2010 February Archive at Asian Window

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Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Irom and the iron in India’s soul

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on February 28, 2010

in human rights

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Irom Sharmila Chanu is a civil rights activist in the Indian state of Manipur. Since November 4, 2000, she’s been on a fast demanding that the Government of India should withdraw the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, from Manipur and other areas of India’s north east.

Her story, says Shoma Chaudhury in Tehelka, should be part of universal folklore:

For young Irom Sharmila, things came to a head on November 2, 2000. A day earlier, an insurgent group had bombed an Assam Rifles column. The enraged battalion retaliated by gunning down 10 innocent civilians at a bus-stand in Malom. The local papers published brutal pictures of the bodies the next day, including one of a 62-year old woman, Leisangbam Ibetomi, and 18-year old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Child Bravery Award winner. Extraordinarily stirred, on November 4, Sharmila, then only 28, began her fast.

Sprawled in an icy white hospital corridor that cold November evening in Delhi three years ago, Singhajit, Sharmila’s 48-year-old elder brother, had said half-laughing, “How we reach here?” In the echo chamber of that plangent question had lain the incredible story of Sharmila and her journey. Much of that story needed to be intuited. Its tensile strength, its intense, almost preternatural act of imagination were not on easy display. The faraway hut in Imphal where it began. The capital city now and the might of the State ranged against them. The sister jailed inside her tiny hospital room, the brother outside with nothing but the clothes on his back, neither versed in English or Hindi. The posse of policemen at the door. More:

Jhunjhunwala’s real bull run

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on February 28, 2010

in Business, India and People

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It took 17 years for India’s most famous investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala to become a father, and it beat anything that all his thousands of crores could buy. Manju Sara Rajan in Open:

Most women accept discomfort as an essential part of the pregnancy ritual, but it takes altogether something else to survive what Rekha Jhunjhunwala went through. In 2003, 39-year-old Rekha, wife of India’s most famous investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, finally became pregnant for the first time. But by the final trimester in early 2004, her baby was in serious trouble: it was sliding down the birth canal far too fast. Too late to surgically keep the baby in, too early to bring it out, Rekha’s doctor gave her a single prescription: be confined to bed till delivery date. “I didn’t bathe for three months,” she says. “It was difficult to do anything, my legs were elevated all the time, and because I was always lying down, after some time I did everything on my side, even eating. But I was determined.” Nishtha was born on 30 June 2004. Her brothers, twins Aryaman and Aryavir, were born at 12.29 am and 12.30 am on 2 March 2009. It took the millionaire couple 22 years of marriage to complete their family.

The latest Forbes India rich list counts 49-year-old Jhunjhunwala as the 58th richest man in the country, with a fortune of $915 million (Rs 4,209 crore). “I have far less than people think, far more than I need. My wealth fluctuates by 5 per cent every week,” he says. But even an amateur guesstimate of listed and unlisted investments, private equity interests and cash holdings safely puts the former chartered accountant’s net worth at over a billion dollars. “Whatever is known publicly is underestimated,” says a source close to him. More:

Who killed Gautama Buddha?

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on February 28, 2010

in Books, Faith and Religion

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New research reveals the dark truths on the life and times of Buddha. Sheela Reddy in Outlook:

Seven years ago, when Buddhist scholar and former monk Stephen Batchelor embarked on a search for the real Siddhartha Gautama, rooting through over 6,000 pages of the Pali Canon — the oldest set of texts on his teachings, which provide glimpses into his social and political world — perhaps he didn’t even dream of the Buddha that would emerge from his research. Far from the picture we have of Siddhartha as a prince who grew up in a palace, who renounced it all and became the Buddha, attracting the rich and powerful as well as hundreds of monks and nuns by his teachings, until one day he just lay down and died, Batchelor’s portrait of the Buddha “is not that simple”.

In his new book, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, to be out in the US early March, this author of eight other books on Buddhism claims the Buddha was a man whose teachings were regarded by his contemporaries as not only radical, but “queer” enough for him to be denounced by one of his own former disciples as a “fake”, who not only managed to win the patronage of the three most powerful political figures of his time, but was worldly enough to survive in the midst of court intrigues, murders and betrayals, effectively quelling a rebellion within his own flock before he was done in by the ambitions of his own family.

