I spend a lot of time on the internet. Most of it spent reading, reading, and reading. Work requires I read a lot, school requires I read a lot, my only consistent and faithful hobby has been reading, and there just is so much out there worth reading. From news pieces, to Op-Eds, papers, comics, thought pieces, even recipes. And the Stumble Add on just adds to all this. Not to mention the hundreds of links I get via Twitter.
So How do I organize all the things I read and appreciate? Blogging about everything is very time consuming, Tweeting about it requires lots of patience. Just bookmarking it on the browser is plain messy, and I like my information organized, divided into folders and sub-folders.
Last weekend was a busy one. We went out on Friday night to listen to a band perform. And were they awesome! Saturday was spent at the Singapore Writer's Festival (a different post for that one soon) and Sunday was spent out again. Books were touched but only now and then, and the upcoming exam was more or less forgotten.
Monday began so well- I woke up and found out that I had managed a very good A minus on my paper on modernist creation of nations. The comments by the professor were good, and after I read and reread my paper a hundred times, I was pretty proud of some of the arguments I made and the way I wrote 6800 coherent words on a subject that was elusive, complex, and immensely confusing. Apparently I did manage to engage with the theory and I did it well =)
So I immediately began to study, because now an A in the final was oh-so close. I studied it all, read all the books I needed to, looked into all the journal articles, even did some extra reading. I was prepared for the exam. Before the exam, I sat in the exam hall, talking to my professor who was ever so sarcastic, and looked ever-so good (yea, he really is oh-so-good looking!). And he assured me that the paper was nothing I could not handle. And then the exam began. And yes everything was as expected. But apparently I don't know how to "write" an exam. I thought too much, couldn't manage my time, hated my handwriting, missed several points, and basically realized I am not cut out to write exams. I finished the paper feeling miserable and depressed knowing I had done so very below what I COULD have done. Everyone said they did badly, and we all discussed how at a Master's level having a two hour exam just did not make sense. Really, isn't the whole point of a Master's degree in a social science discipline, reading, research and writing. What do we accomplish by writing 5000 words in 2 hours? Shouldn't we be judged on our research papers, presentations, thought papers, book reviews, or a damned Take Home exam! Some courses have take home exams, but apparently the professor decided this one shouldn't and I really don't understand why?
Anyway, so depressed and worried I came home. I did all kinds of math on the way- "Since I have an A- on fifty percent of my grade, even if I do really really badly (which is not so possible) I will still end up with a horrible B. More possibly even if I did slightly badly, I would still end up with a higher B+ which is not so bad. Followed by- if I get a B+ what do I need to get in my last remaining course and my thesis to still make it to first class honors......." (you get the drift right!) After some intense calculations, I realized the situation was not so bad. But I am hard on myself (and others too apparently) and I do not like it when I mess up and produce something that doesn't live up to my high standards. I REALLY don't. I think about it for days, for years even and I simply refuse to forgive myself. So I cried some, I slept some, I screamed at self some, I thought and rethought and thought again some.
And then finally I decided to crop, brighten, darken some photographs to cheer some.
It did not help much but it distracted me and took me far away into untold stories, and untold lives that I happened to have photographed.
Yes, I am still thinking of the kids in these photographs and wondering if they even have the option of being hard on themselves over silly things like exams and such =(
While in Bali, my parents and I went for a sunset performance of the Ramayana at Uluwatu Temple. The temple is by the sea side on a cliff and is quite beautiful at sunset. At one end of the temple, an open-air performance of the Ramayana is held every evening. The performance is special because no music or instruments are used. Instead a group of dancers known as Kecak dancers provide the background score, which is essentially chanting of sounds "chak, chak, chak" with different intensities and tempos, as and when required. The performance is also called the Kecak Fire Dance.
It is very interesting to see how the main characters of both Ramayana and Mahabharata, as well as Hindu Gods and Goddesses are depicted in South East Asia. I bought a few paintings for myself and Appu of their depiction of Saraswati and Ganesha. While the main elements look the same, there is something very different about the way the faces are sketched. You can see that difference, with the depiction of Hanuman and Ravana in the pictures above.
Also very interesting, is the Hinduism in Bali. I could go on and on about it, so let me just talk about two or three things I found interesting. First, the caste system. The Balinese are distinctly aware of their caste, and mention it without any hesitation. Our Driver/Guide introduced himself and then immediately proceeded to tell us he was of the Shudra caste. He then of course asked our caste, and my parents who have no clue about any of this, shrugged and said they don't really know and have never bothered to know. But even though the Balinese are aware of their caste, they have no issues with marrying into different castes. I find it funny that although caste does not have much relevance in their daily lives, they are always identified by it.
Second, the offerings and ceremonies. Now I am from a non-religious family. My parents may believe in a higher power, but when it comes to religion, they are pretty indifferent. I am not sure about my sister, but I grew up mainly an atheist, trying to scientifically investigate the matter of "religion and God." We celebrated festivals, even had a few idols at home, and we know the prayer songs and such, but we were never religious. It was all more of a cultural thing. Now, today, I wouldn't call myself an atheist, and I do find solace in many things associated with religion- scriptures, temples, mosques, the Muslim prayer calls etc. but I am definitely not what can be called, religious. My interest in religion and its cultural manifestations (and by religion I mean Religion as a whole, not Hinduism alone) is partly academic, and partly a component of some serious soul searching hunt for spirituality (sounds cliched I know, but its true!). So, as I was growing up and even today, I never really understood the concept of offerings and huge ceremonies, but I saw them around me constantly. Bali is a whole new level of offerings and ceremonies. The Balinese make offerings at several times of the day, they pray several times of the day, they build houses in a way that one-fifth of their house is a temple, and most of their life is in and about the temple. Every birth, every death, every festival- has an expensive ceremony to be done. And yes I know, this is common in India too, but the intensity of it all is simply a lot in Bali. Spend a few days in Bali and just count the number of times your driver/guide/hotel guy mentions the word "ceremony."
The third thing I wanted to talk about is linked to the previous one. Our driver/Guide told us that in most villages in Bali, people were quite poor to afford ceremonies, that each cost a thousand US or two (about 5-10 million Indonesian Rupiah). So they have come up with ways to make them cost effective. Instead of toning down a funeral ceremony- what they do is bizarre. After a person dies, they bury the person the next day. Then they begin to save money. After about two years, when they have saved enough, they remove the body from the ground and hold a cremation ceremony in all its grandeur. (Funerals are occasions of celebration- as now the person can be reincarnated- so there's lots of food, music, and grandeur). Sometimes, the entire village has a joint- funeral ceremony, where they cremate all those who died in the last two years. Sounds a little creepy right? But then cultures where there is a strong emphasis on the after life- reincarnated life, have always seen such rituals. Remember the ancient Egyptians who began building a tomb the minute a new King took the throne?
