It looks like I am going to be on the radio on Monday, as part of an interview with Amitav Ghosh, on Radio Open Source, a new NPR show. It is scheduled for 7-8pm Eastern time (4-5am in India); I am supposed to be on between 7:20 and 7:35 or thereabouts.
They are only up in a few markets, including Boston, Seattle (Manorama, are you reading this?), and Salt Lake City (VK, are you reading this?). But apparently their shows are being both streamed and archived on the Internet, so you can listen remotely and later. Go to their blog to tune in.
Any suggestions for things to talk about on The Hungry Tide, or Amitav Ghosh more broadly? Apparently the producers of the show want to focus on what is happening in India today, politically and culturally -- not so much the literary aspect. Suits me just fine.
I'm going to be working on some questions of my own to ask Ghosh this weekend. But if you send me well-focused short questions that I can use I will try and give you credit over the air.
UPDATE: Ok, it's over. For those of you coming over from Open Source, here are two things I've written on Amitav Ghosh before:
1. On Tsunami relief
2. On The Hungry Tide
Fusion Music: Sikhman/Rastaman and Hindi Reggaeton
Two interesting kinds of music fusion for you today.
1. Transglobal Underground, "The Sikhman & the Rasta," from Impossible Broadcasting. Transglobal Underground are a globalized dub/electronica outfit based in the UK. They've put out quite a number of CDs over more than 15 years, specializing in in experimental, often improbable, kinds of fusion. The results tend to be hit-or-miss. Every CD of their I have has one or two really interesting tracks, but there are also usually several "skips."
The song that caught my ear on the new CD Impossible Broadcasting is the one called "The Sikhman & the Rasta," in which an Afro-Caribbean dancehall MC called Tuup finds a link between Sikhs and Rastas ("The Rasta and the Sikhman dem don't cut hair/ The Rastaman and Sikhman dem have no fear") that is a bit eccentric, though there is something in it -- both Sikhs and Rastafarians have religious stipulations against cutting their hair. And both communities have a distinct and vibrant musical culture that is highly visible in the UK. This song is trying to cross-reference these two unique features.
Even if you don't see the connection, perhaps the song worth tracking down, if the free sample you can listen to at Emusic piques to your curiosity. All I can say is, I'm sure you don't already have anything in your MP3 collection that sounds like this.
2. Desi Reggaeton. Indian remixers in the New York area aggressively sample current hip hop hits on their "promotional" CDs. Most of the time, the remixes don't work very well -- do we realy need a remix of "Chaiya Chaiya" with the beat from "In da club"? Well, maybe you do. And every so often one comes across something that hits just right. Fortunately, the CDs tend to cost around $5, so if a CD is a dud it doesn't hurt too badly.
Some of the same problems are present on Bollywood High Volume 3: Reggaeton Edition, which exploits the current Reggaeton fad. The CD remixes songs from current Hindi films like Kaal, Tango Charlie, Waqt, and Mere Jeevan Saathi, with beats from Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderon, and Nina Sky. It's pretty entertaining to listen to, though as with Reggaeton generally (this fad is slated for extinction, don't you think?), it gets repetitive pretty quickly.
Desiqua. This CD is basically a DJ's fantasy. Unlike Chutney Soca in Trinidad, there isn't that much direct interaction between Indian music and Puerto Rican music going on, either in New York or in Puerto Rico.
However, there is actually a small but vibrant community of Indians living in Puerto Rico (we met a bunch of them the last time we were there). They and their New York expatriates call themselves "Desiquas" (Boriqua + Desi).
1. Transglobal Underground, "The Sikhman & the Rasta," from Impossible Broadcasting. Transglobal Underground are a globalized dub/electronica outfit based in the UK. They've put out quite a number of CDs over more than 15 years, specializing in in experimental, often improbable, kinds of fusion. The results tend to be hit-or-miss. Every CD of their I have has one or two really interesting tracks, but there are also usually several "skips."
The song that caught my ear on the new CD Impossible Broadcasting is the one called "The Sikhman & the Rasta," in which an Afro-Caribbean dancehall MC called Tuup finds a link between Sikhs and Rastas ("The Rasta and the Sikhman dem don't cut hair/ The Rastaman and Sikhman dem have no fear") that is a bit eccentric, though there is something in it -- both Sikhs and Rastafarians have religious stipulations against cutting their hair. And both communities have a distinct and vibrant musical culture that is highly visible in the UK. This song is trying to cross-reference these two unique features.
Even if you don't see the connection, perhaps the song worth tracking down, if the free sample you can listen to at Emusic piques to your curiosity. All I can say is, I'm sure you don't already have anything in your MP3 collection that sounds like this.
2. Desi Reggaeton. Indian remixers in the New York area aggressively sample current hip hop hits on their "promotional" CDs. Most of the time, the remixes don't work very well -- do we realy need a remix of "Chaiya Chaiya" with the beat from "In da club"? Well, maybe you do. And every so often one comes across something that hits just right. Fortunately, the CDs tend to cost around $5, so if a CD is a dud it doesn't hurt too badly.
Some of the same problems are present on Bollywood High Volume 3: Reggaeton Edition, which exploits the current Reggaeton fad. The CD remixes songs from current Hindi films like Kaal, Tango Charlie, Waqt, and Mere Jeevan Saathi, with beats from Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderon, and Nina Sky. It's pretty entertaining to listen to, though as with Reggaeton generally (this fad is slated for extinction, don't you think?), it gets repetitive pretty quickly.
Desiqua. This CD is basically a DJ's fantasy. Unlike Chutney Soca in Trinidad, there isn't that much direct interaction between Indian music and Puerto Rican music going on, either in New York or in Puerto Rico.