But it is Batchelor’s findings on the Buddha’s last days that are the most startling: in the last 10 months of his life, Batchelor says, the Buddha, old and ailing, saw his two main disciples die, one of them brutally murdered, and was forced to flee with a handful of loyalists from all the three political bases he had spent a lifetime building up, until he was possibly poisoned to death by one of his many rivals, leaving a pretender to take over the community after an intense power struggle. More:

Plane-spotting

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on February 28, 2010

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Two British plane-spotters — Stephen Hampston, 46, and Steven Martin, 55, — were held last Monday at a hotel near the New Delhi international airport after staff raised concerns about their suspicious behaviour. They have been charged with illegally intercepting communications between pilots and airport authorities.”This planespotting that they were doing is illegal in India. They should have applied for permission before doing this,” Delhi police said.

Below, Bhairav Acharya, a Bangalore-based plane-spotter, on his hobby. From The Indian Express:

A few decades ago, when airlines and pilots and stewardesses epitomised glamour, plane-spotting was an understandable hobby. Each country’s national airline did more than ferry people overseas; they represented that country abroad. In the late ’80s, for instance, when Ethiopia was in the midst of famine and conflict, their national airline was remarkably successful. In major airports around the world, Ethiopian Airlines aircraft jostled for space with the big European and American carriers. I remember a group of Ethiopian women break into proud applause in a waiting room in Dubai when their airline touched down in front of them.

I often used to travel to Tanzania, and from the windows of African airports I watched planes from little known cities land and depart, each one a colourful embodiment of their countries. I was fairly young when I learned to identify aircraft. There is something unforgettable about sitting in the rear of a Boeing 727, with the third engine screeching overhead, as the pilot makes the last broad turn over the Red Sea before landing in Aden. Or the steady whine of the Boeing 757’s two engines barely 30 feet above the water, where Entebbe airport’s runway juts out like a promontory into Lake Victoria. More:

Pawan Sinha on how brains learn to see

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on February 28, 2010

in Health, Science and Technology

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From TED:

At Pawan Sinha’s MIT lab, he and his team spend their days trying to understand how the brain learns to recognize and use the patterns and scenes we see around us. To do this, they often use computers to model the processes of the human brain, but they also study human subjects, some of whom are seeing the world for the very first time and can tell them about the experience as it happens. They find these unusual subjects through the humanitarian branch of their research, Project Prakash.

In this talk, Pawan Sinha details his groundbreaking research into how the brain’s visual system develops. Sinha and his team provide free vision-restoring treatment to children born blind, and then study how their brains learn to interpret visual data. The work offers insights into neuroscience, engineering and even autism.

Evidence of tolerance: Clashes are rare

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on February 26, 2010

in Faith, India and Religion

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Akash Kapur in The New York Times:

I maintain my faith in India as a highly tolerant — if imperfectly so — country. I believe that the nation’s sporadic episodes of communal violence represent aberrations rather than the norm, inevitable clashes that are remarkable for the extent to which they are, indeed, sporadic.

When I consider the nation’s major outbreaks of communal violence since independence, I am struck by the fact that nearly each one was instigated by an act of political demagoguery. Politicians seeking votes have regularly fanned hatred and chauvinism. And as the Indian scholar Asghar Ali Engineer has pointed out, religious concerns are frequently a front for material interests. Riots between Hindus and Muslims are often thinly veiled property disputes or clashes over commercial interests.

Yet for all the effort by political and business leaders to spread hatred, violent clashes remain rare, unusual in a country where Hindus and Muslims (and followers of other religions) live side by side, in crowded cities and villages, doing business and practicing their faiths in full view of one another. More:

And here’s the link to his previous column, Upholding a tradition of tolerance:

Indian tolerance has deep roots. The Vedas, a body of texts believed to be around 3,000 years old, proclaim that “truth is one; the wise call it by many names.” The Rig Veda, considered the oldest, similarly teaches that “good thoughts come to us from all sides.”

Indian tolerance has also manifested in the country’s society and polity. The Edicts of Emperor Asoka, who ruled much of north and central India in the third century B.C., are notable for their accommodation of other faiths — proclaiming, for instance, that “all religions should reside everywhere” and that “there should be growth in the essentials of all religions.”

