Monthly Archive for January, 2010

Herodotus, and the Parsis at Thermopylae

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on January 31, 2010
in Faith and Religion
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Aakar Patel at The News:

In 480 BC, Persia’s emperor Xerxes attacked and defeated Greece. He bridged the Hellespont, the slim neck between Europe and Asia now called the Dardanelles, and marched his army of Iraqis, Iranians, Egyptians and Indians across to Macedonia and then south into Greece. Most Greek states on his path surrendered to him. Sparta lost one skirmish against his army and then refused to fight. The people of Athens abandoned their city to Xerxes and fled to an island in the south called Salamis.

Xerxes had invaded in anger, after Athens interfered militarily in one of his colonies on the west coast of Turkey. Reaching Athens, he burnt all of it down, including the Acropolis. Then, realising that the Athenians would not defend their state, took his army back to Asia.

We know all this because it was recorded by a Greek historian, Herodotus, who was born a few years before the invasion. It’s a simple and conclusive story. But over the centuries, one part of the invasion, that skirmish with the Spartans, has been used by Europeans to tell a different story. This is the story of freedom-loving individuals (Europeans) defending themselves against slavish barbarians (Asians). And this brave stand of the Spartans, according to the movie ‘300′ and a recent BBC Radio 4 programme called ‘In Our Time’, “saved civilisation”.

It is a bold claim to make, because it assumes that civilisation is entirely European and there was no civilisation on the Persian side. It is also a factually untrue claim on two counts. The first that the skirmish, the battle of Thermopylae, was fought between 300 Spartans and 5.2 million Persians. The second that Xerxes lost the war.

Xerxes is Greek for the emperor’s Old Persian name, which was Kshayarsa, from the same root as Sanskrit Kshatriya and the modern caste name Khatri. More:

Aman Ki Asha, an Indo-Pak Peace Project

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on January 31, 2010
in Conflict, India, Media and Pakistan
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Aman Ki Asha is a brave peace initiative by the two leading media houses of India and Pakistan -- The Times of India and the Jang Group. Below, the TV ad:

The froth of Khan

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on January 31, 2010
in Pakistan, People, Politics and Sport
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Nadeem F. Paracha at Dawn:

What can one say about Imran Khan? A great former cricketer, a compassionate philanthropist … a sorry excuse for a politician. But his continuing forays into bad politics and tactical blunders can be excused, for he is yet to understand that politics is not a game of cricket, and that the democratic election process does not follow the selection policy he enforced as the captain of the Pakistan cricket squad.

The truth is, Khan’s penchant for picking up talented players seemed to have gone haywire when he decided to pick his early political mentors.

Coming from a highly educated, cultivated, and somewhat liberal background, Khan had slipped into reverse gear by the time he decided to enter politics in the early 1990s. In other words, instead of looking forward to becoming an integral part of a new, democratic, and General Zia-less Pakistan, Khan struck an ideological partnership with shadowy characters who were hell-bent on keeping the country stuck in the 1980s – a decade when Pakistan pulled and damaged all of its important political, economic and social muscles under the stressful weight of a myopic dictatorship and the damaging jihad that a dictatorship sponsored in Afghanistan. More:

The greatest squash player of all time

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on January 31, 2010
in Pakistan and Sport
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James Zug in Squash Magazine [July 2004]. From 3quarksdaily:

Hashim Khan, who I think can fairly be described as the greatest squash-racquets player of all time, made his American debut in the winter of 1954.

Hashim Khan, may his tribe increase, completely changed the course of events in the game of squash racquets.

The more I think about it, the more firmly convinced I am that the greatest athlete for his age the world has ever seen may well be Hashim Khan, the Pakistani squash player.

That was how Herbert Warren Wind led off his three epic articles on squash in the New Yorker, in 1973, 1978 and in 1985. Being the New Yorker, the articles were rigorously fact-checked, and all hyperbole was stricken with a red pen. These three sentences were true then and are true today.

