Bad ideas, Debates, Theory

Thinking about ‘the Contemporary’: Between Interdisciplinarity and Indisciplinarity

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[An earlier version of this note was presented as keynote lecture for the Arts Faculty Seminar on Interdisciplinary Research in Humanities, Benaras Hindu University, 9-10 September 2010]

It cannot be emphasized enough how critically important the theme of the Seminar is – especially for us in India today but more generally in the world at large. We need to think of the idea of interdisciplinarity in much more fundamental and radical ways today if we are to even begin to meet the intellectual challenges posed by ‘our contemporary’.

Before I proceed, let me also clarify that the term ‘indisciplinarity’ in the title of my talk, is not simply there for its shock-value. I believe that we are today at the threshold of a fundamentally new condition where there is a serious question mark over old knowledges and disciplines as they emerged in the course of the last few centuries. Continue reading Thinking about ‘the Contemporary’: Between Interdisciplinarity and Indisciplinarity →

Government, Politics

Think Freely, but Obey: Indu Vashist

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Guest post by INDU VASHIST

In recent years, we have seen a number of filmic representations of Delhi, (Love Aaj Kal, Delhi 6, Band Baaja Baraat, to name a few.) Amit Trivedi has even given Dilli a new anthem. All of these artist representations have been trying to capture or at least showcase the contemporary social, political and economic layers of India’s Powerpolis. Implicit within these depictions is that Delhi is actually Dilli, a place mired in contradictions and tensions, but still dil wali, a city with heart.

Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s graphic novel Delhi Calm (Harper Collins Press, 2010) recounts the 21-month period from 25 June 1975 – 21 March 1977 that is known in this country as the Emergency. This book shows another side of the city, one that does not talk about or acknowledge the atrocities committed in the name of the nation. In fact, Ghosh’s Delhi functions on the principle that silence or “self-censorship” is the key to survival in this city and by extension the mythical nation. Continue reading Think Freely, but Obey: Indu Vashist →

Frontiers, Images, Media politics, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Journalism of the People: You Feel Like You Gettin’ Real Noose!

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And Director General of the al-Jazeera network explains why al-Jazeera could see the Arab revolution coming when the WEstern media could not: Continue reading Journalism of the People: You Feel Like You Gettin’ Real Noose! →

Bad ideas, Culture, Genders

The ‘new’ Indian filmi woman: Arpita Das

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Guest post by ARPITA DAS

In these times of celebrating ‘small’ films, ‘new’ unheard-of young directors, little India, and non-filmi characterizations, it seems to have become mandatory for critics to praise every film claiming to build its  narrative around a so-called non-mainstream idea.  If this were not so, two ‘small’, ‘different’ films which created a lot of hype recently, would not have gathered as much post-release steam.  I am talking about No One Killed Jessica and Manu weds Tanu.  Both have been promoted and described in reviews as bold films, with star heroines showing a no-holds-barred temperament and verbal acumen, and this being the central focal point of their ‘different-ness’, both have made that oft-repeated Bollywood claim, ‘pikchar hatke hai’. If the films are to be believed, this new Indian woman can be instantly recognized by one or more of the following traits: smoking nicotine or other substances, mouthing expletives both in Hindi and English with ease, being sexually promiscuous or even vaguely ambivalent, manipulating people close to them without giving a thought to causing hurt, and a sound lack of any sense of ethics in the professional sphere or personal turf.

Continue reading The ‘new’ Indian filmi woman: Arpita Das →

Culture

Who is Jugni?: Indu Vashist

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Guest post by INDU VASHIST

The character of Jugni has been featuring in Punjabi popular and folk music for well over a century. The most recent references of this rebellious, fiery female character have appeared in diverse productions like Pakistan’s Coke Studio (above), Punjab’s sensicore rocker Rabbi Shergill, and of course Bollywood in films like Tanu Weds Manu and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! Continue reading Who is Jugni?: Indu Vashist →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Law

Updated: Get Ready for India’s Blogger Control Act

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Sanchar Bhawan, office of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in New Delhi

The Internet in India is regulated by the Information Technology Act (2000) to which amendments were passed in 2008 and in 2009 the IT (Amendment) Act 2008 was passed. The Ministry of IT has now gotten down to notifying additional rules for the Act. Amongst the set of rules is one specifically for cyber cafes, about which I’ll write another post, and there’s one on ‘due diligence on intermediaries’. Intermediaries in the context of internet means that if you post any comment on this blog, I am legally responsible for your comments too. Intermediary liability is a favourite tool of internet censorship by repressive regimes the world over.