Lunch with Shah Rukh Khan

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on February 26, 2010

in Entertainment, India and Movies

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From The Financial Times:

I wait to meet Khan in the coffee shop at the Courthouse Hotel, off Regent Street in central London. A former magistrates’ court, its grey façade and quiet lobby feel too restrained for a Bollywood superstar.

I had been warned earlier in the day that the star was feeling unwell and that lunch would be delayed. Eventually, after a three-hour wait, I am ushered up to the star’s suite on an upper floor, where Khan, looking tired, greets me warmly.

He is wearing a slim-fitting black suit, a sky-blue shirt with open-necked white collar and shiny black shoes. He plays with his glasses as we talk.

We go into the sitting room of Khan’s suite, a wood-floored, wood-panelled room with armchairs grouped around a coffee table and windows overlooking the street below. The hotel has set up a small buffet table, and a waiter puts rice and chicken curry on a plate for Khan, who normally spurns carbs to maintain his six-pack. He has made an exception for this lunch.

I ask the waiter for chicken and rice with extra lentils and salad on the side. We eat with our plates in our laps, until Khan breaks off to light a cigarette. More:

Pakistan’s secret weapon: A diplomat who can read facess

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on February 26, 2010

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From The New York Times news blog, The Lede:

In advance of talks in New Delhi on Thursday between Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart, Salman Bashir — which touched on a number of sensitive issues — a Pakistani newspaper suggested that Mr. Bashir’s delegation included a secret weapon: a diplomat “who can read the faces of people and predict what they are actually thinking and feeling — an art known as physiognomy.” More:

Below, the report in The News, a Pakistani newspaper:

When Pakistani negotiators start their dialogue with the Indians in New Delhi on Wednesday, they will be informally helped by one of their team members who can read the faces of people and predict what they are actually thinking and feeling — an art known as physiognomy.

Director-General for South Asia, Afrasiab Hashmi, may turn out to be a treasured guide for the country’s delegation by reading the faces of the Indian negotiators.Few people know about the God-gifted quality of Hashmi. He is an expert in judging a person’s character or personality from that mans facial characteristics and structure. Physiognomy and its practice dates back to the ancient Greece but was abandoned later.

Hashmi is said to have harboured this skill by birth, not learning through any special courses. It becomes very difficult to hide one’s inner-self in front of Hashmi, people close to him say, though he gives his frank opinions only to frank friends. More:

Mystical form of Islam suits Sufis in Pakistan

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on February 26, 2010

in Culture, Faith, Politics, Religion and Terrorism

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Sabrina Tavernise from Lahore in The New York Times:

It is Sufism, a mystical form of Islam brought into South Asia by wandering thinkers who spread the religion east from the Arabian Peninsula. They carried a message of equality that was deeply appealing to indigenous societies riven by caste and poverty. To this day, Sufi shrines stand out in Islam for allowing women free access.

In modern times, Pakistan’s Sufis have been challenged by a stricter form of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia. That orthodox, often political Islam was encouraged in Pakistan in the 1980s by the American-supported dictator, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Since then, the fundamentalists’ aggressive stance has tended to eclipse that of their moderate kin, whose shrines and processions have become targets in the war here.

But if last week’s stomping, twirling, singing, drumming kaleidoscope of a crowd is any indication, Sufism still has a powerful appeal. More:

A history of India, as told by the Budget

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on February 26, 2010

in Economy, India and Politics

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From The Wall Street Journal:

Below are excerpts from major national budget speeches in the 63 years of India’s nationhood.

1. 1947-1948

“The long-term effects of the division of the country still remain to be assessed and we are too near the events to take a dispassionate view. When the ashes of controversy have died down, it will be for the future historian to judge the wisdom of the step and its consequences on the destiny of one fifth of the human race.”

–R.K. Shanmukham Chetty, finance minister, Nov.26, 1947

2. 1949-1950

“Although this is the fourth year since the cessation of hostilities, the return of normal conditions, without which it is impossible to expand production and develop trade, seems still as far off as ever. Over large parts of the world, conditions remain disturbed and the progress of recovery from the ravages of the war is painfully slow. In Europe the impasse in Berlin, the civil war in Greece and the emergence of two rival camps among the countries that fought the war as allies are symptomatic of the abnormal conditions which still prevail.”

