“Kanu Sanyal is dead…one less headache for India.” A blogger, who should at best remain unnamed for his or her irreverence to history, wrote on the day the last surviving member of the naxalite trio of Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal, died.
All the three died in penury. Majumdar in penury of thought, Sanyal in penury of conviction and Santhal in penury of action. That should sum up the exercise in gun-class communism in India, now in the throes of capitalism. Or,should it?
It was amusing to read the reviews, analyses and obituaries post-Sanyal’s death. It was as if Naksal Bari (that’s how it is still spelt in the local district gazette) was an error of youth fondly remembered in old age; much akin to the trespasses indulged during the college years and hilariously recalled in later reunions.
Some reviews treated Naksal Bari as merely a symbol of in-fighting between the extreme and moderate communist groups in Bengal. Some others, understandably academics, saw it as a logical successor to the Tebagha and Andhra movements of the 1940s. Some international floaters argued that it was the outcome of the vascillation of the Indian communists between the expansionist Chinese and the revisionist Russians (as the two called each other in the 1960s). But nobody saw it as a live symbol of what is still happening in India: the continuing stamping out of the poor by first the zamindars, then the forward castes and now, the capitalist middle class.
Within the communist system, the traditionalists – CPI and CPM – have always arrogated to themselves the right to rule the poor and nurture them as vote banks, copying the Congress, and saw the ‘naxalites’ as an aberration to be dealt with sternly if their interests – the poor – were interfered with. The late Jyoti Basu, who had no problem in forming Bengal’s first non-Congress coalition with a leader of a rightist Bangla Party as chief minister, equally had no problem in dealing death blows on the Majumdar-Sanyal-Santhal trio (a journalist even called them a ‘triad’, a term usually used to describe criminal gangs in China and Japan!). His funeral was mammoth in scale. I wonder if Sanyal’s family could find even four pall bearers.
A political party evolves its own checks and balances, even against the wishes of its leadership. And more often than not, it is always an extremist group from within which tempers the main party. The Congress, for example, has a brutal history of ordering the killings of Indian citizens, whether in Punjab, Kashmir, Delhi, Bihar, Telangana or the North-East. It would have been more brutal but for its skirmish with the radical policies of Subhash Chandra Bose. The communists, perpetrators of the worst kind of oppression in West Bengal for decades, would have rivaled Pol Pot had they not encountered the ‘naxalite’ leaders in the 1960s; having violently suppressed the movement, the mainline communists could not have themselves nurtured extreme thoughts, if, for nothing, at least for public consumption.
We have seen our politicians shed morality as fast as the youth change their I-pods. We have seen the politicians shamelessly baiting the poor into further ignominy with their ‘India shining’ placards. We have seen the politicians turn themselves into an incestuous class blurring distinctions of ideologies and affiliations, the scent of middle class surpluses mentoring their politics.
They have a lot to learn from Naksal Bari.
Naksal Bari caught the attention of India because of the context in which it was orchestrated. The post-China war, Radio Peking’s open congratulations, and important of all, the ‘revolution’ taking place in a communist-run state. Out of this unique triangulation of contexts, hundreds of Naksal Baris have occurred in other regions in India, but never commanded such attention, prompting the movement’s proponents and opponents alike to increase the stakes. The organized gang represented by the communist-led state won the day; the unorganized ‘naxalites’, even today, trying to conserve energy to fight another day.
The ‘naxalites’, simply put, wanted to teach a powerful nexus a few lessons. The nexus was of the local ‘zamindar’ (biggest of landed gentry) naturally from a forward caste, local ‘daroga’ (sub-inspector), the local ‘sarpanch’ (head of the village) and the local money-lender. Between them they ruled the village on behalf of a similar nexus at the ‘taluk’ level, then the district level, then the state level, then the national level. The ruled were the small traders, small or landless peasants and labourers. Despite their mutual interdependence that an agricultural economy dictated, it was the sheer power wielded by the nexus that subjugated the latter as by natural right.
In 1987, when I was working for The Time of India in Bihar, I was invited by a team of CPI-ML (Liberation) to eyewitness the progress they made in emancipating the villagers from the tyranny of the nexus. I was taken by car, tempo and later on foot, in the middle of the night, to a village in Jehanabad district. It was like a Russian or Chinese commissar accompanying the media to a sanitized village. I heard the labourers say how happy they were because they were employed for at least 70 per cent of the year in contrast to a few weeks some years ago. I took some of the villagers out of the earshot of my ‘guides’. Did they get the minimum wage? No. The big farmer’s accountant took his cut, the money-lender took his interest on the labourer’s loan and finally, the local Liberation members forced a voluntary contribution to keep on helping them achieve their freedom. The women obviously were paid less then men. They told me of organized rapes of themselves or their daughters and daughters-in-law and of the futility in going to the police. The landless peasants, working as labourers, told me they were paid mostly in kind. The going rate of payment in kind had not changed sinced the 1950s in the Bengal-Bihar-Orissa regions: It a bojha (sheaf) for every 21 bojhas, for rabi harvesting; 4 kachi seers (local weight) of paddy during sowing time. In the ‘bojha’ system, the peasant can embrace as much of the standing crop a he or she can at one go: that’s his or hers to chaff the waste and eat. Even here, the farmer’s accountant ensured that the person with the shortest hands was allowed to take the ‘bojha’. My guides told me: “These things happen, but the important thing is they get the ‘bojhas’ in each and every season. We ensure this.” I tried to make them understand that the ‘bojha’ system in the region is as old as the caste system itself. It fell on deaf ears.
Are the ‘naxalites’ to blame for the constancy of payment or are they to be commended for ensuring even such payments are at least regular? In my own presence, the brother of the village’s richest farmer went by on a motorcycle. The peasants, as by custom, stood with their heads bowed even as my guides turned their heads away. As we were returning from the village, my guides led me to a tea shop. I gathered it was owned by the brother-in-law of the local sub-inspector. Apparently, my guides and the policeman were not only of the same caste, but the same ‘biradari’ (community) as well. So much for class-less consciousness. Strange but true, in the 1989 parliamentary elections, when I was touring the Bhojpur area – which was to return India’s first naxalite as a parliamentarian – I came across a couple of my former guides sitting in a brand new campaign jeep and smoking filtered cigarettes and wearing North Star keds.