However, there is actually a small but vibrant community of Indians living in Puerto Rico (we met a bunch of them the last time we were there). They and their New York expatriates call themselves "Desiquas" (Boriqua + Desi).
Sudoku and Mathematics
[Source: Brainbashers. Solution below]
Everyone is talking about Sudoku, so I tried it and was, predictably perhaps, instantly addicted.
The Christian Science Monitor article sums up the game pretty nicely:
Sudoku, which means "single number" in Japanese, is essentially a simple logic problem with layers of hidden complexity that can draw the solver in to the point of obsession. A grid nine squares by nine is presented in which all the integers from 1 to 9 must appear in every row, every column and every 3-by-3 box. So far, so good.
Some numbers are given as initial clues. Then, by process of deduction, sometimes resorting to quite intense logical assumptions, the solver can slowly begin to work out what goes where.
There is a debate at Jabberwock about whether the skills involved in solving the puzzles are or aren't "math." A Financial Times article is referenced, only I don't subcribe to the FT, so I can't read it. It's a safe bet to say that the game requires intensive use of heuristic logic; perhaps it doesn't matter whether we use the "M" word or not.
The CSM article references two terms I hadn't seen before in connection with this question, in the following sentence:
Thus more committed fans will engage you in subtleties of bifurcation and Ariadne threads, of trial and error versus pure logic.
From a quick Googling, all I can get on "bifurcation" is some stuff Fractal algorithms, which doesn't seem at all relevant to Sudoku. And "Ariadne's thread," in mythology, was a gift Ariadne gave her lover to help him get through a labyrinth. In everyday usage, an "Ariadne thread" refers to a heuristic you use to help retrace a line of thought. Presumably in Sudoku it would relate to keeping track of a trail of hypotheticals or guesses. But again, I couldn't find anything that would explain what exactly the technical, mathematical reference point for "Ariadne Threads" might be. There is something going on with this in serious Computer Science-land, but I can't make heads or tails of it.
Update: There is some good math on Sudoku at Wikipedia, but this is more the way a computer would solve the grid as an "NP-Complete" problem, not so much a human.
For more on Sudoku, see of course Slate, Puzzle Cannon, and especially Locana.
Anand points to Web Sudoku, which might be a good place to get started if you're not looking to install the game software from Sudoku.com.
Ashes & Snow: A Traveling Circus
This spring, about half a dozen people, in separate instances, recommended that I see Ashes and Snow, an exhibition of photography by Gregory Colbert. It's at a "Nomadic Museum," a massive temporary building constructed out of storage containers, on Pier 54 in Chelsea. Judging by the hype and the marketing (I've seen posters for the exhibit up all over NYC), this has been the second "must-see" spectacle in New York this year. (The first being "The Gates," of course.)
The media and the blogosphere, as far as I can tell, have been very respectful of Ashes and Snow. Here is Kottke, and here is Richard's Notes (quite informative, actually). Even the excellent Tiffinbox, a professional photographer, seemed impressed with the idea of this exhibition.
I was not impressed. I was, to begin with, bored by the photography, which isn't all that impressive visually; the sepia-tinted pictures are pretty, but the "ethereal" effects can be faked with Photoshop. More importantly, I was deeply annoyed by the strong undercurrent of exoticism and artificiality in the exhibit. Ashes and Snow is the Discovery Channel with one addition: exotic-looking Indian and Asian children in flowy robes are dancing and swimming placidly with the exotic (and often dangerou) animals. They don't speak, they don't smile, and they don't complain. They are, in a sense, analogous to the animals -- not just silent "native others," but, in the logic of this exhibit, animals themselves. The exhibit notes and the website will have you believe that it's a statement about "harmony between animals and human beings."
But I don't buy it, partly because of the blatant artificiality of the poses -- people don't just hang out with Cheetahs on stark desert plains. And they don't swim with elephants with their eyes closed, looking enraptured. (Or, as in the photo above, they don't sit in a row reading while elephants sit, apparently listening.) All of these are poses elaborately staged by the photographer, and it's hard for me to forget it. The other reason I can't buy the statement about human-animal unity is the manipulative environment of the gallery, which is memorably designed, to be sure (see this on Shigeru Ban's approach to "sustainable architecture"). But the deeply recessed lighting, the exotic world music in the background, the pebbles, the rice paper -- the whole presentation, in short -- plays up a "spiritual" and "exotic" atmosphere that nullifies any objective quality the photographs themselves might have.
If you watch the video loop at the back of the gallery for a bit, a male voice starts reciting this mantra while a desi chick dances in the mud with a baby elephant:
"Flesh to fire, fire to blood, blood to bone, bone to marrow, marrow to ashes, ashes to... snow."
To which my response is:
"Cow to beef, beef to burger, burger to mouth, mouth to stomach, stomach to shit, shit to... snow."
Ashes and Snow was for me the equivalent of a traveling circus, only in pictures. It's the traveling circus in an era of political correctness ("no animals were harmed," etc.), and World Music you can buy Starbucks. But it's still a circus, and still, to me, rather repulsive.
Next up for Ashes and Snow is apparently Los Angeles, where I am sure it will be received by more wildly appreciative crowds, dropping $12 per person. Better go, while the circus is still in town.
Rushdie on Creationism/Evolution
Rushdie has a piece in The Toronto Star on creationism vs. scientific atheism (via A&L Daily).
Though I don't actually agree with his point here (atheists should remain intolerant of religion, not accommodating), I admire the verve and style. Rushdie's recent novels seem a little tired... why doesn't he take this up full time?
Since I was just talking about this yesterday, let me quote the passage in the column where he talks about Intelligent Design:
Incidentally, is another winning Rushdie polemic about creationists in Step Across this Line. It is called "Darwin in Kansas."