To those familiar with Indian laws, this will appear to be routine stuff, the sort of laws that regulate newspapers, for instance, or freedom of expression in India in general. However, three main problems here: one, the over-emphasis on blogs and bloggers, indicating the government’s anxiety over controlling blogs; two, the vagueness and vast scope of the reasons for which the government can block websites; and three, the utterly regressive move of introducing ‘intermediary due-diligence’, a favourite tool of repressive regimes against bloggers.

It is interesting that while “Blogs” and “Blogger” are defined in the Definitions section of this rule, the words aren’t used in the rules per se. In other words, they had blogs in mind while making the rules. These rules, if notified, will basically be India’s Blogger Control Act.

Continue reading Updated: Get Ready for India’s Blogger Control Act →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Law

Updated: Crazy internet censorship time in India, again

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Update: Please see bottom of the post for several updates.

*

“Shivam!” Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama called this morning. “It’s 2006 all over again. They’ve blocked Typepad.” I instantly knew what this meant. They’ve done this at least twice before, the fellas at CERT-IN. In 2003, 2006 and now 2011.

Typepad.com is a blogging service, much like Google Blogger (Blogspot.com) or WordPress.com that this site, Kafila.org runs on. Now. Airtel users who go to Typepad.com find this:

Users of most ISPs can see this, but government-owned MTNL has ironically not caught up :) Continue reading Updated: Crazy internet censorship time in India, again →

Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Left watch, Movements, Theory

Reflections on Sudipta Kaviraj’s ‘Marxism in Translation’

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[The following is a revised version of some comments made during a discussion with Sudipta Kaviraj at the Centre for the Study of Developing Socoeties, Delhi on 21 October 2010. Kaviraj made a presentation based on a recent essay of his ‘Marxism in Translation: Critical Reflections on Indian Political Thought’ (published in Political Judgement: Essays in Honour of John Dunn, Eds Raymond Geuss and Richard Bourke) to which some of us responded. AN]

It is interesting to revisit, with Sudipta Kaviraj, the field of ‘Indian Marxism’. It is an abandoned field, a piece of haunted land where no living beings go – at least not in their senses. What is more, it is a field that ‘Indian Marxists’ themselves are afraid of revisiting. It is their past – the land of the dead, of unfulfilled ancestral spirits, where the ghosts of yesteryears hang like betaal from every tree. The terror of this forbidden territory has redoubled, after the collapse of socialism. It is as if some deep secrets of the past lie buried there which they would rather not bring back to life, for fear of what might be revealed to them of their own selves. It is strange but true that Marxists who swear by history are perhaps as afraid of it as anybody else.

Read the full post in Critical Encounters.

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, Law

You fill up my Census…

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…quipped my brother Dilip in response to the following mail from my sister Pramada:

So the bell rings this afternoon. desperate clanging. i open the door and there is a man with forms in his hand and a general irritated demeanor. figured that this was the census man. he comes in and settles down. starts by wanting to know who the head of the household is. i say there is no one. he insists. i continue to say no one.

Census of India 2011 mascot

He proceeds to explain that if the parents live in the house, then they are the head of the household, if married then the husband is. I proceed to ask for definition and say that all three of us who live in the house are head of the household since we all earn and take decisions. he promises to erase what he has written since he was sure my mother was head of household.

He seemed to find my gender a bit dubious so questioned my mother if i was a boy or a girl and then repeatedly said “ladki” to me. having established that i indeed was a woman, he wanted to know date of birth, which was not difficult, but place of birth he found extremely challenging. he could not get his spellings right, or did not know districts or states in the country so tattamangalam in palghat district in kerala was as baffling as mysore in karnataka. calcutta was easy to deal with and he said calcutta was in calcutta!!! mother tongue caused him more angst because he had to write malayalam and again the spelling eluded him.

Continue reading You fill up my Census… →

Capitalism, Media politics

Big Media Anyone?

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From an article I did for this morning’s Hindu:

DB Power is a subsidiary of DB Corp Ltd, a media conglomerate that owns four newspapers, including the Hindi Dainik Bhaskar and English DNA, that have a combined readership of 17.5 million readers, and the My FM radio station.

The company’s most recent project in Dharamjaigarh shall displace 524 families from six settlements to extract 2 million tonnes of coal every year to fuel a 1320 MW thermal power plant that shall be built in the adjoining district of Janjgir.

