I've been watching Mira Nair's Director's Commentary on The Namesake DVD, and it's been surprising to see how much of the film was inspired by other film directors and visual artists' work. This was a film I liked quite a bit when I first saw it, and it had the unusual distinction of being a film my parents also liked. (I also liked the book, though I know from earlier discussions that a fair number of readers did not.) Watching the Director's Commentary I realize there was a great deal in Nair's film I had missed earlier.
Despite the immense amount of craft that went into the making of the film and the strong performances by Irfan Khan and Tabu, I doubt that The Namesake will get much attention come Oscar time. Why not is an endless question; one might point out that the Oscars don't really award the year's "best" films so much as the films the major studios feel are at once somewhat "serious" and "commercially viable."
Still, the nice thing about writing for a blog is, you can pay tribute to the films that caught your attention from a given year, even if no one else agrees with you.
In the post below, I explore some names from among the large array of people who inspired Nair and collaborated with her as she put together the visual and aural elements of the film. The artists are both Desi (mostly Bengali) and American, though it's really the former group that makes the biggest impact on the film aesthetically.
Milieu
Like Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake is in a sense a "milieu" film. In the first film, Nair used many members of her own family in the smaller roles; in her adaptation of Lahiri's novel, it's Jhumpa Lahiri's family, for the most part, that gets the bit parts -- Jhumpa herself shows up, at one point. Nair does use her niece, who was raised in the U.S., to play Gogol's sister.
Nair also uses an Indian film critic named Jaganath Guha in one bit part, and the famous historian Partha Chatterjee, in another.
One surprise: I didn't know that Irfan Khan (who plays Gogol's father, Ashoke) had actually had a small role in Mira Nair's earlier film, Salaam, Bombay, when he was just eighteen years old, and a student at the National School of Drama.
Bengali Artists and Filmmakers
At one point Ashima's father is seen painting while sitting back, with his knees up. This apparently is an homage to Satyajit Ray, who painted in a similar posture. Nair also mentions that the sequence where the relationship between Ashoke and Ashima starts to develop (i.e., after they get married and move to the U.S.) is inspired by Ray's Apur Sansar ("The World of Apu").
Nair also uses Bengali actress Supriya Devi in a bit part, as another homage to Bengali art cinema (Supriya Devi acted in a number of Ritwik Ghatak films, including Meghe Dhaka Tara).
Asian Underground Musicians
The film's music is done by Nitin Sawhney. It's really pretty, understated music that has some powerful moments. Nair also uses State of Bengal's "Flight IC 408" at one point as the Ganguli family is en route to India.
Baul Singers
In addition to cutting edge Brit-Asian musicians, Nair brings in traditional Baul singers, Lakhan Das and Bhava Pagla.
Indian photographers and Design Artists
The idea for the changing fonts (where the lettering goes from Bengali calligraphy to Roman) in the opening credits comes from Mumbai-based design-artist, Divya Thakur. In her commentary, Nair calls the idea "brilliant," and I tend to agree (it produces an interesting visual effect, and the symbolism of a transition from one font to the other parallels the idea of cultural transformation that is at the core of both the novel and Nair's film).
The photographs of the famous Indian photographers Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh inspired a number of the Calcutta shots, including the image, early in the film, of Durga being carried on a wagon on the street in the early morning.
The Taj Mahal
The greatest work of art used in Nair's film is, of course, the Taj Mahal, and Nair films it from some unusual angles. The most interesting might be her use of the interplay of arches and domes (as in, the view of the splendid domes of the Taj through the arches of an auxiliary building).
Western Artists
The look of the paintings used in the opening credits are to some extent inspired by Mark Rothko. Nair says she wanted a "handmade" look, and the paintings do work that way -- the texture of the canvas is visible, as are the brush strokes of the paint within the big swaths of color filling up the screen.
Nair used an installation by Diller and Scofidio at JFK ("Travelogues"), which features images relating to travel using a neat optical effect (produced by "lenticulars").
The visual style of the whole sequence where the Ganguli family is at the beach in winter is inspired by Chris Marker's art-house classic, La Jetee.
Quite a number of Nair's shots at the airport were inspired by photographs by Garry Winogrand.
Learning Urdu, Visiting Chicago (MLA/SALA)
For the past three days I was in Chicago, at the South Asian Literature Association conference and then MLA.
At the SALA conference (Narayan, I know, is chuckling every time I use that acronym!), I was presenting on Sa'adat Hasan Manto's "Letters to Uncle Sam" ("Chacha Sam Ke Nam-Ek Khat," Doosra Khat, etc.). Though I was mainly working with Khalid Hasan's translation, I didn't want it to be one of those papers about a writer that fails to look at the original text -- but to do that in Manto's case one needs to be able to read Urdu!
Therefore, I actually spent a couple of days early this week re-learning Urdu script. I had been taught it briefly in a Hindi class in college fifteen years ago, but since then I'd completely forgotten it. It turns out that one can (re)learn a script with a little work and (in Urdu's case) a lot of concentration. Luckily, Manto's particular vocabulary and style of writing seems to be fairly close to Hindustani, so I was actually able to make some use of the original text in the paper. I will have to do much more work with it if I want to publish the paper, though. (Incidentally, the seeds of the paper were planted in this blog post from last year. The academic paper is much more argument-driven and less informal, of course)
This time I'm going to keep practicing reading Urdu every so often (perhaps using the Urdu short stories at the excellent Annual of Urdu Studies journal as fodder), so hopefully I won't forget. If anyone wants to read along with me -- or indeed, help me out! -- please let me know by email or in comments. (I might take a stab at translating this short poem (PDF) next week.)
* * *
The conferences went fine on the whole. I missed Raji Sunder Rajan's keynote and the Hawley/Krishnaswamy plenary at SALA due to a professional appointment I had at the larger MLA conference, but on the whole it's nice to see SALA improve a little every year -- there were some great papers presented this year. Unfortunately, the audiences at some panels are still too small; it seems like very few people come to SALA just to hear papers, and that's too bad.
I also had a decent time at MLA, seeing a few panels, and also catching up with a number of grad school friends. Good luck to everyone on the job market, and congratulations to Candice on her book.
* * *
Wednesday night I got away from the conferences and went to the Indo-Pak shops and restaurants on Devon Avenue, which is Chicago's equivalent of New Jersey's Oak Tree Road (Iselin/Edison) or Jackson Heights, Queens. It happened to be the night Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated, and the restaurant where I ate (Zam Zam) was buzzing with talk about it -- not all of it intelligent, unfortunately. I overheard one Pakistani 'uncle' sarcastically telling his friends that he thought Benazir's death was effectively a kind of suicide (khudkushi), so what's the big deal, why get upset? ... sad.
* * *
On Friday, Sepoy braved heavy snow and drove into central Chicago to meet up for lunch. We went to a "Cabbie" restaurant called Kababish, where they serve *really* authentic, homestyle desi khana. (It's so homestyle, there aren't even menus -- you just tell them what you want!) Naturally, we discussed the situation in Pakistan (for analysis and links, you should really go to Sepoy's Chapati Mystery blog; as I've been traveling, I haven't really been keeping up)
At the SALA conference (Narayan, I know, is chuckling every time I use that acronym!), I was presenting on Sa'adat Hasan Manto's "Letters to Uncle Sam" ("Chacha Sam Ke Nam-Ek Khat," Doosra Khat, etc.). Though I was mainly working with Khalid Hasan's translation, I didn't want it to be one of those papers about a writer that fails to look at the original text -- but to do that in Manto's case one needs to be able to read Urdu!
Therefore, I actually spent a couple of days early this week re-learning Urdu script. I had been taught it briefly in a Hindi class in college fifteen years ago, but since then I'd completely forgotten it. It turns out that one can (re)learn a script with a little work and (in Urdu's case) a lot of concentration. Luckily, Manto's particular vocabulary and style of writing seems to be fairly close to Hindustani, so I was actually able to make some use of the original text in the paper. I will have to do much more work with it if I want to publish the paper, though. (Incidentally, the seeds of the paper were planted in this blog post from last year. The academic paper is much more argument-driven and less informal, of course)
This time I'm going to keep practicing reading Urdu every so often (perhaps using the Urdu short stories at the excellent Annual of Urdu Studies journal as fodder), so hopefully I won't forget. If anyone wants to read along with me -- or indeed, help me out! -- please let me know by email or in comments. (I might take a stab at translating this short poem (PDF) next week.)
* * *
The conferences went fine on the whole. I missed Raji Sunder Rajan's keynote and the Hawley/Krishnaswamy plenary at SALA due to a professional appointment I had at the larger MLA conference, but on the whole it's nice to see SALA improve a little every year -- there were some great papers presented this year. Unfortunately, the audiences at some panels are still too small; it seems like very few people come to SALA just to hear papers, and that's too bad.
I also had a decent time at MLA, seeing a few panels, and also catching up with a number of grad school friends. Good luck to everyone on the job market, and congratulations to Candice on her book.
* * *
Wednesday night I got away from the conferences and went to the Indo-Pak shops and restaurants on Devon Avenue, which is Chicago's equivalent of New Jersey's Oak Tree Road (Iselin/Edison) or Jackson Heights, Queens. It happened to be the night Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated, and the restaurant where I ate (Zam Zam) was buzzing with talk about it -- not all of it intelligent, unfortunately. I overheard one Pakistani 'uncle' sarcastically telling his friends that he thought Benazir's death was effectively a kind of suicide (khudkushi), so what's the big deal, why get upset? ... sad.
* * *
On Friday, Sepoy braved heavy snow and drove into central Chicago to meet up for lunch. We went to a "Cabbie" restaurant called Kababish, where they serve *really* authentic, homestyle desi khana. (It's so homestyle, there aren't even menus -- you just tell them what you want!) Naturally, we discussed the situation in Pakistan (for analysis and links, you should really go to Sepoy's Chapati Mystery blog; as I've been traveling, I haven't really been keeping up)
Documentary: "I For India"
I recently got a chance (thanks, Kate) to see an excellent documentary called I For India. It's a kind of family documentary that spans nearly forty years. When Yash Suri moved to England, in 1965, he decided to buy two Super 8 film cameras, two tape recorders, and two projectors. One set he kept, the other he sent to his family in Meerut. He filmed and recorded his family's life and growth through the 1970s and 80s, and his family in India did the same -- and they sent each other the tapes, as a way of staying in touch. The result is an amazing archive of what happens to a family when one part of it goes abroad. Yash's daughter Sandhya Suri assembled and edited the material into a unique 70 minute statement. Here is a brief clip:
(You can also supposedly see a clip from the film at the BBC, though when I tried it I couldn't get the video to play.)
For me, I For India captured a lot of the strangeness of the diasporic experience, including the parents' constant and nagging sense of displacement, the parent/child generation gap, and above all, the difficulty in returning home -- even when "home" might be all you think about. The Suris aren't the only family to keep planning to return home, only to keep delaying the plan by a few years (my father, for instance, used to say this for years; eventually, he dropped the plan). In the late 1980s, the family actually did try to move back to Meerut; Suri, a doctor, thought he could set up a clinic there, but it didn't take. (There's no ruby slippers; home always changes when you leave it.)
On the purely visual register, it's interesting just to compare what the Suri family in Darlington, England chooses to film against what the Suri family in Meerut films. In the English footage, you see the nuclear family, various tourist excursions, snow, railroads, the Buckingham Palace guards. In Meerut, the footage Sandhya Suri uses is almost entirely of extended family gatherings. The family in England is effectively alone, which means it is sometimes painfully isolated -- but it also enables them to go off and have certain kinds of adventures. The extended family in India has a very different kind of experience.
Often, in diasporic novels like The Namesake, for instance, the center of the story is the part of the family that leaves -- usually because the writer comes from that background herself. What's unique about I For India is the way the old film footage allows the director to in some sense tell both sides of the story at once: we have the point of view of the family that left (and constantly mourned what it had left behind), but also that of the family that stayed behind (and mourned the loss of the ones who left).
I For India has been reviewed positively by virtually everyone who's seen it, including The New York Times and The Guardian. One company is distributing it on DVD in the U.S., though it's very expensive (you might be able to track down a copy from Amazon Canada). If anyone knows of other ways to get access to this film, I'm sure readers will be grateful.
(You can also supposedly see a clip from the film at the BBC, though when I tried it I couldn't get the video to play.)