The problem with ‘naxalism’ was and is the theoretical framework not matching the reality on the ground. What may have worked (?) in Russia or China after first forcing the different peoples to become one uniform mass with uniform thoughts, could not have worked in alien culture like India’s where all the parties – the oppressor, the oppressed and the reformer – shared the same diverse culture and could not exist outside it. “In communist Russia even the most minor of state officials is more powerful than the biggest minister,” the late Vinod Mishra, the Liberation leader of Bihar, once acknowledged to me when I went to meet him in Dhanbad after his late marriage even as his armed, underground outfit was falling apart around him after the Liberation’s decision to take part in parliamentary politics.
It is the socio-cultural dynamics and politics of India – the only Indian characteristic that ironically bridges the rich-poor gap in the country – that is least understood both by the ‘naxalites’ and the officialdom of the state. There are a few who realize that the manner of tackling ‘naxalism’ is not by treating it as a criminal matter to be dealt with by the police. But either they choose to remain silent or are silenced.
Throughout my tenure of five years in Bihar, I tried to follow and understand the ‘naxalite’ movement in the state which began when a lower caste school teacher, Jagdish Mahto, was beaten up by the goons of a forward caste candidate in the 1967 general elections in Ekwari village in Bhojpur district. The incident opened Mahto’s eyes to the oppression around him and Jagdish ‘Master’ was born, who did not shy away from organizing the opporessed into a force, trying to end their subjugation even through violence. For the ‘naxalites’ in retreat from Bengal, this was a God (?) send. His wife, Kamaleswari Devi, told me years after his death: “Yes, he became popular. I am proud of him. But the reality is, nothing has changed.” There are some sub-altern historians in Bihar who shy away from seeing ‘Master’ as a naxalite and instead compare him with what are called social brigans (a la Robin Hood) like Nakshatra Malakar, or the many Yadavs from the ‘diara (riverbank, swampy land) areas of Munger and Patna districts and Sasaram. Perhaps it serves their purpose in dishing out a simple social history of oppression without complicating it by introducing the element of ‘naxalism’.
By mid-1988, the Liberation group of CPI-ML was in the throes of a major argument over the continuance of underground armed struggle in Bihar. They were neither moving forward nor going backward. A revisionist group took things in its hand and started a campaign for the party to come overground. I was the only journalist to have written in detail about this exercise, correctly prophesying (on the basis of some truthful admissions from the concerned horses’ mouths) that the party would enter the political fray in 1989. There were many reactions to my article, one of them a sweet telephone call in my office from someone who introduced himself: “I am Kanu Sanyal, speaking. I am in Dhanbad. I read your report. Let us meet sometime.” The meeting happened after the 1989 elections and by then Vinod Mishra was barely three years away from appearing in public for the first time at a rally in Calcutta.
We talked for three or four hours, at a tea shop on Fraser Road in Patna. Sanyal had come to meet the son of a friend of his, a local journalist. Given the image I had of him as the original ‘naxalite’, I was disappointed by his low-key appearance. He was dressed in a white full shirt, blue trousers and Bata chappals and carrying a black plastic bag. He wouldn’t talk much about the Naksal Bari days, but had much to say about the futility of the entire movement in its current shape. India is too big a country to even be ruled, not to talk of staging a revolution, was the gist of his argument. He was promoting education as the only weapon to fight the factors causing oppression. “The world is changing fast. What we did in those days now looks to me as an affair of an affected youth. Guns are not the solution. Only when the poor are aware of their rights can they do something about it.” And on, he went. His utter dislike of the traditional communists was, of course, apparent as most of his analogies were situated in West Bengal or Tripura.
Did he mean to say that the concept of Indian ‘naxalism’ was a blunder, I asked him. He gave me a serious look. I still remember his words which are appearing in print for the first time here and I quote from a distant memory: “You cannot turn back on Naksal Bari. Or the off-shoots of that movement, however lumpenised they may be today. They have created a stir in the hearts of the poor who now realize that they have not been born to be slaves. In time, more and more of them will realize this. And then a change will come.”
Was Naksal Bari then a catalyst for future change? Don’t try to deconstruct the past, he waved a finger at me. As I shook hands with him, Sanyal gave me a toothy smile and patting my back said: “If you can read Bangla, look up a novel called Mahakaler Rather Ghora by Samaresh Babu. It is about my friend, Jangal Santhal, the action man. I was only an organizer and Charu was the ideas man, but Santhal…..”
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
MULAYAM SINGH YADAV: WRESTLING WITH WOMEN’S WORTH
“Vartmaan swaroop men mahila aarakshan vidheyak pass hua tho sansad men udyogpatiyon evam adhikariyon ki aisi-aisi ladkiyaan aa jayengi jinhe dekhkar ladke peeche se seeti bajayenge.”
(If the Women’s Reservation Bill is passed in its present form, then such daughters of industrialists and officials will enter Parliament who would invite catcalls and whistles from the boys.)
Thus spake Mulayam Singh Yadav, one of India’s senior, surviving socialist leaders and former defence minister of India and former chief minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Yadav made this comment while unveiling the statue of India’s biggest socialist ever, the late Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, at the eponymous hospital in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.
The statement reflects the level of thinking of this insolent male chauvinist who would use or throw women for his political ends without any compunction. He perhaps forgot in the heat of the moment that he himself has in the past encouraged daughters and wives of officers and industrialists and even Bollywood actresses, not to talk of his own daughter-in-law, to enter politics by giving tickets to them in parliamentary or assembly elections.
The statement is nothing new. His anti-women stance came to the fore even earlier too, when, on March 14, Yadav described the Women’s Reservation Bill as an “international conspiracy” to weaken democracy. How would that happen?