Though I don't actually agree with his point here (atheists should remain intolerant of religion, not accommodating), I admire the verve and style. Rushdie's recent novels seem a little tired... why doesn't he take this up full time?
Since I was just talking about this yesterday, let me quote the passage in the column where he talks about Intelligent Design:
And in America, the battle over the teaching of intelligent design in U.S. schools is reaching crunch time, as the American Civil Liberties Union prepares to take on intelligent-design proponents in a Pennsylvania court.
It seems inconceivable that better behaviour on the part of the world's great scientists, of the sort that Ruse would prefer, would persuade these forces to back down.
Intelligent design, an idea designed backward so as to force the antique idea of a Creator upon the beauty of creation, is so thoroughly rooted in pseudoscience, so full of false logic, so easy to attack that a little rudeness seems called for.
Its advocates argue, for example, that the sheer complexity and perfection of cellular/molecular structures is inexplicable by gradual evolution.
However, the multiple parts of complex, interlocking biological systems do evolve together, gradually expanding and adapting — and, as Dawkins showed in The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, natural selection is active at every step of this process.
But, as well as scientific arguments, there are others that are more, well, novelistic. What about bad design, for example? Was it really so intelligent to come up with the birth canal or the prostate gland?
Incidentally, is another winning Rushdie polemic about creationists in Step Across this Line. It is called "Darwin in Kansas."
Isaac Newton and Intelligent Design
For my book, I've been reading up a bit on the secularization of philosophy, which entailed some dabbling with the ideas of Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Rene Descartes, and Baruch Spinoza. The road to a purely secular view of the world, it turns out, has had some interesting twists and turns. I've been particularly impressed by how much effort was exerted in the 17th century to hold onto the idea of "God"; nothing remotely similar is undertaken today.
All of the philosophers above were revolutionary mathematicians or scientists in addition to being philosophers. When they attempted to create linguistic and conceptual explanations of the world, they were also the first people to have understood certain aspects of the workings of the universe.
The best example of this might be Isaac Newton, who was the first to offer a comprehensive mathematical explanation of the planetary orbits in our solar system. When he looked at the solar system, he was probably the first to understand the true complexity of the physics involved, and it was dazzling.
Here is what he wrote in the Principia, in 1687:
It's beautiful, it all runs on its own with marvelous symmetry -- it must have been designed by something or someone Intelligent.
It so happened that I was reading this the day after I had read a piece on the pseudo-scientific movement called "Intelligent Design" in the New Yorker, and I was struck by the similarity in the reasoning.
Intelligent Design, as many readers know (especially those who look in on the excellent Pharyngula now and again), is a movement posing itself as an alternative theory (or set of theories) to evolution. According to Allen Orr in the article, its main scientific proponents are the biochemist Michael Behe, who wrote a book called Darwin's Black Box, and William Dembski, a mathematician.
Behe's arguments might relate to Newton the best. He believes the sheer complexity of individual cells, even of the simplest bacteria, is dazzling. In particular, he finds the interaction of different proteins that perform essential tasks in cells -- such as building the flagellum, or tail, or a bacteria, for example -- is "irreducibly complex." That is, each of the components is dependent on others in an extremely complex interlocking framework. It seems difficult to imagine how such a system might have evolved using Darwin's principle of natural selection, and indeed, apparently evolutionary biologists cannot yet fully explain it. And here is where Behe comes in:
There are, of course numerous very serious problems with this line of thought, and almost no professional scientists accept the "irreducible complexity" argument. I won't get into that here (read the article). Rather, what's interesting to me is that Behe's invocation of an "intelligence" is in response to a discovery every bit as dazzling as Newton's. There is an elegance to the workings of the natural world that, for these two men in very different eras and circumstances, seems impossible to accept as a purely unmotivated, random event.
The comparison ends there. Unlike Newton, Behe didn't discover anything in particular. And the complexity of proteins in cells has been known for several decades -- it's even taught in high school -- so it's hardly dazzling in the same way as the physics of the solar system must have been for Newton.
But most importantly, Newton's rationalization was part of a sweeping movement towards secularization that would soon see the idea of God considerably diminished in Philosophy. Within 60 years of Newton's invocation of a kind of Deist God in the Principia (i.e., who sets the machine in motion), there would be Denis Diderot in France, shrugging his shoulders: whether or not God does what Newton says he does doesn't matter to us, since the day-to-day workings of the world operate without divine intervention. Newton's "Intelligent Mechanick" God was not one to inspire fear and trembling, but rather a kind of cerebral -- and voluntary -- appreciation.
In contrast, the Intelligent Design of Behe and Dembski is in support of a belief in God that, for these scientists, resides in an emotional fundament that always trumps the scientific project.
The comparison, in the end, is small, but perhaps it is still worth considering. How do we explain the advent of dazzling complexity in the natural world? Do we depend on our own intelligence to decipher and describe the world, or do we posit the existence of of an Intelligent designer, who made it? I prefer the former, but I can understand how some smart people might not, under the right circumstances.
All of the philosophers above were revolutionary mathematicians or scientists in addition to being philosophers. When they attempted to create linguistic and conceptual explanations of the world, they were also the first people to have understood certain aspects of the workings of the universe.
The best example of this might be Isaac Newton, who was the first to offer a comprehensive mathematical explanation of the planetary orbits in our solar system. When he looked at the solar system, he was probably the first to understand the true complexity of the physics involved, and it was dazzling.
