On 23rd September 2014 Maqsood Pardesi lost his life. He had gone to the National Zoological Gardens in Delhi to meet a tiger. The tiger killed him. He was 20 years old. Maqsood worked as a daily wage laborer and lived with his family under the Zakhira flyover in central Delhi. He is survived by his father Mehfuz Pardesi, his mother Ishrat, his brother Mehmood and his wife Fatima.
There are conflicting reports as to how Maqsood found himself en face a tiger. Several reports state that, despite being discouraged by a guard on two occasions, he managed to climb into the tiger’s enclosure when the guard’s attention wavered. Some reports suggest that he accidentally fell into it. The authorities have vigorously denied the possibility of accidental entry and contested the assignation of blame on the zoo, or the tiger, for Maqsood’s death. Other reports have dwelt on Maqsood having a history of mental illness. Some state that he was drunk when he entered the enclosure. Some claim that he threw stones at the tiger, lost his balance and fell. Like the dissection of Maqsood, there has been speculation about Vijay, the tiger. The zoo authorities defend against charges that Vijay is aggressive. The tiger is not at fault many say: how can it be held responsible for the death of a man who enters its enclosure? The head zoo keeper has said, “Maqsood was mentally unstable otherwise why would a sane person jump into the tiger’s enclosure.” Why indeed?
The characterization of Maqsood as either a destitute figure or a mad person or both, seems to be shared by the public at large. The tragedy of us secular moderns is that we are incapable of recognizing the appearance of majesty even when it smacks us in the face. The mere fact of “life”, and its termination, eclipses any discussion of how that life may have been lived. That Maqsood died is what matters, not what he did before that. Maqsood went to meet a tiger. If this sounds a non-sense, then the question to ask is what has occurred in our collective experience of the last two hundred years that such a statement no longer makes sense. It seems somehow “rational” that a soldier goes off, leaving his wife and family and children, to lose his life on the orders of the single most oppressive unimaginative violent institution humans have ever produced – the modern nation state – but we have no resources to think of why Maqsood went to meet a tiger. Is the only language we have to conceive of this extraordinary encounter that of “mental illness”?
Maqsood’s death was not without witnesses. Several onlookers watched in horrified fascination and captured images on their phones. One said, “After he fell down, the white tiger which was further inside the enclosure came towards Maqsood. As the tiger came closer, he clasped his hands and seemed to be praying. The tiger watched Maqsood closely for almost 15 minutes.”
Doubtless this was a terrifying experience. To watch a man mauled to death by a tiger cannot be anything but terrifying. A possession ritual is also terrifying. Every onlooker that day was a witness to a possession. Usually the gods appear “in” or “through” a human. Usually the humans through which they appear survive. Occasionally (though rarely) they don’t. This is frightening enough in itself. Except this time Vaghdev appeared in the flesh, embodied vast striped white form. While the mythological literature has many such accounts, we have very few anthropological accounts of the first appearance of a god. We certainly have several accounts of what they demand once they do arrive. Humans have been talking with gods for a very long time. And communion with them is often a perilous undertaking. Our ancestors were well aware of this. Us secular moderns have become accustomed to an easy sovereignty of the human and getting our thrills for cheap. But something beyond a concern for his (what it is fashionable these days to call) “bare life” was at work in Maqsood. Something called to him, impelled him to clamber over the moat. He was in the throes of a visitation, a possession. Vast, dangerous, unpredictable, wild beings were moving through him. And he did not go without invitation.
The most detailed and moving report on Maqsood’s death appears in the the Times of India on 25th September 2014. It is worth reading in full. In so far as reports on unusual deaths go, this one is surprisingly sensitive. This obituary says nothing about Maqsood’s “mental illness” or his alleged drunkenness. It does not dwell on his poverty, or his unemployment. These appear as background details. It tells, rather, a strange and powerful tale about Maqsood’s desire. We are told that Maqsood had become recently obsessed with tigers. Maqsood could not explain (or his friends and family could not understand) what it was that so entranced him about them. But his grandfather recalls that something about tigers excited him intensely. He would go to visit them in the zoo, and speak of his visits once he returned. As time went on his obsession grew: he slipped out in the afternoons to see the tigers, he lied to his mother and went to see the tigers, he spent whatever little money he earned to buy tickets to the zoo so he could see the tigers.
