Category Archives: Culture

Capitalism, Culture, Everyday Life

तिलिस्म-ए-होशरुबा, उर्फ़ पूंजी की अनकही कहानी

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[यह लेख हाल में प्रभात खबर के दीपावली विशेषांक में छप चूका है  और मेरी हालिया किताब डिजायर नेम्ड डेवेलपमेंट के कुछ अंशों पर आधारित है.]

एक ज़माना था जब इंसान जिंदा रहने के लिए पैदावार किया करता था. बहुत पुरानी बात नहीं है – यही कोई सौ डेढ़ सौ बरस पहले का किस्सा है. आज जब हम जिंदा रहने के लिए नहीं बल्कि ‘जीडीपी’ या ‘सेंसेक्स’ जैसे कुछ अदृश्य देवताओं का पेट भरने के लिए पैदावार करते हैं, तब यह बात हमारी याद्दाश्त से तकरीबन गायब हो चुकी मालूम होती है की ये देवता दरअसल बहुत नए हैं. ‘जीडीपी’ की उम्र बमुश्किल अस्सी साल होगी, और ‘सेंसेक्स’ तो हमारे यहाँ १९७९ में ही वजूद में आया है. याद रखने काबिल बात है की इन दोनों का लोगों के वास्तविक जीवन से कोई रिश्ता नहीं है और यह बिलकुल मुमकिन है कि लोगों के जीवन-स्तर में लगातार गिरावट के साथ साथ आंकड़ों में हमें दोनों में अच्छी खासी बढोतरी दिखाई दे. मसलन, यह संभव है कि आप जंग के वक़्त लगातार जीडीपी में इज़ाफा देखें जब वास्तव में लोगों कि ज़िंदगियाँ बद से बदतर होती जा रही हों.

Continue reading तिलिस्म-ए-होशरुबा, उर्फ़ पूंजी की अनकही कहानी →

Culture, Frontiers, Identities

In Search of Ram and Kabir

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You may have seen this documentary film before. If you have, you will, I’m sure, want to see it again. It is not about Ram or Kabir. It is about you and me.

Had Anhad is a documentary film, part of the Kabir Project, released in 2008.

A film by Shabnam Virmani
Language: Hindi & Urdu with English Subtitles
Duration: 103 min

Kabir was a 15th century mystic poet of north India who defied the boundaries between Hindu and Muslim. He had a Muslim name and upbringing, but his poetry repeatedly invokes the widely revered Hindu name for God – Ram. Who is Kabir’s Ram? This film journeys through song and poem into the politics of religion, and finds a myriad answers on both sides of the hostile border between India and Pakistan.

Watch it on Culture Unplugged.

Culture, Everyday Life, Government, Language

Sexting no more: Pakistan’s hilarious list of 1,795 expletives to be banned on SMS

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Whoever made the English and Urdu lists deserves an award, though I did find some Pakistanis who knew expletives that were not on the lists.

Thanks to this helpful compendium many Pakistanis are finding their expletive vocabulary enhanced. @UroojZia asked what “BUMBLEFUCK” and “LADYBOOG” meant. @Zakoota said the lists should be required reading in schools to give children the vocabulary to describe politicians and cricketers. With the amount of phrases that include the word “BUTT”, @KhaLeak wondered if Aijaz Butt was banned as well. [My story for FirstPost.com]

Bad ideas, Culture, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

A Curious Silence and an Un-Crossed Line: In the Wake of A Disbanded Exhibition

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A news item from some weeks ago, which has gone curiously unremarked and un-commented upon has made me think about the limits that the freedom of expression debate and the discourse on secularism in India unwittingly or knowingly does not seem to be able to cross, despite repeated provocation.

We all know that when the Hindu right comes to town –  declaring that this or that text should not be taught in the university, or this or that painting should not be seen, or this or that film should not be shown – the secular left-liberal intelligentsia in India automatically gets outraged, signs petitions, holds press conferences and generally vents it righteous anger. I know this because I do all these things, along with all my friends. I sign the online petitions, attend the demonstrations, express my anger and do some (or all) of that which needs to be done, that should be done. We should never give an inch to the hoodlums of Hindutva.

However, when it comes to responding to the equally aggressive, reactionary and utterly arbitrary actions of sections of the Muslim clergy and other self appointed leaders on the ‘Muslim Right’ a strange inertia seems to take hold of the best and boldest foot-soldiers of secularism in India.

