All posts by Sohail Hashmi

Supporter of Causes no longer fashionable in these days of globalisation, script writer on documentaries on above causes and a chronic optimist
Bad ideas, Centre watch, Frontiers

Israel(i Man) seduces India(n Woman)

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Here’s how a state-owned Israeli defence firm tries to get business from India’s Defence Ministry:

The Danger Room blog said the text implied that the “Indian military is somehow like a helpless woman who needs to feel safe and sheltered.”

Rafael dismissed the criticism of its film and said that it made movies with a local theme for every international defense expo. A movie, one company source said, made for a defense expo in Brazil focused on soccer and weapons. Another movie, for a US audience, focused on football.

“We try to make the movies about the place where the defense expo is located,” the company source said, adding that in previous years Rafael had won prizes for its pavilions and marketing techniques. [The Jerusalem Post]

Bad ideas, Identities

Muslim Madrasa Modernisation

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A rather animated debate is on among different sections of the Muslims as also among the civil and the uncivil society in India about the Madrasa, their importance, the role they play and the need to make them more modern, thereby converting them into institutes that are more relevant to the contemporary requirements of both the Muslims and the market. The former is openly stated while the latter is rarely articulated.

Before proceeding with an exploration of some of these concerns and to try to understand the trigger behind the proselytising zeal to modernise the madrasa, let us understand the institution of the madrasa itself. Continue reading Muslim Madrasa Modernisation →

Bad ideas, Culture, Everyday Life

Phool Walon Ki Sair

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Akbar Shah Saani (the second) ruled over a rapidly disintegrating empire between 1806 to 1837. It was during his time that the East India Company dispensed with even the fig leaf of ruling in the name of the Mughal Monarch and removed his name from the Persian texts that appeared on the coins struck by the company in the areas under their control.

Bahadur Shah Zafar who succeeded him was not Akbar Shah Saani’s choice as his successor, Akbar Shah was, in fact, under great pressure by one of his queens, Mumtaz Begum to declare her son Mirza Jahangir as the successor. Akbar Shah would have probably accepted this demand but Mirza Jahangir had fallen foul of the British and they will have none of this.

The Phool Walon Ki Sair or Sair-e-gul-Faroshan that is celebrated with much fanfare and official patronage had its beginning in a fracas between Mirza Jahangir and Sir Archibald Seton, the then British resident at Delhi. According to contemporary records of the event, Mirza Jahangir was extremely resentful of the manner in which the British threw their weight around the Red Fort and violated all customs and traditions. He was a strong man, moved around with a band of his followers and kept getting into arguments with the Goras. Continue reading Phool Walon Ki Sair →

Bad ideas, Debates

Counting Lights

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This is a simple exercise in basic arithmetic that will help us reach some rather basic results, the results might be a little unexpected but simple arithmetic is known to have indulged in such pastimes on other occasions as well.

There are around 3000 Blue line buses that ply on the streets of Delhi, and aside from terrorising the general populace off the streets, sending around 150 citizens of Delhi to meet their respective makers they are also known to occasionally ferry passengers.

It is now public knowledge that most, if not all, these buses are owned, benami, by local politicians and, as the expression goes, their near and dear ones. The fact that these killers are allowed to hold an entire city of close to 14,000,000 to ransom is not entirely due to their being politically correctly related, though that helps, it is mostly because of a well organised system of preventing diligent government servants from the discharge of their duty.

The government servants being thus prevented are gentlemen who have promised to be “with us for us always” [the motto of Delhi Police, for the information of non-Delhi people] (I am personally extremely happy that they are being prevented from discharging their duties towards me). The fellows want so dearly to serve us but are systematically prevented by the drivers and owners (Ds & Os) of the aforementioned vehicles. What can the poor fellows do, every time they want to rise to our defence the Ds & Os or their representatives show them some magical papers and the potential do gooders freeze in mid stride!

Continue reading Counting Lights →

Bad ideas, Debates, Everyday Life, Media politics

Climaterror, boredom and media

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The pressing, in fact the overpowering need to keep people perpetually agog with false excitement, generated by the fear of impending doom, played out in all its gory details over the last three days across the gossip channels that go in the name of News Channels and Glamour sheets that try to pass of as Newspapers.

26th January had come and gone, Sarkozy had come and gone without giving us the nuclear fuel that would have overnight made the greatest democracy into the second or third or fourth or the nth most happening country in the world.

Continue reading Climaterror, boredom and media →

Ecology/Environment

Monkeys and other Primates from Delhi

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As children one was occasionally treated to a Bandar ka Tamasha and the antics of these distant cousins entertained us no end. The monkeys that one saw enacting the roles of a newly married couple, whose conjugal relationship deteriorated within 10 minutes to a life of dreary middle class existence, belonged invariably to the Rhesus (Macaca mulatto) family. We owe a lot to these distant cousins, including the discovery of the RH factor in our own blood. This 1940 discovery has probably saved millions of lives and whether one believes in their being closely related to lord Hanuman or not, we are indebted to these simians.

The joy of watching the Bandar ka Tamasha is now a thing of the past, thanks to the animal rights activists and a certain Gandhi, no longer part of the first family of Indian politics. The use of these monkeys for medical research was also stopped through the active interventions of the same agencies. As a result of these ‘animalitarian concerns’ the ‘poor multinational drug cartels’ are forced to test their new concoctions on black, brown and other coloured populations of higher primates living on the fringes of ‘civilization’ in the third world. I wonder why the animalists do not protests against this violation of human rights. After all humans are also animals, that, however, is another story; we plan to confine ourselves to monkey business as understood by their more evolved cousins.