When did Maqsood’s “obsession” begin? We are not told for certain, but it seems he became intensely preoccupied with tigers in June 2014, around the same time he was fired from his most recent job. This was not the first job Maqsood had lost – an ex-employer noted that he had fired Maqsood after he “jumped off a delivery truck and ran after an animal”.
The report continues. We learn that Maqsood was “forgetful”, and that he “rarely spoke to anyone”. He walked around with earplugs (so he could not hear the world). On his phone (which had no sim card so no one could call him) he listened to music and clicked pictures. On this phone were several images of tigers. Other, less careful, reports describe Maqsood’s inwardness as “mentally ill”. But Maqsood Pardesi was not suicidal. He did not go to the zoo to die. He went to meet a tiger.
Another report suggests that he may have been drunk when he clambered across the moat. Are these “explanations” for Maqsood’s action? Not quite. If anything, they are descriptions of the sorts of persons to whom visitations are given. We can of course discuss at length elsewhere why it is that the gods (and other beings) often (though not always) come to persons such as these. And Delhi was, and miraculously continues to be, a city imbued with encounters between different sorts of beings: my friends, and anthropologists, Anand Taneja and Bhrigupati Singh have brought back several reports of such encounters. In Anand’s case between humans and djinns (which also take the form of tigers), and Bhrigu tells of humans and gods. Maybe if Maqsood had lived a hundred and twenty years ago, there would have been many others who would have recognized Maqsood for the Majzoob that it seems he was. Eighteenth century Delhi was crowded with Majzoobs (see Abhishek Kaicker’s work on the sacral landscape of Delhi). But Delhi lost its Majzoobs and its tigers around the same time. Will Vaghdeva appear again? We do not know. He may, but the chances are not high. We live at a time when the world is being de-populated by certain classes of beings. Like tigers, the gods too are endangered.
Maqsood’s death is neither a celebration nor a cause for lamentation. These binaries are not the only available ways by which we, who did not know him personally, can think his life and his death. We can also witness respectfully from a distance and remember Maqsood: the man who went to meet Vaghdev. His death is most certainly a tragedy: especially for his parents (who have since reconciled from a separation), and in particular for his pregnant wife who now finds herself alone. As did Siddhartha’s wife and son when he, following who knows what voice, walked into the forest to be reborn as the Buddha. As did the parents of Lhamo Dondrub when their son was chosen as the current reincarnation of the Avalokiteshwara. As do all those whose intimates and kin are claimed by beings beyond the relations of this world. However the pain his kin feel at his loss, and the voyeuristic abstract outrage the general public feels in a situation in which blame cannot be self-righteously apportioned, should not be the only grounds on which we think Maqsood’s life.
I am not valorizing Maqsood’s death. And in particular the terrible terrible burden of grief and loneliness placed on Fatima, his wife. I desperately wish he had lived. And he may well have if those watching had not thrown stones at the tiger. And this situation in itself would never have come to pass if animals were not in zoos in the first place. But after the fact of his death, how will we stand in relation to it?
Maqsood Pardesi was the bearer of a message: Maqsood comes from the Arabic root “qasad”: intention. From which come both “qasida” a petition; a prayer; a praise, and “qasid” the messenger. In Persian the Arabic transforms to “maqsad”: meaning, and maqsood: intention; desire. What is the maqsad of Maqsood’s life? How will he be remembered?