For me, I For India captured a lot of the strangeness of the diasporic experience, including the parents' constant and nagging sense of displacement, the parent/child generation gap, and above all, the difficulty in returning home -- even when "home" might be all you think about. The Suris aren't the only family to keep planning to return home, only to keep delaying the plan by a few years (my father, for instance, used to say this for years; eventually, he dropped the plan). In the late 1980s, the family actually did try to move back to Meerut; Suri, a doctor, thought he could set up a clinic there, but it didn't take. (There's no ruby slippers; home always changes when you leave it.)
On the purely visual register, it's interesting just to compare what the Suri family in Darlington, England chooses to film against what the Suri family in Meerut films. In the English footage, you see the nuclear family, various tourist excursions, snow, railroads, the Buckingham Palace guards. In Meerut, the footage Sandhya Suri uses is almost entirely of extended family gatherings. The family in England is effectively alone, which means it is sometimes painfully isolated -- but it also enables them to go off and have certain kinds of adventures. The extended family in India has a very different kind of experience.
Often, in diasporic novels like The Namesake, for instance, the center of the story is the part of the family that leaves -- usually because the writer comes from that background herself. What's unique about I For India is the way the old film footage allows the director to in some sense tell both sides of the story at once: we have the point of view of the family that left (and constantly mourned what it had left behind), but also that of the family that stayed behind (and mourned the loss of the ones who left).
I For India has been reviewed positively by virtually everyone who's seen it, including The New York Times and The Guardian. One company is distributing it on DVD in the U.S., though it's very expensive (you might be able to track down a copy from Amazon Canada). If anyone knows of other ways to get access to this film, I'm sure readers will be grateful.
An Afro-Pakistani Poet
Via 3 Quarks Daily, I read a profile of Noon Meem Danish, an Urdu-speaking poet from Karachi who is of African descent. The author of the piece, Asif Farrukhi, makes reference initially to some places I hadn't heard of:
Lyari, one learns, is a town in/near Karachi where many of Karachi's Africans (an estimated 500,000 of them) live. Their ancestors came to Balochistan as slaves via Arab traders (Noon Meem Danish defines himself ethnically as "Baloch," which was confusing to me until I made the connection).
The Afro-Pakistani community, perhaps not surprisingly, hasn't been treated particularly well, according to this essay in SAMAR magazine (skip down towards the end for some disturbing references to the extra-judicial killing of African youths). It's not surprising that Noon Meem Danish, given his penchant for poetry, would consider leaving.
Danish is pretty forthright about the difference in how he is perceived in Karachi vs. New York:
Karachi University wouldn't hire him, but NYU did, and now he teaches at the University of Maryland (where he teaches in the foreign language department -- Urdu, I presume). It's interesting to think of someone of African descent emigrating to the U.S. because it's less racist than the place where he grew up, but there you have it.
You can see Noon Meem Danish reciting at a Mushaira on YouTube (he's at 2:30).
Whether you think of Lyari as Karachi’s Harlem or Harlem as a Lyari in New York, for Noon Meem Danish places provide a context but not a definition. ‘I am what I am’; he explains his signature with a characteristic mixture of pride and humility. Off-beat and defiant, he was a familiar figure in the literary landscape of the ’70s and ’80s. His poems expressing solidarity with the Negritude and the plight of blacks all over the world were referred to in Dr Firoze Ahmed’s social topography of the African-descent inhabitants of Pakistan. Karachi’s poet Noon Meem Danish now makes his home in the New York state of mind, and feels that he is very much in his element there. (link)
Lyari, one learns, is a town in/near Karachi where many of Karachi's Africans (an estimated 500,000 of them) live. Their ancestors came to Balochistan as slaves via Arab traders (Noon Meem Danish defines himself ethnically as "Baloch," which was confusing to me until I made the connection).
The Afro-Pakistani community, perhaps not surprisingly, hasn't been treated particularly well, according to this essay in SAMAR magazine (skip down towards the end for some disturbing references to the extra-judicial killing of African youths). It's not surprising that Noon Meem Danish, given his penchant for poetry, would consider leaving.
Danish is pretty forthright about the difference in how he is perceived in Karachi vs. New York:
More than home, Karachi was for him the city of the torment of recognition. ‘I was black and in Karachi it was always a shocking experience when people would ask me where I came from. They would ask how come you are speaking saaf Urdu. I had to explain myself each time.’
Karachi University wouldn't hire him, but NYU did, and now he teaches at the University of Maryland (where he teaches in the foreign language department -- Urdu, I presume). It's interesting to think of someone of African descent emigrating to the U.S. because it's less racist than the place where he grew up, but there you have it.
You can see Noon Meem Danish reciting at a Mushaira on YouTube (he's at 2:30).
Follow-up on Romney (Muslims & Religion in US Politics)
Last week several commenters at Sepia Mutiny criticized my post on Mitt Romney's "Muslims in the cabinet" comments. Romney's apparent gaffe quickly faded from the headlines, but Romney's recent speech on his idea of the role of religion in politics might be a good opportunity to briefly revisit my earlier post, and take a look at some issues with Romney's attitude to religion in politics that come from directly from Romney's statements "on the record."
First, on the previous post. In hindsight, I regret not taking seriously the people other than Mansoor Ijaz who say they heard Romney say he would rule out people of Muslim faith from his cabinet. At the time I wrote the post, there were two witnesses saying that; by the following day there were three. All three individuals work for one libertarian magazine based in Nevada, which does pose a concern (that is to say, it's possible they're part of a right-wing anti-Romney movement).
That said, four witnesses (including Mansoor Ijaz, who in my view is not very credible) is enough: Romney probably did say (at least once, possibly twice) "Not likely" when asked whether he would have Muslims in his presumptive cabinet. The biggest problem with that statement, of course, is that it's discriminatory. And those of us who aren't Muslims should be equally concerned: if he's not having any Muslims in his cabinet, he's probably not having any Hindus or Sikhs or Jains either.
Another unfortunate aspect of Romney's statement is that it reveals his seeming lack of awareness of people from a Muslim background who might in fact be qualified for certain cabinet posts. One such person is the Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN -- one of the few high-level Bush political appointments that hasn't been a total flop.
In the end, I do not think the Romney "Muslims" gaffe is a significant political event, partly because it seems no one caught it on video, which means Romney has "plausible deniability" (damn you, deniability!). Pressed on the question by the media, Romney finesses it, and argues that what he meant was that he wouldn't have Muslims in his cabinet just to placate critics of America in the Muslim world. That explanation works just fine with the mainstream media.
Still, Romney's recent speech on religion probably isn't going to win him many Muslim friends:
Muslims have "Frequent prayers" -- that's the best he could come up with? Oy, vey. (I think Jews might also be a bit troubled that his praise of Judaism is for its ancientness, a quality which has sometimes been invoked by anti-Semites. It's also untrue that the religion is unchanged; ever hear of Reform or Conservative Judaism? But I digress.)
Of course, what's really wrong with Romney's speech, beyond that absurd paragraph, is the way he completely flip flops on secularism.
At the beginning of the speech Romney says:
But by the end he says:
He's perilously close to a direct contradiction in these two statements, and is only saved by a slight distinction between the idea of "politics" (where he says religion does not play a direct role) and the idea of the "public square" (where he says it should).
(Romney also conveniently overlooks the fact that "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance -- which, it should be mentioned, was not written by the "founders"! -- fairly recently.)
To continue:
Romney wants to have it both ways: he wants to be respected by the main stream of American voters despite his belonging to a small religious minority. But he also wants to insist on the importance of keeping God in the political picture, and seemingly fudges over the fact that his concept of "God" is surely not the same as a Catholic's, or a Jew's, or a Buddhist's. (And he doesn't give a thought for what all this means to those Americans who do not believe in God at all.) The rhetoric is slippery: at the very moment when it seems he's going overboard with religion, he turns around, and describes American values in secular terms ("equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty").
In short: on religion, Romney is like a wet seal on icy pavement. (He reminds one, more than a little, of John Kerry.)
First, on the previous post. In hindsight, I regret not taking seriously the people other than Mansoor Ijaz who say they heard Romney say he would rule out people of Muslim faith from his cabinet. At the time I wrote the post, there were two witnesses saying that; by the following day there were three. All three individuals work for one libertarian magazine based in Nevada, which does pose a concern (that is to say, it's possible they're part of a right-wing anti-Romney movement).
That said, four witnesses (including Mansoor Ijaz, who in my view is not very credible) is enough: Romney probably did say (at least once, possibly twice) "Not likely" when asked whether he would have Muslims in his presumptive cabinet. The biggest problem with that statement, of course, is that it's discriminatory. And those of us who aren't Muslims should be equally concerned: if he's not having any Muslims in his cabinet, he's probably not having any Hindus or Sikhs or Jains either.
Another unfortunate aspect of Romney's statement is that it reveals his seeming lack of awareness of people from a Muslim background who might in fact be qualified for certain cabinet posts. One such person is the Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN -- one of the few high-level Bush political appointments that hasn't been a total flop.
In the end, I do not think the Romney "Muslims" gaffe is a significant political event, partly because it seems no one caught it on video, which means Romney has "plausible deniability" (damn you, deniability!). Pressed on the question by the media, Romney finesses it, and argues that what he meant was that he wouldn't have Muslims in his cabinet just to placate critics of America in the Muslim world. That explanation works just fine with the mainstream media.
Still, Romney's recent speech on religion probably isn't going to win him many Muslim friends:
"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings. (link)
Muslims have "Frequent prayers" -- that's the best he could come up with? Oy, vey. (I think Jews might also be a bit troubled that his praise of Judaism is for its ancientness, a quality which has sometimes been invoked by anti-Semites. It's also untrue that the religion is unchanged; ever hear of Reform or Conservative Judaism? But I digress.)
Of course, what's really wrong with Romney's speech, beyond that absurd paragraph, is the way he completely flip flops on secularism.
At the beginning of the speech Romney says:
"Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for President, not a Catholic running for President. Like him, I am an American running for President. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.
"Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin. (link)
But by the end he says:
"The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust. (link)
He's perilously close to a direct contradiction in these two statements, and is only saved by a slight distinction between the idea of "politics" (where he says religion does not play a direct role) and the idea of the "public square" (where he says it should).
(Romney also conveniently overlooks the fact that "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance -- which, it should be mentioned, was not written by the "founders"! -- fairly recently.)
To continue:
"We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'
"Nor would I separate us from our religious heritage. Perhaps the most important question to ask a person of faith who seeks a political office, is this: does he share these American values: the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty?
"They are not unique to any one denomination. They belong to the great moral inheritance we hold in common. They are the firm ground on which Americans of different faiths meet and stand as a nation, united. (link)
Romney wants to have it both ways: he wants to be respected by the main stream of American voters despite his belonging to a small religious minority. But he also wants to insist on the importance of keeping God in the political picture, and seemingly fudges over the fact that his concept of "God" is surely not the same as a Catholic's, or a Jew's, or a Buddhist's. (And he doesn't give a thought for what all this means to those Americans who do not believe in God at all.) The rhetoric is slippery: at the very moment when it seems he's going overboard with religion, he turns around, and describes American values in secular terms ("equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty").
In short: on religion, Romney is like a wet seal on icy pavement. (He reminds one, more than a little, of John Kerry.)
SALA Conference Program 2007 (Chicago)
(The 2007 South Asian Literary Association is having its annual conference in Chicago, on December 26-27. The keynote address will be given by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, which should be good. I am posting the entire conference program here as a service to SALA.)
Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices.
