| |
|
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Apr 27, 2012 AT 23:24 IST
,
Edited At: Apr 27, 2012 23:24 IST
Who should write about India? Last week, Patrick French wrote about Writings on India in the Hindustan Times:
there is a growing antagonism towards the idea of foreigners engaging with India, a latter-day literary swadeshi predicated on the theory that Indians should be doing it for themselves, rather than listening to what outsiders have to say. It is a view that arises out of a justified sentiment, namely that for too long India had to endure books by foreigners which distorted its culture and history. But today, the denouncers of the foreign hand on the keyboard are more often than not vigilantes in search of a crime. In my experience, the people who hold this view most strongly are those who have studied at universities in Britain or North America, and in some cases still live outside India. The kind of career made by David Frost, Daljit Dhaliwal or Fareed Zakaria in the United States would be impossible in India. Although foreigners are occasionally regarded as entertaining and even interesting, they remain a curiosity. I think it’s fair to assume that when Fareed Zakaria, the Mumbai-born son of the Congress party stalwart Rafiq Zakaria, presents his weekly show on CNN, he is not greeted by catcallers asking him what right he has to discuss American politics. He does not face intellectuals in Washington DC who pose, in all seriousness, the preposterous question: Who should be allowed to write about America? Yet this is precisely the debate that recurs, time and again, in India, spurred by people who would not think of applying the same rules to themselves in an overseas context. The British journalist Edward Luce recently published a book titled Time To Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline. Even those American reviewers who disagreed with his thesis did not think to question Luce’s right to write the book. As Francis Fukuyama wrote about him: “In a tradition stretching back to de Tocqueville, sympathetic foreigners are often the keenest observers of American life.”...
India’s writing elite is fundamentally pro-establishment, and dislikes the way the nation has changed. Global power is shifting. It is a different world now, one in which many writers of Indian origin make a living abroad, and the richest person in England is Indian. Contrary to what we are fed, Indian voices are not stifled, but vociferously heard. Literature should not be constrained by parochial rules of engagement, self-censorship or the pious, self-affirming orthodoxies of social media. Creativity should not be stifled by finger-wagging. Let the “Who should write about India?” question be consigned to the dustbin of history. Let Xuanzang go free, to write the books he wants. Let India accept the rest of the world, as the rest of the world accepts India.
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Apr 27, 2012 AT 23:24 IST, Edited At: Apr 27, 2012 23:24 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Jan 16, 2012 AT 06:14 IST
,
Edited At: Jan 16, 2012 06:14 IST
Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express has a brilliant article on What Vivekananda Valued , arguing that his underlying sensibility was open, self-confident and governed by the belief that humanity needs wider circles of identification to transcend narrow identities::
He directed India towards a liberality by reminding us that it was god’s job to protect us, not ours to protect our gods. The distinction of Indian nationalism was precisely that it never saw the nation as the highest embodiment of value. With the condescension of hindsight it is too easy to dismiss this project as either disembodied idealism, or worse still, an assertion of Indian superiority. But embedded in it was the radical idea that India means nothing if it is not going to be a source of alternative values. There is a recognition of pluralism, but not one that sacrifices truth. “We want to lead mankind to a place where there is neither the Vedas, nor the Bible, nor the Koran, yet this has to be done by harmonising the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran.” Whatever one may think of this project, the idea that each tradition could reach to some place outside itself, by working through all traditions, was a sign of intellectual ambition that is now all but lost.
Again, in hindsight, Vivekananda has been read as progenitor masculinity in politics; and he has certainly been appropriated that way. His claim that “for our motherland, a conjunction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam — Vedanta Brain and Islam Body is the only hope” has been tirelessly misinterpreted. This quotation is prefaced by two striking claims “Practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all mankind as one’s own soul, was never developed amongst the Hindus.” And “if any religion approached equality in any appreciable manner it was Islam and Islam alone.” The reference to Islamic body is not to an ideal of power; it is to the central idea of equality.
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Jan 16, 2012 AT 06:14 IST, Edited At: Jan 16, 2012 06:14 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Dec 02, 2011 AT 23:27 IST
,
Edited At: Dec 02, 2011 23:27 IST
In the Asian Age, Sidharth Bhatia compares the latest Indian rage Kolaveri Di
with the outrage expressed in Pakistani band Beygairat Brigade's Aalu Anday
and concludes:
...our creative people do not like to rock the boat. There is no dearth of troubling issues in the country — what is missing is vibrant engagement and critiquing.
India, too, has a history of activism and intellectual dissent and this is not to suggest that there are no novels, films or songs that ask questions of the establishment, but India today sees itself not as a country with worrying concerns but as a rapidly growing economy ready to take its place in the world.