As a “mentally ill” drunk whose “obsession” was responsible for his ludicrous death? As a sad case whose strange manner of dying testified to the destitution of his brief life? Or, as a man who wagered, and lost, his life on the impulsion of an encounter? Mourning Maqsood’s death does not preclude taking seriously the extraordinary vitality of his life. To posthumously pathologise Maqsood by calling him “mentally ill” is to impoverish his memory, and denude our capacity to receive that which is given, and appears, only very rarely.
Maqsood Pardesi walked into the enclosure of a tiger! What is lamentable about a death like this? Why must it mark a “failure”: his, society’s, the zoo authorities’? Is this not perhaps how, when the world was a richer more awake place, people went to meet the spirits and the gods?
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KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Apart from all the references to the supernatural, the article was profound. Really appreciated it.
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The death is lamentable because it could have been so easily prevented. The tranquilizer darts which were rusting in some warehouse on the zoo campus should have been on the person of the guards so that they could USE it at times like these. Agreed, such a situation is hard to comprehend – someone walking into a tigers cage on his own volition – but that’s what you are supposed to prepare for- and should equip yourself to handle – ANY accident. All said and done – brilliant article. Gave me a fresh perspective on the whole saga.
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engaging, reflecting, deeply from within!
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Masha-allah! May we each encounter djinns, majzoobs, tigers and Aarti in our lives, and remember to be thankful for all.
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The tragedy of secular moderns of India is their fascination with Islam. Having said that I think all attempts to understand any object of knowledge are welcome!
Aarti do you not feel that the need of the hour, the need of several decades now is to understand Hinduism in India. Bhrigu does focus on Hinduism but then again the forms which he investigates are devoid of any political agency.
Does not India desperately need an anthropology of Hinduism, particularly of Hindutva. What do we know about the maqsad of Hindutva. What is it about Hindutiva that people ready to sacrifice their life for this ideology.
Where is the definitive account anthropology of contempt that Hindutva sows.
How does Hindutva operate within a Hindu canon. What has transformed in the motivation of people who joined Hindutva organisations a 100 years back and now. What is the ontology of Hindutva.
Yes there are several hundred articles written on Hindutva, on Hindusim. Yes there are tens of book on this topic as well. But somehow on an everyday commonsensical level knowledge about Hindutva and Hinduism does not seem to be have crossed a discursive threshold.
No secular modern non-Hindu can attempt to ask questions on Hindutva in India as an object of inquiry. Even if she wants to study Hinduvta, has familiarized herself with the cannon and so on she probably will not do it. No secular modern non-Hindu can do an anthropology of the Sangh. And it appears secular modern Hindus are too busy analyzing jinns of Delhi, which is really sad!
Why is it that I can’t think of any Bollywood film or any novel for that matter any anthropological account which depicts radicalisation of Hindus in India. Maybe boys in the branches is an exception but that it is so old now. I wonder how many people know about it. At the same time films like Fiza, Shahid readily comes to my mind when I turn the angle.
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@Imtiaz,
Thank you very much for your comment. You raise some very serious questions. Let me try and respond
So first, I disagree with you :) In my opinion “Hindutva” is precisely that of which we do not need any anthropologies. Of course if someone wishes to write one they should do so, but I personally would have zero interest in such an undertaking. Why? Because I do not think such an exercise will yield anything particularly productive. When it comes to phenomenon such as Hindutva there could be, broadly, two reasons for why one might be interested in studying them. The first, which we can call an “instrumentalist” reason, is because it is good to know one’s enemy in order to fight. So we need to study Hindutva so we can sharpen our weapons against it. If this is our purpose then the hundreds of studies, as you yourself mention, on the history, emergence, demographic composition, political vocabulary, and everyday practices of Hindutva produced by a legion of political scientists and historians already give us a detailed understanding. And more, there are classic works on fascism as well that address not the specificity of Hindutva, but tell us how and why and through what means ideaologies such as Hindutva find resonance amongst particular groups at particular moments in history.