Here is what he wrote in the Principia, in 1687:
I do not think it explicable by mere natural causes but am forced to ascribe it to ye counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent.' A month later he wrote to Bentley again: 'Gravity may put ye planets into motion but without ye divine power it could never put them into such a Circulating motion as they have about ye Sun, and therefore, for this as well as other reasons, I am compelled to ascribe ye frame of this Systeme to an intelligent Agent.' If, for example, the earth revolved on its axis at only one hundred miles per hour instead of one thousand miles per hour, night would ten times longer and the world would be too cold to sustain life; during the long day, the heat would shrivel all the vegetation. The Being which had contrived all this so perfectly had to be a supremely intelligent Mechanick.
It's beautiful, it all runs on its own with marvelous symmetry -- it must have been designed by something or someone Intelligent.
It so happened that I was reading this the day after I had read a piece on the pseudo-scientific movement called "Intelligent Design" in the New Yorker, and I was struck by the similarity in the reasoning.
Intelligent Design, as many readers know (especially those who look in on the excellent Pharyngula now and again), is a movement posing itself as an alternative theory (or set of theories) to evolution. According to Allen Orr in the article, its main scientific proponents are the biochemist Michael Behe, who wrote a book called Darwin's Black Box, and William Dembski, a mathematician.
Behe's arguments might relate to Newton the best. He believes the sheer complexity of individual cells, even of the simplest bacteria, is dazzling. In particular, he finds the interaction of different proteins that perform essential tasks in cells -- such as building the flagellum, or tail, or a bacteria, for example -- is "irreducibly complex." That is, each of the components is dependent on others in an extremely complex interlocking framework. It seems difficult to imagine how such a system might have evolved using Darwin's principle of natural selection, and indeed, apparently evolutionary biologists cannot yet fully explain it. And here is where Behe comes in:
In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe maintained that irreducible complexity presents Darwinism with "unbridgeable chasms." How, after all, could a gradual process of incremental improvement build something like a flagellum, which needs all its parts in order to work? Scientists, he argued, must face up to the fact that "many biochemical systems cannot be built by natural selection working on mutations." In the end, Behe concluded that irreducibly complex cells arise the same way as irreducibly complex mousetraps—someone designs them. As he put it in a recent Times Op-Ed piece: "If it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it’s a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it’s so obvious." In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe speculated that the designer might have assembled the first cell, essentially solving the problem of irreducible complexity, after which evolution might well have proceeded by more or less conventional means. Under Behe’s brand of creationism, you might still be an ape that evolved on the African savanna; it’s just that your cells harbor micro-machines engineered by an unnamed intelligence some four billion years ago.
There are, of course numerous very serious problems with this line of thought, and almost no professional scientists accept the "irreducible complexity" argument. I won't get into that here (read the article). Rather, what's interesting to me is that Behe's invocation of an "intelligence" is in response to a discovery every bit as dazzling as Newton's. There is an elegance to the workings of the natural world that, for these two men in very different eras and circumstances, seems impossible to accept as a purely unmotivated, random event.
The comparison ends there. Unlike Newton, Behe didn't discover anything in particular. And the complexity of proteins in cells has been known for several decades -- it's even taught in high school -- so it's hardly dazzling in the same way as the physics of the solar system must have been for Newton.
But most importantly, Newton's rationalization was part of a sweeping movement towards secularization that would soon see the idea of God considerably diminished in Philosophy. Within 60 years of Newton's invocation of a kind of Deist God in the Principia (i.e., who sets the machine in motion), there would be Denis Diderot in France, shrugging his shoulders: whether or not God does what Newton says he does doesn't matter to us, since the day-to-day workings of the world operate without divine intervention. Newton's "Intelligent Mechanick" God was not one to inspire fear and trembling, but rather a kind of cerebral -- and voluntary -- appreciation.
In contrast, the Intelligent Design of Behe and Dembski is in support of a belief in God that, for these scientists, resides in an emotional fundament that always trumps the scientific project.
The comparison, in the end, is small, but perhaps it is still worth considering. How do we explain the advent of dazzling complexity in the natural world? Do we depend on our own intelligence to decipher and describe the world, or do we posit the existence of of an Intelligent designer, who made it? I prefer the former, but I can understand how some smart people might not, under the right circumstances.
After the Jo Boley So Nihal bombings
India is nominally a country with a Constitution guaranteeing Freedom of Speech (Article 19). But there are also clauses in the Indian Constitution (such as Article 25) which effectively cancel that right, because they allow the government to restrict speech that might inflame religious tensions. It is a Partition-era provision, and therefore quite understandable; one could argue it has done as much good as harm over the years.
The Film Censor Board is famous for restricting displays of explicit sexuality in Indian films, but what is less known is that one of its primary responsibilities is the censoring of films that could inflame religious communalism. Thus, even the religious sentiments of the films of the late 1990s -- the Golden Years of Hindutva -- were kept in check somewhat by the demands of the Censor Board.
Whether it does good or harm, the net effect of these restrictions is that the idea of freedom of speech in India is extremely limited when it comes to entertainment for the masses. (In other media--in print, for instance--it seems to me there is effective Freedom of Speech. Printed texts are censored quite rarely.) It is absurdly easy to get a film banned. Slightly offensive or objectionable moments that the Censor Board might allow to pass (at least, until they receive a complaint) also form the basis of massive protest campaigns that themselves inflame religious tensions more than anything in the films themselves. Censorship thus seems to have the oppositve of its stated intention.
The latest incident is the film Jo Bole So Nihal, which led to a pair of terrorist bombings in movie theaters in Delhi yesterday. One person has been killed, and dozens are injured. It's really a sham of a free speech case, because the film at issue can't be construed as "offensive," not in comparison to religious caricatures routinely seen in other Hindi films, and certainly not in comparison to a credible incidence of what in would be called "hate speech" in the U.S.