See- this is why I don't understand why Bali is considered a place to sit by a beach and drink and club. There's so much more to it, from Hinduism to volcanoes, to temples to rice fields, and of course art and handicrafts galore!
The plan was to catch the author John Boyne at the Singapore Writer's Festival. However, they rescheduled events and I missed out. But I did manage to catch the free screening of the movie made from his book- The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
Based during the Second World War, the story looks at the holocaust from a child's perspective. Eight year old Bruno's father is in the Nazi military and as he gets promoted, the family has to move from Berlin to the countryside. What is never said, but is understood, is that he is to be in charge of a concentration camp (presumably Auschwitz).
Bruno is a funny, intelligent child who is bored within the four walls of his house, and in one of his "exploring" trips wanders to the fence of the camp meeting a Jewish child, called Shmol, imprisoned in the camp. A friendship forms between the two, and they meet regularly at the fence, where Bruno brings Shmol food, and they talk, and even find ways to play across an electric fence.
Although yes, historically this was not possible (as children that young were usually not working in concentration camps), the movie looks at the entire issue of the holocaust, of war, of death and the brutality human beings are capable of, from the innocent perspective of a child.
At a point in the movie, Bruno, who is a bored, restless eight year old with an active imagination, tells the Jewish child Shmol that he thought it was pretty unfair that he was out there alone, while Shmol had so many others to play with at the other side of the fence. You can't help but smile at the absolute innocence of his words and later his actions.
But between some heartfelt, funny moments; the severe and dark undertone of the movie and its tragic ending makes you shiver and shudder, repeatedly, and you feel both, thankful and sad, that children see things so differently from adults.
I have been meaning to write about this for a few days. So let me quickly make my point(s).
First, yes even I was shocked by the news. I thought I was reading the Onion. I agree he doesn't deserve it, its too soon, what has he done so far? But the Nobel Prize Committee has faltered before and will continue to do so.
Second, winning the Nobel puts Obama under more pressure, much more than he already is submerged under. He is cleaning up a mess, agreed, but now he is pressured not only to clean up the mess without making a new one, but also to look beyond just cleaning up. He now knows that in order to live upto his name and fame, he really does need to make a difference. His opponents of course scrutinize every move he makes and every word he says, but now his supporters are also watching, intently.
Third, a lot of comments (of the supposedly humorous kind) were circulating on the Internet pointing out that now getting a Nobel was so easy. Example: What is the difference between a Google Wave Invite and a Nobel Peace Prize? Answer: Getting a Google Wave Invite is difficult. Yep, funny I know. But also incorrect.
Obama winning the Nobel over ordinary people- who stood up against dictatorships, protested in Iran, fought for Burma's democracy, spoke and worked against human rights abuses all over the world, worked with refugees and victims of climatic catastrophes, went into Gaza during the Israeli offensive with aid and relief, or simply have spent every single day of their life helping others live better-; simply shows that praise, help, acknowledgment and acclaims such as the Nobel for the ordinary you and I- who might do actual things making a difference in small but real ways- is hard to come by. Whereas if you are the President of the United States, just plans and words of a better future are deemed enough to honor you with the greatest honor in the field that there is.
Put simply, Obama winning the Nobel just shows how much harder it is for the ordinary man, working for peace and a better life for those around him, to be recognized in a World full of flowery diplomacy and powerful figures.
For the last two months I have been working on a VERY LONG and VERY DETAILED report on the naxal insurgency in India. I have looked at over 500 pages of incidents related to the naxals, read hundreds of reports and books, read several analytical pieces, scoured over government websites, met scholars, politicians, defence and security analysts, written several commentaries myself, analysed their history and developments, political and military strategy, their weapons and cadres, their training, funding, logistics, tactics, trends, procedures, casualties, the state's response towards them and several other facets of the insurgency. And last week I finally reached the final stage of my report- working on edits I was given, and making appendices and adding the final chapter!
Simulataneously, my class on Nationalism and Multiculutralism (the only class I took this term- and I am so glad I did) was wrapping up as well. After weeks of discussion on the creation of nations, on nationalism, on multiculturalism and state policies, on race and ethnicity, and transnationalism and supranantionalism, there finally arrived the final class on social resilience and state policies of social resilience.
The course has been the heaviest course I have taken so far (other than IR theory) as it is primarily a theoretical course and the required reading list runs 8 pages long! (most of those reading being 200 page books!) When a course is near its end, a term paper is around the corner. So for this course, I had due a 5000 word term paper on one of the set broad questions. I chose the first of those questions- "All Nations are Willed Creations. Discuss." I chose this because firstly I am interested in the modernist and post modernist ideas of the conception of a nation. And secondly because I am writing my dissertation on a Nationalism-related empirical study, I have already read several books on the subject (several out of the hundred on my reading list). So I was well aware of all the literature out there on the subject, and felt I knew enough to add to it. But, of course as I started writing so much new literature was discovered and in the end I read three new books just two days before the deadline, and spent 16 hours straight, writing furiously with no sleep or rest. But 28 pages of writing, a 4 page bibliography, and a 6800 word count later, I was done! This has been the hardest paper I have written but I think i might just have done it well (will find out when I get my grade this week!).
So after these two epics (allow me to exaggerate) were written, all I wanted to do was disappear. And it all turned out so well, because the girls (henceforth the term for my most awesome four friends at work/school) had planned a weekend in an isolated beach in East Bintan, Indonesia for us! So off we went at an early 9 AM for our weekend of long walks on the beach, walking to another island in a very very low tide, over-consumption of cheap Indonesian Vodka (that was blue in color), excellent food, lovely bamboo hut to stay in, lots of swimming, and of course lots and lots and lots of love, laughter, and conversation. How much I love these girls !!!! I decided to lend my camera to a friend and go camera-less, because all I wanted to do was relax with the people I love, and read my book, and swim in the ocean. Of course when I saw the sunrise from my window- I wished I had my camera :(
Anyway, now after a well-deserved break, its back to the grind. More reports, more work, an exam next week, interspersed with prayers for an A on the paper. Such is my boring life.
Reproduced below is Aakar Patel's column on the Thackerays, published in the Hindustan Times on October 11 2009. (Original here) (I have italicized some gems in this column)
Few stand-up comics have been as good as Bal Thackeray, and none has cashed in on his talent more profitably. Armed with his lines, and little else, he built a party and made and spent billions. Elections are no fun without him, and he’s absent from the one in Maharashtra tomorrow, a dull event.