The IANS news agency reported: “He was of the view that 33 percent reservation for women in legislatures would finally make it a nearly all-women parliament…. ‘just imagine what would be the fate of this nation in the hands of inexperienced leadership, with both Pakistan and China sitting across our borders with their own nefarious designs’?”
“I am not opposed to reservation for women, but I am opposed to the bill in its present form,” he added, perhaps not to be seen as a misogynist. http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/politics/mulayam-fears-an-all-women-parliament_100334553.html
What is interesting is the venue – the unveiling of Dr. Lohia’s statue – Yadav used to vent his sexist bias. For his information, the web site of Dr. Lohia – whose ardent follower he claims to be – says this about the attitude of India’s pioneering socialist leader towards women:
“More than half of our population comprises women. Their condition is pathetic. Cooking food, breeding children and being a slave to her husband -this is woman's fate. A woman is not considered equal to a man, such is the blind belief sustained through the ages. The law has guaranteed equality to women, but that is only on paper. Equality has not been practiced. Hence jobs must be reserved for women in all walks of life. They must be freed from the tyranny of homework. The latent talent of women should be brought to the limelight. Society does not progress as long as women remain oppressed. Society must be rid of deep-rooted beliefs and old practices. Beginning with women in villages every woman should be given justice. Lohia strove for this cause. According to him the emancipation of women was the foundation of social revolution; without this there can be no prosperity.”http://www.drlohiacentenary.org/index_more.html
(If the Women’s Reservation Bill is passed in its present form, then such daughters of industrialists and officials will enter Parliament who would invite catcalls and whistles from the boys.)
Thus spake Mulayam Singh Yadav, one of India’s senior, surviving socialist leaders and former defence minister of India and former chief minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Yadav made this comment while unveiling the statue of India’s biggest socialist ever, the late Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, at the eponymous hospital in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.
The statement reflects the level of thinking of this insolent male chauvinist who would use or throw women for his political ends without any compunction. He perhaps forgot in the heat of the moment that he himself has in the past encouraged daughters and wives of officers and industrialists and even Bollywood actresses, not to talk of his own daughter-in-law, to enter politics by giving tickets to them in parliamentary or assembly elections.
The statement is nothing new. His anti-women stance came to the fore even earlier too, when, on March 14, Yadav described the Women’s Reservation Bill as an “international conspiracy” to weaken democracy. How would that happen?
The IANS news agency reported: “He was of the view that 33 percent reservation for women in legislatures would finally make it a nearly all-women parliament…. ‘just imagine what would be the fate of this nation in the hands of inexperienced leadership, with both Pakistan and China sitting across our borders with their own nefarious designs’?”
“I am not opposed to reservation for women, but I am opposed to the bill in its present form,” he added, perhaps not to be seen as a misogynist. http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/politics/mulayam-fears-an-all-women-parliament_100334553.html
What is interesting is the venue – the unveiling of Dr. Lohia’s statue – Yadav used to vent his sexist bias. For his information, the web site of Dr. Lohia – whose ardent follower he claims to be – says this about the attitude of India’s pioneering socialist leader towards women:
“More than half of our population comprises women. Their condition is pathetic. Cooking food, breeding children and being a slave to her husband -this is woman's fate. A woman is not considered equal to a man, such is the blind belief sustained through the ages. The law has guaranteed equality to women, but that is only on paper. Equality has not been practiced. Hence jobs must be reserved for women in all walks of life. They must be freed from the tyranny of homework. The latent talent of women should be brought to the limelight. Society does not progress as long as women remain oppressed. Society must be rid of deep-rooted beliefs and old practices. Beginning with women in villages every woman should be given justice. Lohia strove for this cause. According to him the emancipation of women was the foundation of social revolution; without this there can be no prosperity.”http://www.drlohiacentenary.org/index_more.html
Monday, February 15, 2010
Shah Rukh's Khan
I saw ‘My Name Is Khan’ on the second day of its release in Leicester, where I now reside. I wasn’t alone, but with my wife and daughter. It was the 1130pm show and the cinema hall was nearly full. I noticed lots of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indian Muslims. The Leicester brigade of Ugandan Gujaratis and Singh Sahebs from both sides of the Punjab made up the rest.
The same evening, much of the Asian diaspora was watching the film in several cities in the UK, including Bristol, Manchester, London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bardford, etc. Unlike ever in the past, this film was released in each and every, repeat, each and every cinema house of the small and big towns in the UK. Same story in the US and a host of other countries, I gathered later.
My wife told me Shah Rukh Khan had acted very well. The best, she gushed. I generally don’t disagree with my wife, knowing well how much she adores him. But I said to myself, perhaps SRK himself was diffident about his acting, given the kind of publicity stunts he devised at least two months before the film’s release. My views of the devalued Indian broadcast media are well-known among my friends, but I must say these channels do rise to occasions, such as this, to delve into greater depths of pitiable marketing. The channels breathed, lived, ate, what not, SRK. And all of them were exclusive coverage. NDTV repeated the telecast of Barkha Dutt’s exclusive with SRK almost every hour on the eve of the film’s release. I pitied Raj Kapoor and Nargis and Dilip Kumar, even Keshto Mukherji, for never having lived in the age of global live communications. Who knows, Sri 420 would have been the national film of Burkina Faso or Mother India would have been translated into Swahili.
Lest my dislike for SRK become apparent, here are some random thoughts about the film which manufactured controversy (Chomsky listening?) and made a certain cartoonist-turned-petty-politician see red. It is my belief that all the unintended comments of SRK always had an intended target.
The credit goes to him for raking up the Hindu-Muslim controversy that preceded the film’s release. What the stupid chiefs of the various Senas did was to merely react, along predictable lines. But SRK is clever. He was not bothered about a pre-reaction in India alone. He wanted it wherever the Asian diaspora lives, particularly abroad. Remember, the first time anyone heard of the film was when there was a news report that SRK had been subjected to a body search at an airport in the US because his name was…well….Khan!