Wednesday, December 26
1:00-3:00: Conference Registration
3:00-3:30: Welcome Address
SALA President P. S. Chauhan, Arcadia University
Conference Co-Chairs Nivedita Majumdar, John Jay College, City University of New York and Karni Pal Bhati, Furman University
3:30-4:00: Coffee/Tea
4:00-5:30: Session 1
1A. Modernity, Tradition, and Gender in Amitav Ghosh’s Fiction
Chair: Pennie Ticen, Virginia Military Institute
Kulvinder Arora, Macalester College, “Gender and Modern Apparitions in Anil’s Ghost and The Hungry Tide”
Srikanth Mallavarapu, Case Western Reserve University, “Reengaging the Local: The Negotiation of Modernity in Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”
Anuradha Ramanujan, University of Delhi, “Brokering Justice in a Translated World: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”
1B. Sexual Minorities
Chair: Cynthia Leenerts, East Stroudsburg University
Kanika Batra, Texas Tech University, “Factoring ‘Class’: Contemporary Gender Studies and Cultural Representations of Sexual Minorities in India”
Jana Fedtke, University of South Carolina, “From Social Stigma to Appropriate(d) Activism: Representations of HIV/AIDS in Recent Indian Films”
Rebeccca Kumar, Emory University, “Queer Desis and ‘Social Justice’: A Comparison of Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Karan Razan’s Girlfriend”
1C. Arundhati Roy
Chair: Kanika Batra, Texas Tech University
Arch Mayfield, Wayland University, “Exploitation: What’s the Harm? A Look at Arundhati Roy’s Answer”
Miriam Nandi, University of Freiburg, “Translating Cash-flow Charts? Social Criticism in Indian English Writing”
Navneet Kumar, University of Calgary, “The Postcolonial Intellectual and Social Justice: Edward Said and Arundhati Roy”
Pennie Ticen, Virginia Military Institute, “Exploring the Rhetoric of Social Justice in the Essays of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy”
5:30-7:00: Session 2
2A. Mahasweta Devi and Mahadevi Verma
Chair: Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University
Lopamudra Basu, University of Wisconsin, Stout, “Mourning and Motherhood: Transforming Loss in Representations of Adivasi Mothers in Mahasweta Devi’s Short Stories”
Madhurima Chakraborty, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, “Dangerous Memories: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Statue’ and the Problem with Conjuring Independence”
Jayshree Kak Odin, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, “Techno-capitalist Rationality, Environmental Justice, and Indigenous Perspectives”
Amiya Sharma, Indira Gandhi Nehru Open University, “Search for Social Justice in the Personal Essays of Mahadevi Verma”
2B. Cinematic Justice
Chair: Toral Gajarawala, New York University
Meenakshi Bharat, University of Delhi, “A Call for Justice: Transformed/Transforming Apparatus for Social Change in Indian Films”
Reena Dube, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, “Remaking Caste, Class, Masculinity, and Social Justice: The Cinematic Tradition of the Devdas Films”
Manjula Jindal, Independent Scholar, “Gender, Orientalism, and Legal Narrative in Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen”
Kaustav Mukherjee, Michigan State University, “Social Justice in Swades: The Question of the Individual against Cultural Purity”
2C. Interrogating Nationalism
Chair: Amritjit Singh, Ohio University
Angshuman Kar, Burdwan University, “Interfacing Social Justice and Gender in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura”
Tirthankar Das Purkayastha, Vidyasagra University, “The Owners (?) of History: Focus on Shashi Tharoor’s Riot”
Saadia Toor, College of Staten Island, CUNY, “’Chale chalo ke woh manzil abhi nahin aayi’: Literary Politics in Pakistan in the Aftermath of Independence”
Wednesday, December 27
7:30-8:30: Coffee/Tea and Danish
Conference Registration
8:30-10:00: Session 3
3A. Colonialism and/in Performance
Chair: Henry Schwarz, Georgetown University
Sayan Bhattacharyya, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, “The Idea of Revolution in the Plays of Rabindranath Tagore”
Parmita Kapadia, Northern Kentucky University, “Marginalizing Political Activism: Postcolonial Shakespeare Theater and the Academy”
Nandi Bhatia, University of Western Ontario, “Re-presenting the Courtesan in the 1857 ‘Mutiny’”
3B. Justice Without Borders
Chair: Lopamudra Basu, University of Wisconsin, Stout
Monia Acciari, University of Manchester, “If Cultures Coexist, Can We Hear (and See) Social Justice with Borderless Superimposition of Ethnicities?”
Esra Mirze, University of Tampa, “Disorientation in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia”
Jalal Uddin Khan, University of Qatar, “Shelley’s Orientalia: Indian Elements in His
Poetry”
Amardeep Singh, Lehigh University, “’The kind of writing you like’: Shifting Frames in
Manto’s ‘Letters to Uncle Sam’”
3C. Between Nations
Chair: Sukanya Banerjee, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Nyla Khan, University of Nebraska, Kearney, “Islam, Women, and the Violence In Kashmir: Between India And Pakistan”
Ashmita Khasnabish, Brandeis University, “Negotiating the Humanitarian Identity in Shalimar the Clown”
Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University, “Who Speaks of the Komagata Maru? Cultural Memory, Identity Talk, and Social Justice”
Alia Somani, University of Western Ontario, “Srivinas Krishna’s Masala and the Politics of Mourning”
10:00-10:15: Coffee/Tea
10:15-11:45: Session 4
4A. Contemporary Theatres of Resistance
Chair: Nandi Bhatia, University of Western Ontario
Seema Malik, Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, “Injustice, Resistance, and Subversion: A Study of Selected Plays by Indian Women Playwrights”
Roopika Risam, Emory University, “Budhan’s Theatre of Pedagogy: Formal Strategies and Political Interventions”
Henry Schwarz, Georgetown University, “Is Indian History Indian History Yet? Revolution and Reaction in Recent Indian Narrative”
4B. Colonialism and its Aftermath
Chair: Amardeep Singh, Lehigh University
Sukanya Banerjee, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “’Coolies,’ ‘Arabs,’ and Indentured Labor: Indians in Colonial South Africa”
Surekha Dangwal, H. N. B. Garhwal University, “’I must never behave as though I am staying’: Shifting Epistemologies in Naipaul’s Half a Life”
Arthur Dudney, Columbia University, “Greco-Roman Social Justice and Early Colonial India”
Abdollah Zahiri, University of Toronto, “The Naxalite Justice in Naipaul’s Magic Seeds”
4C. Representations of Dalits
Chair: Joseph Jeyaraj, Liberty University
Toral Gajarawala, New York University, “The Dalit Limit Point: Realism, Representation, and Crisis in Premchand”
Vijaya Singh, Government College for Men, Chandigarh, “The place of Dalit Women in Dalit Aesthetics and Literature”
Babu Suthar, University of Pennsylvania, “Politics of Migration and Migration of Politics in Gujarati Dalit Short Stories”
11:45-1:15: Session 5
5A. Women in/and Diaspora
Chair: Robin Field, King’s College
Cynthia Leenerts, East Stroudsburg University, “American Nightmares in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams”
Gita Mohan, University of Salford, “Struggles of Immigrant Women: Expanding Literary Polysystems through Translations”
Amulya Kishore Purohit, Ravenshaw University, “Moral Agency and Social Justice in Bharati Mukherjee’s Short Fiction”
Parama Sarkar, Michigan State University, “’The old rules aren’t always right’: Redefined Gender Roles in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Narratives”
5B. Family and the Female Body
Chair: Saadia Toor, College of Staten Island, CUNY
Sarbani Bose, University of South Carolina, “The Family and the Gender Politics of the Body: A Reading of Aparna Sen’s Parama”
Shirin Edwin, Sam Houston State University, “The Indian Family: A Microcosm of Socioeconomic and Political Injustice in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting”
Kathleen Fernando, York University, “’Dirty’ Bodies, Everyday Life, and Social History: Emancipatory Narratives of South Asian Women’s Writing in the Vernaculars and in English”
Hafiza Nilofar Khan, University of Southern Mississippi, “Wifely Agency in the Fiction of Subcontinental Muslim Women Writers”
5C. Ideologies of Caste
Chair: Babu Suthar, University of Pennsylvania
Joseph Jeyaraj, Liberty University, “Ethos and Caste: The Rhetoric of Silence in Diasporic Discourses”
Roger McNamara, Loyola University of Chicago, “Towards a Dalit Secularism: Bama’s Kurukku and the Possibilities of an Internal Critique”
Prabhjot Parmar, Royal Holloway College, “’Zabaan sambhal kar baat kar, kutte!’ [‘Watch your tongue, you dog!’]: Mangal Pandey and Caste Politics”
K. D. Verma, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, “Coolies and Untouchables: Mulk Raj Anand’s Sense of Social Injustice”
2:30-3:30: Plenary Panel with John Hawley and Revathi Krishnaswamy, moderated by Karni Pal Bhati and Nivedita Majumdar
3:30-4:00: Tea and reception for Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
4:00-4:30: SALA 2007 Achievement Award (Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni)
4:30-5:30: Keynote Address: Prof. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Global Distinguished Professor of English, New York University.
Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices.
Wednesday, December 26
1:00-3:00: Conference Registration
3:00-3:30: Welcome Address
SALA President P. S. Chauhan, Arcadia University
Conference Co-Chairs Nivedita Majumdar, John Jay College, City University of New York and Karni Pal Bhati, Furman University
3:30-4:00: Coffee/Tea
4:00-5:30: Session 1
1A. Modernity, Tradition, and Gender in Amitav Ghosh’s Fiction
Chair: Pennie Ticen, Virginia Military Institute
Kulvinder Arora, Macalester College, “Gender and Modern Apparitions in Anil’s Ghost and The Hungry Tide”
Srikanth Mallavarapu, Case Western Reserve University, “Reengaging the Local: The Negotiation of Modernity in Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”
Anuradha Ramanujan, University of Delhi, “Brokering Justice in a Translated World: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”
1B. Sexual Minorities
Chair: Cynthia Leenerts, East Stroudsburg University
Kanika Batra, Texas Tech University, “Factoring ‘Class’: Contemporary Gender Studies and Cultural Representations of Sexual Minorities in India”
Jana Fedtke, University of South Carolina, “From Social Stigma to Appropriate(d) Activism: Representations of HIV/AIDS in Recent Indian Films”
Rebeccca Kumar, Emory University, “Queer Desis and ‘Social Justice’: A Comparison of Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Karan Razan’s Girlfriend”
1C. Arundhati Roy
Chair: Kanika Batra, Texas Tech University
Arch Mayfield, Wayland University, “Exploitation: What’s the Harm? A Look at Arundhati Roy’s Answer”
Miriam Nandi, University of Freiburg, “Translating Cash-flow Charts? Social Criticism in Indian English Writing”
Navneet Kumar, University of Calgary, “The Postcolonial Intellectual and Social Justice: Edward Said and Arundhati Roy”
Pennie Ticen, Virginia Military Institute, “Exploring the Rhetoric of Social Justice in the Essays of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy”
5:30-7:00: Session 2
2A. Mahasweta Devi and Mahadevi Verma
Chair: Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University
Lopamudra Basu, University of Wisconsin, Stout, “Mourning and Motherhood: Transforming Loss in Representations of Adivasi Mothers in Mahasweta Devi’s Short Stories”
Madhurima Chakraborty, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, “Dangerous Memories: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Statue’ and the Problem with Conjuring Independence”
Jayshree Kak Odin, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, “Techno-capitalist Rationality, Environmental Justice, and Indigenous Perspectives”
Amiya Sharma, Indira Gandhi Nehru Open University, “Search for Social Justice in the Personal Essays of Mahadevi Verma”
2B. Cinematic Justice
Chair: Toral Gajarawala, New York University
Meenakshi Bharat, University of Delhi, “A Call for Justice: Transformed/Transforming Apparatus for Social Change in Indian Films”
Reena Dube, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, “Remaking Caste, Class, Masculinity, and Social Justice: The Cinematic Tradition of the Devdas Films”
Manjula Jindal, Independent Scholar, “Gender, Orientalism, and Legal Narrative in Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen”
Kaustav Mukherjee, Michigan State University, “Social Justice in Swades: The Question of the Individual against Cultural Purity”
2C. Interrogating Nationalism
Chair: Amritjit Singh, Ohio University
Angshuman Kar, Burdwan University, “Interfacing Social Justice and Gender in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura”
Tirthankar Das Purkayastha, Vidyasagra University, “The Owners (?) of History: Focus on Shashi Tharoor’s Riot”
Saadia Toor, College of Staten Island, CUNY, “’Chale chalo ke woh manzil abhi nahin aayi’: Literary Politics in Pakistan in the Aftermath of Independence”
Wednesday, December 27
7:30-8:30: Coffee/Tea and Danish
Conference Registration
8:30-10:00: Session 3
3A. Colonialism and/in Performance
Chair: Henry Schwarz, Georgetown University
Sayan Bhattacharyya, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, “The Idea of Revolution in the Plays of Rabindranath Tagore”
Parmita Kapadia, Northern Kentucky University, “Marginalizing Political Activism: Postcolonial Shakespeare Theater and the Academy”
Nandi Bhatia, University of Western Ontario, “Re-presenting the Courtesan in the 1857 ‘Mutiny’”
3B. Justice Without Borders
Chair: Lopamudra Basu, University of Wisconsin, Stout
Monia Acciari, University of Manchester, “If Cultures Coexist, Can We Hear (and See) Social Justice with Borderless Superimposition of Ethnicities?”