The little kernel of bad taste in the film is its title, which is part of a Sikh prayer (the Ardas). It is a prayer that, as far as I know, does not originate from the sacred Sikh scripture (the Guru Granth Sahib), so I doubt whether by any fair standard it is "sacred." It is a blessing that comes at the end of the prayer ritual, roughly akin to an 'Amen'. For these reasons, it seems like a stretch to see its use in a secular film as a problem. Furthermore, Jo Bole So Nihal is a comedic film, in which the Sikh protagonist heroically attempts to stop a terrorist (who is a Christian, interestingly) from assasinating the U.S. President. It is a much more positive representation than, for instance, Mission Kashmir a few years ago.
Thus, the main political organization of the Sikhs, the SGPC, was last week lobbying aggressively -- even hysterically -- to ban a movie that has a sympathetic Sikh hero, played by a widely-respected Punjabi actor, in which the symbols of Sikhism are represented positively. Until yesterday, the invocation of "blasphemy" seemed pretty laughable. Only a contentious fool, or an organization composed of contentious fools, could possibly construe things that way.
For me today, then the bombs aren't the issue so much as the irresponsibility of the SGPC's campaign against a film that, in the bigger picture, did not constitute a threat to Sikhism or the Sikh community. The SGPC seems increasingly like an organization desperate for direction, now that their established enemies -- the Congress Party, the Nehru family, the Indian Army's counter-terrorist measures in Punjab -- have either dwindled or transformed. In an era when the Prime Minister is himself a practicing, if secular, Sikh, Sikh organizations in India can no longer claim exclusion or discrimination. They have as a result chosen to mimic the world-wide rhetoric of religious outrage, exemplified in India by the RSS and by conservative Muslim groups. The rhetoric of outrage is, it seems, the primary way in which religious leaders -- around the world, and in every major religious community -- attempt to make themselves relevant to modernity.
Sad to say, this turn to the Politics of Censorship will probably work for the SGPC. The fact that the SGPC's (unsuccessful) campaign against the film was followed by bombings -- awfully convenient, isn't it? -- means that the future campaigns they undertake, no matter how frivolous, will have to be taken seriously. What's more, the bombing will appear to many followers and potential followers as hard evidence of the influence and strength of the SGPC. Terrorism works.
Insofar as no one can publicly challenge the drift towards fundamentalism amongst -- seemingly -- the leadership of all the major religious groups, we are in for more misdirected outrage, more censorship, and yes, more religious violence. It is the surest way to political power.
The Film Censor Board is famous for restricting displays of explicit sexuality in Indian films, but what is less known is that one of its primary responsibilities is the censoring of films that could inflame religious communalism. Thus, even the religious sentiments of the films of the late 1990s -- the Golden Years of Hindutva -- were kept in check somewhat by the demands of the Censor Board.
Whether it does good or harm, the net effect of these restrictions is that the idea of freedom of speech in India is extremely limited when it comes to entertainment for the masses. (In other media--in print, for instance--it seems to me there is effective Freedom of Speech. Printed texts are censored quite rarely.) It is absurdly easy to get a film banned. Slightly offensive or objectionable moments that the Censor Board might allow to pass (at least, until they receive a complaint) also form the basis of massive protest campaigns that themselves inflame religious tensions more than anything in the films themselves. Censorship thus seems to have the oppositve of its stated intention.
The latest incident is the film Jo Bole So Nihal, which led to a pair of terrorist bombings in movie theaters in Delhi yesterday. One person has been killed, and dozens are injured. It's really a sham of a free speech case, because the film at issue can't be construed as "offensive," not in comparison to religious caricatures routinely seen in other Hindi films, and certainly not in comparison to a credible incidence of what in would be called "hate speech" in the U.S.
The little kernel of bad taste in the film is its title, which is part of a Sikh prayer (the Ardas). It is a prayer that, as far as I know, does not originate from the sacred Sikh scripture (the Guru Granth Sahib), so I doubt whether by any fair standard it is "sacred." It is a blessing that comes at the end of the prayer ritual, roughly akin to an 'Amen'. For these reasons, it seems like a stretch to see its use in a secular film as a problem. Furthermore, Jo Bole So Nihal is a comedic film, in which the Sikh protagonist heroically attempts to stop a terrorist (who is a Christian, interestingly) from assasinating the U.S. President. It is a much more positive representation than, for instance, Mission Kashmir a few years ago.
Thus, the main political organization of the Sikhs, the SGPC, was last week lobbying aggressively -- even hysterically -- to ban a movie that has a sympathetic Sikh hero, played by a widely-respected Punjabi actor, in which the symbols of Sikhism are represented positively. Until yesterday, the invocation of "blasphemy" seemed pretty laughable. Only a contentious fool, or an organization composed of contentious fools, could possibly construe things that way.
For me today, then the bombs aren't the issue so much as the irresponsibility of the SGPC's campaign against a film that, in the bigger picture, did not constitute a threat to Sikhism or the Sikh community. The SGPC seems increasingly like an organization desperate for direction, now that their established enemies -- the Congress Party, the Nehru family, the Indian Army's counter-terrorist measures in Punjab -- have either dwindled or transformed. In an era when the Prime Minister is himself a practicing, if secular, Sikh, Sikh organizations in India can no longer claim exclusion or discrimination. They have as a result chosen to mimic the world-wide rhetoric of religious outrage, exemplified in India by the RSS and by conservative Muslim groups. The rhetoric of outrage is, it seems, the primary way in which religious leaders -- around the world, and in every major religious community -- attempt to make themselves relevant to modernity.