Continue reading A Curious Silence and an Un-Crossed Line: In the Wake of A Disbanded Exhibition →

Capitalism, Culture, Everyday Life, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Theory

A Rickshaw Ride in Kolkata: Waled Aadnan

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Guest post by WALED AADNAN

“Amar naam Chatterjee!” My name is Chatterjee! sounds like a proclamation from a fiery leader of the masses at a public rally, but it came from a rickshaw wallah plying his trade in the dusty bylanes of North Calcutta and addressed to no one in particular.

As I sat on his rickshaw, the frail old man launched into an indignant tirade against the ruling political party, whom he branded as a group of turncoats, insisting vehemently and repeatedly to nothing but the evening breeze that he had always been a Congressman.

Yes, he defended, petrol prices have been rising, but surely the bosses in Delhi would admit to that! What is the point of protesting about that in an insignificant meeting of rickshaw wallahs’ union? His tone of uncompromising understanding of world affairs drew me to listen to him, rather than plug in my earphones and switch off the world. Continue reading A Rickshaw Ride in Kolkata: Waled Aadnan →

Culture, Frontiers, Identities

Bhupen Hazarika – The Sub-nationalist Imagination of a Universalist: Bikram Bora

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Guest post by BIKRAM BORA

The unprecedented number of mourners crowding the otherwise sleepy streets of Guwahati at night following the demise of the maestro, proves testimony to his genius. In his life, there was no dearth of followers, some logical, some blind; while in his death, grief engulfs both the sections. What could be the reasons for Hazarika’s powerful grip over people’s emotions? It can’t be just his musical dexterity; it’s more the aura surrounding him, emanating from his multi-dimensional persona and life-span.

Continue reading Bhupen Hazarika – The Sub-nationalist Imagination of a Universalist: Bikram Bora →

Culture, Politics

Taking the Jajabor’s Journey Forward – The troubled legacy of Bhupen Hazarika: Mayur Chetia and Nayanjyoti

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Guest post by MAYUR CHETIA and NAYANJYOTI

Mourning people from across Assam assemble in miles and miles of roads leading up to Bhupen Hazarika’s funeral. He’s a restless jajabor/wanderer no more. Paeans after paeans are being sung now after the ‘great cultural hero’, the ‘greatest Assamese’, the believer in ‘the power of the nation’ (the ‘nation’ being Akhand Bharat or Brihottor Axom, depending on whichever variety of nationalists sing). Bhupenda is dead.  Assam is in despair.

Continue reading Taking the Jajabor’s Journey Forward – The troubled legacy of Bhupen Hazarika: Mayur Chetia and Nayanjyoti →

Culture, Ecology/Environment, Everyday Life, Scams

Esther’s Story – Battling the Land Mafia in Hardwar: Sumantra Maitra

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Guest post by SUMANTRA MAITRA

When you are in journalism, something that slowly builds up in you is your immunity to suprise. You can feel fear, sadness, hopelessness, impatience, and even joy, though the last emotion is increasingly becoming a rare thing in this field. But whatever you feel, one thing is for sure, that you generally don’t get surprised. So when I initially heard about a lone Canadian woman of advanced age and energetic spirits, who had come to India at the age of 19 in the 1960s, fighting the land mafia in Hardwar, without any help from anyone, I was intrigued, but NOT surprised.

I decided to chase the story.

Continue reading Esther’s Story – Battling the Land Mafia in Hardwar: Sumantra Maitra →

Culture

Bistirno Parore: A tribute to Bhupen Hazarika

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Bhupen Hazarika was cremated this morning in Guwahati, at a ceremony on the banks of the Brahmaputra that was attended by an estimated 100,000 people present to pay their tribute to the legendary singer.

His politics did go  somewhat awry in his last years,  but I don’t want to think about that right now.  Here is Bhupen Hazarika, with the original Assamese of the song many of us have heard him sing in Hindi, Ganga behti ho kyon.  While studying at Columbia University, New York, Hazarika met Paul Robeson, whose song Ol’ Man River moved him so much that he rendered it into his mother tongue Assamese as bistirno parore.   In  Ol’ Man River, Robeson had adapted to the context of slavery, an American folk song of the Mississipi region. It is believed that this song in turn was an American version of a popular Russian song, Song of the Volga Boatmen. Hear the song in Robeson’s voice here.

