Mahendra Singh Dhoni Exemplified the Small-Town Spirit and the Killer Instinct of Jharkhand by Ullekh NP
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www.openthemagazine.com 50 31 AUGUST /2020 OPEN VOLUME 12 ISSUE 34 31 AUGUST 2020 CONTENTS 31 AUGUST 2020 7 8 9 14 16 18 LOCOMOTIF INDRAPRASTHA MUMBAI NOTEBOOK SOFT POWER WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY Who’s afraid of By Virendra Kapoor By Anil Dharker The Gandhi Purana By Jayanta Ghosal The tree of life Facebook? By Makarand R Paranjape By Srinivas Reddy By S Prasannarajan S E AG IM Y 22 THE LEGEND AND LEGACY OF TT E G MAHENDRA SINGH DHONI A cricket icon calls it a day By Lhendup G Bhutia 30 A WORKING CLASS HERO He smiled as he killed by Tunku Varadarajan 32 CAPTAIN INDIA It is the second most important job in the country and only the few able to withstand 22 its pressures leave a legacy By Madhavankutty Pillai 36 DHONI CHIC The cricket story began in Ranchi but the cultural phenomenon became pan-Indian By Kaveree Bamzai 40 THE PASSION OF THE BOY FROM RANCHI Mahendra Singh Dhoni exemplified the small-town spirit and the killer instinct of Jharkhand By Ullekh NP 44 44 The Man and the Mission The new J&K Lt Governor Manoj Sinha’s first task is to reach out and regain public confidence 48 By Amita Shah 48 Letter from Washington A Devi in the Oval? By James Astill 54 58 64 66 EKTA KAPOOR 2.0 IMPERIAL INHERITANCE STAGE TO PAGE NOT PEOPLE LIKE US Her once venerated domestic Has the empire been the default model On its 60th anniversary, Bangalore Little Streaming blockbusters goddesses and happy homes are no for global governance? Theatre produces a collection of all its By Rajeev Masand longer picture-perfect By Zareer Masani plays performed over the decades By Kaveree Bamzai By Parshathy J Nath Cover photograph Rohit Chawla 4 31 AUGUST 2020 OPEN MAIL [email protected] EDITOR S Prasannarajan LETTER OF THE WEEK MANAGING EDITOR PR Ramesh C EXECUTIVE EDITOR Ullekh NP Congratulations and thanks to Open for such a wide EDITOR-AT-LARGE Siddharth Singh DEPUTY EDITORS Madhavankutty Pillai range of brilliant writing in its Freedom Issue (August (Mumbai Bureau Chief), 24th, 2020). In this 74th year of Independence, we need Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair to congratulate each other and enjoy our freedom (‘The CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rohit Chawla Ideal Pursuit’ by MJ Akbar). The Partition saw the ART DIRECTOR Jyoti K Singh SENIOR EDITORS Sudeep Paul, carving up of the subcontinent along sectarian lines, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), the massacre of millions and the rending asunder of a Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval AssOCIATE EDITOR Vijay K Soni (Web) country into two, and then later three, making it one of ASSISTANT EDITOR Vipul Vivek mankind’s greatest tragedies. When India celebrated CHIEF OF GRAPHICS Saurabh Singh its much-awaited freedom on August 15th, 1947, after SENIOR DESIGNERS Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh being subjugated by the British for close to two PHOTO EDITOR Raul Irani centuries, no one could forget the enormous human DEPUTY PHOTO EDITOR Ashish Sharma cost that was paid for it. While our elders remember NATIONAL HEAD-EVENTS AND INITIATIVES the deeds of the freedom fighters, their children are tolerable in due course. Arpita Sachin Ahuja Bholey Bhardwaj AVP (ADVERTISING) the future of this country. A major challenge for us is to Rashmi Lata Swarup prevent the brain drain to other countries as our best GENERAL MANAGERS (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) youth leave the country, first, for universities and, then, MORE THAN A PARTNER for jobs (‘A Higher Degree’). We must take a pledge to Even though women’s NATIONAL HEAD-DISTRIBUTION AND SALES Ajay Gupta make the most of what we have to rise to higher levels, social standing in Shivrani REGIONAL HEADS-CIRCULATION D Charles (South), Melvin George so that instead of us migrating for a better life, others Devi’s time was hardly (West), Basab Ghosh (East) compete to come here for a better experience. We are anything to talk about, HEAD-PRODUCTION Maneesh Tyagi still not halfway where middle-income countries such she dared to cross the SENIOR MANAGER (PRE-PRESS) Sharad Tailang as Brazil and Sri Lanka are and there is already a worry domestic threshold to create MANAGER-MARKETING that given how we are going, we might, at best, get her own public persona Priya Singh CHIEF DESIGNER-MARKETING stuck in the middle-income trap. (‘Premchand’s Partner’ by Champak Bhattacharjee CK Subramaniam Arnav Das Sharma, August CFO & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht 3rd, 2020). The insight into CHIEF EXECUTIVE & PUBLISHER her life her memoir of her Neeraja Chawla husband Premchand gives is All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner GREAT FICTION rubbing the who’s who of compelling evidence of the is prohibited. I read such an amazingly the film industry the wrong roots of feminism in India. Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf written story after a long way was never the politically Fierce, bold and idealist, of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, time (‘Tomorrow We Will correct thing to do; she’s Shivrani Devi did not fail to 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). Be Wolves’, August 24th, putting herself at great risk by challenge the orthodoxy of Published at 4, DDA Commercial 2020). Thanks to Open for being frank. Kangana knows her times. Her marriage to Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. bringing Deepa Anappara’s very well the ramifications Premchand itself showcased Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 marvellous writing to us. and consequences of her her as a social reformer. To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to Puja Roy actions and yet chose to Through her literary www.openthemagazine.com or call our Toll Free Number speak for the common nonfiction, she has presented 1800 102 7510 REAL COURAGE good of her community to us an excellent alternative or email at: [email protected] I saw Kangana Ranaut’s which is often subjected to account of Premchand by For alliances, email [email protected] interview and tried hard blackmail, manipulations showing the Hindi doyen’s For advertising, email not to believe what she and debauchery. She has private life through her own [email protected] For any other queries/observations, was saying but ended up herself faced persecution eyes. It is an unfortunate fact email [email protected] thinking she was right in and ostracism, which she as well as a comment on our many ways (‘The Flame identified among reasons for literary establishment that Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing Thrower’, August 3rd, 2020). the actor’s death. Nepotism despite the significance of initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using First, she was speaking in Bollywood is not going her writing and contribution products or services advertised in the magazine straight from the heart: to go away—just as it is not to the Indian freedom Volume 12 Issue 34 no rehearsed scripts or going away in any other struggle, Shivrani Devi got For the week 25-31 August 2020 dialogues for cheap claps. sphere of life—but, one eclipsed by the greatness of Total No. of pages 68 Secondly, espousing the hopes, bias against the up her husband. cause of a dead actor by and coming will become less Gaurav Pant 31 AUGUST 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 5 LOCOMOTIF By S PRASANNARAJAN WHO’s AfrAID OF FaCEBOOK? ISINFORMATION IS DESTINY. What propels and its inauthenticity. It’s an old anger; only the nature of the the war on hate speech today is the rage against the medium has changed. The consumer is also the content provider. business model of social media, especially Facebook. There is no passerby here; everyone is a participant, a gene in the A front page report in The Wall Street Journal on how ever-expanding media organism. The new media is a declaration some BJP hatemongers get away with their crime of freedom and a struggle for domination. It empowers the Don Facebook pages has brought this war to Indian politics. The ordinary lives outside media elitism; its sewage system feeds report wondered: If Facebook could banish an anti-Semitic the troll. When a politician’s Twitter followers exceed the zealot of Black nationalism and an unhinged conspiracy readership of a global newspaper, you know what liberation theorist, what stops it from meting out the same treatment means, you know what unfiltered power means, and you know to demagogues from the Indian Right? The report implied what the decoupling of truth and fact means. Every attempt to that it tolerated them because India was Facebook’s biggest impose a moral code of conduct on social media smacks of moral market, and the company’s public policy executive was soft on dishonesty—and political desperation. the Hindu cause. A Congress party general secretary wrote to That desperation today demands moral homogeneity, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, demanding “transparency on in turn makes hate speech and free speech interchangeable. hate speech.” Someone representing “the peace and harmony In the US, the First Amendment makes it easier to offend, to committee of Delhi Legislative Assembly”—Orwell still reigns market hate in the name of freedom, to argue without the safety as a semantic inspiration in the politics of social justice— of metaphors. The progressives and Trump-weary liberals are wanted to summon senior Facebook management. No need to seeking the state to regulate social media because they expect be alarmed: the parallel universe of social media, swarmed by truth to obey the ideological consensus of the public square.