Sad to say, this turn to the Politics of Censorship will probably work for the SGPC. The fact that the SGPC's (unsuccessful) campaign against the film was followed by bombings -- awfully convenient, isn't it? -- means that the future campaigns they undertake, no matter how frivolous, will have to be taken seriously. What's more, the bombing will appear to many followers and potential followers as hard evidence of the influence and strength of the SGPC. Terrorism works.
Insofar as no one can publicly challenge the drift towards fundamentalism amongst -- seemingly -- the leadership of all the major religious groups, we are in for more misdirected outrage, more censorship, and yes, more religious violence. It is the surest way to political power.
Unbelievable
See Sepia Mutiny, on the bombing of a movie theater in Delhi.
I'm currently speechless with horror and anger.
There might be a proper blog post on this later...
I'm currently speechless with horror and anger.
There might be a proper blog post on this later...
The Suketu Effect: Bombay in the News
Last week, Somini Sengupta had a piece in the Times on the question of what will happen with the redevelopment of Bombay's mill lands. They were being rapidly developed, but some groups have been fighting the process.
Also, today, there is a piece in Slate on everyday life in Dharavi.
I can't help but wonder about this sudden interest in Bombay from the New York-based media. Might it have something to do with reporters reading Maximum City? Both the redevelopment question and the sprawling slums are discussed in the book...
Incidentally, Somini Sengupta also recently had a piece on the small boom in Pakistan's economy since 9/11 (6.4 percent growth last year, and projected 8 percent growth this year). Some of it is 9/11 related investment, but much of the growth comes from better handling of economic policy. This, I must say, came as a surprise to me.
Also, today, there is a piece in Slate on everyday life in Dharavi.
I can't help but wonder about this sudden interest in Bombay from the New York-based media. Might it have something to do with reporters reading Maximum City? Both the redevelopment question and the sprawling slums are discussed in the book...
Incidentally, Somini Sengupta also recently had a piece on the small boom in Pakistan's economy since 9/11 (6.4 percent growth last year, and projected 8 percent growth this year). Some of it is 9/11 related investment, but much of the growth comes from better handling of economic policy. This, I must say, came as a surprise to me.
"Identity Jazz"; Writing needs work
This review of Vijay Iyer's new CD in the Village Voice has what might be the worst sentence I've read all week:
So they don't have editors at the Voice? Not only is this a textbook run-on sentence, the individual parts of the sentence are pretty badly constructed. And do we really need a parenthetical telling us what Iyer's parents do for a living?
The reviewer saves the review with a quip at the end about "identity jazz":
It's still a little muddled, and more than a little name-droppy (Voice writers can't seem to help themselves on this). But you get the idea.
Not that the idea makes any sense, of course. Arguably, African-American jazz has always been "identity jazz," only caucasian audiences have found ways to overlook it. What's new here is, it's a different "identity."
[I did an earlier post on Vijay Iyer here]
This will have to remain a puzzle for now, because the most remarkable thing about Reimagining is its nine originals for trio or quartet--so strong in conception and performance it seems only a matter of time before the same sort of consensus Jason Moran inspired a few years ago begins to form around Iyer, who was born in Rochester, New York, in 1971, the son of upper-middle-class Indian immigrants (father a retired research chemist, mother a manager for Xerox).
So they don't have editors at the Voice? Not only is this a textbook run-on sentence, the individual parts of the sentence are pretty badly constructed. And do we really need a parenthetical telling us what Iyer's parents do for a living?
The reviewer saves the review with a quip at the end about "identity jazz":
A giveaway should have been the unusual number of Indian people who turned out, even if few of them wore kurtas or saris. My only argument with what I'm tempted to call identity jazz is the mistaken belief of some promoters that the way to lure more people to jazz is to convince audiences that it's about them. The Polish-speaking immigrants I see at Tomasz Stanko are no more likely to show up for David S. Ware than the lesbian reconstructionist rabbi I recognized at a performance of Stephen Bernstein's Diaspora Blues--and African American musicians are suddenly the ones left out in the cold. For all of that, the music itself can be pretty heady stuff, especially when driven by an honest desire to come to terms with a forgotten or long-taken-for-granted cultural heritage. In the Dakshina Ensemble, the two saxophonists found a common tongue in B-flat. That's a natural setting for the bluesy, speech-inflected Mahanthappa. But it's also Gopalnath's sruti, or favored key.
It's still a little muddled, and more than a little name-droppy (Voice writers can't seem to help themselves on this). But you get the idea.
Not that the idea makes any sense, of course. Arguably, African-American jazz has always been "identity jazz," only caucasian audiences have found ways to overlook it. What's new here is, it's a different "identity."
[I did an earlier post on Vijay Iyer here]
Shyam Benegal's Netaji
There is a controversy brewing around Shyam Benegal's new film on Netaji, Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero. A group of researchers have filed suit against the film, because they dispute whether Bose was in fact married to an Austrian woman he met in the 1930s, named Emilie Schenkl. Their primary evidence seems to be that Bose checked "single" when applying for a visa to visit China in 1939. But they overlook the fact that Bose apparently traveled widely under false names, including "Ziauddin," when in Afghanistan, and "Count Orlando Mazzota" (an Italian nobleman), when in Moscow! There are also 162 love letters Bose wrote to Schenkl as documentary evidence of the depth of the relationship -- though these are being questioned by the researchers.
Emilie Schenkl claimed that she had married Bose in 1937, in a secret ceremony in Vienna. She also had a child by Bose, whose name after marriage became Anita Pfaff. Anita Pfaff, now an Economics professor in Austria, also continues to claim Bose as her father.
I obviously don't know anything more than what Rediff tells me here. What is clear that Benegal isn't getting this out of nowhere, and it's also clear that there's a strong nativist emotional charge behind the drive to keep Bose's image free from the "contaminant" of a non-Indian wife.