The first thought that came to my mind was about the war for superiority among religions. Religions cannot co-exist, because their differences are the very basis for their existence. By the same logic, followers of religions cannot co-exist either. But then we human beings are said to be different from animals because we can reason. And this reasoning has left us with certain rules that allow religionists co-exist if they follow certain rules. That’s when politics enters the fray. The father of the Indian Constitution, Dr. Ambedkar – who laid down some of these rules -- may have had his reasons to embrace Buddhism, but that very act was a political one, making it clear that Hinduism practised untouchability and, therefore, Buddhism was superior. This was less than a century ago. The Hinduism-Islam feud goes back centuries. So the case with Islam and Christianity, and so on.
In this backdrop, when the preamble of the Indian Constitution says that India is a ‘secular’ republic, it is only attesting the fact that people of this country practice several religions, and not necessarily that people of this country practice several religions peacefully. There is no peace in conflict. And if there were no conflict, there wouldn’t be so many religions in the first place.
Religious co-existence, to my mind, is a political act, crafted carefully to nurture certain assumptions that characterise a nation or a state. It is not a social tool. Just like poverty. Will you give away part of your wealth to a beggar of your own volition? No. You need to be taxed to take that money away from you to redistribute. Like female infanticide. You need laws to stop you from killing your girl child. Like caste. You need laws to make you co-exist with a person of another caste.
So is the case with religion. Ambedkar was one example. Yesudas is another. Shouldn’t the high priests of Guruvayoor be hanged in public because they have committed the same crime as those who bought the Babri Masjid down? Or, at the very least, shouldn’t they be banned from hearing songs in praise of Lord Krishna sung by Yesudas? Why was Yesudas, a Christian, allowed to sing Hindu songs in the first place? How dare Valmeeki, a lower caste, write the Ramayana? How could we tolerate an Austrian nun in Calcutta? Would there have been four battles of Panipat in all if Akbar had not married Jodha?
See, how complicated this damn talk about religion is? Luckily we have politics which saves us from ourselves and religions, which touts secularism in the face of fundamentalism, nation-building in the face of a violent, religious migration, reservation in the face of caste conflict. Politics is omni-potent. It gives birth to a conflict, it nurtures it, it destroys it. Politics itself is no constant, evolving over time. Like in the present, ‘My Name Is Khan’.
Two things go in his favour, clearly. Bollywood has now reached a stage where a Muslim character in a film need not be a lackey of a Hindu hero and keep proving his loyalty to his community and his country, in that order. Mr. Khan, to that extent, now shares the celluloid pedestal with Mr. Bharat insofar as cinematic reflection of Indian politics is concerned. To that extent, Mr. Khan is the ideal cenotaph for Tamas and Garam Hawa.
Secondly, Mr. Khan introspects about the ills of the misguided among his fellow religionists – perhaps the first of its kind in Indian cinema on Muslim identity – and that give him a place in the hall of flame inhabited by the Meerabais and Munnabhais.
I want to ask SRK why he made the film, other than to make more money. Did he have a political message to convey other than that has been conveying through television and Twitter throughout the pre-release period? Did he think the Indian Muslims would react to the film in the same manner as Muslims in other parts of the world? Perhaps the 9/11 backdrop was created to make the film contemporaneous to Muslims across the globe? I don’t know if SRK had a message to convey, because he has not said so other than mouthing secularist phrases as explanations.
Given the political campaign that preceded the film’s release, it has to have a message. But what? I tried watching the film seriously for clues. For instance, Khan’s failure to meet President Bush, Khan’s natural affinity for Afro-Americans, his (un)intentional travels through the southern states like Arizona and Georgia, his insistence on being called Khan even by his wife instead of by his first name, Rizvan, the absence of the ubiquitous mark on the forehead of every practising Muslim (as shown without fail in Indian films!). But most important of all, the character of Khan and his message, ‘I am Khan, but I am not a terrorist’, preferring to hide himself inside the body of an autistic person who with his mannerisms disarms any overt criticism of what Khan has to say.
In the end, is it a film to educate people about Asperger’s Syndrome (because the titles carry an explanation about it), or how religion can disharmonise relations between inter-religious couples, or about the western mistrust of the followers of Islam, or of the true Islam that preaches peace as much as any other religion? I know one thing. There’s nothing apolitical about it.
SRK should know. He owes the Indian television audiences at least that much for overwhelming us with his presence all these months. As the film ended, I didn’t know who stood tall. SRK or Khan?
Otherwise, it’s just another Bollywood film.
The same evening, much of the Asian diaspora was watching the film in several cities in the UK, including Bristol, Manchester, London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bardford, etc. Unlike ever in the past, this film was released in each and every, repeat, each and every cinema house of the small and big towns in the UK. Same story in the US and a host of other countries, I gathered later.
My wife told me Shah Rukh Khan had acted very well. The best, she gushed. I generally don’t disagree with my wife, knowing well how much she adores him. But I said to myself, perhaps SRK himself was diffident about his acting, given the kind of publicity stunts he devised at least two months before the film’s release. My views of the devalued Indian broadcast media are well-known among my friends, but I must say these channels do rise to occasions, such as this, to delve into greater depths of pitiable marketing. The channels breathed, lived, ate, what not, SRK. And all of them were exclusive coverage. NDTV repeated the telecast of Barkha Dutt’s exclusive with SRK almost every hour on the eve of the film’s release. I pitied Raj Kapoor and Nargis and Dilip Kumar, even Keshto Mukherji, for never having lived in the age of global live communications. Who knows, Sri 420 would have been the national film of Burkina Faso or Mother India would have been translated into Swahili.
Lest my dislike for SRK become apparent, here are some random thoughts about the film which manufactured controversy (Chomsky listening?) and made a certain cartoonist-turned-petty-politician see red. It is my belief that all the unintended comments of SRK always had an intended target.