Esra Mirze, University of Tampa, “Disorientation in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia”
Jalal Uddin Khan, University of Qatar, “Shelley’s Orientalia: Indian Elements in His
Poetry”
Amardeep Singh, Lehigh University, “’The kind of writing you like’: Shifting Frames in
Manto’s ‘Letters to Uncle Sam’”
3C. Between Nations
Chair: Sukanya Banerjee, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Nyla Khan, University of Nebraska, Kearney, “Islam, Women, and the Violence In Kashmir: Between India And Pakistan”
Ashmita Khasnabish, Brandeis University, “Negotiating the Humanitarian Identity in Shalimar the Clown”
Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University, “Who Speaks of the Komagata Maru? Cultural Memory, Identity Talk, and Social Justice”
Alia Somani, University of Western Ontario, “Srivinas Krishna’s Masala and the Politics of Mourning”
10:00-10:15: Coffee/Tea
10:15-11:45: Session 4
4A. Contemporary Theatres of Resistance
Chair: Nandi Bhatia, University of Western Ontario
Seema Malik, Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, “Injustice, Resistance, and Subversion: A Study of Selected Plays by Indian Women Playwrights”
Roopika Risam, Emory University, “Budhan’s Theatre of Pedagogy: Formal Strategies and Political Interventions”
Henry Schwarz, Georgetown University, “Is Indian History Indian History Yet? Revolution and Reaction in Recent Indian Narrative”
4B. Colonialism and its Aftermath
Chair: Amardeep Singh, Lehigh University
Sukanya Banerjee, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “’Coolies,’ ‘Arabs,’ and Indentured Labor: Indians in Colonial South Africa”
Surekha Dangwal, H. N. B. Garhwal University, “’I must never behave as though I am staying’: Shifting Epistemologies in Naipaul’s Half a Life”
Arthur Dudney, Columbia University, “Greco-Roman Social Justice and Early Colonial India”
Abdollah Zahiri, University of Toronto, “The Naxalite Justice in Naipaul’s Magic Seeds”
4C. Representations of Dalits
Chair: Joseph Jeyaraj, Liberty University
Toral Gajarawala, New York University, “The Dalit Limit Point: Realism, Representation, and Crisis in Premchand”
Vijaya Singh, Government College for Men, Chandigarh, “The place of Dalit Women in Dalit Aesthetics and Literature”
Babu Suthar, University of Pennsylvania, “Politics of Migration and Migration of Politics in Gujarati Dalit Short Stories”
11:45-1:15: Session 5
5A. Women in/and Diaspora
Chair: Robin Field, King’s College
Cynthia Leenerts, East Stroudsburg University, “American Nightmares in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams”
Gita Mohan, University of Salford, “Struggles of Immigrant Women: Expanding Literary Polysystems through Translations”
Amulya Kishore Purohit, Ravenshaw University, “Moral Agency and Social Justice in Bharati Mukherjee’s Short Fiction”
Parama Sarkar, Michigan State University, “’The old rules aren’t always right’: Redefined Gender Roles in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Narratives”
5B. Family and the Female Body
Chair: Saadia Toor, College of Staten Island, CUNY
Sarbani Bose, University of South Carolina, “The Family and the Gender Politics of the Body: A Reading of Aparna Sen’s Parama”
Shirin Edwin, Sam Houston State University, “The Indian Family: A Microcosm of Socioeconomic and Political Injustice in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting”
Kathleen Fernando, York University, “’Dirty’ Bodies, Everyday Life, and Social History: Emancipatory Narratives of South Asian Women’s Writing in the Vernaculars and in English”
Hafiza Nilofar Khan, University of Southern Mississippi, “Wifely Agency in the Fiction of Subcontinental Muslim Women Writers”
5C. Ideologies of Caste
Chair: Babu Suthar, University of Pennsylvania
Joseph Jeyaraj, Liberty University, “Ethos and Caste: The Rhetoric of Silence in Diasporic Discourses”
Roger McNamara, Loyola University of Chicago, “Towards a Dalit Secularism: Bama’s Kurukku and the Possibilities of an Internal Critique”
Prabhjot Parmar, Royal Holloway College, “’Zabaan sambhal kar baat kar, kutte!’ [‘Watch your tongue, you dog!’]: Mangal Pandey and Caste Politics”
K. D. Verma, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, “Coolies and Untouchables: Mulk Raj Anand’s Sense of Social Injustice”
2:30-3:30: Plenary Panel with John Hawley and Revathi Krishnaswamy, moderated by Karni Pal Bhati and Nivedita Majumdar
3:30-4:00: Tea and reception for Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
4:00-4:30: SALA 2007 Achievement Award (Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni)
4:30-5:30: Keynote Address: Prof. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Global Distinguished Professor of English, New York University.
Taslima Nasreen: A Roundup
The Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen (about whom I've written before) has become the center of controversy again following anti-Taslima riots in Calcutta over the past few days. Exactly why the riots focused on her is a bit of a mystery, since the incident follows a new violent incident at Nandigram (about which I've also written before). At any rate, some Muslim groups are also demanding that Nasreen's Indian visa be canceled (she's applied for Indian citizenship; her current visa expires in February 2008), and she seems to have yet again become a bit of a political football.
Since the riots, the Communist government of West Bengal apparently bundled her up in a Burqa (!) and got her out of the state, "for her own protection." (She's now in Delhi, after first being sent to Rajasthan, a state governed by the BJP.) The state government has also refused to issue a statement in defense of Taslima, fueling the claims of critics on both the left and right that the Left is pandering (yes, "pandering" again) to demands made by some members of the Muslim minority.
The writer Mahashweta Devi's statement sums up my own views quite well:
Ritu Menon in the Indian Express gives a long list of outrages to freedom of artistic expression in India in recent years:
I was unaware of some of those, in fact.
In Dawn, Jawed Naqvi quotes a book on Nasrin and feminism, which compares her to the great rebel poet Nazrul Islam:
Barkha Dutt plays up the irony of Taslima's being asked (forced?) to put on a Burqa as she was escorted out of the state:
Saugata Roy, in the Times of India, gives an insider perspective on the "Fall & Fall of Buddha" -- which refers to the growing willingness of both the Chief Minister (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya) and the Communist Party of West Bengal in general, to compromise on basic principles. Roy mentions that in the 1980s, the CPI(M) did condemn Rajiv Gandhi's overturning of the Supreme Court's decision on Shah Bano. But no more:
And finally, Taslima Nasreen herself speaks, asking that her situation not be made into a political issue:
It's a fair request -- unfortunately, it's already too late. Politics, one might say, has "been done."
Since the riots, the Communist government of West Bengal apparently bundled her up in a Burqa (!) and got her out of the state, "for her own protection." (She's now in Delhi, after first being sent to Rajasthan, a state governed by the BJP.) The state government has also refused to issue a statement in defense of Taslima, fueling the claims of critics on both the left and right that the Left is pandering (yes, "pandering" again) to demands made by some members of the Muslim minority.
The writer Mahashweta Devi's statement sums up my own views quite well:
This is why at this critical juncture it is crucial to articulate a Left position that is simultaneously against forcible land acquisition in Nandigram and for the right of Taslima Nasreen to live, write and speak freely in India. (link)
Ritu Menon in the Indian Express gives a long list of outrages to freedom of artistic expression in India in recent years:
These days, one could be forgiven for thinking that the only people whose freedom of expression the state is willing to protect are those who resort to violence in the name of religion — Hindu, Muslim or Christian. (Let’s not forget what happened in progressive Kerala when Mary Roy tried to stage ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar’ at her school. Or when cinema halls screened The Da Vinci Code.) Indeed, not only does it protect their freedom of expression, it looks like it also protects their freedom to criminally assault and violate. Not a single perpetrator of such violence has been apprehended and punished in the last decade or more that has seen an alarming rise in such street or mob censorship. Not in the case of Deepa Mehta’s film; not in the attack on Ajeet Cour’s Academy of Fine Arts in Delhi; not in M.F. Husain’s case; not in the violation of the Bhandarkar Institute; not at MS University in Baroda; not in the assault on Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad this August. I could list many, many more. (link)
I was unaware of some of those, in fact.
In Dawn, Jawed Naqvi quotes a book on Nasrin and feminism, which compares her to the great rebel poet Nazrul Islam:
The foreword to the book, "Taslima Nasrin and the issue of feminism", by the two Chowdhurys was written by Prof Zillur Rahman Siddiqui, the former vice-chancellor of Dhaka's Jahangirnagar University. "To my mind, more important than Nasrin's stature as a writer is her role as a rebel which makes her appear as a latter day Nazrul Islam," he says.
"The rage and the fury turned against her by her irate critics reminds one of a similar onslaught directed against the rebel poet in the twenties. More than half a century separates the two, but the society, despite some advance of the status of women, has not changed much. The forces opposed to change and progress, far from yielding the ground, have still kept their fort secure against progress; have in fact gained in striking power. While Nazrul never had to flee his country, Nasrin was forced to do so." (link)
Barkha Dutt plays up the irony of Taslima's being asked (forced?) to put on a Burqa as she was escorted out of the state:
As ironies go, it probably doesn't get any better than this. A panic-stricken Marxist government bundling up a feminist Muslim writer in the swathes of a protective black burqa and parceling her off to a state ruled by the BJP -- a party that the Left would otherwise have you believe is full of religious bigots.
The veil on her head must have caused Taslima Nasreen almost as much discomfort as the goons hunting her down. She once famously took on the 'freedom of choice' school of India's Muslim intelligentsia by writing that "covering a woman's head means covering her brain and ensuring that it doesn't work". She's always argued that whether or not Islam sanctifies the purdah is not the point. A shroud designed to throttle a woman's sexuality, she says, must be stripped off irrespective. In a signed piece in the Outlook called 'Let's Burn the Burqa', Nasreen took on liberal activists like Shabana Azmi (who has enraged enough mad mullahs herself to know exactly what it feels like) for playing too safe on the veil.(link)
Saugata Roy, in the Times of India, gives an insider perspective on the "Fall & Fall of Buddha" -- which refers to the growing willingness of both the Chief Minister (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya) and the Communist Party of West Bengal in general, to compromise on basic principles. Roy mentions that in the 1980s, the CPI(M) did condemn Rajiv Gandhi's overturning of the Supreme Court's decision on Shah Bano. But no more:
The role reversal didn't come in a day. It began the day when the CM banned Nasreen's novel Dwikhandita on grounds that some of its passages (pg 49-50) contained some "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any group by insulting its religion or religious belief." What's worse is Buddha banned its printing at the behest of some city 'intellectuals' close to him. This was the first assault on a writer's freedom in the post-Emergency period. Later, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court lifted the ban.
But the court order was not enough to repair the damage. The government move dug up old issues and left tongues wagging. Soon thereafter, Hindu fundamentalists questioned M F Hussain's paintings on Saraswati. Some moved the court against Sunil Gangyopadhyay's autobiographical novel Ardhek Jiban, where he recounted how his first sexual arousal was after he saw an exquisite Saraswati idol. All this while, the Marxist intellectuals kept mum lest they hurt religious sentiments. And when fundamentalists took the Taslima to the streets, they were at a loss. Or else, why should Left Front chairman Biman Bose lose his senses and say that Taslima should leave the state for the sake of peace? Or, senior CPM leaders like West Bengal Assembly Speaker Hashim Abdul Halim say that Taslima was becoming a threat to peace? Even worse, former police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee - now in the dog house for his alleged role in the Rizwanur death - went to Taslima's Kolkata residence and put pressure on her to leave the state. This was before last week's violence in Kolkata. But still, the timing is important. Mukherjee went to
Taslima's place when the government went on the back foot after the Nandigram carnage.
But the Marxists themselves? Perhaps unknown to himself, Buddha has been steadily losing his admirers. There was a time — just a few months ago, really — when not just the peasantry and workers but the Bengali middle class swore by him. Today leftist intellectuals like Sumit Sarkar, liberal activists like Medha Patkar are deadly opposed to him and his government. The Bengali middle class, for whom Buddha represented a modernizing force, is today deeply disappointed with him. One thing after another has added to the popular disenchantment. First, there was the government's high-handed handling of Nandigram, then came the Rizwanur case in which the state apparatus seems to have been used and abused to thwart two young lovers, and now the government's capitulation in the Taslima affair before Muslim fundamentalists. (no link to TOI; sorry)
And finally, Taslima Nasreen herself speaks, asking that her situation not be made into a political issue:
Taslima Nasreen is happy her plight has been highlighted, but the author-in-hiding says she does not want to become a victim of politics. She has been told that she could become an issue for the BJP against the Congress and the CPM in the Gujarat elections.
