PEN International President Jennifer Clement's Opening Speech at 84th PEN International Congress
PEN Congress Pune, India
It’s very special to be in a country with a grand literary tradition and one that has contributed prodigious scientific knowledge to humanity. It is also an honour to be here with our PEN Membership to open a year of festivities around the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. Our 84th International congress, in honour of this great man’s life and ideas, is devoted to the theme Experiments with Truth: Freedom, Truth and Diversity.
PEN International was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere, emphasise the role of literature in developing mutual understanding and world culture, fight for freedom of expression and act as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes, as with Gandhi, killed for their views. And our PEN Charter was developed to remind all our members that we each have personal responsibility to resist all hatreds and counter discriminatory narratives, injustice and the censorship of government critics.
As the first woman President one of my missions has been to help women writers and also explore how violence against women creates censorship. In the immeasurable variety for kinds of violence – from sex-selective abortion to stolen girls who are sold and trafficked to female students at universities who are rated and slut-shamed on social media – one common result is to disappear and silence the voices of women.
In thinking about women, and because we are in India, I must address the fact that the India’s government’s annual economic survey, which was released January 30th, at the beginning of this year, claims that more than 63 million women are “missing” across India and more than 21 million are unwanted by their families. “The challenge of gender is long-standing, probably going back millennia,” wrote the report’s author, chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, noting that India must “confront the societal preference for boys”.
I feel the deepest sorrow at the loss of these Indian girls’ voices, stories, their lives. Therefore, it is so meaningful to also celebrate Kasturba’s life today. As Gandhi’s wife, she was instrumental in helping him to reach his views on nonviolent resistance and he acknowledged his debt to her.
In closing, as we are people who honour the word and believe in literature, knowledge and truth, and, above all, as we are in India, I’d like to remember the ancient and wise words of the beautiful Mahabharata, India’s great epic poem, which says:
As the full moon by its mild light expands the buds of the lotus, so this Purana (story, epic), by exposing the light of the Sruti (scriptures) has expanded the human Intellect. By the lamp of history, which destroys the darkness of ignorance, the whole mansion of nature is properly and completely illuminated.
Mahabharata 1.1
Thank you.