Archive for the 'Society' Category

Why India loves Facebook

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on March 17, 2010
in Culture, India, Society and Technology
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Tunku Varadarajan at The Daily Blog:

The social-networking giant has opened its first-ever office in Asia—in the country where being all up in one another’s business is practically a birthright.

Facebook and Indians have a magnetic connection. Everyone in my family in India except my father—who, at 77, is entitled to his suspicions of the medium—is a Facebook user. Every single friend of mine in India—except for an eccentric Bengali writer who idolizes a 19th-century British viceroy, Lord Curzon, for which reason he cannot be said to have come to terms with the modern world—is a Facebook user.

Every single friend of mine of Indian origin, anywhere in the world, is a Facebook user. And a great number of my Facebook “friends” are Indians who, having read my journalism, or seen my name on a sibling’s or (genuine) friend’s page, have sought me out and “friended” me as a reflexive act of connection; and being of Indian origin myself, I’ve always found it infernally hard—if not virtually impossible—to say “no.” More:

God and the gospel of globalisation

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on March 4, 2010
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Against all hope, secularism remains a myth. Meera Nanda in Himal Southasian. Meera Nanda’s most recent book is “The God Market: How globalization is making India more Hindu (2010)”.

Asha Dangol / Himal Southasian

The defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s general elections last year was greeted with relief by secularists and democrats everywhere. Not entirely unreasonably: they read the fact that the BJP lost a solid 3.4 percent of its previous poll share as evidence that Indian voters had rejected the majoritarian politics of Hindu pride and prejudice, peddled by the BJP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar. The general consensus is that the ideology of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, has lost its appeal among the urban youth and middle classes – that secularism has won and “God has left politics,” to borrow the elegant title of a recent essay by Delhi journalist Hartosh Singh Bal. Market reforms and globalisation emerge as the stars of this saga. Both the friends and critics of the BJP agree that it is the fervour for making money in India’s roaring economy that doused the flames of Hindu nationalism from the hearts of the middle classes. But that is not all. The ‘free’ market, we are told by a section of influential Dalit intellectuals, will not only free India from the menace of communal violence, but will also lift the curse of caste oppression. It is fair to say that the gospel of globalisation is gaining ground in India.

The story about how the markets defeated the BJP goes as follows. Hindutva appealed to the middle classes and youth back in the bad-old-days of the 1980s and 1990s, when these groups were feeling beleaguered and angry due to the failures of Nehruvian socialism and ‘pseudo-secularism’, which, in their view, gave undue preference to Muslim and Christian minorities. But in the nearly two decades of economic liberalisation and foreign investments that began in the early 1990s, India has witnessed a great burst of economic growth. As a result, the Hindu middle classes are angry no more. Far from feeling beleaguered and discriminated against, they have become more cosmopolitan, more self-confident, and more willing to take on global challenges and seek out global opportunities. Indeed, so confident is the Great Indian Middle Class that it has claimed the 21st century as India’s Century. And so the critics ask: What use can such forward-looking people possibly have for the past glories of Hinduism, about which the stodgy old men in khaki shorts keep harping? This story has found great favour among the self-proclaimed Friends of the BJP, who want the party to drop Hindutva altogether, or at least to make it sound less communal, and emerge as a ‘normal’ pro-market, pro-defence, anti-‘minority-appeasement’, right-of-centre party. More:

The blight of Hindustan

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on March 3, 2010
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Namit Arora at Shunya’s Notes:

How the institution of caste took root and spread is still a hotly debated question among scholars, but its story begins c. 1500 BCE with the arrival of the Indo-Aryans into what is now Pakistan. Data from disciplines like linguistics, philology, and archaeology strongly suggests that these bands of nomadic pastoralists came from further west. Upon arrival, they encountered long settled rural communities, which were perhaps divided into subgroups based on occupation, much like guilds—in the sense that the subgroups were not hierarchical, hereditary, or endogamous. The Indo-Aryans, whose culture became dominant, introduced into the region their social pyramid with three classes, or varnas: the Brahmins (priests and teachers), the Kshtriyas (warriors and rulers), and the Vaishyas (traders and merchants). They added a fourth varna after their arrival: the Shudras (laborers and artisans). All four varnas appear in the earliest known Indo-Aryan text, the Rig Veda, and were no doubt a feature of the emerging Vedic society.