Eighty-four in a few months, Thackeray has been keeping indifferent health. He hasn’t spoken in public for two years. This year he skipped the annual Vijayadashami rally he has held since 1966. To last year’s rally he came but did not speak.
This is a loss for those who know Marathi and can enjoy him. He’s a truly great performer: understated in slapstick, always deadpan and with a rapper’s sense of rhyme. His response to why so much was being renamed after Shivaji: ‘Shivaji nahi tar kai Quattrocchi?’
From his Vijayadashami pulpit he revealed his view, often arrived at mid-speech, of Enron, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Friday prayers and atomic bombs.
On September 28, the Shiv Sena released its manifesto. It promised to finish a proposed Shivaji monument off Marine Drive in five years. A week later, in his newspaper Saamna, Thackeray described the idea of the monument as foolish. ‘Was one needed’, he asked, ‘when another stood just down the road at the Gateway of India?’ After Shivaji we have already renamed the Prince of Wales Museum, Victoria Terminus and the airport. As word spread, his son Uddhav said Thackeray had been misunderstood. But what’s possible also is that he wouldn’t have read the manifesto.
It is quite unfair to judge the Shiv Sena for its policies. It’s not that sort of political party. It has no caste base; it only has Thackeray and his utterings.
Most mornings, the news service PTI is kept busy with translations of Saamna’s editorials and interviews — the man most interviewed in Thackeray’s paper is Thackeray.
Thackeray demands this; Thackeray blasts that. It’s good copy, and easy to get because Thackeray has an opinion on a lot of things from the habits of middle-class Mumbaikars (always drying undies in their balconies, embarrassing Thackeray before his foreign guests) to diplomacy (why haven’t we obliterated Pakistan?).
Though these lines are delivered ex cathedra, they aren’t to be taken seriously. We know this because often the opinion is in street language and includes calling people names, like bhadwa (pimp).
People get fired up by this, but that’s only because they misunderstand Thackeray. In 2001, Shiv Sainiks burnt down the 400-bed Singhania hospital, killing two including a baby. The Sena hasn’t rebuilt it, but it did indicate that it was sorry.
The evidence shows that Thackeray doesn’t hate much. He dislikes Muslims, but sips warm Heinekens on his roof with Dilip Kumar.
He’s angry about Marathis being under-represented, but gives his Rajya Sabha tickets to Bengali Pritish Nandy, Bihari Sanjay Nirupam and Gujaratis Mukesh Patel and Chandrika Kenia. He rants against Western culture, but is ecstatic that Michael Jackson used his toilet (whether Jackson graced it with a Number 1 or a Number 2 we do not know).
Of late the joy has gone. The Sena has been out of power for 10 years. That’s a decade without cash, and it’s tough to nourish a political party without the income that ministries bring.
Parties cannot run on one-liners alone.
People who realise this bolt. His first deputy Chhagan Bhujbal left him in 1991, a second deputy Narayan Rane left him in 2005. When he put son Uddhav in charge, his nephew Raj left him in 2006.
Thackeray’s larger sorrow must be that his son doesn’t have his talent. Uddhav is what he appears to be: boring. He cannot speak lucidly, and is introverted. He likes to photograph wildlife, but hasn’t the patience of National Geographic. There’s a terrific picture of him shooting close-ups of a tiger that his chamchas are holding down with ropes.
Raj, on the other hand, is funny and charismatic.
A fine caricaturist like Thackeray, Raj is less surefooted on knowledge. On his site he has sketched Yeltsin and called him Brezhnev. He likes the gently menacing language of Ram Gopal Verma villains. His letters to shopkeepers warning them to change their boards from English to Marathi show this unexpected side. You could be taught a lesson, Raj says, ‘I will personally supervise this special tuition.’
We know that he certainly carries a big stick. When he was arrested last year, his party went berserk and killed people. Raj apologised, clarifying that these weren’t planned assassinations. So that’s OK then.
The Thackerays have communicated to India the image of the Marathi as sullen and hostile. This is incorrect. The Marathi is hardy, cheerful and relentlessly high-culture.
There isn’t reason for him to be resentful. Outsiders have helped built the economy of his great city. In the 19th century, Gujaratis built the stock market and in the 20th North Indians built Bollywood, employing lakhs of people.
They were able to do this because the British state guaranteed the trader rule of law, the filmmaker protection from moralists, and the citizen a monopoly over violence. We democratised violence and now any group can profess hurt, and beat up and kill.
The British built this city. Their talent was building institutions. Our talent is renaming things others built.
Our politics have always been rubbish. But with Thackeray at least we got entertainment. We don’t even get that now.
Aakar Patel is a Mumbai-based writer and businessman.
Although as I mentioned earlier, this column is pretty funny to read, and Aakar is pretty damn sarcastic, lets not get totally flippant about the politics of the country. Yes, caricaturization of our politicians is great fun, but dismissing Indian politics completely and saying that all our politicians are crap but oh well Thackeray was at least entertaining, and hence his "retirement" is such a loss, is a bit much. Its good to laugh at yourself when others are surely doing so, but its also good to keep in mind that the joke is on you. There are still stories of inspiration and good governance in this country. They maybe few and not so entertaining, but they exist.
And Mr Patel, as much as I like your humor and the way you bring out the sheer hypocrisy of the Thackerays and what they represent, I wish you would not enjoy it so much and forget that these people are out there campaigning for office, and THEY, themselves are the reasons why the politics of our country are, as you say, 'rubbish.'
I am unable to understand why the BJP, Shiv Sena, and the MNS cannot understand some very very simple logic.
Say the Congress had z number of supporters, while the right wing voter base was x. And lets just say, that x and z were pretty comparable and the fight was tough.
The right wing voter earlier had pretty much one choice- the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. Assuming, that the overall right wing voter population is not going to suddenly alter by staggering proportions, we basically had x number of guys, who voted for BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. But now with the Sena- MNS split, the right wing voter is presented with two choices- BJP-Shiv Sena and the MNS. So out of the x number of right wing voters, we now have a y number of voters going for the MNS, leaving the BJP-Shiv Sena at (x-y).
So while Congress retains its z (give or take a few of course), the BJP-Shiv Sena has lost y to the MNS.
Essentially, given that the BJP-ShivSena and MNS are not going to come together (given the dramatic split)- it now becomes easier for the Congress to win a majority over the BJP-Shiv Sena (x-y) and the MNS (y).
In the General Elections in May 2009, a strong BJP leader lost out to Congress candidate Sanjay Nirupam (who lives in the building my home in Bombay is), and in these State elections too, the division in the right-wing is going to cost them votes.