But there may be another reason to study Hindutva: because in itself there is something exciting vivifying about Hindutva for the.researcher, and on this count for me Hindutva falls flat. This is I think the source of disagreement between us: i.e. on what constitutes a “resource”.
You mention Bhrigu’s work and say that the sorts of popular Hinduisms he studies have no “political agency”. You are right, and I think that is precisely what is exciting about his work and the practices he looks at. Again for you the study of Djinns is a cause for lament while for me Anand’s work opens an entire terrain of . The question is, at what level must “resources” be produced and towards what purpose. The kinds of practices that Bhrigu and Anand study do not operate at the level of what you term “politics”, and therefore cannot be marshaled for “political agency”. This is precisely why they continue to produce pathways along which people find routes of escape. Because these practices have somehow (thus far though I wonder for how much longer) managed to elude capture by the state form and the dead-end exhausted trap of representational politics.
So what sort of study of Hindutva would you wish for that has not been undertaken already? Towards what purpose?
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@Imtiaz,
One last connected thought: If you ask me, the need of the hour is to turn our back on all thought that takes the current form of the state as its starting point and its destination. Everyone has their own functions to perform, and if academics have been given the extraordinary privilege and liberty to be the priests of a secular world and get paid for thinking, then at the least they can do is produce (and/or recover/discover) images of worlds which we may wish to inhabit. If this is the case, then these images, to my mind, will not come from an exploration of the wastelands (imaginative and actual) that the state has produced. They will have to come from elsewhere, precisely from sites such as Anand and Bhrigu point to.
Does this mean that we should give up on even analyzing what the state, and things allied with it, does? No of course not. We are condemned to live under one, so we are condemned to not ignore our master. However these must be seen as reports on the doings of power. Not as sites from which alternative visions of life can flow. Therefore I think there is no need for anthropologies of Hindutva. What we have, and thankfully we have a lot, will do :)
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Aarti,
I am sorry but did I make an argument about knowledge? Whether the knowledge appeals to instrumentalist reason or whether it is vivifying is not the point I was trying to make. The point I wanted to raise and still want to raise pertains to the responsibility of intellectuals.
For in a society where knowledge is such a scare resource is it not the responsibility of intellectuals who are in a privileged position to expose the lies of power, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions? And explain to the general public through the help of their training what is power up to.
Tell me what do I do with the knowledge of emerging liberal ideologues working for the empire writing enchanting texts about chattan baba or the jinns? Their work is slowly appearing to be as crucial and critical as that of a German anthropologist working diligently in the 1930’s writing about peripatetic priests of Calvinism or the jewish mysticism in Munich.
Should I not look upon intellectuals to explain what called the mobs to murder a techie in Pune? What message did Dhananjay Desai bear? How would you, as a trained anthropologist, look at what’s coming from Mangalwari Mahal in Nagpur? How would you look at the PMO? Can you even do an anthropology of PMO with as much of command over ideas as you wrote about Mr. Pardesi? My guess is perhaps you can but you’d rather not. Because you suggest, do you not, Hindutva as an idea, as a practice, as a system of thought does not matter now because too much has been already written on that subject, isn’t it?
No one can tell anyone what to write and what to research. It is as much a researcher’s imperative to write as it is of a reader’s to read and comment. You wrote an extremely moving piece about Mr. Pardesi. I know now because Mr. Pardesi bore a message therefore he went to meet Mr. Tiger. Mr. Tiger did not kill Mr. Pardesi. Mr. Pardesi died a tragic death while meeting Mr. Tiger. The logic of your interpretation is resolute. Your interpretation is deeply nuanced and could I dare say absolutely brilliant! I thank you for your keen observations and look forward to read more of your wonderful writings.
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@ Imtiaz,
Thanks again for coming in. I think we disagree on some very fundamental questions to do with how one lives in the world and what might constitute a responsibility towards it. It remains to be seen if these disagreements are productive or not, and what their political stakes are.
So, you say:
What we think of as the ends of knowledge is intimately connected to what you call the “responsibility of intellectuals”.