Though obviously documentary evidence needs to be checked and cross-referenced, I think people need to get over this need to turn Netaji into the symbol of "authentic" nativist rebellion. He was a very skilled organizer and undoubtedly a charismatic leader, but he did spend a fair amount of time in Europe, and he did have some western education. Also, even before Bose went abroad, he attended Presidency College in Calcutta, one of the most elite (read: most Anglicized) institutions in the British Raj. Bose was, in short, no different in constitution from the Congress leaders of the day. And he was not a saint: as everyone knows, Bose went to Adolf Hitler for support for a military solution to British colonialism. His Indian National Army then fought with the Japanese against Anglo-Indian forces in Burma, 1943-1945. The Japanese said they were fighting to liberate people of color from colonialism, but they weren't exactly credible on this, even then.
The question of whether Subhas Chandra Bose married an Austrian woman is a relatively small thing, considering that he was most definitely sleeping with the devil militarily. After everything, it's his personal life that seems to matter most to people.
As a side-note, the film is getting good reviews, and has a soundtrack by A.R. Rahman as a plus; I'll probably go and see it.
Global Dimming and Bollywood Cinema
The Times had a piece on the phenomenon of "global dimming" last week. This is the amount of light which reaches the earth's surface, and it can be affected by clouds or pollution (or both, as you'll see if you read the article).
Apparently, it's either stopped, or begun to reverse. In India, however, it continues to worsen:
It reminds me, as many things do, of the look of Bombay in old Bollywood films. If you watch 1970s classics like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, which is largely filmed outdoors on the streets of Bombay, you see an image of the city with quite a bit more direct sunlight, and less smog/pollution, than you see now. It's particularly dramatic on the Marine Drive shots -- you actually see a sharp horizon.
If this were a Salman Rushdie novel, the disappearance of the horizon due to smog would be a metaphor for a kind of moral greyness amongst the populace. And "global dimming" would be fodder for a joke about the low attention-span youth of today.
Apparently, it's either stopped, or begun to reverse. In India, however, it continues to worsen:
In some places, he said, the brightening has more than offset the dimming that was detected beginning in the late 1950's. In others, like Hong Kong, which lost more than a third of its sunlight, the dimming trend has leveled off, but previous levels of brightness have not yet returned. In a few places, like India, the dimming trend continues, he said.
It reminds me, as many things do, of the look of Bombay in old Bollywood films. If you watch 1970s classics like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, which is largely filmed outdoors on the streets of Bombay, you see an image of the city with quite a bit more direct sunlight, and less smog/pollution, than you see now. It's particularly dramatic on the Marine Drive shots -- you actually see a sharp horizon.
If this were a Salman Rushdie novel, the disappearance of the horizon due to smog would be a metaphor for a kind of moral greyness amongst the populace. And "global dimming" would be fodder for a joke about the low attention-span youth of today.
Triumph of the 'Christianists' -- and other links on religion
It just so happens that today is a great day for posts and articles relating to religion online.
William Safire on the advent of the pejorative term "Christianist"/"Christianism" to describe members of America's religious right. Andrew Sullivan claims credit for it; Hendrik Hertzberg recently used it in The New Yorker.
I think this might be a pretty useful term to have, especially when discussing global religion politics with people who have an anti-Muslim bias. I still have my doubts as to whether it will take off in the mainstream media. If it does, it will probably start in Europe.
The blogger who calls himself Abdul-Walid has a brilliant post on belief. He is basically doing something like negative theology, except his goal is to distinguish religious belief ("I believe in God") from a more intellectual and secular conception of divinity. Ironically, the latter may take the idea of God more seriously than standard affirmations of religious belief do. (Read it...)
Chapati Mystery has a great post on Kingdom of Heaven, which refers to earlier representations of Salahuddin (aka Saladin and Salah ud Din) in Hollywood. Apparently Cecil B. DeMille's 1937 film The Crusades was very popular in Egypt back in the day. I'm a little torn about whether to bother with KoH. Paradoxically, I would be more likely to go see it if there were more controversy about the film's portrayal of Islam. Perhaps Ridley Scott should have thrown in some gratuitous anti-Islamic, anti-Eastern Orthodox Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments? A Kingdom of Heaven without any semblance of political correctness would be both more historically accurate and -- in certain obvious ways -- more in touch with George W. Bush's America.
Moorish Girl links to a great interview with Tariq Ramadan in Egypt Today. The only odd thing is, they remove the interviewer's questions from the piece, so you have to speculate on what he's responding to (though it's not hard to guess). Ramadan comes off pretty well here. He seems to have a reasonable perspective on the Hijab ban in France ("France is still not a racist country"). I was also happy to see he is against the advent of Sharia courts in Canada for family law (along the lines of the differential civil codes in India). It was being discussed a fair amount last year (read this BBC article for more background)
Dilip D'Souza has an interesting piece in Tehelka on Kashmiri Pandits, exiled from Srinagar, who have ended up in permanent relief camps in places like Delhi. These folks don't get a lot of attention these days, partly because any sympathy for their plight runs the risk of being interpreted in political terms.
William Safire on the advent of the pejorative term "Christianist"/"Christianism" to describe members of America's religious right. Andrew Sullivan claims credit for it; Hendrik Hertzberg recently used it in The New Yorker.
I think this might be a pretty useful term to have, especially when discussing global religion politics with people who have an anti-Muslim bias. I still have my doubts as to whether it will take off in the mainstream media. If it does, it will probably start in Europe.