–John Mathai, finance minister, Feb.28, 1949

Reinvigorating the BJP

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on February 26, 2010

in India and Politics

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Swapan Dasgupta in The Wall Street Journal:

Barely 10 months ago, India’s elites agonized over the possibility that the general election would produce an unstable and fractious coalition government that would jeopardize the country’s economic growth. Today, with a stable government in place and the Congress Party having clearly established its political primacy, Lutyens’ Delhi resonates with whispered concern over the absence of a purposeful opposition.

The concern is based on a string of misgivings. The Manmohan Singh government is perceived to have grown utterly complacent. With inflation having crossed 8% and the price of food having registered a sharper increase, there is a feeling that the government is letting matters slide because it doesn’t fear political opposition and social unrest. There are fears that political considerations are preventing a robust response to the Maoist threat. Finally, in the aftermath of the Copenhagen summit and the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan, there are concerns that the prime minister is obliging the Obama administration excessively.

Since it lost power in 2004, the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s principal opposition party, has lost its earlier appeal among the middle classes and the youth. This erosion of support was a consequence of a tired leadership, internal feuding, the pursuit of a policy of blind obstruction to all government initiatives and a failure to check sectarian hotheads identified with its Hindu nationalist ideology. From being a party of conservative Middle India, the BJP ceded its centrist space to the Congress Party. In recent months, it has been paralysed by a failure to counter the appeal of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress heir-apparent. More:

The tallest short man

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on February 26, 2010

in India and Politics

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In The Hindustan Times, Sumit Mitra profiles veteran politician Pranab Mukherjee:

Pranab Mukherjee

But, more importantly, PKM, as he is called by his colleagues in affection and awe, is a consummate politician. It is a badge that unfortunately very few contemporary politicians can wear. (A.B. Vajpayee is an exception, but he is no longer a contemporary.) It is Mukherjee’s razor-sharp political judgement that overshadows the minor question marks — such as his being a closet dirigiste, not to speak of his mercurial temper or his home-grown English, which the smart set of his party has named ‘Pranabese’. But it is a pleasure to hear the argument that rings out of his misplaced sibilants, subtly structured, brilliantly argued, and delivered with a rich cadence.

It was left to another master politician, Indira Gandhi, to discover this little master when, in 1969, Mukherjee, as a member of the Bangla Congress, a breakaway Congress group, delivered in the Rajya Sabha a speech that foreshadowed the vivisection of Pakistan — still two years ahead. Maybe Indira thought how could this five foot wonder, son of a freedom fighter from faraway Birbhum, peep into her innermost thoughts. Within a year Mukherjee and his faction was in the Congress. As a junior minister with independent charge of revenue and banking departments, he was quickly making headlines with a crackdown on the then Bombay smuggling underworld don who had become a law unto himself. Haji Mastan, whom he got arrested, was the inspiration behind emerging superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s cult movie of the time, Deewar.

Indira hit it off so well with her favourite find that, after her return to power in 1980 from the post-Emergency oblivion,

she promptly dispatched the grave and stodgy R. Venkataraman from the Ministry of Finance to Defence and, in January 1982, led Mukherjee to the room in North Block that he’d love most through the rest of his career. More:

India and Pakistan: The potholes

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on February 26, 2010

in India, Pakistan and Terrorism

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In The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan analyses the first official talks between India and Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks:

So accident-prone and politically fraught is the relationship between India and Pakistan that conventional diplomatic metrics for measuring the success or failure of a meeting between them must invariably be discarded for more esoteric markers.

The absence of a joint statement or joint press conference at the end of Thursday’s meeting of the two foreign secretaries clearly meant the bilateral gulf was still enormous. But the fact that Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir spoke of taking small first steps, stopping the “regression” in the relationship and rebuilding confidence and trust suggested their encounter had served its original purpose: of opening a path for a new process of engagement. More:

The 200 Club

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on February 25, 2010

in India and Sport

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The Indian Express front page

India superstar Sachin Tendulkar superbly smashed one-day cricket’s first 50-over double century. Below, from The Indian Express (click on the image to read the Express report on how Sachin prepared for the knock):

In the end, there seemed to be only one force of nature that could have stopped Sachin Tendulkar from reaching the first double century in one-day internationals: Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s inability to get the delivery away for anything less than a boundary. That was apt. Tendulkar owns many records, but they have never been just a matter of numbers. So it is that he again affirmed his special place in cricket by not allowing, in those final overs, any anxiety about the record change the drift of play. His partner was straining to give him the strike, but Tendulkar’s batting did not betray a temptation to get the strike by passing up an opportunity for a run. More:

From The Times of India report headlined “Sachin Tendulkar immortal at 200″:

If devout worshippers had any reason to quibble, it was that there was no one record-shattering innings – Brian Lara has the highest Test score of 400 and Saeed Anwar and the little-known Charles Coventry shared the ODI record of 194.