The responsibility of academics and intellectuals towards the world they live in is contiguous with the responsibilities of others who live in the world also. Therefore an academic must do what they can to protect lives and limit harm, and oppose power and help, in whatever way they can, those who find themselves in powers’ crosshairs. And this academics do all the time. But there is something more at stake here for you I think. Which has to do with what you see as the “professional” function of academics (and by extension I presume intellection in general). So let me try and address some of this.
If it is illumination you are seeking, then there are already several works that academics have produced that try and grapple with the murder of a techie in Pune. And Dhananjay Desai bore the same message that fascist thugs everywhere bear. This is why beyond stating this, there is nothing that a further excavation of his experience can yield. What would such an exploration open? How would it extend our expand or further the ways in which we might inhabit our worlds? This is the rub, this is where our differences lie: on what we see as the ends of thought and its connection to responsibility.
Could I do an anthropology of the PMO? I very much doubt it. Others should, and I hope they will, with far greater insight and skill than I ever could. But you are absolutely right, even if I could, I would not do so. And my refusal to do so is what you see as my “irresponsibility”. Because we have a different notion of what responsibility entails, or towards whom and what it must be directed.
So let me ask you instead: What if I said that Anand and Bhrigu are undertaking a responsibility towards worlds and practices and people who are under threat precisely by the very forces that you seem to be in opposition to? The worlds that Bhrigu writes of are under erasure from the ascension of right wing Hindutva, just as the worlds Anand writes of are besieged by Deobandi Islam. And Deobandi Islam and Mangalwari Mahal Hinduism, for all their apparent oppositions, inhabit the same life-denying world. So now, what must be the “responsibility” of an academic towards this?
According to you, as you state quite clearly, academic (and ethical) responsibility rests in undertaking a prognosis of how power operates in the present moment, its modalities and motivations, its logics and compositions, its psychology and capacities for destruction. And indeed there is again a plethora of work that identifies all the multifarious traditions of little ‘x’ and little ‘y’ that are threatened by the ascension of majoritarian notions of X and Y. Identifying the myriad means by which erstwhile heterogenous practices are corralled into monolithic traditions in service of the “nation”, etc etc is now a stock-in-trade of standard academic discourse. This, I think, is what the task of academics is for you yes? Because isn’t this exactly identifying the destructive capacities of Hindutva? And if an academic does not do this, she is somehow failing in, what for you is apparently, the mission of thought.
But my question to you is: is all you can derive from these worlds negatives under erasure? Does this world not say anything to you in its own right? Does its value consist only in insofar as its destruction maybe adduced as evidence of impending doom? Is all it can offer you its carcass so you may present it as evidence for the prosecution in some supposed court of justice in which Hindutva will be on trial?
However what if I were to say, instead, that maybe “responsibility” also rests in inhabiting the ebbs and flows of these worlds, not only through a narrative of lament, but indeed to see how they may expand the boundaries of how life may be lived? That responsibility for anthropologists (and philosophers, and historians, and mathematicians, and physicists) consists not only in shining a light on the denudations enacted by power but also consists in bringing back reports of other ways in which this world may be inhabited? If our resources to deal with the bruising our world is suffering at the hands of these thugs seem to be on the verge of exhaustion, then does not responsibility also consist of finding sources of nourishment and vitality? What would such a search entail? Where would we look, and for what? However it seems these sorts of questions hold no interest for you. Why does such a search become degraded in your eyes? I would really like some clarification on this, because I have often encountered this baffling attachment to negativity, that is sadly only too fashionable within certain “progressive” circles, and I have never understood its allure.
First, I do not think those words mean what you think they mean. The work of which you speak runs profoundly counter to both empire and liberalism. But lets leave that aside for now. Or do you mean they are “working for the empire” in so far as they are located in the US academy? Careful now. What purports to be a critique of the “politics of location” is often resentment parading as thought. Or, is it your contention that as expiation for, what you think of as their first world privilege, the least they can do is discharge their obligations to society by bringing their training to bear on an analysis of the PMO?