“I do not want any more twists to my tale of woes. Please do not give political colour to my plight. I do not want to be a victim of politics. And I do not want anybody to do politics with me,” an anguished Taslima told HT on Monday over the telephone. (link)
It's a fair request -- unfortunately, it's already too late. Politics, one might say, has "been done."
The Men Who Make the Manhole Covers
There's a story in the New York Times today about a foundry in Haora, West Bengal that makes New York City's manhole covers. It's written largely from a photographer's point of view, and there's a great audio + images slideshow accompanying the piece here. Adam Huggins' photos are indeed pretty intense:
When you see pictures like this, it's hard not to think of the issue of worker safety, which might be somewhat predictable (i.e., from the discussions of child labor at Sepia Mutiny): isn't it possible that manholes can be produced so cheaply in India precisely because there aren't high worker safety standards? Shouldn't Con Edison insist on certain minimal worker safety protections when it signs contracts with Indian companies?
On the other hand, it could be argued that raising this issue potentially hurts the workers as much as it helps them, as it increases the chance that they'll lose their jobs if American contracts are canceled. And while I'm not aware of statistics relating to worker injuries at this or other plants, it's at least possible that the factory owner isn't lying when he says that the system that's been worked out is safe enough -- as long as the workers remain completely focused on what they're doing. (Interestingly, the photographer doesn't seem outraged by the conditions he sees; if anything, his tone reflects admiration for the strength and fearlessness of the workers at the foundry.)
When you see pictures like this, it's hard not to think of the issue of worker safety, which might be somewhat predictable (i.e., from the discussions of child labor at Sepia Mutiny): isn't it possible that manholes can be produced so cheaply in India precisely because there aren't high worker safety standards? Shouldn't Con Edison insist on certain minimal worker safety protections when it signs contracts with Indian companies?
On the other hand, it could be argued that raising this issue potentially hurts the workers as much as it helps them, as it increases the chance that they'll lose their jobs if American contracts are canceled. And while I'm not aware of statistics relating to worker injuries at this or other plants, it's at least possible that the factory owner isn't lying when he says that the system that's been worked out is safe enough -- as long as the workers remain completely focused on what they're doing. (Interestingly, the photographer doesn't seem outraged by the conditions he sees; if anything, his tone reflects admiration for the strength and fearlessness of the workers at the foundry.)
Review: "Queens Boulevard (the Musical)"
Over the weekend we caught a matinee of Queens Boulevard (the musical) at an off-broadway theater in New York. The play has already been covered at both SAJAForum and Ultrabrown; here are my own impressions.
The cast of Queens Boulevard has three people of South Asian descent in it, and Charles Mee, the playwright, mentions in the script that "Queens Boulevard (the musical) was inspired by the Katha-Kali play The Flower of Good Fortune by Kottayan Tampuran." The central plot of the story is partly a reworking of the Shakuntala myth, and partly a version of Homer's The Odyssey -- and sometimes both at once.
I had a number of problems with the play, but I want to start with the positives.
First, the musical numbers are terrific. At times they create a really interesting sense of cross-cultural collage, and the choreography and dancing is well-done. The show makes good use of a Punjabi wedding song (twice), an Asian Karaoke rendition of Abba's "Dancing Queen," M.I.A.'s "10 Dollar," French hip hop, a Gaelic ballad, and a half-dozen other songs. (Far and away, the high point of the show for me was the glam/nightclub dance sequence set to the M.I.A. song.)
Second, the set design by Mimi Lien is pretty brilliant -- it's a lively snapshot of a street in Jackson Heights, with Indo-Pak-Bangla shops, travel agencies, Chinese and Korean signs, and Bollywood film ads plastering every surface. It captures the energy and bustle of Queens without seeming busy.
Third, I liked the play's appropriation of Kalidasa's Shakuntala story (or see Wikipedia for a summary). Though it was introduced near the end of a play as a long monologue, it was done quite well.
Finally, the overall effect the play is going for is a multi-culti pastiche, with East Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Caribbean, and Eastern European, cultures all moving together and interacting in the same space. Getting this to work on stage reflects a sincere and admirable kind of ambition on the part of the playwright and cast, and I wish people would try doing it more.
Unfortunately, in my opinion the actual plot and the dialogue in the play as written is often quite bad. There are numerous long, ponderous monologues about love and fidelity that drag the energy of the play down, again and again.
You don't have to just take my word for it -- Charles Mee has posted the entire text of his play online at his website. Here is one of the monologues I personally found to be cliché-ridden deadweight:
If you go for that sort of thing, you might enjoy Queens Boulevard more than I did. My feeling is that Charles Mee's mistake here is to try and impose long segments of "serious" and conventional "drama" between the surrealist, cross-cultural musical numbers. A better approach might have been to keep the "straight" plot and dialogue light -- aim more for the tone of an intelligent romantic comedy perhaps -- or lose it entirely, and go entirely surrealist (in the Richard Foreman vein).
I had some other problems with the play, but I don't want to nitpick.
I should also point out that other people seem to have enjoyed Queens Boulevard more than I did. A commenter at Ultrabrown, for instance, wrote the following:
I agree with Ameera on Debargo Sanyal at least, who was indeed one of the standout members of the cast (I hope we'll be seeing more of him down the road, either in the theater, or in TV/movies).
Queens Boulevard (the musical) is playing at the Signature Theatre until December 30. All seats are $20; it's a small theater, so there's no bad seats.
The cast of Queens Boulevard has three people of South Asian descent in it, and Charles Mee, the playwright, mentions in the script that "Queens Boulevard (the musical) was inspired by the Katha-Kali play The Flower of Good Fortune by Kottayan Tampuran." The central plot of the story is partly a reworking of the Shakuntala myth, and partly a version of Homer's The Odyssey -- and sometimes both at once.
I had a number of problems with the play, but I want to start with the positives.
First, the musical numbers are terrific. At times they create a really interesting sense of cross-cultural collage, and the choreography and dancing is well-done. The show makes good use of a Punjabi wedding song (twice), an Asian Karaoke rendition of Abba's "Dancing Queen," M.I.A.'s "10 Dollar," French hip hop, a Gaelic ballad, and a half-dozen other songs. (Far and away, the high point of the show for me was the glam/nightclub dance sequence set to the M.I.A. song.)
Second, the set design by Mimi Lien is pretty brilliant -- it's a lively snapshot of a street in Jackson Heights, with Indo-Pak-Bangla shops, travel agencies, Chinese and Korean signs, and Bollywood film ads plastering every surface. It captures the energy and bustle of Queens without seeming busy.
Third, I liked the play's appropriation of Kalidasa's Shakuntala story (or see Wikipedia for a summary). Though it was introduced near the end of a play as a long monologue, it was done quite well.
Finally, the overall effect the play is going for is a multi-culti pastiche, with East Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Caribbean, and Eastern European, cultures all moving together and interacting in the same space. Getting this to work on stage reflects a sincere and admirable kind of ambition on the part of the playwright and cast, and I wish people would try doing it more.
Unfortunately, in my opinion the actual plot and the dialogue in the play as written is often quite bad. There are numerous long, ponderous monologues about love and fidelity that drag the energy of the play down, again and again.
You don't have to just take my word for it -- Charles Mee has posted the entire text of his play online at his website. Here is one of the monologues I personally found to be cliché-ridden deadweight:
I mean, you know,
it's wonderful that you've just been married
that you have found the love
we all hope for
even if we're born
with parents we love
still we look for the one who is meant only for us
and then, it seems,
when the time comes that we lose our parents
we see that any love we find in life
lives amidst these other loves we've lost and found and lost,
the love of parents
family
if we're lucky
if we grow as we're meant to grow
nourished and protected by the love of our families and our friends
so that your love for your wife
belongs to this sea of love
of social love
and is nourished and sustained by that
because, as we all come to know,
it's not enough just to experience carnal love
or erotic love
or personal love
because, none of us is safe in our own lives and loves
without the social love that makes a safe place
for our personal love to flourish
the regard, the respect,
and, then, too, as we have come to see,
the recognition of all kinds of love deepens each one
so that your love for your wife is deepened
and honored and sustained
when you act on your love for your friends and their families. (link)
If you go for that sort of thing, you might enjoy Queens Boulevard more than I did. My feeling is that Charles Mee's mistake here is to try and impose long segments of "serious" and conventional "drama" between the surrealist, cross-cultural musical numbers. A better approach might have been to keep the "straight" plot and dialogue light -- aim more for the tone of an intelligent romantic comedy perhaps -- or lose it entirely, and go entirely surrealist (in the Richard Foreman vein).
I had some other problems with the play, but I don't want to nitpick.
I should also point out that other people seem to have enjoyed Queens Boulevard more than I did. A commenter at Ultrabrown, for instance, wrote the following:
I just saw QUEENS BOULEVARD this past Friday night, and loved it! It was such a unique theatrical experience–there was music, singing, dancing, a fun script, smart direction, and strong actors. Most of the actors played multiple roles, including Debargo Sanyal, who was downright hilarious as the Paan Beedi Guy (that you mention above), as well as in his several other roles. Geeta Citygirl and Satya Bhabha were great also. And there’s a hysterical little dance set in a Russian bathhouse featuring three of the men (wearing nothing but towels and smiles!) that must be seen to be believed. I highly recommend this production for folks looking to spend a fun evening at the theater this holiday season.(link)
I agree with Ameera on Debargo Sanyal at least, who was indeed one of the standout members of the cast (I hope we'll be seeing more of him down the road, either in the theater, or in TV/movies).
Queens Boulevard (the musical) is playing at the Signature Theatre until December 30. All seats are $20; it's a small theater, so there's no bad seats.
Language-Based States (Guha Chapter 9)
[Part of an ongoing series on Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi. Last week's entry can be found here. Next week, we will look at Chapter 10, "The Conquest of Nature," on India's approach to development and the modernization of agriculture.]
Guha's Chapter 9, "Redrawing the Map," is about the early phase in the movement to establish language-based states, with particular emphasis on the south (the creation of Andhra Pradesh out of what was formerly the state of Madras), the status of Bombay vis a vis Maharashtra, and the delineation of Punjab.
As Guha points out, though reorganizing states according to language was part of the Congress plank from the 1930s, after Independence/Partition, both Nehru and Sardar Patel were strongly opposed to rushing into any reorganization of states, especially if there was a danger that such reorganizations could lead to the destabilization of the union. The logic behind this hesitation was understandable and quite sound: if the idea of "India" could be broken along the lines of religion, why not also language?
The first new state to be created along the lines of language was Andhra Pradesh, and this was largely due to the hunger strike of Gandhian activist and Telugu leader Potti Sriramulu, who is another one of those great, largely forgotten (well, forgotten outside of Andhra Pradesh at least) "characters" from post-independence Indian history who probably should be better known than he is:
Potti Sriramulu died of his hunger strike on December 15, 1952. Three days later, Nehru announced that the formation of the state of Andhra out of the eleven Telugu-speaking districts of Madras.
Of course, with Andhra the reorganization was just beginning. Three years later, the national States Reorganization Committee announced a number of other changes. In the south, the job was easy, as there were four clear language regions (Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam) that could be allocated their own states.
In Bombay, the situation was more complicated, as the Marathi-speakers in Bombay comprised a plurality (43%) but not a majority of the city's residents as of 1955. Moreover, the economically dominant ethnic communities of Bombay -- especially Gujaratis -- strongly resisted the idea of making Bombay part of a Marathi-speaking state. However, following growing unrest and a series of "language riots" (memorably described in Rushdie's Midnight's Children), this merger eventually did happen in 1960, as Bombay was declared the capital of the new state of Maharashtra. (Suketu Mehta's book, Maximum City, has a lot more on how language and ethnicity politics have evolved in Bombay over the years -- warts and all.)
This Guha chapter doesn't detail how things would play out later in Punjab, where the Sikhs' early demand for a Punjabi-language state was denied by the States Reorganization Committee in 1955. (Sikhs have always anecdotally blamed this failure on the census of 1951, where Punjabi-speaking Hindus by and large described their primary language as "Hindi," confusing matters greatly.) When reorganization eventually did occur in Punjab in 1966, it caused lots of other problems, some of which would lead to a resurgent Akali movement, and eventually to the rise of Sikh separatism in the 1970s.