I have been informed that apparently I bring out emotions in Monkeys. Such fun.
See for yourself-
Since I only have the kit lens (thanks to being poor student on scholarship as opposed to soul-selling banker), I have pretty much no zoom. So all these photos were clicked at VERY close distances. I was pretty much within getting-my-nose-scratched-and-bitten range. Oh and it took like 30 minutes, a hundred shots, and like a thousand snapping sounds made by clicking fingers, and not to mention a lot of cooing sounds- to get these monkeys to emote and look at me and my camera lens.
On the other hand- the lady in the picture below was easy to click. All she did was sit down in the monkey forest. And I just happened to be there.
The rest of the photographs from Bali are slowly being uploaded on flickr here.
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.
Found Turki al-Faisal's piece on Israel-Palestine, and Saudi Arabia's relationship with Israel, in my inbox the other day, circulated by the Middle East Insitute.
The former Saudi Ambassador to the US, and the former head of Saudi Intelligence, writes quite clearly that peace will only be possible if Israel ends it military occupation of West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
He writes,
In order to achieve peace and a lasting two-state solution, Israel must be willing to give as well as take. A first step should be the immediate removal of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Only this would show the world that Israel is serious about peace and not just stalling as it adds more illegal settlers to those already occupying Palestinian land.
At the same time, the international community must pressure Israel to relinquish its grip on all Arab territory, not as a means to gain undeserved concessions but instead as an act of good faith and a demonstration that it is willing to play by the Security Council’s rules and to abide by global standards of military occupation. The Arab world, in the form of the Arab peace initiative that was endorsed by 22 countries in 2002, has offered Israel peace and normalization in return for Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories including East Jerusalem — with the refugee issue to be solved later through mutual consent.
No country in the region wants more bloodshed. But while Israel’s neighbors want peace, they cannot be expected to tolerate what amounts to theft, and certainly should not be pressured into rewarding Israel for the return of land that does not belong to it. Until Israel heeds President Obama’s call for the removal of all settlements, the world must be under no illusion that Saudi Arabia will offer what the Israelis most desire — regional recognition. We are willing to embrace the hands of any partner in peace, but only after they have released their grip on Arab lands.
Read the entire piece on the NY times website here.
One of the biggest hurdles to the Middle East Process is the fact that Arab Governments (save a few) refuse to recognize Israel, at all. If Arab leaders are going to continue saying that Israel should not exist, and to us Israel does not exist, they might as well be behaving like the pigeon who closes his eyes to deal with the danger of a cat in its vicinity. It has been over sixty years now, and Israel exists. As much as that hurts me, Palestinians, Arabs, and other Palestine supporters, it is a fact that we have to deal with. If by some miracle of International Relations, Israel were to actually not exist anymore, we would be doing to the Israelis exactly what they did to the Palestinians. We would be ousting them from a land that millions of them live on, some blissfully unaware of how the land became Israel. Two generations down, we cannot dismantle the country, no matter how unjustified, unfair, and bloody, the basis of their foundation was. So where do we go from here? Do we continue to call for Israel's annihiliation? Do we continue to not acknowledge its presence? Do we continue to assassinate leaders who recognized its existence?
The more we do that and the more we harp on how they shouldn't be here in the first place, the more opportunities we provide to the Israelis to expand their territory, control the West Bank, and Gaza Strip, and build settlements.
If an actual viable solution to Israel-Palestine has to be drawn, Palestinians have to realize that what has been done sixty years ago, now cannot be undone. And thus, their aim should now be to gain control over the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and to build their nation from scratch, allowing opportunities for the refugees who remain dispersed in an unfriendly Arab world.
And of course for all this to happen, Israel needs to listen to what Turki-al-Faisal is saying- Land first, then peace. Sixty years ago, they took what was certainly not theirs, and now they need to stop. If they want the rockets to stop and "peace" in the neighborhood, then they need to stop decreasing the green areas in this map, remove their checkpoints, breakdown that damned wall, and allow the 1.5 million prisoners of Gaza a way out of the area they bombed and destroyed earlier this year.
I wholly understand and deeply feel the anger about the existence and growth of Israel. And in no way am I saying the events of 1948 and those preceding it, as well as the events of the last sixty one years were justified, correct, or close to being humane. But, living day after day, year after year, on anger, and allowing the fact that you were victimised to take over everything, is greatly worsening the situation. Thus there is a need to stop coming up with plans to erase Israel, but to chart out practical, realistic steps to get back control of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and to tear down new settlements.
Israel was evil and horrible, and still needs to be a taught a lesson too many, but now its time to get over it, pick up the pieces and not allow it to bully you any further.
The stone carvings, wood carvings, oil paintings, sketches, and every single piece of spectacular art and craft.
Uluwatu temple and the Kecak Fire Dance during the seaside sunset.
Lunch at Mount Kintamani facing the beautiful volcano Mount Batur and the Lake Batur.
The seafood at Jimbaran at the beautiful blue waters.
The shops and the shopping everywhere.
The fascinating strand of Hinduism that the Balinese staunchly believe in, their customs, beliefs and ceremonies!
Things I did not like:
Kuta. Enough said.
The traffic and the packed roads.
Kuta Beach.
The CROWD!
The too many-loud-bars and clubs.
Distances in Bali. (everywhere takes at least an hour and a half- and some as long as to three to four hours)
The Bargaining. Oh-so-tiring.
Bali is not much of a beach place, especially during the peak season, as there are people EVERYWHERE. And for me for a beach to be good, it has to be empty. But Bali is full of artsy cultural things and Ubud is really lovely, and that is reason enough to visit. Although in my case, my parents are the drinking kind, and their biggest complaint was that I did not want to go to noisy clubs, and instead wanted to go to temples and such.
With Jimmy Carter saying that racism is the reason behind relentless attacks on President Obama, and Obama proclaiming that racism has nothing to do with, today's New York Times has many Op-ed pieces on the issue.
Among those are Bob Herbert's piece "The Scourge Persists" where he argues that racism is a large part of the attacks on President Obama.
More than three decades later we have Sherri Goforth, an aide to a Republican state senator in Tennessee sending out a mass e-mail of a cartoon showing dignified portraits of the first 43 presidents, and then representing the 44th — President Obama — as a spook, a cartoonish pair of white eyes against a black background.
When a gorilla escaped from a zoo in Columbia, S.C., a longtime Republican activist, Rusty DePass, described it on his Facebook page as one of Michelle Obama’s ancestors.