No prizes for guessing what the Dainik Bhaskar’s coverage was like:

Black diamond to give sparkle to Dharamjaigarh's destiny

Continue reading Big Media Anyone? →

Centre watch, Excavation, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

You Fill in the Rest: Dilip D’Souza on the Godhra verdict

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Guest post by DILIP D’SOUZA

Here’s a crime: February 27 2002, 59 people killed when a train is set on fire in Godhra. 90+ people are arrested and accused of the slaughter. Bail is denied to them all. The trial takes nine years, the trial verdict acquits 63 of them, finds the other 31 guilty. The judge sentences 11 of those 31 to death, the other 20 to life in prison.

Here’s another crime: February 28 2002 (the next day), 69 people killed when a building called Gulberg Society is set on fire and its residents attacked in Ahmedabad.

You fill in the rest. How many arrested and accused of this slaughter? How many denied bail? How long does the trial take? How many are acquitted? How many are found guilty? How many are sentenced to anything at all? Continue reading You Fill in the Rest: Dilip D’Souza on the Godhra verdict →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Violence/Conflict

Sopore sisters, in death and life: Nawaz Gul Qanungo

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Guest post by NAWAZ GUL QANUNGO

In the May of 2006, Praveen “Five Police Station” Swami wrote in Frontline: ““Long live Pakistan,” chanted the hundreds of young men who, armed with axes and crowbars, had gathered to demolish Sabina Hamid Bulla’s home in downtown Srinagar on May 5. “We want freedom!” … Last month, residents of Srinagar complained to the police about two 30-second pornographic video clips that had been circulating through mobile phones. A 16-year old girl was then detained, who said she had been recruited by a prostitution ring run by Bulla. In an unsigned statement to the police, the girl said Bulla, to whom she is related, supplied her with drugs and cash for having sex with two State Ministers, a Border Security Force officer, 10 policemen and several well-known businessmen. … As thing stand, though, the Central Bureau of Investigation – which was, notably, given charge of the case before the protests began – has an enormous mission before it. First, it will have to persuade the girl, who was married off in April with some financial assistance from Bulla, to make a formal statement before a magistrate. Then, corroboration will have to be found to back the charges she has made – no small task, given the influence of the men who now face charges of rape.” [Frontline, May 20 – June 2, 2006.]  Continue reading Sopore sisters, in death and life: Nawaz Gul Qanungo →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Government

The myth of India’s Hajj subsidy: Muhammad Farooq

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Guest post by MUHAMMAD FAROOQ

Recently the Supreme Court of India upheld the constitutional validity of extending subsidy on air fare to the Hajj Pilgrims. This year Rs.280 Crores were reportedly spent by the Government of India to subsidise the air fare of one lakh pilgrims. This amounts to a subsidy of Rs.28000/- per pilgrim. The subsidy provided to the pilgrims has understandably generated a lot of debate within political and social circles in India. While the right wing political parties, when not in power, consider it as an unnecessary appeasement of Indian Muslims, the governments formed by any party have always seen it as a necessary expenditure to help Muslims perform their religious obligation of Hajj.

Since I have also performed my Hajj this year, I decided to do some quick calculations to check the veracity of the tall claims made by the GoI and the Hajj Committee regarding the subsidy amount (see box). The results were quite shocking. I checked with one of the service providers —‘makemytrip.com’— and it showed up the Saudi Airline’s fare of a little over Rs.26000/- for a return Delhi-Jeddah ticket with a gap of around forty days. It was amazing to find that the total airfare of Rs.26,000 for a hajj pilgrimage is even lower than the subsidy amount  of Rs.28,000 thousand which is allegedly paid by GoI to airlines to subsidise the “high cost” of the air tickets. Continue reading The myth of India’s Hajj subsidy: Muhammad Farooq →

Centre watch, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Talking to ULFA: Assam’s Peace Myths and Reality: Tanmoy Sharma

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Guest post by TANMOY SHARMA

Last week, when an eight member delegation of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) returned to Guwahati after the first round of peace-talks with the central government in New Delhi, the response in Assam is a mixed bag of emotions. Arabinda Rajkhowa, the ULFA chairman who led the delegation, while addressing the press, said that they had been assured of an honourable solution to the three decade long Assam conflict by the Prime Minister.  Earlier, on 10th February the ULFA made history by coming to the talks table in New Delhi for the first time with no firm pre set conditions on its agenda.  It is understood as of now, that no substantial talks would begin before the Assam assembly elections which are expected to be held in April-May this year.  However  this ‘familiarisation exercise’ of the centre with one of India’s most influential and violent separatist outfits at such a crucial time is a hugely significant move in contemporary history of  the insurgency-hit election bound Assam. Continue reading Talking to ULFA: Assam’s Peace Myths and Reality: Tanmoy Sharma →