When, as per the book of creation, God made this world, he created all manner of beasts and provided food for them through the agency of trees, grasses, fruits, nuts and seeds, some animals fed on this bounty while others ate up these lesser animals to develop a fairly organised food chain. The forests were populated with both kinds of animals and there was provision for food close at hand, no one worked for a living in those days and there was no need to travel long distances for work.

Continue reading Monkeys and other Primates from Delhi →

Culture, Excavation, Metropolis

The Lives And Times Of The Asokan Pillar At The Delhi Ridge

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Tourists are people in a hurry; they want to pack-in a city in two days, even a city that has taken more than a thousand years to grow. Tourists see buildings as structures, frozen in time, standing aloof, without being part of the ebb and flow of life. Travellers on the other hand come searching for the feel and the spirit of the city. Looking for the lesser known the less explored and the uncelebrated, for it is here that one may find untold histories that lie sheltered under each stone that awaits the explorer.

Beginning with the story of a large piece of rock we launch into an exploration, or shall we say recapitulation, of the almost forgotten stories connected with the less touristy structures and ruins that have been witness to the unfolding of the many histories of Delhi. We begin this series with one of the Two Asokan Pillars erected at Delhi. The pillars were erected at Delhi, not by Asoka who commissioned them in 3rd Century B.C, but by a king who ruled Delhi in the 14th century.

Continue reading The Lives And Times Of The Asokan Pillar At The Delhi Ridge →

Countryside, Everyday Life, Excavation, Metropolis

The Hafta Bazaars of Delhi

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The earliest known urban settlement in Delhi, aside from the mythological Indraprasth, called Inderpat by Sayed Ahmad Khan in his Asaar-us-Sanaadeed (1865) and by Bashir-ud-Din Ahmad in his Waqiyat-e-Daar-ul-Hukumat Dehli (1920) (probably to go well with Maripat, Sonipat, Panipat and Baghpat), is believed to have been at or near the present day Mehrauli.

The large number of exiting structures and ruins, both religious and secular, testify to rigorous building activity in this area going back to almost a thousand years or more and continuing during the colonial period. The Quila Rai Pithora, The Shrine of Qutub-ud-Din Bakhtiyar Kaaki, (disciple and successor of Moin-ud-din Chishti and the Peer of Baba Fareed Ganj-e-Shakar), whose presence in this area gave it the honorific Qutub Saheb, the Tomb of Altamash and of Balban, the Hauz-e-Shamsi, the Gandhak ki Baoli and the Rajon-ki-Baoli, Jamali-Kamali or the tomb and mosque of Jamal-ud-Din and Kamal-ud-Din, Adham Khan and Quli Khan’s Tombs, the Rang Mahal, the adjacent mosque and the large number of colonial structures, including several tehsil buildings, a municipal dispensary, the so called Tamarind Court and the Qutub Colonnade are evidence of a thriving Urban settlement.

Continue reading The Hafta Bazaars of Delhi →

Law

Women, Muslims & Other Backward Castes

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The staple that one grew up on, was the idea, that WE, the people of India, had through a consensus, decided to constitute ourselves into a nation – a secular, democratic, Socialist (as an after thought perhaps, once Gharibi had been hataoed) republic. One was told that the Executive, the legislature and the Judiciary were the pillars that kept a check on each other, thus ensuring that every one was kept in their place, and the pulls and pressures exerted by each on the other two were built into the state structure in order that every one stayed on the straight and narrow.

All this was however soon forgotten to be replaced by the lived experience of the machinations of an uncaring and callous executive and a by and large insensitive legislature. The only hope now was the Judiciary, the third pillar of parliamentary democracy, and one waited with baited breath for the honourable courts to deliver this nation of a billion and more from the collective mess in which the other two had placed the people of the largest democracy in the world.

Judicial activism became the proverbial straw that one clutched at and hoped for more such straws to keep a destitute nation afloat.

Continue reading Women, Muslims & Other Backward Castes →

Identities, Language

Thinking About Sahir Ludhianvi

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Some time ago I had written a short piece for Kafila titled ‘One Question‘. I had thought that I was articulating my anger fairly strongly at the refusal of the political apparatus to do any thing to punish the Guilty of the 1992 Bombay Riots, despite the fact that many perpetrators of those riots had been identified by the Justice Srikrishna Commission. My worry was that almost no one seemed to be bothered while every one was ecstatic about the “guilty” of the 1993 Bombay Blasts being brought to book.

There were a few responses that agreed with my contention and sent me links to sites where similar concerns had been raised. There was, however, one response that raised serious questions about my style of writing and went so far as to suggest that “Such a discourse ends up making the most harrowing human tragedies sound like the nearly fossilized shayari of Sahir Ludhianvi”.

Continue reading Thinking About Sahir Ludhianvi →

Right watch, Violence/Conflict

One Question

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It is a matter of great satisfaction that our sluggish justice delivery system has bestirred itself and through a process of daily hearings found 100 people guilty of the conspiracy for the Bombay blasts. Almost 90% of them were Muslims, they as well as the remainder, have all been served their just desserts.

Justice has not only been done, more importantly, at least as far as our 24X7 media is concerned, it also appears to have been done. Every one knew from day one, who those fellows were, now the courts are saying that as well. So once these two basic requirements of appearance and deed have been met the national conscience, so gravely disturbed over the last several decades, can heave a collective sigh of relief and all men of good faith can take a well deserved rest.

One question, however, continues to bother me. Continue reading One Question →