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18, 2003: Washington D.C. The producers of the PBS program "NOW with Bill Moyers" recently claimed "editing error" which resulted in novelist Bharati Mukherjee's comments appearing to link Sikhs to the 9/11 terrorists. But even with the "editing" correction, Mukherjee's intention to slander is still apparent. SMART (Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Taskforce) had been pursuing the issue with PBS since the first broadcast of the interview on May 2, 2003. The interview began with a discussion of the Air India tragedy, the subject of her 1987 novel "The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India tragedy." In the interview, Mukherjee stated that the Air India terrorists were "…people of Sikh religion, who used militant tactics, terrorist tactics, in order to establish in Punjab, the state of Punjab in India, religious theocratic state for the pure Sikhs, the re-baptized Sikhs." She also said, "Khalistanis…were able to, in temples, Gurdwaras, or later on with 9/11, I realized, in mosques, do fundraising at an enormous scale. Terrifying scale." In a letter to SMART, program host and producer Bill Moyers recognized the mistake, stating that an editing error "unfortunately created the impression that Bharati Mukherjee was implying members of the Sikh religion were involved in the terrorism of September 11th." The clarification posted on the show's web site reads: "Note: It has come to NOW's attention that an editing error in our interview with Ms. Mukherjee has resulted in some misunderstanding and confusion. A statement edited inaccurately in NOW's interview with Ms. Mukherjee implies that she believes that Sikhs were involved in fundraising activities in support of the terrorism activities of 9/11. This statement is not only untrue, but it is not one that Ms. Mukherjee made or meant to suggest. NOW regrets this error and has corrected it in the transcript below." The 9/11 reference now reads: "And they were able to, in temples, Gurdwaras - or later on with 9/11, I realized, [Muslim terrorists] in mosques - do fundraising at an enormous scale. Terrifying scale." Even with the editing error corrected, other comments on the subject suggest that Mukherjee intended to forge a relationship between the Air India tragedy and the 9/11 tragedy. For example, one of her comments were: "I sat there in 9/11 watching the two planes hit… the second plane hit the World Trade Center buildings, and I said, 'My goodness, this is on a mega-scale, a replication of what we had witnessed, experienced, discovered in the June 1985 terrorist bombing of Air India jet.'" When Moyers asked about the mentality of the Air India terrorists, Mukherjee stated that it was based on the fear of fundamentalist religious leaders losing control. "They were afraid that girls, Canadian Sikhs, American Sikhs girls in tight sweaters and boys in fast cars, would somehow not follow the rules that the religion had set, or the society…" Moyers himself added, "That is… seems to be such a parallel between what we've learned about the terrorists who… the Muslim terrorists who brought down the World Trade Center, attacked the Pentagon, that it was the modernizing of their religion that they most despised the United States for encouraging."
The initial letter from SMART to Bill Moyers was written by SMART representative Harleen Kaur who was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the mid 1990s and familiar with Mukherjee's work. In her letter, Kaur stated: "I became quite familiar with her [Mukherjee's] campaign to conflate the alleged acts of a few Sikhs with the inclinations of that group as a whole. Indeed, I, as well as countless other South Asian students at Berkeley (Sikhs as well as Hindus, Muslims, and Jains) found her incessant stereotyping appalling, and many of us often discussed with sadness her sweeping and unflattering generalizations of virtually all non-Hindu religious groups in India. A few years later, during my time at Yale Law School, Ms. Mukherjee's name again came up in conversations with peers and she was again perceived to be a poor spokesperson for South Asian issues. Ms. Mukherjee was so offensive to many South Asian students that her novels were the subject of a thesis which argued that she was plainly racist; the author (a Hindu Ph.D candidate at Berkeley) located throughout Ms. Mukherjee's novels a concerted effort to disparage non-Hindu groups in India." SMART made three requests in the original letter to Bill Moyers. First, a statement be made on the "NOW" website stating that Mukherjee is not an authority in international affairs or counterterrorism. Second, meet with SMART representatives to discuss the unsubstantiated allegations made about Sikhs. And third, invite a SMART representative on the show to discuss the Air India bombing and the 9/11 backlash. Although Moyers responded only to the first request, Manjit Singh of SMART says that they are encouraged and that they will continue to push for a Sikh speaker on the program to further clarify the public record. SMART has sent a follow-up letter to Bill Moyers to that regard. Singh also told The Sikh Sentinel that SMART has sent a detailed lengthy rebuttal of Mukherjee's statements to her, the UC Berkeley English Department, Bill Moyers, the CEO of PBS and the local PBS station in New York where the show is produced. Click here to see transcript of the interview Copyright
©The Sikh Sentinel 2003 |
Bharati
Mukherjee was born in India in 1940. She received a B.A. from the University
of Calcutta in 1959 and an M.A. in English and Ancient Indian Culture
from the University of Baroda in 1961. Mukherjee went on to earn an MFA
and a PhD in English and comparative literature from the University of
Iowa. In 1989, Mukherjee joined the University of California at Berkeley,
where she continues today as a professor of English.