Scream of the assassin – Last hours of the plotters hanged in Dhaka

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on January 29, 2010
in Bangladesh
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From The Telegraph, Calcutta:

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Bazlul Huda, a bespectacled man in his 60s, was the first to walk to the gallows, his face covered with a black hood and hands cuffed behind.

As the guards escorted him to the brightly lit gallows inside Dhaka Central Jail, the former major and one of the plotters of Mujibur Rahman’s assassination struggled to free himself and screamed for his life as loud as he could.

Within minutes, he was on a wooden platform with a manila rope round his hooded neck. A jail official waved and dropped a red handkerchief to the ground — a signal for the executioner to go ahead.

As the executioner pulled the lever, the wooden planks under Huda’s feet slid open, letting his lanky frame swing into the void below.

“It’s over,” said a government doctor examining the body after it had been brought down from the gallows. “He is dead.”

It was just past midnight. More:

An audience with the Sri Lankan general whose appetite for power is undimmed

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on January 29, 2010
in Politics and Sri Lanka
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Andrew Buncombe meets Sarath Fonseka in Colombo. From The Independent:

The 59-year-old said surveys taken by his coalition ahead of the polls had suggested that he would win, and that even on election day, early results had suggested that he was more than 1.4 million votes ahead.

“There has been large-scale rigging – they are not stuffing ballots but they are doing computer manipulation,” he said. “You can see that the people did not expect this [result]. Normally when there is an election people celebrate for two or three days. You have seen it is very sombre on the streets. For the sake of the people’s aspirations we have to get the result cancelled.”

Outside, his dog, a noisy dalmatian, was locked inside a kennel because the member of his security detail who had overseen its daily walks had been relocated by the government.

Mr Fonseka, whose house has armed troops on watch nearby, repeated his claim that the government’s decision to withdraw his personal security detail was an indication it was planning to kill him. He said his name and a son-in-law’s had been placed on an immigration “blacklist” and that they would be unable to leave Sri Lanka. However a presidential spokesman said this was not the case, adding: “He is not on any list. He is free to leave the country.” More:

Back to square one

Published
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on January 29, 2010
in Cricket, India and Pakistan
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There is outrage in Pakistan over the exclusion of Pakistani cricket players from the latest IPL auction. But where was this sense of ‘outrage’ in the aftermath of 26/11, writes Rajdeep Sardesai in the Hindustan Times. Competitive rage is easy to manufacture in the context of Indo-Pak relations.

Indo-Pak cricket, like diplomatic relations between the two countries, suffers from schizophrenia. Rewind to January 1999 when a Chennai crowd gave a standing ovation to Wasim Akram’s men after they had just beaten India. Six months later, the two countries met again in a world cup match against the backdrop of the Kargil war and fans of both sides abused each other. In 2004, we were treated to a Pakistani crowd singing, “Balaji, zara dheere chalo” every time he ran in to bowl. Eight years earlier, I had watched a Karachi crowd hurl bottles on the field when their team lost to India in a dramatic last over. Two years ago, Sohail Tanvir was the toast of the inaugural Indian Premier League (IPL). Today, Tanvir and his other Pakistani teammates find themselves unwanted by their IPL owners. more

India’s groupthink on Islam

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on January 28, 2010
in Books
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s talk at the Jaipur Literature Festival shows how globalization is changing the debate. Sadanand Dhume, the author of “My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009), in the Wall Street Journal. Dhume is writing a nonfiction book on the impact of globalization on India.

Speaking to a packed hall, with her burly bodyguard unobtrusively off-stage, Ms. Hirsi Ali spoke about Islam—and its problems with individualism, women’s rights and sexuality—with a frankness unfamiliar to most Indians. She described the faith she was born into as “a dangerous, totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion.” She argued against the moral relativism that has prevented Western intellectuals from scrutinizing Islam as they do Christianity and Judaism. She asked why it seemed impossible to have a sober discussion about the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad without riling Muslim sentiment, and made the case for bringing the Enlightenment to the blighted lands of the Middle East and Muslim South Asia. Ms. Hirsi Ali touched upon India only briefly, to contrast the country’s success with the dismal state of neighboring Muslim-majority Pakistan. More:

To ward off evil, Zardari kills one black goat a day

Published
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on January 28, 2010
in Culture, Leaders and Pakistan
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From Dawn:

A black goat is slaughtered almost daily to ward off ‘evil eyes’ and protect President Asif Ali Zardari from ‘black magic’. Does this, and the use of camel and goat milk, make the beleaguered president appear to be a superstitious man?