Partly as a result of what happened in Punjab (and we'll get to that in a few chapters), Guha's rather easy acceptance the language reorganization movements seems a bit glib to me:
Guha's premise that language-based politics works somewhat differently from the politics of religious communalism seems right to me. The latter seems inevitably divisive (and almost always destructive), while the former seems to have had several positive benefits (especially as it has led to support for regional literatures and the arts). And it's also clear that the reorganization along linguistic lines didn't lead to what was feared, "the creation of many more Pakistans."
But isn't it still true that the language-based politics that led to the creation of new states starting in the 1950s has also led state governments to certain excesses along linguistic/ethnic lines? Two such excesses might include the renaming of Bombay as 'Mumbai', and the recent renaming of Bangalore as 'Bengluru'. I'm also concerned about the language-based "reservations" that exist in some states, favoring the dominant ethno-linguistic community over other ethnic groups (though I admit I am not a specialist on this latter issue). Now that the states have been permanently established, is the perpetuation of language-based politics really that benign?
Guha's Chapter 9, "Redrawing the Map," is about the early phase in the movement to establish language-based states, with particular emphasis on the south (the creation of Andhra Pradesh out of what was formerly the state of Madras), the status of Bombay vis a vis Maharashtra, and the delineation of Punjab.
As Guha points out, though reorganizing states according to language was part of the Congress plank from the 1930s, after Independence/Partition, both Nehru and Sardar Patel were strongly opposed to rushing into any reorganization of states, especially if there was a danger that such reorganizations could lead to the destabilization of the union. The logic behind this hesitation was understandable and quite sound: if the idea of "India" could be broken along the lines of religion, why not also language?
The first new state to be created along the lines of language was Andhra Pradesh, and this was largely due to the hunger strike of Gandhian activist and Telugu leader Potti Sriramulu, who is another one of those great, largely forgotten (well, forgotten outside of Andhra Pradesh at least) "characters" from post-independence Indian history who probably should be better known than he is:
Sriramulu was born in Madras in 1901, and studied sanitary engineering before taking a job with the railroads. In 1928 he suffered a double tragedy, when his wife died along with their newborn child. Two years later he resigned his position to join the Salt Satyagraha. Later, he spent some time at Gandhi's Sabarmati ashram. Later still, he spent eighteen months in jail as part of the individual Satyagraha campaign of 1940-41. . . .
Gandhi did regard Sriramulu with affection but also, it must be said, with a certain exasperation. On 25 November 1946 the disciple had beugn a fast unto death to demand the opening of all temples in Madras province to untouchables. Other congressmen, their minds more focused on the impending freedom of India, urged him to desist. . . .
Potti Sriramulu had called off that fast of 1946 at Gandhi's insistence. But in 1952 he Mahatma was dead; and in any case, Andhra meant more to Sriramulu than the untouchables once had. This fast he would carry out till the end, or until the government of India relented.
Potti Sriramulu died of his hunger strike on December 15, 1952. Three days later, Nehru announced that the formation of the state of Andhra out of the eleven Telugu-speaking districts of Madras.
Of course, with Andhra the reorganization was just beginning. Three years later, the national States Reorganization Committee announced a number of other changes. In the south, the job was easy, as there were four clear language regions (Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam) that could be allocated their own states.
In Bombay, the situation was more complicated, as the Marathi-speakers in Bombay comprised a plurality (43%) but not a majority of the city's residents as of 1955. Moreover, the economically dominant ethnic communities of Bombay -- especially Gujaratis -- strongly resisted the idea of making Bombay part of a Marathi-speaking state. However, following growing unrest and a series of "language riots" (memorably described in Rushdie's Midnight's Children), this merger eventually did happen in 1960, as Bombay was declared the capital of the new state of Maharashtra. (Suketu Mehta's book, Maximum City, has a lot more on how language and ethnicity politics have evolved in Bombay over the years -- warts and all.)
This Guha chapter doesn't detail how things would play out later in Punjab, where the Sikhs' early demand for a Punjabi-language state was denied by the States Reorganization Committee in 1955. (Sikhs have always anecdotally blamed this failure on the census of 1951, where Punjabi-speaking Hindus by and large described their primary language as "Hindi," confusing matters greatly.) When reorganization eventually did occur in Punjab in 1966, it caused lots of other problems, some of which would lead to a resurgent Akali movement, and eventually to the rise of Sikh separatism in the 1970s.
Partly as a result of what happened in Punjab (and we'll get to that in a few chapters), Guha's rather easy acceptance the language reorganization movements seems a bit glib to me:
When it began, the movement for linguistic states generated deep apprehensions among the nationalist elite. They feared it would lead to the balkanization of India, to the creation of many more Pakistans. 'Any attempt at redrawing the map of India on the linguistic basis,' wrote the Times of India in February 1952, 'would only give the long awaited opportunity to the reactionary forces to come into the open and assert themselves. That will lay an axe to the very root of India's integrity.'
In retrospect, however, linguistic reorganization seems rather to have consolidated the unity of India. True, the artifacts that have resulted, such as Bangalore's Vidhan Souda, are not to everybody's taste. And there have been some serious conflicts between states over the sharing of river waters. However, on the whole the creation of linguistic states has acted as a largely constructive channel for provincial pride. It has proved quite feasible to be peaceably Kannadiga, or Tamil, or Oriya--as well as contentedly Indian. (207-208)
Guha's premise that language-based politics works somewhat differently from the politics of religious communalism seems right to me. The latter seems inevitably divisive (and almost always destructive), while the former seems to have had several positive benefits (especially as it has led to support for regional literatures and the arts). And it's also clear that the reorganization along linguistic lines didn't lead to what was feared, "the creation of many more Pakistans."
But isn't it still true that the language-based politics that led to the creation of new states starting in the 1950s has also led state governments to certain excesses along linguistic/ethnic lines? Two such excesses might include the renaming of Bombay as 'Mumbai', and the recent renaming of Bangalore as 'Bengluru'. I'm also concerned about the language-based "reservations" that exist in some states, favoring the dominant ethno-linguistic community over other ethnic groups (though I admit I am not a specialist on this latter issue). Now that the states have been permanently established, is the perpetuation of language-based politics really that benign?
Review: Nikita Lalwani, "Gifted"
The debut novel by Nikita Lalwani, Gifted , makes for quite enjoyable reading. It's about an Indian girl's coming of age in Cardiff, Wales, as a math prodigy pushed and prodded by an overly controlling father. 
The father's obsession with having his daughter achieve a very rigid kind of academic greatness should ring a bell with second gen/ABD readers, especially given the apparent desi fascination with things like Spelling Bees and World Records. For most middle class desi kids growing up in the west, childhood is often (whether you like it or not) all about "studies" -- and Lalwani's book shows a case of that parental obsession taken to an extreme.
That said, Lalwani's Rumi (short for Rumika) is in fact genuinely interested in math and numbers from an early age, and Lalwani does a good job of taking us into her head without drowning the reader in math problems. Though I'm not particularly mathematically inclined myself, I do remember there being a certain luminosity to math problems as a child/teenager -- something beautiful in algebraic abstractions, or the spiraling concept of infinity in calculus. (Unfortunately for me, I tended to be more enthusiastic about the aesthetics of the math than in actually solving the problems at hand...)
Here's a short passage from early on in Gifted, where Rumi (age 8 at the time) is chatting with her relations while on a trip to India. They are discussing real-life math prodigy, Shakuntala Devi, who was able to multiply two thirteen digit numbers in her head:
Gifted is somewhat different from other Brit-Asian fiction by writers like Hanif Kureishi, in that the social context isn't especially politicized. In Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia and My Beautiful Landerette, the central subject is the tension about race and identity -- with the rise of the National Front on the one hand, and the emergence of the racially self-conscious British Black Arts Movement and the Southall Black Sisters on the other.
Though Gifted is also set in the 1980s, politics and race isn't really an issue. Lalwani's characters are in a more isolated, "mainstream" context, and the story is really about the internal dynamics of a single, deeply dysfunctional nuclear family. If anything politics enters in obliquely in passages like the one above, where the question is really whether and how respect is given by the world to "gifted" Indians. Like Jaggi Bhaiya, Rumi's father smolders with a simultaneous pride and insecurity about his image as a middle-class Indian in British society, and his neuroses are partly what drive him to treat his daughter as he does.
I tend to suspect that this book will be slightly more popular with women than with men, though it is (thankfully) a far cry from those deeply irritating Chitra Divakaruni type books, where the goal is for the desi woman to "find herself," usually after extricating herself from a bad marriage with a bad desi man. Dating and boys do play a role in Gifted, but again, the story is really about Rumi's fraught relationship with her father and mother, and all those familiar clichés of 1st/2nd gen Indian fiction (i.e., involving arranged marriage) are fortunately absent.
Nikita Lalwani's Gifted is available at Amazon.com.
The father's obsession with having his daughter achieve a very rigid kind of academic greatness should ring a bell with second gen/ABD readers, especially given the apparent desi fascination with things like Spelling Bees and World Records. For most middle class desi kids growing up in the west, childhood is often (whether you like it or not) all about "studies" -- and Lalwani's book shows a case of that parental obsession taken to an extreme.
That said, Lalwani's Rumi (short for Rumika) is in fact genuinely interested in math and numbers from an early age, and Lalwani does a good job of taking us into her head without drowning the reader in math problems. Though I'm not particularly mathematically inclined myself, I do remember there being a certain luminosity to math problems as a child/teenager -- something beautiful in algebraic abstractions, or the spiraling concept of infinity in calculus. (Unfortunately for me, I tended to be more enthusiastic about the aesthetics of the math than in actually solving the problems at hand...)
Here's a short passage from early on in Gifted, where Rumi (age 8 at the time) is chatting with her relations while on a trip to India. They are discussing real-life math prodigy, Shakuntala Devi, who was able to multiply two thirteen digit numbers in her head:
Rumi and Jaggi Bhaiya talk about world records, in particular about Shakuntala Devi, the maths genius who multiplied tow thirteen digit numbers in twenty-eight seconds the year before. Rumi has seen Shakuntala Devi on TV, her kindly smile gracing the airwaves like the most favorite auntie you can imagine, big red bindi shining out from the center of her forehead with the super-force of blood. Rumi has a funny feeling when she sees Shakuntala Devi on the screen. It is as though she is related to her. Or something. Even her mum and dad are charged and excited when they see her on the box, thrilled by the contradictions of cotton sari, center parting, blond hair-sprayed host and acrobatic maths.
'But why did they treat her like that? In itself, it is proof of the superiority complex that the West has over us,' Jaggi Bhaiya is saying.
'What is superiority complex?' Rumi asks.
'When a culture thinks they are better than us, that we are dirty, cheating scoundrels. That is why they insulted Shakuntala Devi in this way. You cannot deny it!'
He is referring to the text added next to the entry in The Guinness Book of Records. Rumi knows the words, having Jaggi recite them and having read them in her own edition: 'Some experts on calculating prodigies refuse to give credence to the above--largely on the grounds that it is so vastly superior to the calculating feats of any other invigilated prodigy.'
Gifted is somewhat different from other Brit-Asian fiction by writers like Hanif Kureishi, in that the social context isn't especially politicized. In Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia and My Beautiful Landerette, the central subject is the tension about race and identity -- with the rise of the National Front on the one hand, and the emergence of the racially self-conscious British Black Arts Movement and the Southall Black Sisters on the other.
Though Gifted is also set in the 1980s, politics and race isn't really an issue. Lalwani's characters are in a more isolated, "mainstream" context, and the story is really about the internal dynamics of a single, deeply dysfunctional nuclear family. If anything politics enters in obliquely in passages like the one above, where the question is really whether and how respect is given by the world to "gifted" Indians. Like Jaggi Bhaiya, Rumi's father smolders with a simultaneous pride and insecurity about his image as a middle-class Indian in British society, and his neuroses are partly what drive him to treat his daughter as he does.
I tend to suspect that this book will be slightly more popular with women than with men, though it is (thankfully) a far cry from those deeply irritating Chitra Divakaruni type books, where the goal is for the desi woman to "find herself," usually after extricating herself from a bad marriage with a bad desi man. Dating and boys do play a role in Gifted, but again, the story is really about Rumi's fraught relationship with her father and mother, and all those familiar clichés of 1st/2nd gen Indian fiction (i.e., involving arranged marriage) are fortunately absent.