The credit goes to him for raking up the Hindu-Muslim controversy that preceded the film’s release. What the stupid chiefs of the various Senas did was to merely react, along predictable lines. But SRK is clever. He was not bothered about a pre-reaction in India alone. He wanted it wherever the Asian diaspora lives, particularly abroad. Remember, the first time anyone heard of the film was when there was a news report that SRK had been subjected to a body search at an airport in the US because his name was…well….Khan!
The first thought that came to my mind was about the war for superiority among religions. Religions cannot co-exist, because their differences are the very basis for their existence. By the same logic, followers of religions cannot co-exist either. But then we human beings are said to be different from animals because we can reason. And this reasoning has left us with certain rules that allow religionists co-exist if they follow certain rules. That’s when politics enters the fray. The father of the Indian Constitution, Dr. Ambedkar – who laid down some of these rules -- may have had his reasons to embrace Buddhism, but that very act was a political one, making it clear that Hinduism practised untouchability and, therefore, Buddhism was superior. This was less than a century ago. The Hinduism-Islam feud goes back centuries. So the case with Islam and Christianity, and so on.
In this backdrop, when the preamble of the Indian Constitution says that India is a ‘secular’ republic, it is only attesting the fact that people of this country practice several religions, and not necessarily that people of this country practice several religions peacefully. There is no peace in conflict. And if there were no conflict, there wouldn’t be so many religions in the first place.
Religious co-existence, to my mind, is a political act, crafted carefully to nurture certain assumptions that characterise a nation or a state. It is not a social tool. Just like poverty. Will you give away part of your wealth to a beggar of your own volition? No. You need to be taxed to take that money away from you to redistribute. Like female infanticide. You need laws to stop you from killing your girl child. Like caste. You need laws to make you co-exist with a person of another caste.
So is the case with religion. Ambedkar was one example. Yesudas is another. Shouldn’t the high priests of Guruvayoor be hanged in public because they have committed the same crime as those who bought the Babri Masjid down? Or, at the very least, shouldn’t they be banned from hearing songs in praise of Lord Krishna sung by Yesudas? Why was Yesudas, a Christian, allowed to sing Hindu songs in the first place? How dare Valmeeki, a lower caste, write the Ramayana? How could we tolerate an Austrian nun in Calcutta? Would there have been four battles of Panipat in all if Akbar had not married Jodha?
See, how complicated this damn talk about religion is? Luckily we have politics which saves us from ourselves and religions, which touts secularism in the face of fundamentalism, nation-building in the face of a violent, religious migration, reservation in the face of caste conflict. Politics is omni-potent. It gives birth to a conflict, it nurtures it, it destroys it. Politics itself is no constant, evolving over time. Like in the present, ‘My Name Is Khan’.
Two things go in his favour, clearly. Bollywood has now reached a stage where a Muslim character in a film need not be a lackey of a Hindu hero and keep proving his loyalty to his community and his country, in that order. Mr. Khan, to that extent, now shares the celluloid pedestal with Mr. Bharat insofar as cinematic reflection of Indian politics is concerned. To that extent, Mr. Khan is the ideal cenotaph for Tamas and Garam Hawa.
Secondly, Mr. Khan introspects about the ills of the misguided among his fellow religionists – perhaps the first of its kind in Indian cinema on Muslim identity – and that give him a place in the hall of flame inhabited by the Meerabais and Munnabhais.
I want to ask SRK why he made the film, other than to make more money. Did he have a political message to convey other than that has been conveying through television and Twitter throughout the pre-release period? Did he think the Indian Muslims would react to the film in the same manner as Muslims in other parts of the world? Perhaps the 9/11 backdrop was created to make the film contemporaneous to Muslims across the globe? I don’t know if SRK had a message to convey, because he has not said so other than mouthing secularist phrases as explanations.
Given the political campaign that preceded the film’s release, it has to have a message. But what? I tried watching the film seriously for clues. For instance, Khan’s failure to meet President Bush, Khan’s natural affinity for Afro-Americans, his (un)intentional travels through the southern states like Arizona and Georgia, his insistence on being called Khan even by his wife instead of by his first name, Rizvan, the absence of the ubiquitous mark on the forehead of every practising Muslim (as shown without fail in Indian films!). But most important of all, the character of Khan and his message, ‘I am Khan, but I am not a terrorist’, preferring to hide himself inside the body of an autistic person who with his mannerisms disarms any overt criticism of what Khan has to say.
In the end, is it a film to educate people about Asperger’s Syndrome (because the titles carry an explanation about it), or how religion can disharmonise relations between inter-religious couples, or about the western mistrust of the followers of Islam, or of the true Islam that preaches peace as much as any other religion? I know one thing. There’s nothing apolitical about it.
SRK should know. He owes the Indian television audiences at least that much for overwhelming us with his presence all these months. As the film ended, I didn’t know who stood tall. SRK or Khan?
Otherwise, it’s just another Bollywood film.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Keralites alone sex-starved? Not all Indians?
Communist muffs on a war path against sex is akin to Shiv Sena hoodlums running amok on Valentine’s day. Both are same sides – ideologically and politically -- of the same coin. But that is a different topic.
What is my concern is a person like Paul Zachariah’s description of the current Mallu polity as ‘sex-starved’. But when was Kerala sex-sated, ever? Or, for that matter, India?
Music director Vinu Thomas says in an interview: “When people elsewhere think of Kerala, they invariably speak about adult films. I tell you the real reason behind this. Ours is a small state, with limited income. The film industry too is weak, but highly talented. Adult movies are a periodic development based on the available resources and financial viability. Call it easy money making, assured returns or like that.”