Well, not to his spokesman. “It has been an old practice of Mr Zardari to offer Sadqa (animal sacrifice). He has been doing this for a long time,” spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn on Tuesday. More:

Gandhi and women

Published
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on January 27, 2010
in India, Leaders, Sexuality and Women
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Mohandas Gandhi held India back when it came to women’s rights — and his own behaviour around them could be bizarre, writes Michael Connellan in Guardian’s Comment is Free

Courtesy: Outlook India

Mohandas Gandhi whose death anniversary falls on Saturday, was an amazing human being. He led his country to freedom and helped destroy the British Empire. Little wonder India worshipped him, and still worships him, as the Mahatma – “Great Soul”. In the west he is viewed as a near-perfect combination of compassion, bravery and wisdom.

But Gandhi was also a puritan and a misogynist who helped ensure that India remains one of the most sexually repressed nations on earth – and, by and large, a dreadful place to be born female. George Orwell, in his 1949 essay Reflections on Gandhi, said that “saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent”. If only.  more

The zero-rupee protest

Published
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on January 27, 2010
in Economy and India
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The zero-rupee note

From CommGAP (The Communication for Governance and Accountability Program) at blogs.worldbank.org:

Imagine that you are an old lady from a poor household in a town in the outskirts of Chennai city, India. All you have wanted desperately for the last year and a half is to get a title in your name for the land you own, called patta. You need this land title to serve as a collateral for a bank loan you have been hoping to borrow to finance your granddaughter’s college education. But there has been a problem: the Revenue Department official responsible for giving out the patta has been asking you to pay a little fee for this service. That’s right, a bribe. But you are poor (you are officially assessed to be below the poverty line) and you do not have the money he wants. And the most absurd part about the scenario you find yourself in is that this is a public service that should be rendered to you free of charge in the first place. What would you do? You might conclude, as you have done for the last 1-1/2 years, that there isn’t much you can do…but wait, you just heard about a local NGO by the name of 5th Pillar and it just happened to give you a powerful ally: a zero rupee note.

In Doha last month, CommGAP learned about the work of 5th Pillar, which has a unique initiative to mobilize citizens to fight corruption. In India, petty corruption is pervasive – people often face situations where they are asked to pay bribes for public services that should be provided free. 5th Pillar distributes zero rupee notes in the hopes that ordinary Indians can use these notes as a means to protest demands for bribes by public officials. I recently spoke with Vijay Anand, 5th Pillar’s president, to learn more about this fascinating initiative. More:

[Image: 5th Pillar]

The Afghan leader’s hat

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on January 27, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Culture, Design, Fashion, Leaders and Politics
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From the New York Times:

Known as a karakul hat, and made of the pelt of fetal or newborn lambs of the karakul breed of sheep, traditionally it was something worn by Tajiks and Uzbeks from northern Afghanistan. When Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun from the turban-wearing south, took office in 2002, the karakul hat was part of his attempt to devise a wardrobe that was Afghan rather than ethnic or regional.

It was a move widely praised at the time, in Afghanistan and abroad. The American designer Tom Ford called the Afghan president “the chicest man on the planet.” Afghans looking for national symbols after decades of ethnic strife inspired a brisk trade in the hats, made of lambskins from Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and fashioned by Kabul’s hatters, whose shops lined both sides of Shah-e-do Shamshera Wali Road.

Now, a tainted presidential election later, and with efforts to make a truly multiethnic government foundering, the sheen is off the shimmery fur headwear.