Among the posters at last weekend’s gathering of conservative protesters in Washington was one that said, “The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African.”
I have no patience with those who want to pretend that racism is not an out-and-out big deal in the United States, as it always has been. We may have made progress, and we may have a black president, but the scourge is still with us. And if you needed Jimmy Carter to remind you of that, then you’ve been wandering around with your eyes closed.
And then there is David Brooks, who in his piece, "No, Its not about race" argues that well it is not about race!
Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector. Given all of this, it was guaranteed that he would spark a populist backlash, regardless of his skin color. And it was guaranteed that this backlash would be ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.
I agree with Brooks when he says that the President's big changes and plans for big changes will surely spark a backlash. And hence I agree it may not be entirely about race. But racism is surely a part of it. Perhaps not on some purely primordial level- but thanks to a carefully crafted modernist agenda of tapping into the primordial. In other words- it is quite easy to enrage people about issues of race, if you know how to do it right.
I keep finding interesting things (some funny, some odd, some opinion pieces, and some all of the above) on the internet. And I usually put them up on my twitter (of the twitter is a lonely man fame- see below!), but I thought I shall put some of those gems here.
So to begin with- Shashi Tharoor tweets telling someone that he is flying "cattle class with the holy cows" and suddenly the Congress and the BJP decide that he is calling honest people, who cannot afford business class, "cattle." And decide that he must not be allowed to get away with it. The Indian Media starts the hoopla as usual, and things get weirder and weirder by the minute. Watch a video of a panel discussion on Times Now with Jug Suraiya, Amit Varma, and Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan. Please note the "Kane West" and the bit about how "twitter is a lonely man, needs counseling, bla bla."
Lets move from Tweeeter (as Arnab calls it) to Facebook.
This wonderful set of messages on Facebook shows why your parents should never be on Facebook! And this is the story of the guy who went to a rob a house and decided to update his facebook status DURING the robbery using a computer in the house he was robbing. Addicted much?
And finally, I LOVE this site. The site is called STFU, Marrieds. And in the description it says- "Married couples on Facebook with their inane status updates and wall posts are the bane of my internet existence." The site is a collection of FB wall exchanges, status updates, comments between extremely annoying married people. You have to see it!
I came across this excellent Dan Brown Plot Generator. Very amusing and a good way to kill time and ridicule Dan Brown! And a very amusing absurd article in the Telegraph, here, on how Britons get injured by Biscuits on their tea and coffee breaks. It even ranks biscuits in order of their "danger" levels!
Moving on, watch Baba Ramdev, who openly talks about how he can cure the "disease" of homosexuality, do Yogic Jogging in Bokaro, India. The middle of the video when the Jogging commences is HILARIOUS as are the shots of the public. I absolutely love Baba Ramdev. There is some news of him being on the reality TV show Big Boss. How fun! (link via Amit Varma)
Another awesome video here, although not hilarious like Baba Ramdev's jogging. The Black Eyed Peas perform at Oprah's Season 24 Opening. And I usually don't like the Black Eyed Peas much, neither do I particularly like Oprah, but the flashmob in this video is AWESOME! It totally energizes you. I have always been a fan of the so called- "power of the people." Protests, Rallies, Carnivals, Pride Parades, Other Parades, Political causes, and flashmobs like these- really really cheer me up!
Finally moving to some serious things, here is a set of advertisements by WWF with regards to preservation of the environment and the fauna it is home to. My favorite one is shown below. Why don't we see these ads everywhere?
Lastly, I found this very touching piece about life, change, the future, children, knowledge and such- all woven with the thread of Calvin and Hobbes. The picture is so simple and heartwarming, although it makes me sad.
p.s. Kanye West and Taylor Smith can both die.
p.p.s. The title of the post, of course, is from here. Can't wait to watch it. Missed it the last time :(
In 1992 Francis Fukuyama put forth his idea of "The End of History," which said, "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
Of course if you are living the rich life in a developed welfare state, it could seem like it was the end of History, as these societies are indeed Dead History Societies. But try telling a Palestinian, a Somali, a Kashmiri, or an Iraqi that it was the end of History and see what they say.
In 1993 Samuel Huntington put forth his idea of "the Clash of Civilizations," saying that henceforth conflicts in the world will be clashes between the major civilizations of the world. The Western World and the Islamic World were two of his seven major civilizations that were to clash.
And indeed the events of 9/11 brought out this entire notion of "Islam" and the "West" and how the two civilizations were clashing, allowing many to say that Huntington’s theories were coming alive.
In a review paper in which I critiqued Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ I wrote, "It may seem that Huntington’s theory (which was formulated in 1993) has been verified by world events in the running decade (Clashes between Islamists and America). However, one has to note that this proof of his theory is what carries the main and fundamental flaw of his argument. Huntington’s theory can be applied to any ‘clash’ between ‘different’ people and in most scenarios can be manipulated to be proven right. And looked closely, Huntington’s paper repeatedly picks out instances of clashes that have occurred in the past (e.g. clashes in the Middle East and the Balkans) and converts their pluralistic, complex nature into specific, rigid structures. In today’s context, for instance, the hostility between America and the Islamists that is a myriad of resource geopolitics, security and self defense tactics, religious clashes etc., can be simplistically viewed as a clash of civilizations due to difference in religious identities."
In other words, is it really that easy to identify Islam and the West? Are they discrete entities that can be singled out, and are their interactions easily identifiable? And secondly, is America's interference in the Middle East, its aggressive policy, new?
Both Islam and the West do not exist as independent, identifiable civilizations. They are pluralistic, and are surely not sealed off, holistic entities that do not interact and influence one another, overlapping more often than not. Further the interactions between the supposed West and the supposed Islamic World are as complex as the civilizations themselves. These interactions span over centuries beginning with very emergence of the three Semitic religions, and continuing into the colonial world, and the postcolonial world. In contemporary history there exist significant incidents that have shaped these interactions (Suez Canal, Israel, Iranian Revolution, Gulf War I, proxy wars of the Cold War) and continue to shape them. And through all these incidents it is easy to note that America’s aggression in the supposed Muslim World is not new. In fact, America’s role in the Muslim World has been entirely to serve itself (and Israel), as and when required, and to turn the Muslim World or a given Muslim State into a comfortable “other,” when needed.
Thus it becomes necessary to problematise the terms “Islam” and “the West,” and to understand that 9/11 did not change much when it comes to foreign policies of the West and the Middle East. I learned in a class I took last semester (also called Islam and the West) that the two terms, when taken at face value amount to a false idea of not only history, but also modern-day politics. And hence, gives us a simple world-view where two discrete civilizations are doing to the other what they think the other deserves.