Just 147 balls later, Tendulkar set the record straight in emphatic fashion. A staggering 2,961 matches and almost 39 years after the first ODI was played – and remember, many ODIs in the early years featured innings of 60 overs each, which gave batsmen more scoring opportunities – the Little Legend finally became the first cricketer to score 200 in a one-dayer, propelled by a record 25 fours in one knock. More:

M.F. Husain gets Qatar nationality

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on February 25, 2010

in Art, Culture, India, Religion and Society

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A section of the page from The Hindu website. The caption reads: "The black-and-white line drawing eminent artist M.F. Husain shared with The Hindu. Though this exemplar of secular art did not apply for it, he was conferred citizenship by Qatar."

N. Ram in The Hindu:

M.F. Husain, India’s greatest and most celebrated artist, has been conferred Qatar nationality – something that is very rarely given. The artist gave me this news from Dubai early Wednesday morning by reading out the few lines he had written on a black-and-white line drawing that he released to The Hindu.

“Honoured by Qatar nationality” but deeply saddened by his enforced exile and the need now to give up the citizenship of the land of his birth, which he has lovingly and secularly celebrated in his art covering a period of over seven decades. India does not allow dual citizenship, even though it has instituted the category of the ‘Overseas Indian Citizen.’ Mr. Husain will no doubt seek to acquire OIC status after completing the due procedures.

It is important to note that Mr. Husain did not apply for Qatar nationality and that it was conferred upon him at the instance of the modernising emirate’s ruling family. More:

Also in The Hindu: Art under fire by Chitra Padmanabhan

Casualty and Holby perform ‘Jai Ho’

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on February 24, 2010

in Entertainment and Music

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From BBC:

When Jewish women were the leading ladies of Indian cinema

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on February 24, 2010

in Culture, Entertainment, India and Movies

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Above, Nadira a.k.a. Florence Ezekiel in Raj Kapoor’s Shri 420.

From Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture (via Ultrabrown):

Rose Ezra. Ruby Myers. Farhat Ezekiel Nadira. From the earliest years of Bollywood, these and other Jewish actresses garnered starring roles. And while they may have looked somewhat exotic to moviegoers, they came from Baghdadi Jewish families who had been living in India for decades. Reporter Eric Molinsky speaks to film scholars, as well as friends and relatives of these once-beloved but now mostly forgotten stars of Indian cinema, to find out how they became the “go-to girls” for leading female roles in the 1920s, ’30s, and beyond.

Click here to listen to fascinating lecture.

Bringing it all back home

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on February 23, 2010

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Does the astonishing volume of global remittances redeem the moral ambiguities of migrant labour? In camps, hospitals, beauty parlours and under doormats, John Gravois watches the money move. From The National:

Down the glass-fronted row of exchange houses along Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Street – the city’s unofficial remittance district, where hundreds of security cameras monitor a long, intermittent border-fence of plexiglas teller windows – Maridel Estrelles walked briskly one recent afternoon carrying a glossy faux-leather handbag and, as usual, a wallet full of other people’s money. Trying to keep pace alongside her was a young Bangladeshi man in a spread-collared shirt named Zilani, who carried a small, scuffed laptop folio with flimsy turquoise piping. They were rushing to catch a taxi to the Musaffah Industrial District, 30 minutes away, hoping to arrive there ahead of the clattering buses bound home for the labour camps at sundown.

A wholesomely pretty, disarmingly charismatic Filipina, Estrelles was dressed in a modest acrylic sweater, pale blue jeans and sandals, which slapped the pavement in double time as she walked. Without breaking stride, she called out cheerily to a cluster of blue-jumpsuited Bangladeshi construction workers sitting tiredly on a kerb, who blinked before recognising her and waving back. “Customers,” she explained, before stepping into traffic on Hamdan Street. More:

Power plant in a box

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on February 23, 2010

in Innovation, Science and Technology

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Watch CBS News Videos Online

India-born scientist-CEO K.R. Sridhar has unveiled his “Bloom Box,” a power plant in a box that could eliminate the traditional grid. He provided a sneak peek over the weekend.