Young men no longer wear it; Mr. Karzai’s opponent in the aborted election runoff, Abdullah Abdullah, a northerner, preferred a hatless suit-and-tie ensemble. All but 12 of the hatters shops have closed on Shamshera Road, also famous for its shrine covered in pigeons. Those remaining say they are lucky to sell a hat a day. More:

Yoga for foodies

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on January 27, 2010
in Fashion, Food, Health and Trends
. 1 Comment

From The New York Times:

The past decade has produced thousands of new foodies and new yogis, all interested in healthier bodies, clearer consciences and a greener planet. Inevitably, the overlap between the people who love to eat and the people who love to do eagle pose has grown. In 2007, a combination yoga studio and fine dining restaurant, Ubuntu, opened in Napa, Calif.

Yoga retreat centers now offer gourmet cooking classes and wine tastings; New York yogis trade tips about which nearby ashrams (Anand) and studios (Jivamukti) serve the best muffins.

But not everyone agrees that the lusty enjoyment of food and wine is compatible with yogic enlightenment. Yoga purists say that many foods — like wine and meat — are still off limits. Others, like Mr. Romanelli, say that anything goes, as long as it tastes good. The debate is exposing rich ores of resentment in the yoga world.

“The culture of judgment in the yoga community — I call it “yogier than thou” — is rampant, and nowhere more than around food,” said Sadie Nardini, a yoga teacher in New York. (“Yogis” are those who do yoga, teachers and students alike.) More:

Clock ticks for Nepal to settle its future

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on January 27, 2010
in Nepal and Politics
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Jim Yardley from Kathmandu in The New York Times:

For anyone living in a country where reforming health care is regarded as an insurmountable challenge, consider the political calendar in the struggling Himalayan republic of Nepal. By May 28, or roughly four months off, the entire country must be reorganized.

First, a new constitution has to be drafted to reaffirm fundamental rights for Nepalese citizens, restructure the national government and create states in a country where none previously existed. The positions of president and prime minister (the king has been deposed) must be clarified: Should the country have a directly elected, powerful executive? Or should a parliamentary system prevail?

Then there is the army. Or armies. Two of them. One is the Nepalese Army. The other is the People’s Liberation Army controlled by the country’s Maoists. For a decade, the two sides fought a savage guerrilla war. Now the peace plan stemming from a 2006 accord calls for blending them together, except no one can agree how to do it, so both armies remain intact, resistant to civilian oversight and increasingly testy. More:

Ian Rankin on crime and society

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on January 27, 2010
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Ian Rankin is in India, courtesy the British Council, as part of Lit Sutra, a programme of cultural relations through reading and writing. Interview in The Economic Times:

What made you turn into a crime writer?

One of the reasons I write crime fiction is because crime tells a lot about society. Also, a crime novel allows me to explore social, economic and political issues. A crime novelist has to have a sense of location and be aware of current events and deal with big themes and moral questions. My protagonist, Inspector Rebus, for instance, also delves into the political and economic spheres of Scotland and the UK.

My latest novel, Complaints, hovers around the huge banking crisis that was triggered recently. Edinburgh depends a lot on its financial sector. Twenty per cent of its jobs are absorbed by this segment. When the Royal Bank of Scotland went bust, Edinburgh was in turmoil. The Royal Bank CEO’s home was attacked and he had to leave the country. Although, there is a murder element in the novel, Complaints deals with this financial crisis. The crime novel allows to discuss these themes in a way that is not possible in a literary novel. More:

Botox could become terrorist tool

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on January 26, 2010
in Terrorism
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From the Washington Post:

Al-Qaeda is known to have sought botulinum toxin. The Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, and other groups have bought and sold counterfeit drugs to raise cash. Now, with the emergence of a global black market for fake Botox, terrorism experts see an opportunity for a deadly convergence.

“It is the only profit-making venture for terrorists that can also potentially yield a weapon of mass destruction,” said Kenneth Coleman, a physician and biodefense expert.