Notwithstanding all its problems, this is a country that is largely pleased with itself to the point of being smug; that mood is not conducive to producing radical art. There is nothing wrong with being happy and satisfied, but it is the duty of the artist, the writer and the filmmaker to speak truth to power. That is not happening in today’s India. Occasionally, the online world creates some subversive memes but here, too, it remains rather tame, taking on the usual suspects like politicians, rather than spoof corporates or even do-gooders; no one wants to take on the really powerful. Which is why our Kolaveri will remain charming rather than caustic. We are not going to get an Indian version of Aloo Anday anytime soon, because that would mean not merely making fun of our holy cows, but also questioning ourselves.
Read the full piece: No Kolaveri in India
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Dec 02, 2011 AT 23:27 IST, Edited At: Dec 02, 2011 23:27 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Oct 03, 2011 AT 02:21 IST
,
Edited At: Oct 03, 2011 02:21 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Oct 03, 2011 AT 02:21 IST, Edited At: Oct 03, 2011 02:21 IST
POSTED BY Omar
ON Aug 15, 2011 AT 00:00 IST
,
Edited At: Aug 15, 2011 00:00 IST
Pakistan and India are celebrating the 64th anniversary of “Freedom at midnight” with their usual mix of nationalism and jingoism (Bangladesh seems to ignore this nightmarish dream anniversary and will be mostly ignored in this article). The fashionable opinion about India (within and without, though perhaps less on the Indian left) seems fairly positive; about Pakistan, decidedly muddled if not outright negative. Is this asymmetry another manifestation of the unfair assessments of an Islamophobic world? Or does this difference in perception have a basis in fact?
I am going to make twin arguments: that the difference in everyday life, everyday oppressions and everyday successes is LESS than commonly stated (though a gap may finally be opening up), but at the same time, the asymmetry in their ideals and foundational myths is much greater than outsiders tend to see. Outsiders in general tend to see other nations as generic “nations”; they assume (usually unconsciously) that the default “national interests” are likely to be reflections of the same set of assumptions everywhere. My argument here is that this is frequently true and is true enough of India and Pakistan in many cases (e.g. in negotiations over river waters), but there are some unique elements in the Pakistan story that slowly but steadily push in a less desirable direction, even as the normal evolution of society brings in modernization and economic growth; and unless these are damped down, these “unique elements” have the potential to sink Pakistan. On the other hand, if these can be ignored or painted over, then Pakistan too can become just another “normal” South Asian country, faced with similar problems (some worse, some much less than its neighbors), to which similar solutions can be proposed.
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Omar
ON Aug 15, 2011 AT 00:00 IST, Edited At: Aug 15, 2011 00:00 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Jul 19, 2011 AT 23:33 IST
,
Edited At: Jul 19, 2011 23:33 IST
Ramachandra Guha in Financial Times on the truth " that India is in no position to become a superpower. It is not a rising power, nor even an emerging power":
Corruption is not new in India, but the scale and ubiquity of these problems is genuinely unprecedented.
This activity cuts across political parties – small and large, regional and national. It has tainted the media too, with influential editors now commonly lobbying pliant politicians to bend the law to favour particular corporations...
If nothing else, the current wave of corruption scandals will put at least a temporary halt to premature talk of India’s imminent rise to superstardom. Such fancies are characteristic of editors in New Delhi and businessmen in Mumbai, who dream often of catching up with and even surpassing China.
Brahma Chellaney responds:
India’s rise is threatened by a political factor – a leadership deficit, which is compounded by a splintered polity. India is still governed by a pre-independence leadership – an anomaly even in Asia, where age is supposed to be wisdom. India today boasts the world’s oldest head of government and oldest foreign minister. Old, tired, risk-averse leadership can hardly propel any country to greatness. Worse, India’s coalition federal governments, which have become a norm, tend to function by the rule of parochial politics – in fact, by the lowest common denominator.
MT @pbmehta on Twitter:
Is there any power that escaped serious corruption in the process of becoming great?
What do you think?