Sridhar is the principal co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy. Prior to founding the company, Dr. Sridhar was a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona.

Dr. Sridhar received his Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering with Honors from the University of Madras, India, as well as his M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Below, from The Times of India:

At its heart, Sridhar’s Bloom Box claims to be a game-changing fuel cell device that consists of a stack of ceramic disks coated with secret green and black “inks.” The disks are separated by cheap metal plates. Stacking the ceramic disks into a bread loaf-sized unit, says Sridhar, can produce one kilowatt of electricity, enough to power an American home – or four Indian homes.

The unit can be scaled up, installed anywhere, and be connected to an electrical grid just like you would connect your PC to the Internet. Hydrocarbons such as natural gas or biofuel (stored separately) are pumped into the Bloom Box to produce clean, scaled-up, and reliable electricity. The company says the unit does not vibrate, emits no sound, and has no smell, although Sridhar admits to some initial, but minor, glitches at some installations.

A hoax it is not, although some are suggesting there is a lot of hype around the launch — somewhat like with that of the Segway transporter that was much bally-hooed but did not live up to its billing. As with Segway, the big catch right now is cost. Large-sized Bloom Boxes of the kind installed at some Silicon Valley campuses costs around $ 700,000 to $ 800,000. Sridhar estimates that a Bloom Box for the residential market could be out within a decade for as little as $3,000 to produce electricity 24/7/365. “In five to ten years, we would like to be in every home,” Sridhar told CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday night. More:

The sneak peak has generated a lot of buzz on the net: See here, here, here

Sunderbans will drown in 60 years

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on February 23, 2010

in Bangladesh, Climate change, India, Wildlife and environment

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From The Times of India:

The World Wildlife Fund has warned that days are numbered for much of the sensitive Sunderbans eco-system and in 60 years vast tracts of the rare mangrove forests, home to the Bengal tiger, will be inundated by the rising sea.

The study, focussed on Sunderbans in Bangladesh, says the sea was rising more swiftly than anticipated by

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 and would rise 11.2 inches (above 2000 levels) by 2070. This would result in shrinkage of the Bangladesh Sunderbans by 96% within half a century, reducing the tiger population there to less than 20, said the study.

Unlike previous efforts, WWF’s deputy director of conservation science Colby Loucks and his colleagues used a high-resolution digital elevation model with eight estimates of sea level rise to predict the impact on tiger habitat and population size. The team was able to come up with the most accurate predictions till date by importing over 80,000 Global Positioning System (GPS) elevation points. More:

Click here to read the report: Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh’s Sunderbans Mangroves

Image of Sunderbans mangrove forest from Kolkatabirds

Nilam’s story

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on February 22, 2010

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Kunda Dixit at Nepali Times:

Every once in a while, travelling through Nepal, you come across a sight so incongruous that you have to blink your eyes to believe it.

We were in Gaighat, there was some chukka jam or other, and there were no vehicles on the streets. Neighbourhood children were playing badminton on the dusty road. Suddenly, there was the deep reverberating sound of a heavy-duty motorcycle.

A woman, dressed in jeans and T-shirt was driving past in a 123 cc Enticer. Sitting behind her was another woman carrying a bag. They roared off in a cloud of dust and parked alongside a building down the road. I learnt that she was Najbul Khan Nilam with a colleague from a battered women’s shelter called Muldhar.

Nilam, 33, is an iconoclast. As a Muslim woman living in rural eastern Nepal and being an activist for women’s empowerment is not an easy thing to be. And it is her own personal history has brought her this far. From her childhood, Nilam bore the brunt of the triple discrimination of what women from her community have to put up with it from family, community and society. But there was something in her genes that made Nilam rebel. More:

Dalit food: The poor man’s palate

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on February 22, 2010

in Food and India

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Vikram Doctor in The Economic Times:

Mary was a little diffident, wondering if I would really like it. She brought out a small bowl of what looked like chopped long beans, but whitish, and in a rich brown gravy. They were goats’ intestines she said, waiting for me to refuse them. But, of course, I didn’t and it was delicious — the slight chewiness was more than made up by the rich, savoury gravy, which had a slight jelly-like thickness. I knew from much eating in Mumbai’s Muslim areas that some organ meats like liver and brain are eaten for their own unique texture, but others are more valued for the rich savour of their juices, and these intestines were like that.