Last year, Coleman and fellow researcher Raymond Zilinskas set out to test whether militant groups could easily exploit the counterfeit Botox network to obtain materials for a bioterrorism attack. In a project sponsored by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, two scientists found that a biologist with a master’s degree and $2,000 worth of equipment could easily make a gram of pure toxin, an amount equal to the weight of a small paper clip but enough, in theory, to kill thousands of people. More:

Muslims have no monopoly over ‘Allah’

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on January 26, 2010
in Faith, Politics and Religion
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Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, a member of parliament for the Justice Party and leader of the opposition, in the Wall Street Journal:

Malaysia has once again resurfaced in international headlines for the wrong reasons. Over the last two weeks, arsonists and vandals attacked 10 places of worship, including Christian churches and Sikh temples. Though there were no injuries and the material damage is reparable, the same cannot be said about the emotional and psychological scars left behind. After numerous conflicting statements from government officials, the underlying causes of the violence are still unaddressed. Malaysia’s reputation as a nation at peace with its ethnic and religious diversity is at stake.

Malaysia’s poor handling of religious and sectarian issues is not unique. The ill treatment of minority groups in Muslim countries is often worse than the actions Muslims decry in the West. I have called attention to the broader need in the Muslim world for leadership that demonstrates consistency and credibility in our call for justice, fairness and pluralism. These values are embedded in the Islamic tradition as the higher objectives of Shariah expounded by the 12th-century jurist al-Shatibi.

We have seen Muslims around the world protest against discriminatory laws passed in supposedly liberal and progressive countries in the West. Yet just as France and Germany have their issues with the burqa and Switzerland with its minarets, so too does Malaysia frequently fail to offer a safe and secure environment that accommodates its minority communities. More:

The case of the cricket snub

Published
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on January 26, 2010
in Politics and Sport
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Salil Tripathi in the Wall Street Journal:

Call it the curious incident of the forgotten cricketers. After nearly two hours of a keenly watched auction on Jan. 19, the Indian Premier League’s eight cricket teams bought 11 of the 66 players from 11 countries on offer. But not one Pakistani player was picked.

India and Pakistan have long been enemies on the pitch, but such a public rejection of some of Pakistan’s best players (who are also some of the region’s best players) represents a dangerous new low. The auction process is an important part of the Premier League’s “Twenty20 cricket,” an entertaining, made-for-television, abbreviated form of the sport played in 16 countries.

Twenty20 cricket is not the traditional, seemingly endless version where men in white take a break for tea. Here a match lasts around three hours, with each team playing only 20 overs, trying to amass as many runs as possible and using unconventional techniques. Busty cheerleaders encourage them. And international players are traded just like they are in Major League Baseball or the English Premier League. The changes have drawn new, younger crowds and attracted millions of dollars of television advertising and a recent deal with YouTube. More:

The present state of the gods and goddesses in South Asia

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on January 26, 2010
in Culture, Faith, Religion and Society
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Ashis Nandy in Manushi:

Some years ago, in the city of Bombay, a young Muslim playwright wrote and staged a play that had gods — Hindu gods and goddesses — as major characters. Such plays are not uncommon in India; some would say that they are all too common. This one also included gods and goddesses who were heroic, grand, scheming and comical. This provoked not the audience but Hindu nationalists, particularly the Hindu Mahasabha, a spent political force for a long time, in Bombay. This city is now being dominated by a more powerful Hindu nationalist formation, the Shiv Sena.

It is doubtful if those who claimed they had been provoked were really provoked. It is more likely that they pretended to be offended and precipitated an incident to make their political presence felt. After all, such plays have been written in India since time immemorial. Vikram Savarkar of Hindu Mahasabha — a grandson of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), the non-believing father of Hindu nationalism who thoughtfully gifted South Asia the concept of Hindutva — organised a demonstration in front of the theatre where the play was being staged, caught hold of the playwright, and threatened to lynch him. Ultimately Savarkar’s gang forced the writer to bow down and touch Savarkar’s feet, to apologise for writing the play. The humiliation of the young playwright was complete; it was duly photographed and published in newspapers and news magazines. More:

Tamils may hand power to general who crushed Tigers

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on January 25, 2010
in Politics and Sri Lanka
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Andrew Buncombe from Colombo in The Independent:

If the outcome of Sri Lanka’s bitterly contested presidential election were decided solely by which candidate had the largest billboard, then incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa could sleep easily in his bed.