Culture, Everyday Life, Identities, Metropolis

25 Years of Delhi’s Lotus Temple

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On a hot Sunday morning, tourists wait 30 minutes in a queue to get inside the House of Worship of the Bahá’í in Kalkaji, better known by its unofficial name, the Lotus temple. Once inside, they spend less than 30 seconds. The tourists, who include burqa-clad women and sadhus in saffron, don’t seem to be in need of a multi-faith prayer hall. The multi-faith prayer service, held thrice a day, is also sparsely attended. People are apparently disappointed there’s only a large hall inside that beautiful white Lotus building, and they can’t even take photos of this hall.   Continue reading 25 Years of Delhi’s Lotus Temple →

Bad ideas, Culture, Language, Politics, Theory

‘The Quality of Mercy’: Kindness and Compassion in Higher Education: Prasanta Chakravarty

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Guest post by PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY

There is a moral compass that every freshman must inculcate, says Harvard College Dean Thomas Dingman. To that end, Dean Dingman has asked incoming Harvard students to sign the ‘Class of 2015 Pledge,’ a solemn testament that reflects a set of distinctive values: “That message serves as a kind of moral compass for the education Harvard College imparts. In the classroom, in extracurricular endeavors, and in the Yard and Houses, students are expected to act with integrity, respect, and industry, and to sustain a community characterized by inclusiveness and civility.” The document goes on to hope that entryways and yards will be places where everyone can thrive and where the “exercise of kindness holds a place on a par with intellectual attainment…we want to have an environment in which people can flourish academically.”

Continue reading ‘The Quality of Mercy’: Kindness and Compassion in Higher Education: Prasanta Chakravarty →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Genders, Law

Guardian Angelic Moral Police

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[co-authored with Bobby Kunhu]

 

Of all the different kinds of moral police that inhabit the land of Kerala, the species that should be feared most must probably be the ‘Guardian Angelic Moral Police'(GAMP). The GAMP is just as potent as the Goonda-Activist Moral Police (G-AMP) but in striking contrast to the latter, the former thrives on the surface precisely on values dear to the Malayalee middle-class – the sanction of law, paternal concern, state protectionism of women as the ‘weaker sex’. This makes it much harder for victims of moral policing to fight off their intrusions all of which are couched in the language of benevolent concern. We just got a taste of that from the Hon. Justice V R Krishna Iyer with his controversial Women’s Code Bill, but since so much of his language is such antiquated hyperbole, it was impossible to take any of it seriously. However, it appears that the judiciary in Kerala has more sophisticated GAMP, and  recent orders passed by the bench consisting of Justices R Basant and M C Hari Rani of the Kerala High Court seem to leave no reason for scepticism. Continue reading Guardian Angelic Moral Police →

Culture, Frontiers, Images, Language, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Through the screen, not so darkly: Raza Rumi

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Guest post by RAZA RUMI

Pakistanis love Bollywood. There is no question about that. Amidst the love-hate perceptions, Indian cinema has for decades fed public imagination. Before the 1965 war that took place when Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first military ruler, was in power,  Indian films were released in Pakistan regularly. They competed with the local cinema. The healthy contest enriched filmmaking and gave choice to Pakistani cinema-goers. The war and competing imaginary nationalism halted this process and for decades, Indian films stayed away from cinemas until another military ruler, Parvez Musharraf, allowed limited releases. Such is the power of Bollywood and its commercial viability that for the past few years, Bollywood flicks have revived cinema in Pakistan. Continue reading Through the screen, not so darkly: Raza Rumi →

Bad ideas, Culture, Right watch

An act of Academic Compromise

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The Delhi University academic council’s decision to drop A.K. Ramanujan’s essay, ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’, from the prescribed readings for BA (honours) history and BA (programme) students, brings back memories of Bombay University’s move to remove Rohinton Mistry’s novel Such a Long Journey from the syllabus. The victimisation of art-historian Shivaji Pannikkar by Baroda’s Maharaja Sayajirao University is another long and painful story. The many, many cases of books and plays being proscribed by various governments form the general climate in which our universities operate. Continue reading An act of Academic Compromise →

Culture, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Identities, Images, Mirror Worlds

Navratri in Karachi

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The report above is by Zanobia Ilyas, who writes: Continue reading Navratri in Karachi →

Culture, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Language, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Untitled: Najeeb Mubarki

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Guest post by NAJEEB MUBARKI

I could have met Sebald.
I went to Britain in September 2001,
And he died in December.
East Anglia wasn’t all that far way
From London, nothing, really,
Is all that far away in Britain.
I could have met him, if I had known him
Then.
What I would have wanted to say, I think Continue reading Untitled: Najeeb Mubarki →