Once she knew I was interested in her food, Mary would happily serve me some, always the really cheap meats she bought. Another time she cooked salt fish curry, and again it was delicious, with a tang that you never get with fresh fish. It was the sort of dish you would never find in a restaurant, partly from genuine constraints — the Taj Group’s Chef Ananda Solomon told me wistfully he would love to serve the Mangalorean salt fish dishes of his childhood at his Konkan Cafe, but doesn’t dare for fear of the smell penetrating and lingering through his hotel kitchen — but also because most customers would not order what they saw as poor people’s food.

I thought of Mary’s food when I read that the Dalit poet and activist Namdeo Dhasal has started a restaurant. Dhasal has done this due to the financial problems he’s been facing, and it sounds like a regular place serving North Indian style kebabs and curries, but apparently he also plans to serve lesser known dishes like a curry of harandodi flowers and vazri, which is intestines and tripe (the stomachs of ruminants). These are dishes typically associated with Dalits, or more generally, the poor who could not afford other foods, and I think there is a real niche here if Dhasal wants to develop it. More:

Indian Mujahideen

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on February 22, 2010

in India and Terrorism

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From The Indian Express:

They announced their arrival in 2008 with a bang, literally, claiming credit for a series of blasts that shook cities like Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and the unexploded bombs in Surat. And they were thought to have been largely neutralised within months, with a large number of foot soldiers and some leaders arrested or killed and the rest going underground or fleeing the country. The Indian Mujahideen seemed to have disappeared from the terror map as mysteriously as it had emerged on it. But last week’s bomb blast in Pune, once an IM hub and hideout, has focused the spotlight again on the homegrown Islamist terror outfit even though there is little evidence so far to prove its role in the attack.

The reasons are not hard to comprehend. The Pune attack is the first in 14 months since the November 26, 2008, Lashkar-e-Toiba outrage in Mumbai. While the larger geopolitical events in the AfPak region and their implications for India have been obvious for some time now, shades of grey have dominated the database of security agencies as far as intelligence about what remained of the networks and sleeper cells of Lashkar and its extension, IM. Top police and intelligence officials are, in fact, candid in private when asked if IM is history or if it still retains the ability to spring a surprise like it may have in Pune. Their answer: “We are not sure”. More:

Salman Rushdie: Amnesty International is morally bankrupt

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on February 22, 2010

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From The Sunday Times:

The Booker prize-winning author Salman Rushdie has accused Amnesty International of “moral bankruptcy” for working with a former terror suspect from Britain.

Rushdie, whose plight was championed by Amnesty when he was placed under a fatwa by the Iranian regime for his novel The Satanic Verses, said the charity had done “incalculable damage” to its reputation by collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay, and his organisation Cageprisoners.

His accusation follows the suspension this month of Gita Sahgal, a senior Amnesty official, who raised concerns about the organisation’s links to Begg and Islamists. More:

And below, from The Times, London:

The conscience stifled by Amnesty

When Gita Sahgal questioned the human rights group’s links to Islamic radicals, it suspended her. Now she fears for her safety

Amnesty International has made its name as a champion of free speech, campaigning on behalf of prisoners who have spoken out against oppressive regimes around the world. But when it comes to speaking up about the organisation itself … well, that seems to be a different story.

Last week Gita Sahgal, a highly respected lifelong human rights activist and head of Amnesty’s gender unit, told The Sunday Times of her concerns about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organisation headed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo internee.

Since his release in 2005, Begg has spoken alongside Amnesty at a number of events and accompanied the organisation to a meeting at Downing Street last month. Sahgal felt the closeness of the relationship between Amnesty and Cageprisoners — which appears to give succour to those who believe in global jihad — was a threat to Amnesty’s integrity. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment,” she wrote to Amnesty’s leaders following the Downing Street visit. More:

Punjabi Idol

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on February 21, 2010

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Ahmedabad: An old city’s new approach

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on February 21, 2010

in India and Travel

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From The Wall Street Journal:

Ahmedabad: It’s easy to love a city where residents make sure to feed the birds. More than 120 bird feeders, known as chabutara, are scattered throughout the oldest neighborhoods of Ahmedabad, founded in 1411. Why do these creatures get so much attention? “They are innocent souls,” replies my guide.