But more crucially, how can I tell you what to do with knowledge? You use the word “enchanting” as an abuse for texts you deem to be frivolous at best, complicit in the irresponsibility of privilege at worst. Should I tell you, instead, that you do not understand the actual stakes of actual enchantment? :)
Again here it seems we have a different understanding of what “critical” and “crucial” means. But before I get to that, there is a fairly serious charge that is being made here that I think you need to be accountable for rather than simply state. What exactly do you mean by invoking the figure of the German anthropologist working on Jewish mysticism in Munich in the 30s? (I will get to Calvinism later if I can sustain the interest and energy). You mean, do you not, that while Rome burnt not only did the Neros of Germany waste their time fiddling on the roofs of aracana, but much much worse, they were in fact vultures who feasted on the knowledge of those who the national socialist state was in the process of exterminating? And this, according to you, is what Indian (and lets just be frank you mean Hindu) academics are doing today by reflecting on the histories of mystical Islam and folk Hinduism.
Is this not what you are alleging by drawing this comparison between Germany, Jews and academics in 1930s Munich, and India, Muslims and academics in 2014 Delhi? Leaving aside the patently absurd homology being drawn between Germany 1930 and India 2014, if you really believe this to be the case, how then do you explain the over 20 years long critical engagement academics in India have had with producing a huge body of scholarship on Hindutva? How do you explain that many academics have not just produced work, but have been putting themselves on the line in various ways? The struggle against the Hindu right fascists has not occurred despite academics in India. Academics have been, and continue to be, part of these struggles.
Again I would understand this charge if in fact academics in India had been idly sitting by watching power do its thang…But this is clearly not the case as any perusal of political and academic life in this country over the last two decades will demonstrate.
So now I would like to ask, where exactly are you located? In the world, I mean. I am asking this because the way in which you are responding makes me think that you have not actually lived in India for the last twenty years, or traveled anywhere in this country and seen anything. And that is perfectly ok! Its just that if you don’t know what is going you might wish to hold off on the accusations while you get informed. Or, if you are indeed located in India, how then do you have no sense of any political engagement that academics have had inside and outside the university, on street corners, in homes, in the press, in various movements of every sort across this country on Hindutva? If today some of us are re-thinking our own relationship to state secularism, does it strike you that this might come not from the distance of academic privilege in some undifferentiated “West”, but because it entails an engagement with very intimate heritages that we have grappled with living here?
Come, now you are making fun of me :)
Never mind this piece. But seriously, I think you should interrogate what makes you think that an engagement with mysticism and human experiences of this sort is somehow a less valuable, or less critical, engagement with the crises of the present, than an anthropology of the PMO. Is it because things like mystical experience strike you as frivolous, or “not located in the real world” (a favourite barb thrown at academics such as myself)? As if somehow we are writing or thinking about experiences that inhabit some other, and indeed a lesser world? I am telling you now that if you are searching for redemption to the crises of this current moment, it will not come from undertaking an anthropology of the PMO.
A fair question at this stage would be to ask, so to what “crises” are these engagements responding? At what level is this”crises” located? I’m afraid the answer to that is far too long to undertake here.
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Getting eaten by a Tiger is a short-cut to Heaven without meeting Judgement…
Ask any family in the Sunderbans; you’ll know.
Besides, Vijay was playful and curious. He was merely pawing (not ‘Clawing’) that fellow to check whether he’d play a bit (Yes, a Zoo tiger is Awfully BORED!).
The pelting of stones and yells by onlookers (in their earnest goodwill and attempt to help Masood) made the kitty feel a bit hassled, and Masood was carried off to a more private corner of his prison for some quality time together.
He is a “Cage Born” kitty – He doesn’t know basic hunting, let alone a Human. Even my cat knows more about stalking, poncing, and getting the kill-bite.