Nikita Lalwani's Gifted is available at Amazon.com.
Charles Taylor, "A Secular Age"
I have Charles Taylor's new book, A Secular Age, on the shelf, and will start to tackle it here soon -- probably not in as much detail as I have been looking at Ramachandra Guha, but definitely in some detail.
One of the things I like about Taylor is his ability to bring non-western perspectives into his thinking about secularization, showing just how complicated (and often intertwining) the world's "secularization" narratives have been. His essay, "Modes of Secularism," in Rajeev Bhargava's anthology, Secularism and its Critics, was really helpful to me in developing my thinking about secularism a few years ago, and I'm looking forward to an even more detailed analysis.
Via 3QD, I see that a group of scholars at the SSRC are already discussing the book, and Charles Taylor himself has contributed a post, here.
One of the things I like about Taylor is his ability to bring non-western perspectives into his thinking about secularization, showing just how complicated (and often intertwining) the world's "secularization" narratives have been. His essay, "Modes of Secularism," in Rajeev Bhargava's anthology, Secularism and its Critics, was really helpful to me in developing my thinking about secularism a few years ago, and I'm looking forward to an even more detailed analysis.
Via 3QD, I see that a group of scholars at the SSRC are already discussing the book, and Charles Taylor himself has contributed a post, here.
Non-Aligned Nehru (Guha Chapter 8)
[Part of an ongoing series on Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi. Last week's entry can be found here. Next week we will look at Chapter 9, "Redrawing the Boundaries," on the Language Movements of the 1950s]
With 20-20 hindsight, many people criticize Nehru today for pursuing a foreign policy oriented to "nonalignment" -- that is, independence from both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Here is one of Nehru's most famous statements articulating that policy, from a speech given at Columbia University:
The idealism in that statement is admirable, and still worth thinking about, even if the world order has changed dramatically since Nehru first uttered these words. The idea of taking an "independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue" is one I personally strive for as a writer, and may be something that would in my view serve as a helpful corrective to many partisan ideologues -- on both the left and the right -- who tend to only see the world through one particular ideological filter or the other.
Ideals aside, Nehru's government did make some serious mistakes in foreign policy in the first few years. One of the significant failures Guha mentions in this chapter involved an inconsistency in the response to two international crises: 1) Anglo-French military action in response to Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 (the Suez Crisis), and 2) the Soviet invasion of Hungary following an anti-Communist uprising, also in 1956 (the Hungarian Revolution). India publicly condemned the first act of aggression by western powers, but not the second, which today seems like a clear indication that India was leaning towards the Soviets more than it let on.
Guha suggests there were some internal differences between Nehru and the famous leftist Krishna Menon, who represented India at the U.N., over the Hungary question. Nehru publicly defended Menon's abstention at the U.N. on the resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary, but privately he was deeply upset about the invasion. Part of the problem here might have been Nehru's lack of clarity over the correct course to take, but certainly Krishna Menon's independent streak must have been a factor as well.
A similar kind of diplomatic confusion was present in India's relationship with China starting in 1950. Here, the Indian ambassador to China, K.N. Panikkar (who is also very well-known as a historian), seems to have fatally misread Mao Zedong and the personality of Chinese communism:
And here is Guha's explanation of the failure:
I think Guha has it right on here -- and as a side note, this observation about intellectuals who misread charismatic leaders is intriguing. (Are there other examples you can think of?)
Within the Indian administration, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at least did see the danger posed by the Chinese, and in November 1950 -- just after the Chinese invaded and annexed Tibet -- he wrote Nehru a strongly-worded letter to that effect. In hindsight, Sardar Patel's letter seems incredibly prescient, as it anticipates in some sense the Sino-Indian war of 1962, as well as some of the secessionist movements that continue to plague India along its northeastern border to this very day. The letter is posted in its entirety here, and it is well worth reading. Following are some long extracts:
One of the really tragic consequences of the Indian failure to read Chinese intentions correctly at this point is the impact it would have on Tibet and its ancient culture -- which would later be marked by the Chinese for forcible merger into the mainstream of China. It's not India's fault, of course -- it is China's fault -- but one does wonder if things might have played out differently had Nehru played his cards differently, or if someone other than K.N. Panikkar had been ambassador at the time.
More from Sardar Patel's letter:
And finally, Patel assesses the potential impact on the various border regions, all of whom are in some sense in a gray area ethnically and nationally with regards to China and India:
From earlier posts on Guha's book, I know there are many readers who feel frustrated with Nehru's foreign policy errors from the 1950s and 60s. To some extent I'm inclined to be forgiving; things were happening very fast, and there really was no historical precedent for what Mao did with Communist China. Some of Nehru's close associates from the Nationalist movement (i.e., Krishna Menon) were oriented to Marxism/Communism as part of their anti-Imperialist intellectual orientation.
Sardar Patel, on the other hand, was able to reverse the prevalent orthodoxy, and see -- clearly and, as we now know, correctly -- that Communism could potentially be as ruthlessly "Imperial" an ideology as European colonialism itself. In effect, he was one of the few politicians of his era who was actually able to perform in practice ("an independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue") the values that Nehru preached in his speeches.
With 20-20 hindsight, many people criticize Nehru today for pursuing a foreign policy oriented to "nonalignment" -- that is, independence from both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Here is one of Nehru's most famous statements articulating that policy, from a speech given at Columbia University:
"The main objectives of that policy are: the pursuit of peace, not through alignment with any major power or group of powers but through an independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue, the liberation of subject peoples, the maintenance of freedom, both national and individual, the elimination of racial discrimination and the elimination of want, disease and ignorance, which afflict the greater part of the world's population."
The idealism in that statement is admirable, and still worth thinking about, even if the world order has changed dramatically since Nehru first uttered these words. The idea of taking an "independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue" is one I personally strive for as a writer, and may be something that would in my view serve as a helpful corrective to many partisan ideologues -- on both the left and the right -- who tend to only see the world through one particular ideological filter or the other.
Ideals aside, Nehru's government did make some serious mistakes in foreign policy in the first few years. One of the significant failures Guha mentions in this chapter involved an inconsistency in the response to two international crises: 1) Anglo-French military action in response to Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 (the Suez Crisis), and 2) the Soviet invasion of Hungary following an anti-Communist uprising, also in 1956 (the Hungarian Revolution). India publicly condemned the first act of aggression by western powers, but not the second, which today seems like a clear indication that India was leaning towards the Soviets more than it let on.
Guha suggests there were some internal differences between Nehru and the famous leftist Krishna Menon, who represented India at the U.N., over the Hungary question. Nehru publicly defended Menon's abstention at the U.N. on the resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary, but privately he was deeply upset about the invasion. Part of the problem here might have been Nehru's lack of clarity over the correct course to take, but certainly Krishna Menon's independent streak must have been a factor as well.
A similar kind of diplomatic confusion was present in India's relationship with China starting in 1950. Here, the Indian ambassador to China, K.N. Panikkar (who is also very well-known as a historian), seems to have fatally misread Mao Zedong and the personality of Chinese communism:
In May 1950 Panikkar was granted an interview with Mao Zedong, and came away greatly impressed. Mao's face, he recalled later, was 'pleasant and benevolent and the look in his eyes is kindly.' There 'is no cruelty or hardness either in his eyes or in the expression of his mouth. In fact he gave me the impression of a philosophical mind, a little dreamy but absolutely sure of itself.' The Chinese leader had 'experienced many hardships and endured tremendous sufferings,' yet 'his face showed no signs of bitterness, cruelty, or sorrow.' Mao reminded Panikkar of his own boss, Nehru, for 'both are men of action with dreamy, idealistic temperaments,' and both 'may be considered humanists in the broadest sense of the term.' (176)
And here is Guha's explanation of the failure:
This would be laughable if it were not so serious. Intellectuals have always been strangely fascinated by powerful men; George Bernard Shaw wrote about Lenin in much the same terms. Yet Shaw was an unaffiliated writer, responsible only to himself. Panikkar was the official representative of his government. What he said and believed would carry considerable weight. And here he was representing one of history's most ruthless dictators as dreamy, soft, and poetic. (176)
I think Guha has it right on here -- and as a side note, this observation about intellectuals who misread charismatic leaders is intriguing. (Are there other examples you can think of?)
Within the Indian administration, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at least did see the danger posed by the Chinese, and in November 1950 -- just after the Chinese invaded and annexed Tibet -- he wrote Nehru a strongly-worded letter to that effect. In hindsight, Sardar Patel's letter seems incredibly prescient, as it anticipates in some sense the Sino-Indian war of 1962, as well as some of the secessionist movements that continue to plague India along its northeastern border to this very day. The letter is posted in its entirety here, and it is well worth reading. Following are some long extracts:
The Chinese Government has tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intention. My own feeling is that at a crucial period they managed to instill into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so-called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means. There can be no doubt that during the period covered by this correspondence the Chinese must have been concentrating for an onslaught on Tibet. The final action of the Chinese, in my judgement, is little short of perfidy. The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put faith in us; they chose to be guided by us; and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence. From the latest position, it appears that we shall not be able to rescue the Dalai Lama. Our Ambassador has been at great pains to find an explanation or justification for Chinese policy and actions. As the External Affairs Ministry remarked in one of their telegrams, there was a lack of firmness and unnecessary apology in one or two representations that he made to the Chinese Government on our behalf. It is impossible to imagine any sensible person believing in the so-called threat to China from Anglo-American machinations in Tibet. Therefore, if the Chinese put faith in this, they must have distrusted us so completely as to have taken us as tools or stooges of Anglo-American diplomacy or strategy. This feeling, if genuinely entertained by the Chinese in spite of your direct approaches to them, indicates that even though we regard ourselves as the friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as their friends. (link)
One of the really tragic consequences of the Indian failure to read Chinese intentions correctly at this point is the impact it would have on Tibet and its ancient culture -- which would later be marked by the Chinese for forcible merger into the mainstream of China. It's not India's fault, of course -- it is China's fault -- but one does wonder if things might have played out differently had Nehru played his cards differently, or if someone other than K.N. Panikkar had been ambassador at the time.
More from Sardar Patel's letter:
In the background of this, we have to consider what new situation now faces us as a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we knew it, and the expansion of China almost up to our gates. Throughout history we have seldom been worried about our north-east frontier. The Himalayas have been regarded as an impenetrable barrier against any threat from the north. We had a friendly Tibet which gave us no trouble. The Chinese were divided. . . . China is no longer divided. It is united and strong. All along the Himalayas in the north and north-east, we have on our side of the frontier a population ethnologically and culturally not different from Tibetans and Mongoloids. The undefined state of the frontier and the existence on our side of a population with its affinities to the Tibetans or Chinese have all the elements of the potential trouble between China and ourselves.Recent and bitter history also tells us that Communism is no shield against imperialism and that the communists are as good or as bad imperialists as any other. Chinese ambitions in this respect not only cover the Himalayan slopes on our side but also include the important part of Assam. They have their ambitions in Burma also. Burma has the added difficulty that it has no McMahon Line round which to build up even the semblance of an agreement. Chinese irredentism and communist imperialism are different from the expansionism or imperialism of the western powers. The former has a cloak of ideology which makes it ten times more dangerous. In the guise of ideological expansion lie concealed racial, national or historical claims. The danger from the north and north-east, therefore, becomes both communist and imperialist. (link)
And finally, Patel assesses the potential impact on the various border regions, all of whom are in some sense in a gray area ethnically and nationally with regards to China and India:
Let us also consider the political conditions on this potentially troublesome frontier. Our northern and north-eastern approaches consist of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Darjeeling and the tribal areas in Assam. From the point of view of communication, there are weak spots. Continuous defensive lines do not exist. There is almost an unlimited scope for infiltration. Police protection is limited to a very small number of passes. There, too, our outposts do not seem to be fully manned. The contact of these areas with us is by no means close and intimate. The people inhabiting these portions have no established loyalty or devotion to India. Even Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas are not free from pro-Mongoloid prejudices. During the last three years, we have not been able to make any appreciable approaches to the Nagas and other hill tribes in Assam. European missionaries and other visitors had been in touch with them, but their influence was in no way friendly to India or Indians. In Sikkim, there was political ferment some time ago. It is quite possible that discontent is smouldering there. Bhutan is comparatively quiet, but its affinity with Tibetans would be a handicap. Nepal has a weak oligarchic regime based almost entirely on force: it is in conflict with a turbulent element of the population as well as with enlightened ideas of the modern age. In these circumstances, to make people alive to the new danger or to make them defensively strong is a very difficult task indeed and that difficulty can be got over only by enlightened firmness, strength and a clear line of policy. (link)
From earlier posts on Guha's book, I know there are many readers who feel frustrated with Nehru's foreign policy errors from the 1950s and 60s. To some extent I'm inclined to be forgiving; things were happening very fast, and there really was no historical precedent for what Mao did with Communist China. Some of Nehru's close associates from the Nationalist movement (i.e., Krishna Menon) were oriented to Marxism/Communism as part of their anti-Imperialist intellectual orientation.