At the international airport near Colombo, a huge hoarding shows the president, dressed entirely in white, a beatific smile beaming across his face. His advisers believe that as voters go to the polls tomorrow, their best asset is the candidate himself, a man who oversaw the defeat of separatist rebels and ended a brutal 30-year civil war.

Indeed, less than a year ago, after government troops crushed the rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the authorities responded with a deluge of flag-waving celebrations that projected the president as something half-way between a God and a king, no one could have guessed that eight months later Mr Rajapaksa would be engaged in an ugly political dog-fight. And yet he is. More:

The dupatta: More than a covering

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on January 25, 2010
in Culture and Pakistan
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Aamna Haider Isani in Dawn:

Interestingly, in the early years after Partition, the dupatta’s symbolism was more national than religious. For example, the uniform of the Pakistan Women’s National Guard that was formed during the Kashmir War included a dupatta. ‘Since Pakistan was a Muslim state, the dupatta was naturally part of the uniform. However, it was just a sash across the torso…a starched V-shaped dupatta,’ recalls former Sergeant Abeeda Abidi in an interview with the Citizens Archive of Pakistan. Clearly, this sash was meant to be more of a comment than a covering.

The years that followed saw leaders such as Fatima Jinnah and Begum Rana Liaquat Ali Khan enter politics. Unlike their female predecessors in the armed forces, these women made public appearances with their heads covered with a dupatta, which was deciphered as a symbol of modesty. Since they had set the trend, women who stepped into politics in subsequent decades were expected to follow suit.

In 1966, the uniform for the PIA airhostesses, designed by Paris-based fashion sensation Pierre Cardin, also included scarf-like dupattas over graceful tunics. In this incarnation, the dupatta was viewed more as an attractive accessory than a symbol of Muslim womanhood.

Although a dupatta has always been part of the attire of female politicians of this predominantly Muslim state since the beginning, trends among the masses have been slightly different. It was only in the late 1950s that the dupatta became an integral part of the urban-middle-class woman’s outfit. Before then, some women wore burqas and chadors. But younger women who were looking for some form of covering increasingly opted for dupattas as they proved to be a less stringent alternative. More:

[Image: Dawn]

The Lit Fest wrap

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on January 25, 2010
in Books
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Namita Bhandare on the 5th Jaipur Lit Fest which ends today at Diggi Palace, Jaipur

The fifth season of the Jaipur Literature Festival is almost at an end. So many writers and so many readers packing their bags as they head back home after five days of sometimes heady, frequently thought-provoking and, yes, occasionally banal discussion.

It’s been such a long journey since the first Lit Fest, held with 17 authors in attendance at Neemrana (and, apparently, an audience of five people). This year’s Lit Fest counted 220 authors, including one Nobel Laureate (Wole Soyinka), several Bookers (Roddy Doyle), serious academics (Niall Ferguson) and an international press gathering that included legendary magazine editor Tina Brown. And, yes, the audience: an estimated 30,000 people from Jaipur, Delhi, London, Glasgow, Rome, Mumbai, New York, Kolkata.

While the crowds at Diggi Palace were cause for celebration — who would have guessed that so many people were still interested in the written word — they were also cause for consternation.

And here’s the conumdrum. The beauty of the Jaipur Lit Fest lies in the fact that it is free and open to all. There are no tickets. There are no VIP enclosures, no green rooms for star authors. The success of the Jaipur Lit Fest lies in the fact that it has been able to rope in the crowds it now gets: school children and teachers and unpublished poets wandering around armed with manuscripts and invincible in their belief that all is not lost, that there is a market for their work, that people still read and love poetry.

