Bal Gangadhar Tilak Is Unacknowledged As the True Progenitor of Hindu Nationalism

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contents 24 august 2020

Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor PR Ramesh executive Editor Ullekh NP editor-at-large Siddharth Singh deputy editors Madhavankutty Pillai (Mumbai Bureau Chief), Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair creative director Rohit Chawla art director Jyoti K Singh Senior Editors Sudeep Paul, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval Associate Editor Vijay K Soni (Web) assistant editor Vipul Vivek chief of graphics Saurabh Singh SENIOR DESIGNERs Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh Photo editor Raul Irani deputy Photo editor Ashish Sharma

National Head-Events and Initiatives Arpita Sachin Ahuja AVP (ADVERTISING) The Rashmi Lata Swarup GENERAL MANAGERs (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) Freedom National Head-Distribution and Sales Ajay Gupta regional heads-circulation D Charles (South), Melvin George Issue (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Head-production Maneesh Tyagi senior manager (pre-press) Sharad Tailang MANAGER-MARKETING Priya Singh 6 Editor’s Note Chief Designer-marketing By S Prasannarajan Champak Bhattacharjee cfo & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht 84 The Woman Chief ExecuTive & Publisher Past Is Prologue Art of the Time Neeraja Chawla on the Balcony 8 The Ideal Pursuit 54 An Oath to Keep By Nandini Nair All rights reserved throughout the By MJ Akbar with a Final Breath world. Reproduction in any manner is prohibited. By Riyas Komu Phenomenal Women Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and 14 Speak, History published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf By TCA Raghavan 88 In This World of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Moving Spirit Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, I Only Weep 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, 20 His True Nature 60 The Best of Times By Ira Mukhoty Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). By Keerthik Sasidharan By Lhendup G Bhutia Published at 4, DDA Commercial Complex, Panchsheel Park, 92 The Legend of Nangeli New Delhi-110017. 25 Apostle of Social Realism By Sabin Iqbal Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 the Active Citizen To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to By Keshava Guha 64 There Shall Be No Vanity Fair 9999800012 or log on to Love Lost www.openthemagazine.com 30 The Enigma of Heroes By Nikita Doval 96 Bio Dictatorship or call our Toll Free Number By Sudeep Paul 1800 102 7510 By Sumana Roy or email at: Learning Curve [email protected] The Momentous Moment Fiction For alliances, email 68 [email protected] The Broken Class 34 I, the Hindu 100 For advertising, email By Kaveree Bamzai Tomorrow We Will Be [email protected] By PR Ramesh Wolves For any other queries/observations, 72 A Higher Degree By Deepa Anappara email [email protected] 40 The Eternity of Exile By V Shoba By Rahul Pandita

Disclaimer The Mind Is Its Own Place 106 Not People Like Us ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing 44 The Decline of Dissent By Rajeev Masand initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using By Siddharth Singh 76 Praise the Stoic products or services advertised in the magazine By Madhavankutty Pillai 48 Whispers in the Shadow Cover by By GN Devy 80 Rohit Chawla and Volume 12 Issue 33 Desire Unbound For the week 18-24 August 2020 By Ullekh NP Saurabh Singh Total No. of pages 108

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Editor's Note The Freedom Issue

n whatever we read today, and we read in isolated absorption of the castaways, freedom is the motif that overwhelms the text. It’s as if, in the end, the existential dread gets elemental, more biological than philosophical. It only takes a relentless virus to make us all poets of our mortality, to turn fear into resolutions, to meditate on what were till the Day Before the things we had taken for granted. We were too rattled to realise that when a pandemic stepped out of history, or when reality began to mime the still resonating chronicles of Albert Camus and Daniel Defoe, our inherited certainties would collapse, our vulnerabilities would be accentuated by the limits of our safety measures, be it the possibilities of political leadership or the promises of science. Freedom, in a world made poorer and paranoid by a pathogen, is the most shared sentiment, and we are still struggling to express it, and even protesting against the futility of our struggle. Didn’t I say the possibilities of politics? The first days of the outbreak saw, across the world, politics making false choices, most responses dictated by ideologies and incomprehension rather than information. Freedom, Ievery politician assumed, required heroism, and in varying degrees of statesmanship, stupidity and outright evasion, they played the liberator. Some of them maintained that our essential freedoms as open societies were too precious to be ceded to a virus in transit. Some remained steadfast in their denials. And a few alone respected science and expertise. What united them, the convenient libertarian and the manipulative populist and the honest realist, was the urge for freedom; and what set them apart was the method. Five months into the pandemic, and still devising desperate measures to cope with change, freedom is a struggle. The struggle is not just about being alive in a world where the future is a dispute—or a source of acute depression. The original question of identity—Who am I?—reduced social distancing and united the streets in a country chosen by history as the leader of the free world. Freedom gasped for air under the weight of a White policeman, and anger against “systemic racism”, the totemic term for domination today, would spread across cities. For the Blacks, it was the ’60s all over again, though the crowds swelled by nihilistic fury were denied a Martin Luther King Jr. The angry streets would be matched by the angrier public square. Dissent, joined by self-righteousness, demanded sole proprietorship of Conscience keeping is a conscience. The raw grievances of a community were appropriated by ideological orthodoxy, putting the stamp of regulated industry. stigma on anyone who dared to differ. Freedom hurt, divided, Someone, loftier than the and invented the renegade for a unipolar world of argument. Conscience keeping is a regulated industry. Someone, loftier rest of us, is out there, than the rest of us, is out there, always, watching, proofreading, always, watching, and looking for the subversion of ironies. What Václav Havel described, in his essay on the “power of the powerless”, as “living proofreading, and looking in truth”, the prerequisite for dissent, is not what we see in the for the subversion of ironies loudest arguments for justice today. We see a mobilisation of