The first adult rated Mallu film was Kalayan Rathriyil, directed by IV Sasi. The second adult film, Avalude Ravukal, is also directed by him. That was in the 1960s. In the late 1970s, came Sathrathil Oru Ratri, directed by Sankaran Nair. This film became extremely popular at that time and was shown in all the ‘adult’ movie halls of every major town and city in India. I saw this film in the Light House theatre in Hyderabad in 1978. Light House was considered a ‘bad’ and ‘dirty’ theatre by my parents, like all parents in the country. Anyway, coming to the point, during what is called the golden period of Mallu cinema – late 1970s to early 1990s – there were hardly any ‘dirty’ movies out of Kerala. But the phenomenon returned in the form of ‘Shakeela films’ after the turn of the century. The highs and lows of the adult film history run parallel to the fate of the film industry there: ‘dirty’ films being dished out whenever the mainstream cinema started making flops.
Sex has no political bedfellow. Sex sells. That’s all.
The issue today is not whether moral policing is good or bad. The issue is that today, sex is out of the closet, not just in the slums and chawls where it has always been in the open, but in the moralistic, casteist, orthodox, middle class Indian homes where the ‘first night’ meant, till recently, sex without frills or foreplay, a ritual to be completed with the lights out.
My daughter, aged a half over 7, is going to be taught sex education in her school next year. She is in the UK, but there are many schools in India where sex education is part of the curriculum. Thanks to the internet, today’s children know more about sex at their age than those of previous generations.
The main issue is, as Shyam Benegal once said, humans have an interest in different kinds of prurient pleasures and as individuals, they have to find a way to deal with it.
I remember meeting the late Vijay Anand in 2001 or 2002 when he censor board chief. At that time he was considering a request from the Kerala regional board of certification for screening pornographic films in select theatres in an attempt to 'save' mainstream cinema in the state. Anand was very much in its favour, and told me he preferred certifying adult films as ‘x-rated’ and allowing their legal screening in separate theatres than to use scissors (Of course, he exited soon after and was replaced by a BJP footnote called Arvind Trivedi whose idea of permissive sex on film never went beyond fleeting kisses.)
Anand realized that in several parts of the country, some producers shoot two versions of a film, one with openly sexual scenes and another that is more regular and acceptable to the censor board. Commonly in small cinemas in satellite towns across the country, theatre owners interpolate 'sexually explicit' scenes into films certified for public viewing, he told me. He even had figures with him of police raids on internet cafes allowing customers to log on to adult web sites. He wanted this sex-with-lights-off attitudes to end by not making sex a moral issue.
Is the subject of sex, then, about permissiveness or liberalism? One thing is sure: it certainly is not about calling all Mallus sex-starved.
What is my concern is a person like Paul Zachariah’s description of the current Mallu polity as ‘sex-starved’. But when was Kerala sex-sated, ever? Or, for that matter, India?
Music director Vinu Thomas says in an interview: “When people elsewhere think of Kerala, they invariably speak about adult films. I tell you the real reason behind this. Ours is a small state, with limited income. The film industry too is weak, but highly talented. Adult movies are a periodic development based on the available resources and financial viability. Call it easy money making, assured returns or like that.”
The first adult rated Mallu film was Kalayan Rathriyil, directed by IV Sasi. The second adult film, Avalude Ravukal, is also directed by him. That was in the 1960s. In the late 1970s, came Sathrathil Oru Ratri, directed by Sankaran Nair. This film became extremely popular at that time and was shown in all the ‘adult’ movie halls of every major town and city in India. I saw this film in the Light House theatre in Hyderabad in 1978. Light House was considered a ‘bad’ and ‘dirty’ theatre by my parents, like all parents in the country. Anyway, coming to the point, during what is called the golden period of Mallu cinema – late 1970s to early 1990s – there were hardly any ‘dirty’ movies out of Kerala. But the phenomenon returned in the form of ‘Shakeela films’ after the turn of the century. The highs and lows of the adult film history run parallel to the fate of the film industry there: ‘dirty’ films being dished out whenever the mainstream cinema started making flops.
Sex has no political bedfellow. Sex sells. That’s all.
The issue today is not whether moral policing is good or bad. The issue is that today, sex is out of the closet, not just in the slums and chawls where it has always been in the open, but in the moralistic, casteist, orthodox, middle class Indian homes where the ‘first night’ meant, till recently, sex without frills or foreplay, a ritual to be completed with the lights out.
My daughter, aged a half over 7, is going to be taught sex education in her school next year. She is in the UK, but there are many schools in India where sex education is part of the curriculum. Thanks to the internet, today’s children know more about sex at their age than those of previous generations.
The main issue is, as Shyam Benegal once said, humans have an interest in different kinds of prurient pleasures and as individuals, they have to find a way to deal with it.
I remember meeting the late Vijay Anand in 2001 or 2002 when he censor board chief. At that time he was considering a request from the Kerala regional board of certification for screening pornographic films in select theatres in an attempt to 'save' mainstream cinema in the state. Anand was very much in its favour, and told me he preferred certifying adult films as ‘x-rated’ and allowing their legal screening in separate theatres than to use scissors (Of course, he exited soon after and was replaced by a BJP footnote called Arvind Trivedi whose idea of permissive sex on film never went beyond fleeting kisses.)
Anand realized that in several parts of the country, some producers shoot two versions of a film, one with openly sexual scenes and another that is more regular and acceptable to the censor board. Commonly in small cinemas in satellite towns across the country, theatre owners interpolate 'sexually explicit' scenes into films certified for public viewing, he told me. He even had figures with him of police raids on internet cafes allowing customers to log on to adult web sites. He wanted this sex-with-lights-off attitudes to end by not making sex a moral issue.
Is the subject of sex, then, about permissiveness or liberalism? One thing is sure: it certainly is not about calling all Mallus sex-starved.
India a dream still, at 60
I was watching a white man's ode to India -- Slumdog Millionaire -- on, where else (?), channel 135 of Sky in the UK. And then I came across your piece. A brown man's ode to the original Slumdog.
Nehru was the Danny Boyle of his day. He discovered India, but ruled an imaginary India. He preferred the HIndu civil code instead of the uniform civil code; failed to uinderstand the need for a population policy; did not realise that a mixed-economy model also needed socio-economic infrastructure and building educational facilities in the rural areas; he was in a hurry to create states on a linguistic basis, not realising the impact of imposing Hindi as the official language everywhere; he was over-dependent on the public sector which encouraged bureaucratisation, institutionalised corruption and turned trade unionism into rowdyism.
Ambedkar, the gentleman you write about in the piece, said: “If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile and full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts.”
Sixty years later, it seems an ideal Indian society is tne one only imagined. Like Nehru's India or Boyle's Dharavi. Because the real India is cruel.
Around 350 million – as much India’s wealthy middle class, are illiterate. A similar number of people are below the poverty line. Half of them lack access to drinking water. Half the country’s billion-odd population lacks basic sanitation facilities. Half of India’s children cannot get basic nutrition. Nearly three-fourths of rural India cannot access timely medical facilities and effective medication. ... See More
The girl child continues to be a stigma. Caste inequalities hamper economic and social progress. Linguistic and regional divides boo the concept of India’s inherent strength; it’s so-called nity in diversity. Save the top institutions, education standards are falling as it stands reduced to a mere profit-making venture. Corruption stands tall as ever, as the high priest of development; religious extremism, the high priestess of culture.
Politics in India is all about unbridled freedom for pelf and power to dissent and destroy. The ends justify the means for politicians or police, thieves or armed revolutionaries. Diversity in India can now be explained as people straight-jacketed in vote banks of caste, community, religion, language or region. Indians are bereft of national idols or ideals.
Of course, India rises as one voice when Sachin Tendulkar falls to a wrong decision or Amitabh Bachchan is admitted to a hospital or an Indian student is man-handled in Australia. India also rises as one voice when a Kargil happens or a Mumbai explodes in terror. That's what our news channels show and that's what we, who have no time to see the real India save a couple of minutes to dish out an article on it, prefer to watch.
Indians do believe in a vague sense of oneness. They are as yet unclear what this oneness is, but for them the truth lies somewhere between Tendulkar’s bat and Siachen’s last military outpost, between novel scammer Harshad Mehta and nobel winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, between Do Bigha Zameen and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, between Tata’s |Jaguar and A. R. Rehman’s Jai Ho.
What awakens us Indians to reality is what comes off as reality in celluloid.
Nehru was the Danny Boyle of his day. He discovered India, but ruled an imaginary India. He preferred the HIndu civil code instead of the uniform civil code; failed to uinderstand the need for a population policy; did not realise that a mixed-economy model also needed socio-economic infrastructure and building educational facilities in the rural areas; he was in a hurry to create states on a linguistic basis, not realising the impact of imposing Hindi as the official language everywhere; he was over-dependent on the public sector which encouraged bureaucratisation, institutionalised corruption and turned trade unionism into rowdyism.
Ambedkar, the gentleman you write about in the piece, said: “If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile and full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts.”
Sixty years later, it seems an ideal Indian society is tne one only imagined. Like Nehru's India or Boyle's Dharavi. Because the real India is cruel.
Around 350 million – as much India’s wealthy middle class, are illiterate. A similar number of people are below the poverty line. Half of them lack access to drinking water. Half the country’s billion-odd population lacks basic sanitation facilities. Half of India’s children cannot get basic nutrition. Nearly three-fourths of rural India cannot access timely medical facilities and effective medication. ... See More
The girl child continues to be a stigma. Caste inequalities hamper economic and social progress. Linguistic and regional divides boo the concept of India’s inherent strength; it’s so-called nity in diversity. Save the top institutions, education standards are falling as it stands reduced to a mere profit-making venture. Corruption stands tall as ever, as the high priest of development; religious extremism, the high priestess of culture.
Politics in India is all about unbridled freedom for pelf and power to dissent and destroy. The ends justify the means for politicians or police, thieves or armed revolutionaries. Diversity in India can now be explained as people straight-jacketed in vote banks of caste, community, religion, language or region. Indians are bereft of national idols or ideals.
Of course, India rises as one voice when Sachin Tendulkar falls to a wrong decision or Amitabh Bachchan is admitted to a hospital or an Indian student is man-handled in Australia. India also rises as one voice when a Kargil happens or a Mumbai explodes in terror. That's what our news channels show and that's what we, who have no time to see the real India save a couple of minutes to dish out an article on it, prefer to watch.
Indians do believe in a vague sense of oneness. They are as yet unclear what this oneness is, but for them the truth lies somewhere between Tendulkar’s bat and Siachen’s last military outpost, between novel scammer Harshad Mehta and nobel winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, between Do Bigha Zameen and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, between Tata’s |Jaguar and A. R. Rehman’s Jai Ho.
What awakens us Indians to reality is what comes off as reality in celluloid.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Marathi Sachin
There's an ageing lunatic in Bombay (I insist on calling the city the way I choose to) and two mad cousins. They are the dogs of regionalist and linguistic wars. They have written their personal Mein Kampfs on how to come to power. These morons are of the view that only people who speak Marathi and are Marathi should live in Maharashtra. But for a small army of trash, the rest of the state does not support them. They use different weapons, from pamphlets to newspapers, to lathis and swords, to achieve their end. .
There's none they haven't targetted. I suppose it is a dubious distinction for anyone of importance not to be in their list of punishables. Sachin Tendulkar was one such, till recently. Now he has lost that distinction too.
The ageing lunatic is angry with Sachin because he said he is an Indian, while being a Maharashtrian. Because he said language, like caste and creed, do not bar any Indian from any place in India his or her home. That's blashphemous, the lunatic fringe concluded. So, they targetted the batsman.
The ageing lunatic wrote that Sachin has done nothing for Maharashtra through cricket. Do they expect him to stop playing for India until all the final eleven are from the same state? Do they expect the cricket team to speak in Marathi while in Maharashtra?
Someone was heard saying: The lunatics should be arrested. The question is: Why havent' they been arrested already?
There's none they haven't targetted. I suppose it is a dubious distinction for anyone of importance not to be in their list of punishables. Sachin Tendulkar was one such, till recently. Now he has lost that distinction too.