Continue reading ‘The Lit Fest wrap’

My Life with the Taliban

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on January 25, 2010
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Abdul Salam Zaeef was a founder of the Taliban and his memoir, My Life with the Taliban, offers a fascinating if dispiriting insight into the movement. From The Telegraph:

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founder of the Taliban in 1994 and a minister during its short-lived regime, has much to say about the wars in Afghanistan and the roles he has played in them. As a teenage refugee from the Soviet invasion, he joined the mujahideen, and a few years later was fighting alongside Mullah Omar when the future Taliban leader lost an eye.

He has written a fascinating account of his own remarkable life which gives real insight into why the Taliban was formed, what motivates it, and what it is now trying to achieve. It is what he has to say about hopes of ending the current war, however, that will be of most interest to the spooks and diplomats in Kabul, Washington and London; they will have been hoping that Mullah Zaeef would point the way towards a negotiated end to the fighting. But he does not, and what he has to say suggests that ending the bloodshed could prove extremely difficult, if possible at all. More:

Bread and butter papers

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on January 24, 2010
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Why do Indians read books? A survey by Tehelka finds that self-advancement rather than pleasure is a key motivator. Gaurav Jain has that story

Illustration: Samia Singh/Tehelka

IT IS mostly a solitary activity, unhelpful to advertising. Reading helps us sidestep the cultural demand that we find lucidity only in speed. For a long time, the quality of your reading was the measure of your character. But since character has become a poor predictor of fate, pushy books are now firmly denied access to the mind’s garret. Urban condominiums lie bursting with the plushest modern comforts, the phone directory, and perhaps a lonesome book like Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead. Our habits of distraction have vaporised an entire way of life. With the commitment to reading on the wane, the shared currency of conversations is now movies, YouTube videos, tweets and the occasional toy that masquerades as a book. more

Beyond boundaries

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on January 24, 2010
in Faith, India and Religion
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India’s heterodox religions and their traditions remain stronger than the idea of a unified nation-state. They have survived a long and violent history, writes Pankaj Mishra in The National

India is one of the world’s oldest civilisations; but as a nation-state it is relatively very new, and its nationalism can still appear weak and unresolved, as became freshly clear in August, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party expelled its veteran leader Jaswant Singh. Singh had dared to praise, in a new book about the partition of India, the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Indian nationalists, of both the hardline Hindu and soft-secular kind, see Jinnah as the Muslim fanatic primarily responsible for the vivisection of their “Mother India” in 1947. But Singh chose to blame the partition on allegedly power-hungry Hindu freedom fighters, rather than Jinnah, who he claimed had stood for a united India. more

Literary magic

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on January 24, 2010
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Niall Ferguson, Stephen Frears, and Wole Soyinka kick off the fifth annual Jaipur Literature Festival. Olivia Cole reports for The Daily Beast

For over a hundred years, Jaipur, the so-called “Pink City,” was famously gray. It was only in 1882 that it was painted pink (the traditional color of welcome) in honor of a visit by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort. That sense of hospitality is apt for its literary festival, opening today. Now in its fifth year, from the start the philosophy has always been that it should welcome as many readers as possible. Some 20,000 are expected, but this is not a place with green rooms, wrist bands, or VIP areas, despite the fact that this year’s lineup is just a few starry names shy of a large constellation. more

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the wildcard draw at the Jaipur Lit Fest

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on January 24, 2010
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Posted by Namita Bhandare from the Jaipur Literature Festival:

Her name was never on the official programme issued by the Jaipur Literature Festival, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali, often described as Europe’s most controversial politician finally managed to  get her visa to attend the fest only at the last minute. Despite her quiet, unpublicised entry, she drew packed crowds when she spoke to Shoma Chaudhury of Tehelka on Islam and her journey towards becoming an infidel.

The author of The Caged Virgin and Infidel spoke about how the Koran is viewed by Islamic believers as a complete book and how the Prophet is infallible. “Every discussion that is even slightly critical of the Koran leads to the accusation that the discussion is a sin, that you are an infidel,” Ali told the audience at the Diggi Palace Durbar Hall, venue of the Jaipur Literature Festival. “Islam is exempted from the kind of systematic scrutiny that, say, Christianity, is subjected to.”