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Jul 19, 2011 AT 23:33 IST, Edited At: Jul 19, 2011 23:33 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Jun 09, 2011 AT 01:05 IST
,
Edited At: Jun 09, 2011 14:57 IST
The first and only time I met Maqbool Fida Husain in person was walking down Park Street, Calcutta, many years ago. I was with a friend who recognised the barefoot figure in white. He had been in the news then for having been denied entry into Saturday —or Calcutta —Club (or perhaps both) because he, as was his wont, wanted to walk in barefoot. I don't quite remember whether the Telegraph had already been launched then, or if was the Statesman —one of the two for sure —that had helpfully reminded us that these were the very clubs that once, not too long back, used to have such signboards as "Dogs and Indians not allowed". I remember that all of us in school were suitably outraged and quite kicked with the idea of this barefoot bohemian, stirring up things a bit for the burra sahibs with his bare feet. (We didn't know then that it was a bit of a PR stunt that he seemed to have perfected). So seeing him strolling around, perhaps soon thereafter, somewhere near Flurys, we walked up to him and asked for an autograph. He didn't put on any airs, just smiled, asked what we studied and where and, without any fuss, doodled a signed sketch of the two of us. I still vividly remember it: fluent, firm strokes with a thick, black felt pen on the back of a cream-yellowish postal envelope. We proceeded to lose it before the day was out, but that's quite another story. And at that time, frankly there were no major regrets. Besides, we reasoned, it would in any case have caused problems about which of the two of us would get to keep it.
Years passed. Mr Husain was out of my consciousness till his old paintings of Sita caused a furore sometime in the late-90s. He offered then to publicly apologise and withdraw and destroy whichever paintings were found objectionable.I was provoked enough to take to writing impassioned, unpublished letters to the editors of newspapers in protest. Meanwhile, routine protests against his various paintings continued by the likes of Shiv Sena/Bajrang Dal/VHP//BJP etc. It was all very vile, but had not yet assumed the viciousness of a concerted campaign that was let loose after the Prophet Cartoon controversy brought things to a head in 2006. In UP, a Samajwadi Party minister offered Rs 51 crores to anyone who would chop off the hands of the Danish cartoonist. No legal action was taken against him. It was as if the floodgates of all competitive communalism and politics had suddenly opened up:
In Gujarat, a local leader offered a kilo of gold to anybody willing to gouge out Husain's eyes. In 2006, a fringe organisation calling itself the Hindu Personal Law Board offered Rs 51 crore for his head. Shortly after that, Madhya Pradesh Congress minority cell vice-chairman Akhtar Baig offered Rs 11 lakh to anybody who would chop off Husain's hands.
Our archives tell the shameful, sordid story of the way he was hounded out of India after that. Checking the (mostly) graceful reactions today from various (at least official) quarters, I do not have the heart to go over the FAQ I had hurriedly compiled last March when news of his having renounced his Indian passport to take Qatari citizenship trickled in. The very idea of encountering those done-to-death arguments is exhausting, but there's a distinct memory of what Javed Akhtar had said then:
You see, Husain has not gone to Qatar. I don't remember the title of the story (but) Camus, in one of his short stories, has written that the master tells the servant, "I am going away from here now" and the servant says, "Where are you going master?" and he says, "Can't you understand? I am going away from here. That's where I am going." Husain has not gone to Qatar. Husain has gone away from India....:
It is true even more today, now that he has gone away forever — and not just from India. Yet, as Vinod Mehta had reminded us then, it wasn't quite the case of a high-principled creative genius fleeing persecution who was "pining away in his Dubai penthouse, Ferrari at hand, for his beloved homeland. That is pure humbug."
It was a sentiment that Husain, despite the specially bestowed poignancy of his situation on him, I suspect, heartily endorsed. He was honest enough to himself acknowledge factors such as sponsorship for the sort of work he wanted to do— and taxes— as reasons for choosing Qatari nationality. Which is why, I think, he wouldn't quite have liked the maudlin sentimentality of the Seemab Akbarabadi verse wrongly attributed to Bahadur Shah Zafar that was invoked (mostly incorrectly) by very well-meaning people today with respect to the circumstances of his death in exile.
It may not be politically correct to say this, but it needs to be said: he chose to be away. He was too much his own man, and with more than enough means, to not live on his own terms, wherever he was. And it is a great disservice to his memory to reduce him to a situation of caricaturised, pitiful helplessness.
He was much bigger than any do gaz of zamiiN.