Sardar Patel, on the other hand, was able to reverse the prevalent orthodoxy, and see -- clearly and, as we now know, correctly -- that Communism could potentially be as ruthlessly "Imperial" an ideology as European colonialism itself. In effect, he was one of the few politicians of his era who was actually able to perform in practice ("an independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue") the values that Nehru preached in his speeches.
In Defense of Substantive Democracy
This post is a response of sorts to Abhi's thought-provoking comments at Sepia Mutiny on Musharraf's State of Emergency, and what he sees as the possible benefits of dictatorship in certain limited conditions. Abhi's post, as I read it, was a thought experiment, not necessarily a political program -- and this is a somewhat speculative thought experiment as well (these ideas are not set in stone). There is some value in the general idea that democracy before stability is not always the best thing for a country, and in the particular claim that Pakistan's democratic institutions have been severely weakened by years and years of misrule (going back to the Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif days; Musharraf did not start this with his 1999 coup).
That said, I'm not ready to give up faith in liberal democracy, and I think it could still happen in Pakistan. As for how to get there, there are probably only two or three paths, none of them easy. One is a popular uprising that would probably turn pretty ugly in the short run -- think of the bloody riots in Karachi this past summer, only magnified. If successful, mass protests/riots ould be followed by a military coup and a provisional dictatorship, and then by open elections, if the coup was carried out by the right person. (There could also be more violence during the elections, and possibly more trouble/instability even after they occur.) The other is something accidental, which could be anything. Perhaps a new leadership emerges (Imran Khan, by the way, has managed to escape from house arrest), or perhaps something unforeseen happens to/with Musharraf that leaves a power vacuum? Perhaps both? Who knows. Either way, in my view there is no question that what is necessary if democracy is to have a chance in Pakistan is for Musharraf to go.
Another possibility to speculate on is what might happen if either the Bush administration or (more likely) its successor withheld military and economic aid to pressure Musharraf to cancel this State of Emergency. Here I'm really not sure what the ramifications would be for Musharraf. It might be symbolically bad on the international stage, but would it really hurt him all that much domestically? Here I'm really not sure.
I should also say that I disagree with the calculus, which is widely prevalent amongst American TV "pundits" right now, that Musharraf needs to stay because America needs him for its "War on Terror." There may or may not be any truth in this (as has been pointed out, Musharraf's net contribution to fighting terrorism is highly debatable), but what I keep thinking is that at this moment it's not America's interests that I'm concerned about, it's the Pakistani people, who deserve good, transparent governance. It's the Pakistani people who deserve a free press (not blackouts of private news channels), the right to peacefully dissent, and the right to organize politically -- who deserve, in short, substantive democracy.
Substantive democracy is not just democratic elections; it requires a whole range of institutions that provide meaningful checks and balances on power. Executive authority (a president or a dictator) needs to be subject to legislative and judicial challenges. The prospect of a newly revitalized Pakistan Supreme Court was a really hopeful sign this past spring and summer, and I'm deeply disappointed that Musharraf decided he wouldn't let Iftikar Chaudhry and co. determine his fate. (At least he hasn't succeeded in stopping Chaudhry from talking to the Press, though that will probably happen soon.)
In the U.S. case, the best current example of checks and balances on executive authority are the Congressional investigations of numerous questionable actions by the Bush Administration. Another is the tradition of the "Special Prosecutor," which was instrumental in bringing down Nixon (though it was abused, in my view, with Bill Clinton). What Nawaz Sharif's corrupt regime needed was something akin to a special prosecutor; what it got instead was a takeover by General Musharraf.
India, the "world's largest democracy" isn't perfect on this score either, by the way. I was reminded of this most recently watching the Tehelka videos relating to Gujarat. As I said in my earlier (quickie) post, I don't think the videos give enough evidence by themselves to take down Modi, but they quite definitely show that the entire system of state government in Gujarat -- ministers, police, judges, lawyers -- colluded in allowing those bloody "three days of whatever you want" (as Modi allegedly said) to happen. The checks and balances were not there, and it took intervention from the Center to bring the violence to a halt. (Incidentally, I thought Raghu Karnad's comments on Gujarat and the Tehelka exposé were pretty compelling: here and here.)
My point is this: elections are necessary for democracy to occur, but they aren't sufficient for democracy to sustain itself. What Musharraf should have done, if he really cared about transitioning to democracy, was, first of all, let the Supreme Court rule on whether the recent Presidential election was valid. Secondly, he needed to give up his uniform (though admittedly, that should have happened first). Thirdly, Parliamentary elections.
But other things are necessary too: the opposition political parties have been weakened by years of dictatorship and corrupt leadership. It will take time for new leaders to emerge (Benazir, why not just stay in Dubai? You could buy the Pakistan plot at Palm Jumeirah...), and for the party organizations to become strong and self-sustaining.
Sepoy at Chapati Mystery has a poem in Urdu by Habib Jalib that summarizes my feelings on a more emotional level:
That said, I'm not ready to give up faith in liberal democracy, and I think it could still happen in Pakistan. As for how to get there, there are probably only two or three paths, none of them easy. One is a popular uprising that would probably turn pretty ugly in the short run -- think of the bloody riots in Karachi this past summer, only magnified. If successful, mass protests/riots ould be followed by a military coup and a provisional dictatorship, and then by open elections, if the coup was carried out by the right person. (There could also be more violence during the elections, and possibly more trouble/instability even after they occur.) The other is something accidental, which could be anything. Perhaps a new leadership emerges (Imran Khan, by the way, has managed to escape from house arrest), or perhaps something unforeseen happens to/with Musharraf that leaves a power vacuum? Perhaps both? Who knows. Either way, in my view there is no question that what is necessary if democracy is to have a chance in Pakistan is for Musharraf to go.
Another possibility to speculate on is what might happen if either the Bush administration or (more likely) its successor withheld military and economic aid to pressure Musharraf to cancel this State of Emergency. Here I'm really not sure what the ramifications would be for Musharraf. It might be symbolically bad on the international stage, but would it really hurt him all that much domestically? Here I'm really not sure.
I should also say that I disagree with the calculus, which is widely prevalent amongst American TV "pundits" right now, that Musharraf needs to stay because America needs him for its "War on Terror." There may or may not be any truth in this (as has been pointed out, Musharraf's net contribution to fighting terrorism is highly debatable), but what I keep thinking is that at this moment it's not America's interests that I'm concerned about, it's the Pakistani people, who deserve good, transparent governance. It's the Pakistani people who deserve a free press (not blackouts of private news channels), the right to peacefully dissent, and the right to organize politically -- who deserve, in short, substantive democracy.
Substantive democracy is not just democratic elections; it requires a whole range of institutions that provide meaningful checks and balances on power. Executive authority (a president or a dictator) needs to be subject to legislative and judicial challenges. The prospect of a newly revitalized Pakistan Supreme Court was a really hopeful sign this past spring and summer, and I'm deeply disappointed that Musharraf decided he wouldn't let Iftikar Chaudhry and co. determine his fate. (At least he hasn't succeeded in stopping Chaudhry from talking to the Press, though that will probably happen soon.)
In the U.S. case, the best current example of checks and balances on executive authority are the Congressional investigations of numerous questionable actions by the Bush Administration. Another is the tradition of the "Special Prosecutor," which was instrumental in bringing down Nixon (though it was abused, in my view, with Bill Clinton). What Nawaz Sharif's corrupt regime needed was something akin to a special prosecutor; what it got instead was a takeover by General Musharraf.
India, the "world's largest democracy" isn't perfect on this score either, by the way. I was reminded of this most recently watching the Tehelka videos relating to Gujarat. As I said in my earlier (quickie) post, I don't think the videos give enough evidence by themselves to take down Modi, but they quite definitely show that the entire system of state government in Gujarat -- ministers, police, judges, lawyers -- colluded in allowing those bloody "three days of whatever you want" (as Modi allegedly said) to happen. The checks and balances were not there, and it took intervention from the Center to bring the violence to a halt. (Incidentally, I thought Raghu Karnad's comments on Gujarat and the Tehelka exposé were pretty compelling: here and here.)
My point is this: elections are necessary for democracy to occur, but they aren't sufficient for democracy to sustain itself. What Musharraf should have done, if he really cared about transitioning to democracy, was, first of all, let the Supreme Court rule on whether the recent Presidential election was valid. Secondly, he needed to give up his uniform (though admittedly, that should have happened first). Thirdly, Parliamentary elections.
But other things are necessary too: the opposition political parties have been weakened by years of dictatorship and corrupt leadership. It will take time for new leaders to emerge (Benazir, why not just stay in Dubai? You could buy the Pakistan plot at Palm Jumeirah...), and for the party organizations to become strong and self-sustaining.
Sepoy at Chapati Mystery has a poem in Urdu by Habib Jalib that summarizes my feelings on a more emotional level:
Jackbooted State
If the Watchman had not helped the Dacoit
Today our feet wouldn’t be in chains, our victory not defeat
Wrap your turbans around your neck, crawl on your bellies
Once on top, it is hard to bring down, the jackbooted state. (link)
Two Events this Weekend
There are two events happening that readers on the east coast might be interested in. Both events have their main speakers this Saturday (11/3), though SAWCC actually has a reading/performance on Friday night and creative workshops and panels on Saturday.
First, for people in and near Washington DC, you may wish to attend the SALTAF festival, which features Madhur Jaffrey, Amitava Kumar, Thrity Umrigar, Rishi Reddi, and Canadian filmmaker Vic Sarin (whose film, Partition, is screening at the festival). Kicking off the festival as a whole is the much-hyped Hindi film Loins of Punjab Presents, which I've been waiting to see for months, damnit.
In New York, it's the SAWCC conference, which this year has the charming title, "Electric Ladyland." SAWCC participants are younger and more "Up-and-coming," and the conference itself (which I attended last year) is very much a hands-on, get-involved type of event -- you don't just sit back and sample the wine-and-samosas. I am on a panel called "Pop/Politics," with Mira Kamdar, Sita Bhaskar, and Sunita Mukhi. I am not 100% sure what I'm talking about yet -- probably something involving Bobby Jindal and the latest Tehelka spycam exposé. And Sepia Mutiny blogger Anna is on a panel called "Eat, Pray, Love: Writing/Crafting/Cooking the Personal Narrative," with food writer Chitrita Banerji, and Janki Khatau.
Incidentally, if you're interested in the creative writing workshops on Saturday morning, you should email sawcclitfest@gmail.com, though they may already be filled up (the workshops are limited to 12 people each).
First, for people in and near Washington DC, you may wish to attend the SALTAF festival, which features Madhur Jaffrey, Amitava Kumar, Thrity Umrigar, Rishi Reddi, and Canadian filmmaker Vic Sarin (whose film, Partition, is screening at the festival). Kicking off the festival as a whole is the much-hyped Hindi film Loins of Punjab Presents, which I've been waiting to see for months, damnit.
In New York, it's the SAWCC conference, which this year has the charming title, "Electric Ladyland." SAWCC participants are younger and more "Up-and-coming," and the conference itself (which I attended last year) is very much a hands-on, get-involved type of event -- you don't just sit back and sample the wine-and-samosas. I am on a panel called "Pop/Politics," with Mira Kamdar, Sita Bhaskar, and Sunita Mukhi. I am not 100% sure what I'm talking about yet -- probably something involving Bobby Jindal and the latest Tehelka spycam exposé. And Sepia Mutiny blogger Anna is on a panel called "Eat, Pray, Love: Writing/Crafting/Cooking the Personal Narrative," with food writer Chitrita Banerji, and Janki Khatau.
Incidentally, if you're interested in the creative writing workshops on Saturday morning, you should email sawcclitfest@gmail.com, though they may already be filled up (the workshops are limited to 12 people each).
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