Ali is a prominent critic of Islam and her screenplay for the Theo Van Gogh movie Submission led to death threats and to Van Gogh’s eventual assassination. The Somalia-born author, activist and feminist has been living under tight security in Washington, where she is a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, since.

Unlike other religions that allowed for criticism, Islam brooks no questioning, Ali said. “In Islam you submit your will to a force outside yourself, to a collective will,” she said. Describing the Koran as a book written within a certain cultural context in the 6th century, she said many values are outdated. For instance, she said, in Islam, men and women are not equal, homosexual relations are not tolerated, women found guilty of adultery are required to be stoned to death, and the list of obligations under Islam have led to an environment of bigotry where believers are obliged to distance themselves from non-Muslims.

Hirsi disputed the idea that Islam is under seige. “The idea that Islam is under seige is an Islamic idea. In the name of Islam you have many organised groups and states committing violence and terrorism,” she said. “Islam in this context is a danger to global peace.”

Also read in The Indian Express: ‘When fundamentalists run out of arguments, they call you an infidel’

“It is important to off-set Islamic values with Western values. In Islam, men and women are not equal, a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s, and homosexuality is not acceptable. Is there a way to have a discussion with Muslim fundamentalists about Islam without offending them? No,” says Ali, who feels that Islam needs to go through the same “enlightenment” process that other religions have gone though.

Chetan Bhagat: the paperback king of India

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Robert McCrum in The Observer:

Chetan Bhagat

A year after the launch of Slumdog Millionaire, the Oscar-winning movie of Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A, some more quiz questions: Who is the most read living Indian writer? Is it a) Aravind Adiga (Booker prize-winning author of The White Tiger); b) Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children); c) Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy); or d) Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)?

The answer: none of these. Two generations after independence, one of the vital characteristics of the new India is that the educated middle class who once turned to English for business applications now see it in a different light. To them, in a manner typical of English language and culture in many parts of formerly colonial society, it is becoming decoupled from its bitter imperial past.

This new middle-class audience – small entrepreneurs, managers, travel agents, salespeople, secretaries, clerks – has an appetite for literary entertainment that falls between the elite idiom of the cultivated literati, who might be familiar with the novels of Amitav Ghosh or Salman Rushdie, and the Indian English of the street and the supermarket. Theirs is the Indian English of the outsourcing generation. For these people, there is only one author: Chetan Bhagat. Who? More:

India’s food historians

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Anindita Ghose and Parizaad Khan on people who document recipes and the grammar of Indian cuisines that could soon be extinct. From Mint-Lounge:

Take restaurateur and food researcher Jacob Aruni, for instance. His repeated cajoling of a septuagenarian woman, Sigappi, in a small coastal town of Tamil Nadu, led her to share rare recipes with him—such as rice cooked with betel leaves. A few months later, she died, taking with her several other recipes that may well be lost forever.

Pushpesh Pant, a professor of diplomacy at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, believes that food, like monuments, performing arts, language and costume, is an integral part of any civilization, which is why it should be conserved for future generations.

Pant is a food scholar himself. His book, Hindu Soul Recipes (Roli Books-Lustre Press, 2007), takes up the humble khichdi, among other dishes. The Ayurvedic kshirika, he writes, has mutated in several different directions. In the Mughal emperor Akbar’s time, in the 16th century, it was slow-cooked with aromatic spices and lamb, and befittingly came to be called laziza, which means tasty. In Bengal, it transformed into a spicy delicacy known as khichudi—strictly vegetarian—cooked during religious feasts. And centuries later, in its avatar as the Anglo-Indian kedgeree in the mid-18th century, it reintegrated its meat element as a breakfast dish that couldn’t do without fish. More:

Maryam

Published
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on January 24, 2010
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Pakistani artist Amber Hammad's self-portrait, Maryam, the Arabic name for Mary.

More here and here [via Hindustan Times]

Image from Vasl, a platform for contemporary Pakistani art and artists.