But if 9/11 did not go down in history as being the day the civilizations began to clash, or being the day, when America decided to fix the Muslim World, was it an event that altered nothing at all?
9/11 made the life of normal civilians, both Muslim and non-Muslim, very different from what it used to be. From things such as difficulties in acquiring visas, to racist violence, from everyday annoyances we face at Airport Security, to gruesome torture and detention. And of course the fear of being in the wrong building/plane/city at the wrong time. To the Iraqi and Afghani civilians 9/11 brought a life of bomb blasts, shattered cities, and bloody war. Elsewhere, for you and me, ordinary people who had nothing to do with either the foreign policy of the Western Nations, or the grievances that the Muslim World carries, 9/11 has brought in a generation, a life of paranoia.
9/11 more than anything else, made us- the civilians, who go about minding our daily lives, fretting over broken hearts, and lost jobs, and looking forward to cozy dinners with our respective others- bear the burden of selfish, greedy, and inhuman foreign policies that powerful men drafted and executed, and terrifying murderous plots that a few draft and chillingly execute.
If I were to die in a terrorist attack, would these extremists even know how I feel about Palestine? Would they even understand that I too am pro-Palestine, so much so, that I plan to move there and aid the Palestinians in rebuilding their lives? And, no, they won't know or understand. If I were in Taj Hotel on 26 November 2008, I would have been shot in cold blood, irrespective of my views on Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine or Chechnya.
And these effects of 9/11 and its bloody aftermath (that still continues in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places) are why it is easy for the common man and woman to draw distinct boundaries between civilizations and pick sides, without questioning, and without wanting to question.
If problematising the terms “Islam” and “the West” is what will help one understand the history of interactions between the players of current conflicts, as well as the conflict itself- and that understanding that in the grand scheme of things will lead to ending (maybe not entirely) ideas of hatred, violence, and paranoia, then we sure are in trouble.
Because although policies of the West and the Muslim World bring out the complexity of these terms, the repercussions of those policies, and plots to unleash terror and violence, limit our perspective.
They sap the energy out of the ordinary civilian to seek, to know, to understand, and to bring into focus the gray between the black and the white.
People don't dance on these streets everyday. They don't drown themselves in color, and push idols of Ganesha in pick-up trucks to their homes, and eventually for immersion into the Arabian sea. Vehicle drivers do not stay silent, holding in their curses and their need to honk, everyday. But during the days of Ganpati, while a colorful procession passes by, with devotees singing, dancing, and taking their time as they head towards the sea, the traffic patiently waits and watches. If you visit Bombay during Ganpati, you see a dressed up city. You see a chaos that is distinct from the fast-paced everyday chaos where every hour is a rush hour, and everyone has not a minute to spare. You see a chaos where almost every person in the city, rich or poor, steps outside of the push and pull of everyday life, and either dances on the street, or patiently waits in his car for the dancing to finish.
Its funny how on one hand Bombay is not Bombay during Ganpati, but on the other, Bombay would not be Bombay without Ganpati.
A Durban based IT company called Unlimited IT (lame name!) got tired of the slow speed internet provided by Telkom, and decided that a pigeon could deliver data faster! And so they took eleven pigeons and strapped memory sticks onto them releasing them to go from their call centre in the town of Howick to the firm's main office in Durban! At the time when the pigeons where released they began an ADSL file transfer.
Winston-the pigeon delivered the data to the firm's office in Durban in an hour and eight minutes. The firm took an additional one hour to transfer the data from the memory stick to their computers. All in all, adding upto two hours. And in these two hours the ADSL file transfer was ONLY 4% complete!! (I should really stop complaining about the slow-ness of the internet in my Bombay home!).
Read the whole article on BBC here, and watch the video here.
Oh and the article clearly mentions that the race for data transfer had certain rules.
They included "no cats allowed" and "birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within".
=)
Oh and this pigeon did this, without a lovesick Bhagyashree singing "Kabootar Jaa Jaa Jaa." Now that is AWESOME!
Multicultural (with respect to States, nations, societies) is an adjective that says that there exists a difference with regards to identity that exists within the noun. Multiculturalism then becomes the policies of the State that cater to the management of these differences or multi-cultures.
Countries such as France, have policies that ask an immigrant to meet the country half-way when he moves there. From immigrants to France, assimilation is expected. Different cultures and different immigrants must dissolve themselves into the State, and the State's culture (dominant culture) will exist as their culture. The State's history is their History. On the other end of the spectrum lie States like South Africa in the time of apartheid, that believe(d) in complete separation or segregation. Where not only policies but everyday society existed with definite boundaries between cultures. (I could also take this further and talk about Nazi Germany which believed in an extremist segregation turned into planned mass executions of the 'other' culture).
But in the middle of the spectrum lie states whose policies are those of integration. Integration is often referred to as liberal multiculturalism, and can be further divided into liberalism I (mild liberalism) and liberalism II (hard liberalism). Mild liberalism is often spoken with reference to America, where cultural differences are recognized but the State makes it clear that it will treat everyone equally, and it will not go out of its way to ensure the survival/preservation of a particular culture. Yes it sound perfectly nice, but I agree with Kymlicka (a scholar of Multiculturalism) when he points out that certain communities have been disadvantaged (for instance, the African Americans) and discrimination against them in recent history puts them behind others, right at the starting point of the race. In other words, a State cannot ignore the fact that there exist minority communities that might require more attention, simply because they were ignored (or even discriminated against), hampering their adequate (and equal) development.
Which then brings us to Hard Multiculturalism or Liberalism II, which States like Canada, Australia, and Singapore follow. A State with liberalism II policies ensures the survival of different cultures and makes policies keeping cultural differences in mind. It asks for the different cultures to preserve their uniqueness and allow for a system where cultures can be mutually tolerant and respectful, complementing each other and benefiting from each other. In States like Canada, a system of checks and balances installs itself giving every individual the right to exit his culture/community, which puts pressure on politicians and representatives of that culture to work not for themselves but for the people they stand for.
So if a State believes in integration, and implements Liberalist (Hard) Multiculturalism, it can allow for differences to exist, to prosper, and for a certain State Nationalism to exist alongside Multiculturalism, allowing for a conclusion that says good multiculturalism is not idealist nonsense.
And this is how the presenter in my Nationalism and Multiculturalism class concluded her monologue.