The care and feeding of tourists is a more recent phenomenon. Long overshadowed by Rajasthan, its palace-filled and perpetually self-promoting neighbor, India’s western state of Gujarat has been slow to market the attractions of its biggest city, whose population exceeds five million. But it’s a surprisingly satisfying destination, including some outstanding museums, memorable walking tours (held both day and night) and delectably nuanced vegetarian cuisine.

With an eye to the city’s 600th anniversary next year, a growing number of entrepreneurs, social activists and public officials are gunning for a United Nations designation as a World Heritage City by revitalizing the older section, east of the Sabarmati River. (West of the river is a city of high-rises and malls, noted for its pharmaceutical and chemical industries and educational institutions.) More:

The wedding sleuth

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on February 21, 2010

in Culture, India and Society

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An AP report from New Delhi:

Ajit Singh knows about the lies people tell.

He has followed them through the littered, mildewed mazes of New Delhi’s middle class neighborhoods. He has photographed them as they leave their lovers’ apartments. He hears them exaggerate their salaries and hide their illnesses.

A thin man in an ill-fitting suit, Singh works out of a crowded office around the corner from a muffler shop. An incense stick burns behind his desk. A sign in slightly fractured English warns the staff: ”Walls Has Ears And Eyes Too. BE ALERT.”

Singh has spent years honing his skills: disguise, surveillance, misdirection. With just a few minutes’ notice, he can deploy teams nearly anywhere across the country.

Because in modern India, where centuries of arranged marriages are being replaced by unions based on love, emotion and anonymous Internet introductions, where would a wedding be without a private detective? More:

The many charms of Koregaon Park

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on February 21, 2010

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Sunanda Mehta in The Indian Express. Image Arul Horizon:

Ma Amrit Sadhna of the Osho Commune remembers the time when two majestic banyan trees on either side of the road, and not the two petrol pumps, were Koregaon’s landmarks. “I miss their presence every time I take this road,” says the sanyasin who is also a member of the Commune’s management committee.

The change at the entrance is perhaps symbolic of the transformation that Koregaon has undergone over the years, turning the tranquil, green and peaceful area into one bustling with shops, tourists and eateries.

“Everyone asks me why Osho came to Pune and why he chose Koregaon Park to establish his commune. The answer to the first question is: nobody knows. It is a mystery. And the answer to the second question is that it was chance. His disciples were looking for a spacious bungalow where he could stay and where people could come to meditate. Way back in 1974, Koregaon Park really looked like a park. With sprawling mansions, big gardens and quiet streets lined with huge banyan trees carrying the wisdom of the centuries within their solid trunks, it appeared to be the right setting for meditation,” says Sadhna. More:

So how much do Americans like your country?

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on February 20, 2010

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Gallup’s annual country ratings:

[via 3quarksdaily]

My life as an extra

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on February 20, 2010

in Entertainment, India, Movies and Music

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Shubhangi Swarup in Open:

My career as an extra began when my friend, who was directing a music video on a shoestring budget, desperately sought fillers-in for her nightclub sequence. For free. With good intentions, I washed and conditioned my hair, wore a slinky dress at 9 am and showed up. Only to be insulted by the make-up dudes, who thought my hair needed re-doing and caked my face like the Joker from Batman.

If watching life pass by is a hobby of yours, then I would recommend the patient, thought-provoking job of an ‘extra’. On the music video set that day, while I tried to catch up with my favourite author Naguib Mahfouz, some models snorted a line of coke or two (for inspiration, I’m assuming). As your role increases, the pressure to be inspired does too.

When it was time for my two minutes of fame—a shot where I try to seduce the singer away from his lady love—I screwed it up royally. I had to sing the following lyrics in a seductive way: ‘O mere raja, paas to aaja, dono milke naachenge.’ (Oh my king, come closer, let’s dance together.) My laughter got worse each time I’d repeat the lyrics, and I just couldn’t get myself to look into his eyes and sing those words with a straight face. In the end I was in splits, with tears in my eyes. More:

also read Adventures of Shubhangi