As the settled indigenous communities became part of the early Vedic society, they also adopted its principle of hierarchy, turning their own occupational subgroups into castes, or jatis. The principle of hierarchy, proposed Dumont, had to do with ritual ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ that members of each occupational subgroup were assigned at birth. The highest ‘purity’ points went to those with religious, intellectual, and administrative pursuits, the lowest to workers associated with dead bodies, human waste, tanneries, butchery, street cleaning, and such—most of these were in fact deemed too low to be part of the varna system at all, i.e., they were considered outcastes. Stated differently, ‘purity’ became a means of codifying social power relations using Brahminical ‘knowledge’. More:

Get a womb: Gay couples outsource Indian mothers

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on March 1, 2010
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Saritha Rai from Bangalore at GlobalPost:

In a building smack in the middle of chaotic Hyderabad, an hour’s flight from Bangalore, 29-year-old American Brad Fister recently got acquainted with the delirious joy of first-time parenthood.

Fister and his partner Michael Griebe, who own a computer business in Kentucky, contracted a womb from an Indian surrogate mother thousands of miles away in Hyderabad. Their daughter Ashton, conceived in a laboratory out of Fister’s sperm and an anonymous donor’s egg, was born in mid-February.

India has long been the go-to destination for a diversity of outsourced tasks such as answering customer service calls, online tech support and high-end technology services.

Now Americans — and increasingly gay American couples — are follwing American corporations into the world of oursourcing. More:

M.F. Husain gets Qatar nationality

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on February 25, 2010
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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

The wedding sleuth

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on February 21, 2010
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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:

Pre-marital sex: Rural youth more active

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on February 20, 2010
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From The Indian Express:

New Delhi: Rural youth have more pre-marital sex than their urban counterparts. The less educated are more likely to cast their vote and India’s youth is ill-prepared for employment in a globalised economy. It is information like this that the government hopes will help it understand the ‘vulnerability’ facing the nation’s youth.

In a first of its kind study, researchers and policy makers have tracked key phases in a person’s life, especially concerning health, marriage, civic participation, pre-marital sexual activity and work force participation. The consolidated data of the study — conducted in six states — will be launched by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday.

Youth in India: Situation and Needs is the first ‘sub-nationally representative’ study undertaken by the government to track key transitions experienced by young people in six states in India. More:

A transgender beauty contest

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on February 20, 2010
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Parizaad Khan in Mint-Lounge:

Getting ready to go on stage. Image: Mint

Ritu is a Mumbai girl brought up in Goregaon and Mira Road. She was born a man but as an adolescent she realized that being in a man’s body did not make her one. Luckily for Ritu, her south Indian parents were supportive and understanding—they didn’t tell her not to dress like a woman and her mother often helps her pick out which sari to wear.

Ritu, who loves dancing, became a bar dancer and was one till the ban on dancers in 2005. Recently, she got the chance she had been waiting for—to walk the ramp.

Indian Super Queen, a transgender beauty pageant, was meant to be a way for hijras (eunuchs) to take pride in themselves and show their unity. At first, it smelt like a revolution. For people who had been feared and marginalized for decades, what better way to assert their humanity than by having an in-your-face celebration of their uniqueness? More:

An Indian social democracy?

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on February 13, 2010
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India’s economic reforms have freed it from an era of punitive taxation and stifling regulation. The challenge now is to establish an inclusive social contract that cuts across divisions. Sunil Khilnani in Mint-Lounge:

A peculiar outcome of what many have called the “crisis of capitalism” over the past two years is that it has left capitalism remarkably unscathed. Indeed if anything, the recent shocks to this, our least-bad economic system, have worked to reinforce many of its less good aspects.

Here in India, much has been made of the fact that the economy has gracefully survived the recession. Both the Indian government and our corporate managements responded nimbly, and the companies are now well placed to take advantage of new opportunities. That is all to the good.

Yet the language of crisis can also be a means of manipulation. Over the last two years, it’s been used to eliminate competition and consolidate sectors of the economy in the form of a few, massive players. After the global shake-out among investment banks, airlines and the automobile industry, the surviving players are not just big. They’re secure in the knowledge that they’re far too big to fail. Meanwhile they’ve parlayed the uncertainty about the financial climate into a trumping argument against worker concerns. They’ve pared costs, shed labour, reduced employment security. And now the citizen as consumer has less choice, the citizen as worker has more uncertainty, and a paradox has been laid bare. More:

My name is Khan. This movie isn’t for me

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on February 13, 2010
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Ayesha Khan in The Indian Express:

So, I debate: should I now watch My Name is Khan, with its catchy tagline: “My name is Khan and I am not a Terrorist”. The tagline hurts. It insults.

Incidentally, my surname is Khan. And I know that a name like that needs lots of explaining. While I managed to rent a flat in the so-called cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Ahmedabad that is barred for Muslims, by paying more — about 50 per cent more — than the rest because I am a Khan. It was fine for a year till I renewed the rent lease recently. The building president, two days ago, asked me to pay up a month’s rent as “brokerage” for renewing the lease for the flat that she has nothing to do with — an absolutely unheard practice, which I refused. Otherwise, she said she would tell all that I am a Muslim and get me thrown out. Incidentally, the flat owner is decent and asked me to stay put, the neighbours are sweet. They are least concerned about my surname and more interested in my profession — that of a journalist.

But the building president thinks that a public revelation of my surname — Khan, which speaks of my religion — is leverage enough to get the flat vacated. I am curious to find out what happens next, and am ready for another bout of silent fights. More:

Kabul makeover

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on February 11, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Fashion, Society, Terrorism and Women
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Reality-TV shows like Afghan Model are rewiring Afghan culture—for better and for worse. Kim Barker in The Atlantic:

Anita Khalwat wears heavy makeup, fake eyelashes, and a green spangly head scarf, loose dress, and pants fit for an Afghan wedding. But she’s no bride. She’s a warrior in heels and metallic nail polish, preparing to appear on Afghan Model, a new TV show that aims to find the top fashion star in a war-torn nation where neither of the two main languages has a word for “model,” and where threats by the TV-hating, women-loathing Taliban have turned an appearance before the cameras on a rickety, rainbow-lit white stage into a political statement.

“Hide your hair today,” one judge, Hozair Amiri, tells Khalwat before a recent taping. “Please.”

Khalwat, her green head scarf showing off a good part of her highlighted brown hair, looks at Amiri almost fiercely. With less than perfectly white teeth, a generous nose, an average body, and a hip thrust more fitting for a hockey rink than for a runway, the 23-year-old Khalwat would never make the tryouts for America’s Next Top Model, the Tyra Banks vehicle that Afghan Model tries to emulate. More:

50 reasons NOT to marry a Bengali man

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on February 7, 2010
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From The Telegraph, Calcutta:

10. They expect women to serve them at the dinner table. At least she should be urging him on to the right bowls.

11. They expect the women will carry the dirty dishes to the sink, clear the table and put away the remnants in the right containers.

12. If they do put the food away, the fridge looks like a battlefield, with several things dismembered, dismantled and oozing liquids. In any case, they would never clean the refrigerator. Ditto for the cooking gas.

13. When they are drunk they invoke Robi Thakur. Then they tend to go for the cosmic, namely, Debabrata’s rendition of Akash bhora surjo tara, after which they have dinner.

14. But then when they are sober why are they still discussing Sachin Tendulkar versus Sourav Ganguly, and backing Dada to win?

15. In public, they admire Nandita Das. In secret, they want to be Salman Khan.

16. Rare is the Bengali man who looks good in a formal suit. He stops midway into it. He looks square. Or round. But proud. If you ask him why, he is likely to say that intellect is inversely proportional to height in his part of the world. He can be smug, very smug. More:

And, 50 reasons not to marry a Bengali woman

45. She tries too hard not to look Bengali. She will never have the Punjabi oomph, or the south Indian sensuality. But she will persist in trying. What’s more, she will tell you with a big smile that so and so storewallah thought she was a Punjabi today. Contradict at your own risk!

44. Like the accomplished women of Pride and Prejudice, they all sing Rabindrasangeet and Nazrulgeeti, dance, paint and recite poetry. God help you if she takes her talent seriously.

43. She will never get along with your mother. It is a matter of principle.

42. They will pet and spoil their husbands like overgrown babies and then they’ll ask you not to be a mamma’s boy. The truth is they’d rather you be a “wifey’s pet”.

41. They hate being second to your mother but are still far too controlled by their own mothers.

40. They remove gift wrappers for hours and then preserve the paper under the mattress. If she had her way, she would keep the sellotape too.

39. She won’t leave a single mirror free of stick-on bindis. More:

To which Anvar Alikhan in Outlook adds some more:

1) She will give you a silly pet name (Oltu, Poltu, etc); 2) She will buy you a monkey cap and bed socks for winter; 3) She will feed you Hilsa, which is a unique experience, like trying to eat barbed wire through a mouthful of fish mousse:4) She will throw away your precious World War II movie collection, and replace it with her own collection of Tarkovsky films…More:

 

Attacks on Indians in Australia: Is it racism?

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on February 6, 2010
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Rod McGuirk, The Associated Press, from Canberra:

Discerning the truth, amid the back and forth, has proven difficult.

The controversy comes amid explosive growth in the foreign student population in Australia. The Indians have grown the fastest, from 2,700 in 2002 to 91,400 last year. Overall, overseas students rose from 150,000 to almost 400,000 during the same period.

Australian universities expect Indian enrollment to plummet 30 percent this year, in part because of safety fears.

No doubt there is racism in Australia, as in virtually every society. Researchers have found that one in 10 adults here could be described as racist, a proportion that is not negligible, said University of Western Sydney geographer Kevin Dunn.

“It’s good that they’re a minority of people, but what’s bad is if we deny that that’s out there, and secondly, that we don’t do anything about it,” he said. “My concern is the Indians are right in saying that on those latter two points, we’ve got a problem.”

To what degree racism is behind the attacks is another question. More:

Bollywood’s first gay screen kiss

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on February 4, 2010
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The poster of Dunno Y ... Na Jaane Kyun

From BBC:

The director of a Bollywood film featuring the first male gay kiss in mainstream Indian cinema expects censors to pass the film for release.

Sanjay Sharma made Dunno Y … Na Jaane Kyun (Don’t Know Why) after a High Court ruling overturned a law against homosexuality in India last year.

“At the moment I’m not thinking about any political or censor problems,” Sharma told BBC Asian Network.

The release of Bollywood’s answer to Brokeback Mountain is planned for May.

So what if you aren’t Shah Rukh, you can still be an ass

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on February 4, 2010
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In Outlook, Shefalee Vasudev on fair skin fetish:

Why do Bollywood stars, who claim to be global-local ambassadors of new India, agree to become brand ambassadors of products without being absolutely sure they are hundred per cent safe? Katrina Kaif, who is naturally fair, sells Olay’s Natural White. Preity Zinta, another fair lady, was not so long back the face of Fem’s Herbal Bleach. “It is not a bleach, it is a breakthrough,” said the ad. Wow! Sonam Kapoor sells L’Oreal’s White Perfect and Deepika Padukone sells Neutrogena’s Fine Fairness range. John Abraham dimples and offers you a shade card as he tries to convince you to buy Garnier’s Men’s fairness cream.

What’s especially worrying is that terms like ayurveda, natural, herbal, and adjectives like long-lasting, healthy, nourishing and enriching are used in conjunction with fairness products. (‘Herbal bleach’ sounds like such a slap to ayurveda!) More:

Curry bashing?

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Do the recent attacks against Southasian students in Australia constitute hate crimes or sporadic violence? And has the reaction been more harmful than the incidents themselves? Bina D’Costa, a research fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Justice at the Australian National University, in Himmal Southasian:

The story is actually far more complex than either of the two dominant narratives – on anti-Indian racism and students – would appear to let on. The problems not only appear to go well beyond the education sector, but also include class issues within Southasian communities, and racial tensions between South and West Asian communities. Shortly after the student protests, taxi drivers of Southasian origin demonstrated in Melbourne for their own security; many saying they have long felt unsafe driving at night. While those demonstrations were widely reported in the Australian media, the global media – including in India – did not pay serious attention to the pleas of the taxi drivers. But all the while, there was great focus on the plight of the Southasian students, most of them from relatively well-off families. While some Southasian taxi drivers are also students, the recent attacks, portrayed as targeting only Indian students, created a different kind of anxiety about Australia. Both the press and the middle class in India were able to mobilise critical public opinion to pressure the Australian government to respond to the violence. More:

Down Under, India’s Plunder

An Australian perspective on the recent attacks on Indian students. Jane Rankin-Reid in Tehelka:

First, let’s dump some false assumptions about the so called “lucky country”. Complacency about Australia’s tremendous success as a cohesive multi-cultural new world society is both a good sign that co-existence is second nature in our community, and potentially a bad sign of institutionalised insensitivity towards newer, more swiftly changing migration issues. Still, after decades of vigorous political correctness where official language was combed for all signs of offensiveness towards minorities of any shape or size, it is unsurprising that we Australians think of ourselves as some of the planet’s fairest, most tolerant and open minded individuals. We are, if only because by law, we have to be thoughtful and cooperative with one another. Sorry is our second name. But being sorry is not always enough, as indigenous Australians will testify. More:

Mrs Malik

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on February 1, 2010
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How Pakistan-born Mushaal Mullick fell in love with Kashmiri militant-turned-separatist leader Yasin Malik. From Open:

Mushaal is the kind of face the cameraman would pick up in a packed cricket stadium. She is the sort of girl who would keep as souvenirs the cinema tickets of her first-ever date. She is a girl in whose purse you’d find a mirror, a comb and, perhaps, lip salve. She likes Phil Collins and Shakira, and in poetry her taste varies from Rumi to Sylvia Plath. She is, you’d say if you ever met her, full of life. She has a teenage intensity, if there is any such thing. She writes the way she speaks, and like most youngsters, likes to be on Facebook, adding friends so frantically you would think she is on an undercover mission to make the Facebook server collapse. She writes ‘you’ as ‘u’ and makes careless mistakes such as referring to her school principal as ‘principle’ in emails. The 24-year-old Mushaal was in Delhi recently, with her husband, former militant and now Kashmir’s prominent separatist leader, 43-year-old Yasin Malik. “You could write that Yasin is an Aries and I am a Scorpio,” she told me. And, before I could react, she blurted, “Oh, forget it! It will look so childish.” More:

[Image: Mushaal Mullick website]

Nobel winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan not worthy of phone without deposit

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Amit Roy from London in The Telegraph, Calcutta:

Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan feels he has been deliberately humiliated by the mobile phone company O2 which treated him less favourably than most customers by forcing him to pay a £325 deposit and refusing to budge even after he had explained he was an established scientist with an impeccable record of paying his bills.

“I am actually slightly suspicious that there is an element of racism at play here as well, since I can’t think of a logical reason why I should be denied credit,” said Ramakrishnan, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry, worth $1.4 million, with two other scientists.

The problems began on December 2 last year when Ramakrishnan, a US citizen settled with his wife in Cambridge for the past 10 years, went to a city centre O2 store to buy the highly recommended iPhone 3GS black, 32 Mb.

Ramakrishnan had no difficulty with the young white assistant who served him but the store’s manager insisted he would have to pay a deposit if he wanted the phone. Customers considered credit-worthy are not usually asked to pay such a deposit. More:

Understanding Afghan tribes

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on February 1, 2010
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From The New York Times:

In India, riches breed birthday excess

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Kate Darnton, a writer and editor living in New Delhi, in the Boston Globe:

In the three months we’ve lived here, we have attended seven or eight birthdays for the children of upwardly mobile Indians. Toddler birthday party inflation has Delhi firmly in its grip. In fact, the parties of Boston and Newton can’t hold a candle to the epic extravaganzas of Vasant Vihar, New Delhi. Once you enter past the guards and the ushers, through the arcade of balloons, you are greeted by a buffet of Bar Mitzvah-like largess: dim sum, sushi, pasta, salad, Indian food, kiddy junk galore. There are cakes that rise on remote-controlled elevators, lit by rings of sparklers. There are chocolate fondue fountains, ice cream sundae stations, and endless Indian sweets. As for entertainment, the more, the better: elephant, horse, and camel rides; magic shows; face painters; temporary tattoo artists; train rides; fireworks. When you leave, you are handed not just a goodie bag, but also a wrapped present that will outshine the gift that you had brought for the birthday boy.

Each child attends with an entourage: One mother, clad in designer jeans, heels, and shades, her make-up heavy. She makes a beeline for the lounge area where she’ll air-kiss her girlfriends, then gossip for the remainder of the evening. The occasional dad shows up, still in his business suit. He heads for the opposite corner from his wife, where he’ll talk cricket scores and Sensex prices till it’s time to go. Besides the children, it’s the ayahs who constitute the largest segment of the birthday population. These nannies are usually slight young women who shadow their charges a half-step behind, spoon-feeding them. The nannies themselves are not allowed to eat from the buffet, but receive small boxed dinners to take away. More:

The present state of the gods and goddesses in South Asia

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on January 26, 2010
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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:

In an Indian city, moral police diktat: no lingerie ads

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on January 21, 2010
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A story in The Times of India says activists of a right-wing Hindu outfit are parading the streets of Bhopal asking storekeepers to “tear down hoardings advertising lingerie and cover up mannequins showcasing women’s undergarments.” The storekeepers are being told ‘‘not to display lingerie in public.’’

‘‘Your mannequins should wear sarees, not underwear. From now on, keep all undergarments inside. Show it to the customer when he or she asks for it. Five days from now if undergarments are still hanging outside, we will light a bonfire of the lingerie,’’ threatened the leader of the group.

Bhopal is about 350 km (six-hour drive) from Khajuraho, the temple city famous for erotic sculptures.

The New Expatriate

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Meet the 21st century heirs to the pucca sahibs, angrezi mems, and boxwallahs, haters and half-haters alike. Lakshmi Chaudhry in Open:

The International Frat Boy of Revelry: A subspecies of The Corporate Expat, this is a young man on a mission: to travel far, climb high, and pahrtay!

Most likely to be found: getting drunk and trying to get it on in the company of his expat bros and pretty young Indian things who seem to have mistaken him for Tom Cruise with an expense account.

Most likely to think: An Indian girl will want to marry him the moment they have sex. And if she doesn’t, it’s only because her parents won’t let her do so.

The Neo-colonial Memsahib: Once the privilege of white women in corsets, complaining about the heat, dust and the help (also: pollution, natives, food, filth) has gone multi-culti thanks to the global workplace, offering corporate wives of all ages, race and nationality the equal opportunity to play the ‘gori memsahib’.

Most likely to be found: bemoaning the vicissitudes of Indian life at coffee klatches and happy hours in five-star locales, while their driver waits in the parking lot.

Most likely to think: Basic human decency is an exclusively Western trait. As in, look what good care I take of my dog/maid/child unlike those uncaring, brutish Indians. More:

Children of Hindu, Muslim immigrants in US drawn to hard rock

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on January 10, 2010
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From the Washington Post:

Artwork from the Punjab state of India decorates the Ray family home. A Johann Sebastian Bach statue sits on a piano. But in the basement — cluttered with wires, old concert fliers and drawings — Arjun Ray, 25, is fighting distortion from his electric guitar.

For this son of Indian immigrants, trained in classical violin and raised on traditional Punjab music, getting his three Pakistani American bandmates in sync is the goal on this cold New England evening. Their band, the Kominas, is trying to record a punk rock version of the classic Bollywood song, “Choli Ke Peeche” (“Behind the Blouse”).

“Yeah,” said Shahjehan Khan, 26, one of the band’s guitarists, “there are a lot of contradictions going on here.”

Deep in the woods of this colonial town boils a kind of revolutionary movement. From the basement of this middle-class home tucked in the woods west of Boston, the Kominas have helped launched a small but growing South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement that is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants. It also is drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is “haraam,” or forbidden. More:

Love that crossed borders, religion, cut short by tragedy

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on January 8, 2010
in Culture, India, Pakistan, Politics and Society
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From the Indian Express:

Phagwara, India: She is a Punjabi Brahmin girl from Phagwara, he was a Pakistani Muslim. They met in Dubai, fell in love and married. They then decided to get married according to Hindu rituals as well.

On New Year’s Day, he collapsed in the bathroom of her family home and died. The body was sent across the Wagah border yesterday. She was denied a visa to travel to Pakistan. Had he been alive, their Hindu wedding would have been tomorrow.

Priyanka Sharma of Urban Estate, Phagwara and Muhammad Tariq Hussain of Baramwala village in district Ladhara, Pakistan, had spent the last days of 2009 distributing invitation cards to friends and relatives for the January 8 wedding. Sangeet was on January 6, and Jaago the day after. “Tariq was very excited,” said Priyanka. More

Mumbai Parsis divided on intermarriage

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on January 7, 2010
in Culture, India and Society
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From GlobalPost:

Mumbai: A group of about a dozen young Parsi professionals gather around a table at the Parsi Gymkhana or social club at Marine Lines in Mumbai. They drink Pepsis and snack on toast topped with akuri, a spicy mixture of scrambled eggs and tomatoes, as they wait for others to arrive.

“What’s up, homies?” says 23-year-old Peshotan Kapadia as he makes his entrance. Sporting a goatee, jeans and T-shirt, Kapadia — like the rest of the group — looks like a typical modern young adult.

But despite the modern scene, the group’s underlying purpose is a reflection of their traditional beliefs: to foster marriage between young Parsis.

The group, Zoroastrian Youth for the Next Generation (ZYNG), was launched in mid-December and aims to provide social, cultural and employment opportunities for young people in their community. Zoroastrianism is the religion that the cultural group Parsis follow. More:

Spiritual awakening

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on January 1, 2010
in Books, Culture, Faith, India, Religion and Society
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William Dalrymple in the New Statesman:

On a foggy winter’s night in November 1998, Om Singh, a young landowner from Rajasthan, was riding his Enfield Bullet back home after winning a local election near Jodhpur, when he misjudged a turning and hit a tree. He was killed instantly. As a memorial, his father fixed the motorbike to a stand, raised on a concrete plinth under the shelter of a small canopy, near the site of the crash.

“We were a little surprised when people started reporting miracles near the bike,” Om’s uncle Shaitan Singh told me on my last visit. “Om was no saint, and people say he had had a drink or two before his crash. In fact, there was no indication whatsoever during his life that he was a deity. He just loved his horses and his motorbike. But since his death a lot of people have had their wishes fulfilled here – particularly women who want children. For them, he has become very powerful. They sit on the bike, make offerings to Om Singh-ji, and it is said that flowers drop into their laps. Nine months later they have sons. Every day people see him. He comes to many people in their dreams.”

“How did it all begin?” I asked. We were in the middle of a surging throng: crowds of red-turbaned and brightly sari-ed villagers gathered around the bike, the women queuing patiently to straddle its seat and ring the bell on the canopy. Nearby, two drummers were loudly banging dholaks, while chai-shop owners made tea and paan for the pilgrims. Other stalls sold plaques, postcards and statues of Om Singh and his motorbike. Pieces of cloth were tied to branches all over the tree and gold flags flapped in the desert wind. Everywhere buses and trucks were disgorging pilgrims coming to visit Rajasthan’s newest shrine. More:

Enid Blyton and the post-colonial world

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on December 22, 2009
in Education, India and Society
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Amy Rosenberg in The National:

Ram Advani Booksellers sits in the heart of Hazratganj, an upscale shopping district in Lucknow, India. The store opened in 1947, just a few months before Partition, when Ram Advani fled Lahore, in the newly forming Pakistan, and set up shop in his new (old) country. In a city known at the time for its devotion to highbrow culture, aristocratic pleasures, and courtly manners, the place quickly became a destination and meeting point for the intellectual crowd, and Advani, now 88 and still running the business, acquired a reputation as an erudite host, known particularly for hand-picking recommendations for his customers based on long discussions with them.

Advani’s son, Rukun, who spent much of his childhood in the store, remembers the refinement and polish of the place, the neat rows of books, and the near-constant flow of learned patrons seeking to converse with his father. What he recalls most, however, is the single shelf in the children’s section that prominently displayed the work of the British children’s author Enid Blyton.

“I was all of eight and a half years old in 1964, when I took The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage off the shelf,” says Rukun, who now runs Permanent Black, a well-known publishing house in Delhi. “I hadn’t read anything as good as that book before, ever, so I was hooked and read everything else by Blyton that I could lay my hands on for the next three or so years.”

At the time, Blyton’s books were just starting to become widely available in India, though Ram Advani recalls having seen stray copies in the 1940s and 1950s. (“I stocked these books,” Advani says, “because there was a demand, and it was taken for granted that a store like mine, which kept only books in the English language, would have the whole lot of the Enid Blyton series on hand. I confess I never read them.”) More:

One Pakistani institution places his faith in another

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Business, Economy, Education, Leaders, Pakistan and Society
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Syed Babar Ali, 83, a veteran businessman who helped create the Lahore University of Management and Science, wants to restore merit to Pakistani society. Sabrina Tavernise in the New York Times:

Mr. Ali is an institution in Pakistan. He has started some of the country’s most successful companies. But perhaps his most important contribution has been his role in creating the Lahore University of Management and Science, or L.U.M.S., begun as a business school but now evolved into the approximate equivalent of Harvard University in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s biggest problem, he believes, is one of leadership. A corrosive system of privilege and patronage has eaten away at merit, degrading the fabric of society and making it more difficult for poor people to rise. The growing tendency to see government positions as chances to profit, together with the explosion in the country’s population, has led to a sharp decline in the services that Pakistan’s government offers its people.

“Nobody is bothered about the masses,” Mr. Ali said. More:

The story of a womb

Published
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on December 20, 2009
in Health, India, Science and Society
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In the Sunday Express a report from Anand in Gujarat, India’s surrogacy hub and the story of a woman who rented her womb:

Ramilaben Solanki: "This time I am asking for Rs 5 lakh ($10,000) because I am too weak to keep doing it many more times."

Ramilaben Solanki: "This time I am asking for Rs 5 lakh ($10,000) because I am too weak to keep doing it many more times."

Before she pressed her inked thumb on the contract agreement, they had made Ramilaben Solanki understand that she is a womb. No more, no less. They had told her that the baby would be no part of her flesh and blood. That she was its shell, only a shell.

But sitting in the dark of her single-room, tin-roofed hovel—home to nine more people in her extended family—this 27-year-old domestic help in Gujarat’s Anand is still fighting to come to terms with herself. She thinks that the “pink infant with the golden hair and light brown eyes” of his American father, the one she bore and delivered, had come of her. Not through her.

For seven days and nights after, until the American couple from Wisconsin, US—whose sperm, ovum and money helped make her baby—flew in, Ramila had fed him her milk, sung him to sleep. She had also whispered in his ears that he is Deep, younger brother to her own five-year-old daughter, Deepali. More:

[Photo: The Indian Express]