Countryside, Culture, Everyday Life, Government, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Silent changes amidst terror in the Jungle Mahal of West Bengal: Kumar Rana

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Guest post by KUMAR RANA

Nothing seems to have changed in the past quarter decade. Past Jhargram, the town in the woods, the metal road connecting Lodhasuli to National Highway No. 6 wraps itself in a shady serenity. At occasional intervals, the artificiality of a clamour, emitted by a motor engine, creates an unquiet irritation, murdering the resonance of the forest and interrupting its slumber. The bus-stops at Kalabani and Boria are as lonely as they used to be; Gar-Salboni, a roadside village, is stuck in its eternal search for a path to survival. The mud road that breaks from the main road to meet the villages Sirsi, Joalbhanga and Lab-Kush, is as tranquil as it had been 25 years ago. Past the lush green rice fields by the road begins the forest that hems the horizon. The leaves that have just had a splash of shower glistens with the brilliance of the sun.

— Last year it was different, whispered the road.

— Yes, I have heard of it – there had been a drought. And it was the same in the year before the last. It used to follow a cycle like this 25 years ago. Rain ensures the crop. Hunger rides free when there is a drought.

Continue reading Silent changes amidst terror in the Jungle Mahal of West Bengal: Kumar Rana →

Culture, Identities, Violence/Conflict

Desecrating Memory – The Paramakudi Police Shootings: V Geetha

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Guest Post by V. GEETHA

Readers of Kafila might have heard of the horrific shootings that took place at Paramakudi and Madurai on September 11. Officially seven people died when police opened fire on dalits who had gathered to pay their respects to Immanuel Sekaran, a dalit leader who was brutally killed in 1957 in circumstances that pointed to the complicity of dominant caste thevars in carrying out this murder.  (The thevars are an important constituent of the ‘Mukkulathor’ complex of castes that includes the kallars and the maravars.) Subsequently, U Muthuramalinga Thevar, Forward Bloc leader was arrested in connection with Sekaran’s death – he stood trail and was released two years later, because the case against him was not established and proved. (Thevar was proud of his anti-communism and his Hinduism; to him he claimed that patriotism and theistic belief constituted his very vision, they were the ‘eyes’ through which he saw the world.) Continue reading Desecrating Memory – The Paramakudi Police Shootings: V Geetha →

Culture, Everyday Life, Excavation, Identities, Language, Politics

Gautam Book Centre

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AK Gautam

It is the sort of place you will not find unless you are looking for it. Even if you find the address in Hardevpuri near Shahdara, you will not know where to knock. There is no signboard that will tell you this is Gautam Book Center. “A signboard will attract the attention of those who don’t like our books,” explains AK Gautam.

These are not books of pornography or an underground militia. These are books on caste.
Continue reading Gautam Book Centre →

Bad ideas, Countryside, Culture, Government, Identities, Images, Left watch, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Out of Development’s Waiting Room, Out of Democracy: The Continuing Agony of the DHRM

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[with inputs from Baiju John]

Faced with the never-ending agony to which the members of the Dalit Human Rights Movement (DHRM) in Kerala seem to be subject to, it appears that that the more familiar ways of marginalizing of dalit people in Malayalee people do not work anymore. The past few days have seen horrendous attacks on these people near the town of Varkala in Thiruvanathapuram district. The DHRM has accused the Siva Sena and the BJP of violence, but it appears that both the authorities and the press are equally and irremediably deaf. Continue reading Out of Development’s Waiting Room, Out of Democracy: The Continuing Agony of the DHRM →

Culture, Everyday Life

Where have the pilgrims gone?

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The Journey is an integral part of any pilgrimage, the manner in which it is conducted is crucial to the successful conclusion of the endeavour. An edited version of this article first appeared in the travel and culture magazine Terrascape, published from Delhi. Photos: Himanshu Joshi/Curun Singh

Pilgrims at Puri, outside Jagannath Temple

There is a scene in Mughal-e-Azam, the early 1960s blockbuster of a movie by K Asif, where Akbar and his queen, the mother of his first son Jahangir (wrongly identified by K Asif and also by Ashutosh Gowarikar as Jodha Bai) stumble through the hot sands of Rajasthan under the mid-summer day sun that seemed intent on drying up and burning everything in sight. The two are on a pilgrimage. The pilgrimage was to fulfill a vow that Akbar had taken.

What I have to say in this piece can best be prefaced by narrating the story of that vow. Continue reading Where have the pilgrims gone? →