Capitalism, Left watch, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Scams

Hypocrisy beneath hammer-and-sickle sign: Sankar Ray

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Guest post by SANKAR RAY

Sankar Ray is a veteran journalist based in Kolkata

[This article presents the sordid tale of land acquisitions for the New Rajarhat Township and the involvement of important CPI(M) personnel in this game. One of them, the key protagonist of the story below, was mentioned by Pranab Mukherjee in parliament yesterday, taunting the CPI(M) over its claims to be a crusader against corruption, arousing the ire of its MPs. – AN]

Calling it a ‘shocking experience”, after a visiting a segment of oustees in the Narmada Valley in mid- August 2002,  Sarla Maheswari, then CPI(M) member of Rajya Sabha member told the media – as if her heart bled, and with revolutionary conscience ablaze:  “How can a development project create a disaster in the lives of the most downtrodden tribal people and also thousands of farmers of a huge area? How can it ravage their lives without any protest by mainstream political parties?  Truth indeed is stranger than fiction as the same fire-eating  ‘communist MP’s demagoguery is now in a hot soup as I-T sleuths raided  at  her residence, as a sequel to  detection of an unaccounted sum of Rs 31 crores and 26 benami companies, belonging to the Canopy Group whose chairman is her husband Arun Maheswari. And the CPI (M) brass at the Muzaffar Ahmed Bhavan, Bengal CPI(M)’s state headquarters keep up their recalcitrance, not even demanding a ‘show cause’ of the cash-rich ‘comrade’ . Former MP and CPI(M) CC member Mohd Selim, a spokesman of state party leadership too, ruled out any punitive step until specific indictment by the I-T department, leave alone criticizing the shady land transactions in the controversial New Town project at Rajarhat fully with the knowledge of ‘comrade Sarla Maheswari’  and her family.

Continue reading Hypocrisy beneath hammer-and-sickle sign: Sankar Ray →

Culture, Frontiers, Identities, Language

10% Anthology: Tarun Bhartiya

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A review by TARUN BHARTIYA

The Oxford Anthology of Writings From North-East India : Poetry and Essays
Edited by Tilottoma Misra
Oxford University Press
New Delhi, 2011, 332 Pages / Rs. 595 ISBN 0-19-806749-6

If you are on the marginalisation trip, and India’s North East is your illicit high, you should be worried. In the last ten years, trying to make up for the dark fifty years of Indian ignorance, anthologies of literature from the region have begun to appear almost annually.

But before I get accused of an inside job, a disclosure that I am loathe to make:

I know many of the poets (some of whose biographies smell of Shillong) who feature in The Oxford Anthology of Writings From North-East India : Poetry and Essays. We share little magazines, anthologies, dark bye-lanes of love, anger, feuds, booze, and journeys to find our next fix.  So, I promise to dull my taste and leash my judgment. And only occasionally lapse into pointless gossip. Continue reading 10% Anthology: Tarun Bhartiya →

Countryside, Everyday Life, Government, Law, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

What do the Maoists want?

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The media has by and large focused on the Maoist demand of release of some of their own in exchange of the Malkangiri collector and junior engineer. The list of the total 8 of 14 demands of the Maoists that the Orissa government has agreed to makes for interesting reading:

(1) Orissa government will write to Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to take action on the extremists demand for release of Maoist central committee members Sheela di (jailed in Jharkhand) and Padma (in Chhattisgarh) owing to their ill-health; (2) ST status for the Konda Reddy and Nukadora communities categorized as OBCs; (3) stopping the multi-purpose Polavaram project of Andhra Pradesh; (4) ‘pattas’ (record of rights) to tribals dispossessed of their land in Malkangiri and Koraput; (5) irrigation in Maribada and Maniamkonda villages in Malkangiri; (6) compensation based on HC order to Tadangi Gangulu and Ratanu Sirika who died of disease allegedly due to torture; (7) relevant laws for mining operations in Mali and Deomali bauxite mines; (8) minimum displacement of tribals and adequate compensation. [ToI]

Bad ideas, Excavation, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Are Ikhwanis back in Kashmir?