The blogger who calls himself Abdul-Walid has a brilliant post on belief. He is basically doing something like negative theology, except his goal is to distinguish religious belief ("I believe in God") from a more intellectual and secular conception of divinity. Ironically, the latter may take the idea of God more seriously than standard affirmations of religious belief do. (Read it...)
Chapati Mystery has a great post on Kingdom of Heaven, which refers to earlier representations of Salahuddin (aka Saladin and Salah ud Din) in Hollywood. Apparently Cecil B. DeMille's 1937 film The Crusades was very popular in Egypt back in the day. I'm a little torn about whether to bother with KoH. Paradoxically, I would be more likely to go see it if there were more controversy about the film's portrayal of Islam. Perhaps Ridley Scott should have thrown in some gratuitous anti-Islamic, anti-Eastern Orthodox Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments? A Kingdom of Heaven without any semblance of political correctness would be both more historically accurate and -- in certain obvious ways -- more in touch with George W. Bush's America.
Moorish Girl links to a great interview with Tariq Ramadan in Egypt Today. The only odd thing is, they remove the interviewer's questions from the piece, so you have to speculate on what he's responding to (though it's not hard to guess). Ramadan comes off pretty well here. He seems to have a reasonable perspective on the Hijab ban in France ("France is still not a racist country"). I was also happy to see he is against the advent of Sharia courts in Canada for family law (along the lines of the differential civil codes in India). It was being discussed a fair amount last year (read this BBC article for more background)
Dilip D'Souza has an interesting piece in Tehelka on Kashmiri Pandits, exiled from Srinagar, who have ended up in permanent relief camps in places like Delhi. These folks don't get a lot of attention these days, partly because any sympathy for their plight runs the risk of being interpreted in political terms.
Visiting the new MoMA; Eating MozzArepas
We finally got over to the new MOMA, only seven months after it opened. I liked it, particularly the configuration of the space and the distinctive lighting. Here's a picture I took of the atrium.
Terry Teachout has a pretty good one-liner on the difference between the old and the new MoMA approaches to 20th century art:
Yes. It seems to me there is much more space for the Russians (Rochenko's "constructivism" and Malevich's "suprematism") as well as the German expressionists in the new scheme. There is a very memorable array of paintings by Egon Schiele, Ernst Kirchner, and Oscar Kokoschka, all next to one another. Klee and Beckmann are in different rooms. Somehow the Klee paintings in the MoMA aren't that exciting to me, though Beckmann's triptychs are pretty powerful.
Other random thoughts and links:
--When the new MoMA opened, what many people said was, what about _______ ? Many old favorites in the MoMA's collection, such as Larry Rivers' "Washington Crossing the Delaware," have been put in storage. Perhaps it's a reflection of critical fashion? Perhaps it's just for a change?
--I was impressed at how vibrant the restored Demoiselles d'Avignon looks. The pre-restored version was kind of dingy; it was hard to see what all the fuss over this breakthrough painting by Picasso was about.
--Also nice is this Kiki Smith piece (each metal jug has gothic lettering, with the name of a bodily fluid or ailment: mucus, diarrhea, semen, etc). I didn't know Kiki Smith before. (Here is my photo of one of the jugs on Flickr.)
--Some other artists who were new to me were Julie Mehretu, Charles LeDray ("Oasis"; the link points to a photo I posted on Flickr), and David Alfaro Siqueiros ("Collective Suicide").
* * * * *
We had a kind of messy, multicultural lunch at the annual Ninth Avenue Food Festival. In addition to (Polish) Pierogies and Indonesian veggie fritters, we enjoyed some Venezuelan Arepas. In New York, the Arepas you get come stuffed, predictably, with Mozzarella -- the "Mozzarepa."
Very simple -- and yet completely excessive.
Terry Teachout has a pretty good one-liner on the difference between the old and the new MoMA approaches to 20th century art:
Visitors to the old MoMA had only one way to experience the unfolding of modernism: in a sequence carefully controlled by the entrances and exits to the successive galleries. The new floor plan, by contrast, is much more open. MoMA still tells a highly idiosyncratic "story" about modern art, but you can read the chapters in whatever order you choose.
Yes. It seems to me there is much more space for the Russians (Rochenko's "constructivism" and Malevich's "suprematism") as well as the German expressionists in the new scheme. There is a very memorable array of paintings by Egon Schiele, Ernst Kirchner, and Oscar Kokoschka, all next to one another. Klee and Beckmann are in different rooms. Somehow the Klee paintings in the MoMA aren't that exciting to me, though Beckmann's triptychs are pretty powerful.
Other random thoughts and links:
--When the new MoMA opened, what many people said was, what about _______ ? Many old favorites in the MoMA's collection, such as Larry Rivers' "Washington Crossing the Delaware," have been put in storage. Perhaps it's a reflection of critical fashion? Perhaps it's just for a change?
--I was impressed at how vibrant the restored Demoiselles d'Avignon looks. The pre-restored version was kind of dingy; it was hard to see what all the fuss over this breakthrough painting by Picasso was about.
--Also nice is this Kiki Smith piece (each metal jug has gothic lettering, with the name of a bodily fluid or ailment: mucus, diarrhea, semen, etc). I didn't know Kiki Smith before. (Here is my photo of one of the jugs on Flickr.)
--Some other artists who were new to me were Julie Mehretu, Charles LeDray ("Oasis"; the link points to a photo I posted on Flickr), and David Alfaro Siqueiros ("Collective Suicide").
* * * * *
We had a kind of messy, multicultural lunch at the annual Ninth Avenue Food Festival. In addition to (Polish) Pierogies and Indonesian veggie fritters, we enjoyed some Venezuelan Arepas. In New York, the Arepas you get come stuffed, predictably, with Mozzarella -- the "Mozzarepa."
Very simple -- and yet completely excessive.
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