That was no “Kill Bite” ~ it was in fact the exact way my cat would carry her kitten off when it was bugging my dog too much. He was merely taking his new-found friend to a quieter location since the fellow was quite unwilling to voluntarily do anything such.
OK, Yes, Masood was scared – in fact, Masood probably died out of Heart Failure before his body was “Mauled” (** Do note – We do not know how far the body was “Mauled”, how much of it post-mortem; which is what a cat does after their plaything refuses to move… A cat will try to get the plaything to start being a bit more active by a bit of biting and clawing)
I mean Vijay was already serving a life Born in Imprisonment. That isn’t a Tiger – he’s a large kitty who eats more meat. Yea, hang Vijay, won’t you – you’ll be doing him a favor. He’s suffering already in a cage, and will do so for the rest of his life if he’s not put to death earlier. Vijay MUST DIE – it is the only way he will EVER BE FREE!!
So yea, Hang Vijay (or whatever mode of death they might choose for him) for Vijay is not a Tiger, but a faded shadow of a magnificent predator – a creature of rare elegance, ferocity, royalty, and fearsome-ness. Vijay is a shame to all Tiger-kind, and his death will only bring him Freedom, and an end to an absolutely morbid, senseless, and unjust lifelong imprisonment of an innocent soul.
So while you’re at it – Legalize Euthanasia for terminal illnesses, and Legalize the death-sentence in Earnest will you lot??
I mean these patients WANT TO DIE rather than survive in pain, and the Dredges of Society can be PURGED instead of spending money on them for years – Money the country can use to feed the starving, educate children, and restart free Hospitals…
I feel a Positive Vibe since these people are finally realizing their inner calling for more “Death” – personally, I’d like them to hurry up – We’re exploding with populace!!
>> Disclaimer – The Author Does NOT visit any Zoos, because he has known Incarceration and Solitary Confinement personally… A Zoo is a Jail with an Exhibition Facility :D
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@ Siddharth
I do not visit zoos either and I think no animals should be in zoos.
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Please write such a long article even when a tiger or other innocent animal is killed by human.
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indeed, this is not valorizing a death, and in the shortness and longness of anything written about Maqsood that attempts to express dissent with stereotypes is bound to meet an opacity of knowingness. therefore what matters is not the length of the piece but the frequency with which we mourn ‘unlivable’ and ‘ungrievable’ lives. As we seek an account for Maqsood’s life, and express willingness and openness to depathalogize subjecthood, I feel we are also accepting our sense of loss and grief at not being able to recover Maqsood’s narrative, and are claiming no intention to appropriate his narrative construct to bear equivalence with any other political articulation.
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This is just awesome…
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Thanks, Aarthi, for that fascinating account of the manner and meaning of Maqsood Pardesi’s brief life and violent end. I’ve been trying to make sense of it myself, but didn’t have the tools to do so.
I was particularly saddened by media depictions of Maqsood as a suicidal madman while he was, in all likelihood, nothing of that sort.
Had he lived, Maqsood would have been declared insane (who but a madman would willingly confront a tiger?) or found guilty under IPC 309 of attempted suicide, or doing an “act towards the commission of such offence”. And then, being guilty, he would have been put in a cage in order to teach him — and others — the beauty and value of life, and the wickedness of ending it without the state’s consent.