After which the professor looked at me, and asked me if AS ALWAYS I would like to point the rosiness of the argument in the theoretical and show that empirically the argument doesn't hold. And I did. I pointed out that firstly hard multiculturalism would hold if and only if a State was a properly functional democracy, and all cultures were represented well. Secondly, it would only work if the democratic system involved politicians who worked for their community not themselves. In other words in a system with minimal corruption, bureaucracy and a lot of transparency. Thirdly, if a government does make concessions for certain communities, the system would only work if these concessions would be implemented properly and effectively (for instance, instead of actual disadvantaged Scheduled Tribe members, middle class and even well-off people should not be flaunting their real or fake SC/ST certificates to get into colleges and jobs). Lastly, although the government might make good policies to deal with the differences, and say figure out ways to implement them well, there will always be people with grievances, who will go the "communal" route to gain support of fellow grievance-holders (because it IS a simple route!); and some culture or the other, at every point, will scream about the government's partiality to another.
So then is there anything called good multiculturalism? Will there ever be?
As I finished, my professor said I was much too cynical, and I must look at not what a State is today and how some idiot politicians have implemented perfectly good policies in perfectly terrible ways. But I should look at the principles on which a (my) State was founded, and what is aspires to be. Because with a solid foundation, things can change and they will. And although all backward classes may not be getting the opportunities that the government puts forth for them (thanks to both the non-backward classes with their fake stamps of backwardness and economically well-off "backward" classes who are not in any need of extra aid, but magically find their "backward" certificates whenever needed), the fact that some do is enough for us to not give-up and aspire for a system that gets better by the day.
There are some articles circulating that say the naxals might have acquired anti-aircraft weaponry and shot down YSR.
Highly unlikely I would say. I will elaborate later on that.
Meanwhile, my Delhi trip had involved a lot of research on the Naxals. I met the heads of a couple of think tanks that worked on the Naxals and we discussed everything from my upcoming commentary (see previous post on Naxals) to the entire idea of security and development. And I met someone at IDSA, who knew the Naxals inside out. It was a hilarious meeting in restrospect, because I asked questions, and he replied in crisp monosyllables in his very loud voice, leaving me pretty scared and weirded out. But the man knew his stuff, and I was quite glad that he took out a few minutes to talk to me. I also met a former Naxal and he told my leftist-self why no matter how much I feel for their cause, I must never walk down that path.
The last entire week has been spent reading and writing about the Naxalites in India, and now I am yearning for a chance to make a research trip to Naxal infested areas on West Bengal, Chhatisgarh, and Jharkhand. Hopefully early next year.
Yesterday I completed a whole year at my current (first ever) workplace. Yesterday I also had a sort-of breakdown about wanting to LEAVE this country. When I say leave I do not mean leave today, next week, or even next month. For me to leave in a year, there would be a need to apply to schools by the end of this year, and to think tanks by early next year. And for that I need to make up my mind now and figure out a plan now.
This job has its issues (and God Knows there are many), but this job has been a stepping stone, that has connected me to an entire pool of possibilities and has channeled my interests by letting me realize both- what I want, and what I definitely do not want. And now that I do somewhat know the direction, it is entirely upto me to step out of a comfort zone I always said I would never create, pack up and leave.
So here's to a year full of events/people that have on the one hand allowed me to find and define a comfort zone, and on the other hand made me hate the creation of that comfort utterly, leaving me in a state, where I am always looking to leave.
Republished below, is a commentary I coauthored almost a month ago. The commentary went through a series of dramatic and annoying incidents during the writing, approval, AND publishing- and is finally out for circulation today. It can also be viewed at the RSIS website here, and the centre website here.
RSIS Commentaries are intended to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy relevant background and analysis of contemporary developments. The views of the authors are their own and do not represent the official position of the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU.
Surge in the Red Tide: Rise of Maoist Militancy in India
For eight long months prior to June 2009, members of the Communist Party of India- Maoist (CPI-M) ran a parallel government in Lalgarh, West Bengal with 1,100 villages under their control. Following their expulsion by paramilitary forces in an insurgency war, a formal ban has been imposed on the Maoists. Is India prepared to fight a long war?
FROM JANUARY to June 2009, India has witnessed a total of 1128 incidents of violence related to the Maoist insurgency affecting thirteen states in Central and Eastern India. The Maoist insurgency has, in these six months, claimed 455 lives of security officers and civilians.
Maoism or Naxalism (as commonly termed in India) started as a peasant movement in the 1970s, its namesake being a small village called Naxalbari on the border between West Bengal and Nepal. Today it is a movement aimed towards liberating the tribal population (who comprise approximately 9% of India’s population) from many years of oppression and current exclusion from modern India’s growth story. The Maoists, who unified under a single banner as the Communist Party of India-Maoist on 21 September 2004, have emerged as a formidable militant force and aim to form a Red Corridor through the heart of India --extending from Nepal in the north to Kerala in the south, covering 155 districts. Their most recent attack in Lalgarh, West Bengal has reignited efforts to counter the Maoist threat in India.
What fuels the movement?
Modern India represents two very different faces of development. India, the world’s second fastest growing economy, ranks 66th among the 88 countries surveyed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the Global Hunger Index (2008). This is below Sudan, Nigeria and Cameroon, and slightly above Bangladesh. One of the worst hit in this ladder of deprivation is the tribal population belonging to the Maoist belt that faces stagnantly poor or barely improving standards of living. Unlike the better developed states, states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and others have not initiated effective land reforms, wide-scale industrialisation policies and poverty alleviation programmes.
These states are highly feudalistic, with landless peasant villagers comprising the bulk of the labour force, their numbers being greater than those in other states.Although these states are resource-rich and thus teeming with economic activity, socio-economic exploitation by the state governments and various business enterprises deprive the villagers of any economic benefits from these resources. There have been cases in which several employees of local state-run agencies are in cahoots with the Timber mafia (who control much of the timber industry in these regions).
The Timber mafia, alongside renowned business houses, is known to expel peasants from their land, extort money from them, and enslave them as bonded labourers. This exploitation is not limited to the timber industry; it is also present in the mineral mining industry and in agriculture. Many times, the local police collaborate with these parties, inflicting human rights abuses on the villagers instead of protecting them from these injustices.
Consequently, these states have become the most backward, underdeveloped, and impoverished States in India, with more than a third of their populations living under the poverty line.
What is the current conflict?
The Maoist insurgency captured headlines with the Lalgarh incident in West Bengal recently. In November 2008, the foundation for a Jindal Steel plant was laid at Shalboni in West Bengal. The convoy of West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Central Minister Ram Vilas Paswan was attacked on their return from the foundation ceremony. The CPI-M took responsibility of this attack, saying that it did not support the construction of a steel plant on tribal land. Since then, the Maoists have stood alongside tribal villagers and have formed a “liberated, anti-capitalist” zone in Lalgarh, West Bengal. In June 2009, the central government of India launched Operation Lalgarh to reclaim the areas infested by Maoists and to flush out the Maoist militants from Lalgarh and its surrounding areas.