Also See: M.F. Husain: FAQ
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Jun 09, 2011 AT 01:05 IST, Edited At: Jun 09, 2011 14:57 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Jun 08, 2011 AT 06:26 IST
,
Edited At: Jun 08, 2011 06:26 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Jun 08, 2011 AT 06:26 IST, Edited At: Jun 08, 2011 06:26 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON May 17, 2011 AT 19:39 IST
,
Edited At: May 17, 2011 19:39 IST
An expansive interview with Amitav Ghosh in Guernica where, among many fascinating things, he 'discusses the link between anthropology and writing, The New Yorker’s edit of his essay on the Iraq war, and John Updike’s worst book'. With many interesting insights about the diaspora, various literary figures, his literary tastes (doesn't care much for The Catcher in the Rye) and much else besides. Some excerpts:
Salman Rushdie
'His books are national projects. One book was sort of like a modern history of India, the other is modern history of Pakistan. But I don’t think one can write about India like that'
V.S. Naipaul
'I don’t think I would agree with more than like ten or twenty things that he says. I think he’s completely wrong about a lot of things... His representations of India, his representations of Islam. I think very often they’re just mistaken. They’re just in fact a sort of perverse kind of autobiography rather than representations of what he sees...Often I think the weaknesses of Naipaul’s work come from the fact of his having grown up in a circumstance where there were very intense small conflicts. Where he, I think, could never really claim Trinidad for himself, and never felt enabled to claim it for himself'
Arundhati Roy
'She’s not afraid of talking about emotion. About very essential, powerful, human emotions. And that’s what you don’t find in American writing anymore. It’s just so ironicized, it’s just boring. I can’t read any American writing anymore; it’s just not interesting to me'
and on being asked about the women writers from India he likes, and whether he likes Jhumpa Lahiri:
'Anita Desai, she’s a great favorite. Kiran Desai, who’s a very dear friend… You know, it’s such a long list, I could just go on. It’s a very fortunate moment to be an Indian writer'
On how the IWE were received in places like the US:
And the sorts of reviews we would get, it would be like, you know the singing dogs? It’s just interesting because they do it. But I think that’s what really changed... I would say. I think that’s what really changed with people like Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha. I think they really changed the grounds of the debate so that it was no longer possible to take that position in relation to us. So I really respect what they’ve done. Does it in any way inform my writing? I don’t think so.
On India:
One of the interesting things about the Indian voice is that it’s always been a composite voice. As late as the nineteenth century every Bengali learned Persian; it was normal! We’ve always learned Sanskrit. No one in India has ever spoken in one voice; it’s not something anyone thinks of. But this much is clear: India and China in the 18th century controlled 50% of world trade. After the end of colonialism they controlled less than 2 percent of world trade. But what is happening? The balance is being righted. India and China will again control 50% of world trade. And it’s taken us… We’re just now awakening from the long night of that colonial experience.
Read the full piece at the Guernica
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON May 17, 2011 AT 19:39 IST, Edited At: May 17, 2011 19:39 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Jun 17, 2010 AT 22:40 IST
,
Edited At: Jun 18, 2010 00:40 IST
For those who care for such things, the 22-nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey is out for 2010 and has some interesting findings and very, very hurried comments --
Kenyans think more highly of the USA than Americans themselves, but there are very few other countries who have that good an opinion of the USA - and this when we are down by as much as 10%, which could be attributed to the Obama/Afghanistan effect. If the poll had been done after June 7 Bhopal judgement, it is anybody's guess what the figures would have been like.
And here, again, is a whopping 17% decline in US ratings -- blame it largely on the David Headley and the US Af-Pak policy.
We are down, and gloomier, but this is still #4 optimistic reading in the world, after China 87%, Brazil 50% and Poland 47%. Pakistanis rate thier country at 14%, which is up from 9% last year. But, then, that might well be because the poll this time excludes FATA, erstwhile NWFP, AJK and Balochistan.
This is actually the third best optimistic reading of one's country's economic situation, after China 91% and Brazil 62%. Only 18% of Pakistanis, for example, think similarly about their economy, as compared to 24% last year.
Only Germany (30%), Japan 26% and Turkey (20%) have a more unfavourable opinion of China. 85% in Pakistan have a favourable opinion.
More interactive stuff here
- Another interesting sidelight is people's image of their country in the world: After Indonesians, 92% of whom say Indonesia is generally liked by people in other nations, there are as many as 87% Indians who think that about India, followed by Jordan (85%), China (80%) and Brazil (80%). Only 40% Pakistanis and 35 Americans have that view of their countries
- Another interesting finding is the use of military force: In Asia, majorities consistently agree that military force can sometimes be necessary. Gandhi would perhaps not be happy to learn that India leads the pack at a surprising 92%, although most in Pakistan (73%), Indonesia (72%), China (60%) and Japan (57%) also agree with this position. In South Korea, more now (56%) hold this view than did so in 2007 (43%).
- And, of course, 19% Indians also believe that Brazil will win the FIFA World Cup, with Australia a close second at 14%
- Read the full report
Read Full Post
|
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Jun 17, 2010 AT 22:40 IST, Edited At: Jun 18, 2010 00:40 IST
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Angelina Jolie |
| BJP |
| Congress |
| Copyrights - Intellectual Property Rights - Patents |
| Cricket - Match & Spot Fixing |
| Cricket - IPL |
| Genetics- Genes- DNA- etc |
| Health- Medicine- Fitness |
| NDA |
| Pratap Bhanu Mehta |
| Rahul Dravid |
| S. Sreesanth |
| Third Front |
| UPA |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Go |
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|
| | | | | | | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | | 29 | 30 | | | | | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|