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@Sajan,
Thanks Sajan. You are absolutely right vis. the state’s right over life and death. I think we need to really think through what occurred in our colonial modernity. The usual framework thats been around for a while is of course “governmentality”, i.e. the modern state’s control over all aspects of the life of its citizens, and indeed ‘life’ no longer belongs to the person who is alive but is the property of the state and thus cannot be ended without the state’s consent. But I think more than this, we need to see what happens to the definition of “life” itself at this time. Again “biopolitics” doesn’t capture this at all. What happens is actually a wholesale extinction wherein classes of beings, entire ways of life and being in the world simply stop making sense anymore. How one could even begin to write these histories is the question…
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Thank you for humanizing Maqsood…without robbing him of the miracle that he was
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Thank Milind. Though I was hoping to animalize Maqsood instead ;)
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Imtiaz Ali,
Clearly, kicking and bashing the secular moderns is the flavour of the month! So far it was from the Hndu right and now, thanks, for opening another front. There are many like Aarti in this post and myself and many others, elsewhere, who have seriously tried to grapple with our legacy as secularists, for quite some time now. In part this troubled engagement comes out of our interrogation of our own subject-position as Hindu secularists – and I use this term with deliberation. There are no longer any secular secularists left in this world. However, precisely because we find ourselves struggling and opening ourselves out to potshots from you, I feel it is time for some frank talk. This is certainly not the place for a longer discussion on this issue but I cannot resist making some remarks and posing a couple of questions to you. You say that “the tragedy of secular moderns is their fascination with Islam.” This may be true of some but I personally have increasingly begun to feel it is a burden we have to bear because of people like you. You, who can keep a safe distance from “secular moderns” as well as from the Islamists. Now let me ask, are you also one of the ‘secular moderns’ who are fascinated by Islam? If I understand you correctly, you use this expression only to refer to Hindu name-bearers like us who can be guilt-tripped into anything by invoking Hindutva. What would you call yourself? A secular Muslim? A non-secular Muslim? Do you feel you have any responsibility in countering those who have hijacked Islam and are carrying out mayhem in its name? Can I ever dream of guilt-tripping you into asking what anthropology or ontology of Islam you have produced? I know, like all self-righteous people you too will have a long answer to everything I say. There will not be a moment of self-doubt or self-reflection. However, I not wish to reply. I do hope, on some other thread to come back to this issue for a fuller discussion, though.
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Dear Imitiaz,
I have no idea who you are. You seem to refer to me and my work with some familiarity. I have a question for you. It may sound rude but it is also very genuine and modest. Are you literate? You seem to be able to write sentences, but can you read?
If so I refer you to two articles of mine, my only published writing so far on popular religion.
The first is an essay on Thakur Baba, which appeared in a journal called Cultural Anthropology – not Chattan baba as you say. In this article I give you (or anyone who knows how to read) three concepts with which to understand a form of religious life, the Pir and the Vir, which moves across Hinduism, Islam, and even certain forms of popular deification in Buddhism, as well as Catholic Christianity. I don’t do this in terms of the happy and very secular language of syncretism etc. but in concepts which I don’t have the time to outline for you. Then I tell you what exactly why Hindutva attacks this form of life and what the transformation would be in terms of logics of sacrifice and transcendence if someone were to ‘enter’ a Hindutva mentality, as you call it. Then I tell you how seemingly secular nationalism also appropriates and transfigures those same logics.
The second essay I refer you to is on Tejaji (in a journal called American Ethnologist – I apologize if the name of the journal hurts your purist sensibility – it should have been called The German Anthropologist). In this article I show you (or anyone capable of reading) what lower caste aspiration might look like within Hinduism, different from the two logics in which it has been understood so far, that of imitation of upper caste norms (Sanskritization) and of resistance (as with David Hardiman’s well known thesis on the Coming of the Devi).
If this isn’t ‘political agency’ I don’t know what is. Did you read even just the title of these articles? The first refers to sovereignty, the second to agonistics. Both of these are central concepts of politics. I have also published essays directly on Hindutva but I don’t feel I need to justify my credentials to censors like you. Maybe it is not worth writing at all, if this is the level of conversation that persists.
Slightly disheartened,
Bhrigu
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I read this piece two months ago and just read it again. It’s breathtaking.
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Reblogged this on markinrabbit.
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I thoroughly enjoyed this article. Thank you, not only, for honoring this man’s life and his death but for respecting him as a human being. Thank you for sharing a very different, yet enlightening perspective on his “mental illness” and his “obsession”.
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