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A report by Pradeep Thakur in the Times of India today has stunned a lot of people in Kashmir. The report says that the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Indian Army are reviving Ikhwan units in Kashmir to quell the anti-India movement. Some Kashmiris living in Kashmir feared the era of Ikhwani terror and blackmail will be back. The stunning bit is how openly the effort of the MHA and the Indian Army is being acknowledged in creating a renegade political pro-India militia force in today’s political environment in Kashmir. What is not surprising is that this is happening at all, because it has happened before. At worst, this seemed like a stupid move to publicise an overt political operation of the sort Kashmir has seen no dearth of.

The story, titled, “Two pro-India parties floated in J&K with Army, MHA help” by Pradeep Thakur reads: Continue reading Are Ikhwanis back in Kashmir? →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Ecology/Environment, Media politics, Movements

The Answer My Friend, is Blowin’ in the Wind…

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Even as the western and Indian media go ecstatic over the new democratic upsurges in the Arab world, something else has begun to happen. The Tunisian ‘virus’ that spread rapidly via Egypt, is now finding newer and equally hospital bodies elsewhere – that is to say, bodies made vulnerable by the years of plunder by corporate capital. Now, what precisely, is the connection between corporate capital and the Arab ‘jasmine revolutions’? On the face of it, nothing. However, as the state legislature in Wisconsin sat considering a bill to severely curb state workers’ rights of collective bargaining a few days ago, thousands of state employees descended on the building, virtually occupying it.

And as protests against Republican Governor Scott Walker’s assault on collective bargaining rights entered the fifth day, the support for the movement has begun to expand. Demonstrators were joined by union supporters from Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as national union leaders and civil rights advocate the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

An interesting article by Dan La Botz, “A New American Workers’ Movement Has Begun“, underlines the connections of the ongoing struggle in Wisconsin with the Arab virus!

Continue reading The Answer My Friend, is Blowin’ in the Wind… →

Bad ideas, Culture, Everyday Life, Identities, Violence/Conflict

Teaching Harmony, Practicing Disharmony

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This was presented as a paper at a symposium on Peace Education organised as part of National Conference on Indian Psychology, on 6 February 2011 at the India International Centre.

This piece seeks to underscore the cleavages that exist in our society, explore the foundations upon which the edifice of intolerance has risen and to look at the tools, like education for peace and harmony, with which we try to dismantle this citadel of intolerance.

Peace education, you would agree, cannot be confined merely to teaching the message of Love and brotherhood, our text books have been teaching this message for as long as I remember and my memories of our text books go back, at least to my senior school days in the mid sixties, almost 45 years ago.

If telling students in their classes that we should all love each other because we are all Indians and that we are all equal was enough then we would not have many of the problems that we are confronting today. Continue reading Teaching Harmony, Practicing Disharmony →

Capitalism, Debates, Movements, Politics

“dissenting dialogues” on Egypt, Sri Lanka and other debates

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The editorial and the list of articles in the dissenting dialogues Issue No 2, February 2011 are posted below. The entire issue can be downloaded as a pdf file from the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum website.

Editorial

As the second issue of dissenting dialogues goes to press, we join in worldwide celebrations of the ongoing democratic revolution in Egypt, itself sparked off by an uprising in Tunisia. The Egyptian uprising, which has tremendous regional and possibly global consequences, came against a background of simmering unrest directed at a dictator who presided over a brutal, authoritarian regime. This regime was distinguished by its incarceration and torture not only of its own dissidents but of prisoners “renditioned” to it by the CIA, the denial of basic democratic rights on the pretext of fighting Islamism, and rising youth unemployment and inflation.

Although the timing and form of Egypt’s popular revolt could not have been predicted, an examination of the recent history of Egypt contextualises the forces at work. For a start, we cannot avoid looking at the recent history of neoliberalism in Egypt, its relationship to the authoritarianism of President Hosni Mubarak’s government, and the regime’s relationship to imperialism. The post-war history of Egypt also charts and indeed defines the historical trajectory of Third World sovereignty. Egypt’s revolt has to be understood in the context of the progressive socialist, anti-colonial struggle for national self-determination of the Bandung era from the 1950s until the liberalisation of the economy in the 1970s, the International Monetary Fund’s “restructuring” in the early 1990s, and the recent capitulation to the accumulation strategy of global finance capital.
Continue reading “dissenting dialogues” on Egypt, Sri Lanka and other debates →

DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE