Tag Archive for ‘Vir Sanghvi’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Vir Sanghvi'

The 26/11 effect: raging against middle class rage

Published

on December 7, 2008

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As they light candles and wave placards post 26/11, Mumbai’s angry elite come under attack from a variety of sources. In the New York Times, Somini Sengupta

Last Wednesday, an extraordinary public interest lawsuit was filed in this city’s highest court. It charged that the government had lagged in its constitutional duty to protect its citizens’ right to life, and it pressed the state to modernize and upgrade its security forces.

The lawsuit was striking mainly for the people behind it: investment bankers, corporate lawyers and representatives of some of India’s largest companies, which have their headquarters here in the country’s financial capital, also known as Bombay. The Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the city’s largest business association, joined as a petitioner. It was the first time it had lent its name to litigation in the public interest.

In Hindustan Times, Vir Sanghvi says middle class anger is spinning out of control

I wrote last week that I had never known such anger in urban India as we have witnessed after the Bombay attacks. Over a week after the attacks ended, the fury has not dissipated. Rather it has spun almost entirely out of control.

I have no problems with anger. It is often the precursor to change. Unless Indians make it clear that they are mad as hell and are not going to take it any longer, the system will never change.

Elsewhere, in The Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta tries to understand this rage

You’d be surprised to realise how it is much more likely you would get away with saying something entirely facetious and silly, but get into trouble when you try making a serious, sincere point. That, at least, has been the story of my life. At a series of public functions in Pakistan several years ago, I said Pakistan was in many ways as imperfect a dictatorship as India was an imperfect democracy: the central argument being that just as India had not been able to accord all its citizens all the freedoms that a democracy of this quality should have, Pakistan had not quite been able to deny their people all the freedoms that a classical dictatorship should have.

Nothing is sacred, nobody is safe

Published

asianwindow

on November 27, 2008

in Conflict, Society and Sport

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In Mint, Vir Sanghvi, a former Mumbai resident, reacts to watching one of his city’s greatest symbols go up in flames

Sometimes a single image has more impact than a hundred tragic stories. That’s how it was with the sight of the twin towers up in flames—symbols of American achievement reduced to rubble by the actions of a small group of jehadis. And that’s how I felt when I saw the dome of the Taj Mahal hotel blazing brightly in the Bombay night.

That image will stay with me for as long as I live. And I think it is forever etched in the minds of anybody who has ever lived in Bombay or loves this greatest of all Indian cities.

To understand the symbolism of the old Taj is to understand the ethos of Bombay. For three decades now, Bombay has been two different cities. The Bombay of the suburbs (defined as anywhere north of Worli or perhaps Parel) is the Bombay you read about: the Bombay of the film industry, the Bombay of many of the communal riots, the Bombay of the newly prosperous professional class, the Bombay of the new malls and the flashy restaurants, the Bombay of the factories and the Bombay of the new dons whose stories so fascinate novelists and the media.

For more on the burning of this iconic Bombay hotel click here.

LK before he leaps

Published

asianwindow

on March 26, 2008

in Leaders

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Vir Sanghvi in the Hindustan Times says L.K. Advani’s memoirs, My Country, My Life, is a readable, rewarding and, often, racy account of his political career, yet the book’s silence on key events is telling

Anybody who has ever interviewed LK Advani will know that he is an unusual Indian politician in the sense that he does not shy away from discussing issues. He is unusual also in that he is comfortable with ideas and happy to conduct an intellectual argument. If he has faults, they lie in his sensitive nature. He is remarkably thin-skinned for a politician, will often take needless offence and equally, will be easily and tearfully overwhelmed. Plus, he is reluctant to cause hurt. Rarely will he say anything bad about any of his colleagues even when the truth might do him more good than the evasions he sometimes resorts to.

Advani’s strengths and weaknesses are captured in his new book, My Country, My Life, (Rupa). It is a readable, rewarding and often racy account of his political career. Written from the heart, it is part-memoir and part-manifesto. But he pulls his punches. And so, his account of his time at the head of his party is only half-complete. Many of the mysteries of the last ten years are not solved and, frequently, we can only guess at the truth by what is left unsaid.

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Also, read our previous post, Inside L.K. Advani’s Mind, here

Hair apparent

Published

asianwindow

on March 2, 2008

in Leaders

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Vir Sanghvi in his Counterpoint column in the Hindustan Times says that unlike in the West where appearance matters, Indian voters don’t really care about how politicians look. So where does this leave Pakistan where politicians like Nawaz Sharif have recently had a hair transplant?

Okay, so it isn’t just me. A few months ago, as the political scene in Pakistan hotted up, Indian TV channels all began telecasting ‘exclusive’ interviews with a man who was described as Nawaz Sharif. I am not an expert on Pakistan but, even to my untutored eye, there was something odd about this Sharif.

It was the hair. The Sharif who had welcomed AB Vajpayee to Lahore had a head like a billiard ball. So distinctive was his baldness that Pakistani papers claimed that Nawaz and his brother Shahbaz were affectionately called ‘Do Ganje’ by their friends in the Punjab.

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Age of intolerance

Published

asianwindow

on February 17, 2008

in Society

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Vir Sanghvi in the Hindustan Times on the recent Jodhaa Akbar and Rani of Jhansi controversies says it’s almost impossible to deal creatively with a historical account without stirring up a storm

Such is the the climate of intolerance in today’s India that it is almost impossible to write a book or make a movie without having to cope with a mob of protestors who claim that you have offended their caste/community/religion/region/city/grandparents/favourite pets.

Two such protests erupted last week. The first, and more publicised, of the rows related to Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar which is still to be released in Rajasthan because of fears that so-called Rajput organisations will vandalise cinema halls where it is shown. The second, and less known, relates to Rani, a fictionalised biography of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi by the well known author Jaishree Mishra. Apparently the book is insufficiently respectful to the late queen and the Mayawati government has assured the protestors that it will be banned in Uttar Pradesh. Both protests raise several issues which have been insufficiently addressed so far. Here are some of my concerns:

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