublespeak! (You had a committee to draw that up, didn't you?! Now, for your next assignment, define a banana.)

Something has been bottled up for years, but I think there is a need for it to be said. We are too polite. 'Thou shall not criticise the efforts of others' is a religiously held commandment in the arts and literature, though bitching and backbiting is allowed. I suspect I am going to make myself enormously unpopular in certain circles. But Gordon's statement above requires some response.

I have never been to the Hong Kong Festival. Actually, I must confess, I have been avoiding it, especially after hearing comments from a prominent journalist who lived a major part of his life there. When asked (this was some years ago), he dismissed it as 'silly expatriate angst'. I was in Ubud for the first festival and I realised what he meant. An American writer, whom I had met earlier at the KL Fest, said to me, "Raman, tell me, am I the only one feeling out of place here?" This same sentiment was also reflected by another English couple (from Malaysia). I noticed it the first time I entered the door but I was too polite to say anything. It was like being invited to a function at a private club: sorry your father can't come in because ... er ... he is wearing a dhoti. (There is another story about the treatment of Indonesian writers during that festival but it is too distasteful to be repeated in print here, even for me.)

I am sure there are wonderful people behind Hong Kong and Ubud, and I have met some of them. But obviously there are some people who don't 'get it'. Hong Kong is China. Bali is Indonesia. And Mongolia is in Asia. Get use to it.

But I do like the concept of the Man Asia prize itself, though. All entries must have been previously unpublished in English. That should eliminate all that lobbying and campaigning by publishers, not to mention names of the usual suspects. Let's hope this award throws up some interesting ones.

By the way, Chinua Achebe has won the Man Booker International prize against a bunch of the usual suspects.

Full story: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main31.asp?filename=hub160607The_babel.asp