Response
One of the earliest responses to counter the movement was introduced by the Chhattisgarh government. Termed as Salwa Judum (literally, ‘purification hunt’; euphemistically referred to as ‘peace campaign’), the movement was introduced by the Chhattisgarh government in June 2005 to arm local tribals against the Maoists. However, since the Maoists were also arming the tribals to gain tribal support, the result is a pseudo civil war in Chhattisgarh, leading to large-scale denouncement of the movement.
After the Lalgarh operation, the central government announced its plans of a coordinated and organised operation in all the states affected by Maoists, so that Maoist militants do not find escape routes in neighbouring states.
The Union Home Minister then imposed a formal ban on the Maoists under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in West Bengal. By this act, the CPI-M joins the 30 banned outfits among which are Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Student’s Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). Thus the current government has classified this highly complex issue as a law and order problem. By doing so and by clubbing the Maoists as “terrorists”, the government has infested these Maoist areas with state forces, paramilitary forces, and police, further isolating the people and their problems.
With increasing militarisation of the problem, one gets a sense of déjà vu as the Indian government seems to be prioritising hard measures rather than a healthy combination of hard and soft measures to tackle the roots of the crisis. Soft measures are especially important as the Maoists enjoy considerable public sympathy and support.
Not just that, the main opposition party in West Bengal -- the Trinamul Congress (TMC) -- is also supportive of the rebels’ cause. Simply banning the outfit would imply giving a free hand to the ruling political party to curb dissidents in the state in the name of rooting out terrorism.
Termed as the ‘biggest internal security threat’ by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as far back as 2006, the government has witnessed increased sophistication in the Maoist attacks in terms of tactics, targets and area of operation -- from the rural to the urban areas. While the Indian government focuses on combating Islamist terrorism, this ‘people’s movement’ is getting increasingly bloodier by the day. The time has come for the Indian authorities to wake up to the reality of red militancy in India and devise a comprehensive solution that includes both hard and soft measures to combat the roots of the violence, not the violence alone.
Sujoyini Mandal is an Associate Research Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University where Akanksha Mehta is a Research Analyst. Kunal Kirpalani is a student of International Relations at the Australian National University (ANU) and is currently interning at RSIS.
District 9 is the best alien movie I have ever seen. I guess mainly because it wasn't really about aliens but was more of a social commentary touching upon issues of racism, violence, class, and the evolution of any given society into something with both good and bad segments.
With evictions, settlements, concentration camps, detention, torture, weapons, illegal trade, medical experiments, violence, being repetitive themes, I couldn't not think of Israel- Palestine, treatment of Muslims today, of Iraq, of the Holocaust, of racism, of so many other incidents of violence, and of how many people die in these conflicts and more, every single day.
It is both, tragic and brilliant, that it took aliens and space ships to create a hard hitting social commentary that brings out effectively what man is doing to man, and as the ending shows, what man will continue to do to man.
Jaswant Singh has been mentioned on this blog before, and its clear I don't think much of him or his politics.
But as I was interviewing scholars of Hindu Nationalism, and an old devout Hindu Nationalist in Delhi, I came across all the hoopla surrounding BJP's expulsion of Jaswant Singh because of his book on Jinnah. I wasn't surprised much, what do you expect from a party that endorses Varun Gandhi's hate-filled rhetoric, and not only supports but counts on Narendra Modi's divisive politics? A party that built its campaign on the Ram Jamnabhoomi Movement, and has always believed in a Hindu Rashtra?
Some say the BJP is in shambles after its recent loss in the General Election, and I agree, it probably is. But it is important to understand that even if the BJP is in shambles, divisive discourse of the Sangh Parivar continues to build and flood this nation, both formally through shakhas and samitis, and informally through walks in the park, lunch breaks at school, and yoga sessions at the neighborhood community hall. And at this juncture and any other, it is important to understand that economic development or not, the Sangh Parivar stands for something that can only break this country, and is already beginning to do so. The BJP needs to let go of a past that they have imagined, and we need to let go of them, to build the future we imagine.
I visited Delhi properly after five years. When I lived there I was a child, and when I visited I was a foolish, young, college student, who had no answers to questions about her "future" that relatives who fussed over her asked. But here I was, all grown up, with a job and such, somewhat clearer of the choices I had made, and the choices I plan to make, visiting the grandparents whilst I was in the city for a conference on Regional Security and research work on Hindutva and the Naxals.
Delhi seemed strangely the same as it was years ago. I guess when your grandparents have lived in the same house for 40 years, with the same neighbors, the same maid, the same lady who irons their clothes, it is but natural to feel like you have walked into something you have known all your life. Everything about their house felt familiar. I could see the showpiece that my sister had chipped in the corner, still lying on one end of the living room, right next to the Krishna-Radha idol that the neighbors had given them so long ago. I could still see the pigeons outside the window in the corridor, and I could still hear the voice of Chaudhary Aunty who still lives downstairs. My grandfather still called everyone "bhoodambedal" (Persian for "ullu"), and he still repeatedly muttered to himself, "kis kis ko sunaoge, kaun sunega?" while insisting that he never learned how to write Hindi, and stuck to Urdu and Persian. My grandmother also was still the same, talking of the same things, with the same friends, in the same living room.
Caught in that familiarity I did not quite understand how big the changes had been. How old my grandparents had become, how tall my cousins had grown, how Chaudhary Aunty's dear dog Shampi had died, how Aarti Aunty had become the Mayor of New Delhi, how the neighbor's grandkids- Manu, Tejasva, Akanksha, and Arjun had all become so grown up and were studying outside of Delhi, how the park across their house (where my aunt got married!) had lights and a brand new gate (courtesy dear Mayor Aunty!), how casually my aunt offered to fix me a drink, and how easily my grandmother spoke to me off my live-in relationship and where it was headed, and attempted to understand why I had chosen to study "social sciences" and "politics" when I had the "brains" to study science.
Between the familiarity of my grandfather's stories of his days in London and his migration to India from Sialkot, Pakistan, and my days full of work and such, I understood one afternoon the comfortable enormity of how much familiar-things had changed. On that afternoon, I stood in the kitchen attempting to show off my cooking skills, while my grandmother who no longer cooks, sat on the steps opposite the kitchen, chit-chatting and keeping me company. The same steps, where as a child I sat, chit-chatting and keeping her company, while she, on hot summer afternoons, tossed cumin and mustard seeds into hot oil.