The ageing lunatic is angry with Sachin because he said he is an Indian, while being a Maharashtrian. Because he said language, like caste and creed, do not bar any Indian from any place in India his or her home. That's blashphemous, the lunatic fringe concluded. So, they targetted the batsman.
The ageing lunatic wrote that Sachin has done nothing for Maharashtra through cricket. Do they expect him to stop playing for India until all the final eleven are from the same state? Do they expect the cricket team to speak in Marathi while in Maharashtra?
Someone was heard saying: The lunatics should be arrested. The question is: Why havent' they been arrested already?
Living with Liberhan
The family was discussing the Liberhan Commission report on November 23, 2009. Apparently an Indian newspaper got hold of sections of the report. An Indian news channel followed it up with studio discussions throughout the day. The last one was the family discussion. This is a highily knit family. You can see them, or a combination of them, on this channel almost every day. It is more of a Mutual Admiration Society of editors, bureaucrats and politicians, present and past. They debate and argue on things national and societal and political, for appearances sake. Because the family comes first. So what if in the process they are evidence of the nexus between the Indian media and politics. They arrogate to themselves the right to think on behalf of India and Indians. They are arrogant enough to pass off heresays as facts. They are the self-styled arbiters of the Indian mind. They play out a P3 game show every evening.
On November 23 the family was discussing the Liberhan Leak and its implications. After a marathon session, they labelled the report as a joke, the findings as dumb and concluded it was not worth the paper it was written on. And they went home, happily after telling the Indian audience they could go on demolishing temples and mosques and churches and even zoos and latrines with impunity and without fear of punishment. They concluded that the Indian state was a non-governable body.
The fact they forgot to mention, intentionally, was that they being a part of that very same society and politics they were laughing at, they should be laughed at, too.
Barkha Dutt was as usual anchoring the show. Vir Sanghvi and Swapan Dasgupta were the editorial pulpits. Shekhar Gupta was not present as it was his paper, the Indian Express, which apparently printed the Liberhan Leak. The rest of the cast were the usual political suspects who are distinguishable from the channel staff because of the sheer fact that they do'nt as yet carry the channel ID.
The issue was whom to blame for the demolition of the Babri Masjid. That question was twisted a number of times until the issue was whom did Liberhan indict for the demolition. Another round of twists and it was who should pay the price for the demolition. Yet another twist turned the issue into what took Liberhan 17 years to come out with the report. And so it went on for two hours.
They managed to steer the blame away from the BJP and towards the Congress. They were merciless in attacking a person now dead: PN Narasimha Rao, who as Prime Minister in 1992, remained silent as the Masjid came down. The collective idea was to protect the current leadership of both parties, the Congress and the BJP. To make the family secular, the head of the Muslim Personal Law Board was invited to the table. To make it unbiased, a former bad boy who founded the lumpen arm of the BJP was also invited. They were the props, because the air time was entirely for the family alone.
I think most Indian journalists may have watched this show on the channel, mostly because they had nothing else to do or they couhldn't find a table at the Press Club. Most of them may have worked for, with or under the family members at least once in their careers and so, would know, if they cared to, how these members have made a volte face in these 17 years. Archives would show what they said in 1992 and what they said on November 23, 2009. Possibly, as members of the global village of India, they decided that religious quibblings did not go down well with a march towards globalisation. They were in a hurry to forget what happened in 1992. That is why the reiteration, irrespective of right, left or centre, that 17 long years have passed since the demolition. That is why the reiteration that the Liberhan report is a sham and cannot lead to any judicial conviction for the accused. Let sleeping karsewaks lie. That's their motto.
What a shame to call them journalists or politicians or bureaucrats.
On November 23 the family was discussing the Liberhan Leak and its implications. After a marathon session, they labelled the report as a joke, the findings as dumb and concluded it was not worth the paper it was written on. And they went home, happily after telling the Indian audience they could go on demolishing temples and mosques and churches and even zoos and latrines with impunity and without fear of punishment. They concluded that the Indian state was a non-governable body.
The fact they forgot to mention, intentionally, was that they being a part of that very same society and politics they were laughing at, they should be laughed at, too.
Barkha Dutt was as usual anchoring the show. Vir Sanghvi and Swapan Dasgupta were the editorial pulpits. Shekhar Gupta was not present as it was his paper, the Indian Express, which apparently printed the Liberhan Leak. The rest of the cast were the usual political suspects who are distinguishable from the channel staff because of the sheer fact that they do'nt as yet carry the channel ID.
The issue was whom to blame for the demolition of the Babri Masjid. That question was twisted a number of times until the issue was whom did Liberhan indict for the demolition. Another round of twists and it was who should pay the price for the demolition. Yet another twist turned the issue into what took Liberhan 17 years to come out with the report. And so it went on for two hours.
They managed to steer the blame away from the BJP and towards the Congress. They were merciless in attacking a person now dead: PN Narasimha Rao, who as Prime Minister in 1992, remained silent as the Masjid came down. The collective idea was to protect the current leadership of both parties, the Congress and the BJP. To make the family secular, the head of the Muslim Personal Law Board was invited to the table. To make it unbiased, a former bad boy who founded the lumpen arm of the BJP was also invited. They were the props, because the air time was entirely for the family alone.
I think most Indian journalists may have watched this show on the channel, mostly because they had nothing else to do or they couhldn't find a table at the Press Club. Most of them may have worked for, with or under the family members at least once in their careers and so, would know, if they cared to, how these members have made a volte face in these 17 years. Archives would show what they said in 1992 and what they said on November 23, 2009. Possibly, as members of the global village of India, they decided that religious quibblings did not go down well with a march towards globalisation. They were in a hurry to forget what happened in 1992. That is why the reiteration, irrespective of right, left or centre, that 17 long years have passed since the demolition. That is why the reiteration that the Liberhan report is a sham and cannot lead to any judicial conviction for the accused. Let sleeping karsewaks lie. That's their motto.
What a shame to call them journalists or politicians or bureaucrats.
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