6 24 august 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh consensus, and a rhetorical militancy in the effort for social justice. It is then inevitable that truth is either “fake” or too fragile to withstand the intrusion of another opinion. The most conspicuous mobiliser here is the progressive, the freedom fighter who detests the pusillanimous liberal and the culturally entitled conservative. When viewed from certain historical angles, the new progressivism may look as didactically oppressive as the old ideologies that sought to create the New Man. The dispute over freedom remains unresolved. As it has always been. Don’t we Indians know? One of the best books that have come out on racism is called Caste, making social hierarchy a more convincing explanation for inequality and injustice. Which only further explains that, as long as identity alone powers the struggle for social justice, our incompatibilities will continue to remain as stark as ever in the slogans of the progressives. It was the politics of social justice that set the mood for India’s enchantment with political Hinduism and displaced gods. It was the project of a caste-based balkanisation that turned India to the right. The one word that marked every point of rupture, whether it was Mandal or Mandir or Modi 2014, was ‘freedom.’ On August 5th in Ayodhya, it was independence day for those Indians who had all along believed that their god was a victim of cultural vandalism. Even in victory, they could not have missed the cruel irony that their god alone needed constitutional legitimacy, that they alone had to be apologetic about the original adjective of their national identity. Their freedom was someone else’s anxiety. That someone could be the progressive in denial, or an Indian with a different god who has consistently been told to behave. Freedom is an uneven text in which what is being read as redemption can be misread as subjugation by the silent minority. The persistence of a pathogen may have restricted our movements and exhausted our resources, but we are all time travellers today. Regaining something even as we keep losing something else. On the 73rd anniversary of India’s independence, we invite you to a journey through stories and arguments—and we have no idea where it will take you. n

S PRASANNARAJAN

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MJ AKBAR PAST IS PROLOGUE PAST

Photo alamy Jawaharlal Nehru delivers his 'Tryst with Destiny' speech to the Constituent Assembly towards midnight on August 14, 1947

The Ideal Pursuit Between independence and freedom The Freedom Issue

n unsuspected, and The Norman conquest of Britain in Gandhi understood from an early age, hence uncorrected, 1066 was more nuanced, for the trium- British rule depended not on British fallacy has caused phant Frenchmen from Normandy strength but on Indian weakness. Fear much confusion in soon blurred the difference between de- of the British kept the British in power. political philology, pendence and independence. The new Once fear was gone, the British would impairing analysis conquerors did not rule England from follow. That was the essence of the and understanding France; they ruled swathes of their native Mahatma mantra. of the modern na- land from England. Normans became the Tensions between authority and free- tion state. new English establishment. In a delicious dom do not disappear with independence. AIndependence is not synonymous paradox, French history books now ven- The tussle between individual freedom with freedom. erate St Joan of Arc for liberating France and authority is a continuing narrative. Both are essential to the contempo- from Norman royalty. At what point of inflexion can freedom rary ideal. They are compatible and often There is no confusion, however, in become the convector of anarchy? complementary. But the two virtues fol- England’s history of freedom. It is legiti- In democracies, governments have to low different trajectories and attain sepa- mately traced back to the Magna Carta address such questions on a regular basis. rate objectives. Independence is liberation Libertatum, signed by a reluctant King In dictatorships, they know the answers from foreign or colonial rule; freedom is John in 1215 to obtain support of the before any questions have been asked. a right of every individual citizen which landed nobility against a French inva- Democratic India emerged from colo- may be denied as easily by an indigenous sion. The charter gave barons the right of nisation with both independence and ruling elite as by any foreign power. consultation on raising taxes through a freedom intact. Its first Prime Minister, India and America celebrate their council; this evolved into a foundational Jawaharlal Nehru, had to answer this cru- independence on August 15th and July institution of freedom, Parliament. cial question immediately after the adop- 4th respectively to commemorate the From the late 18th century, Britain and tion of the Indian Constitution in 1950. triumphant moment when they threw France began to devote more energy on On May 10th, 1951, he moved the first the British out of their lives. England has conquering Africa and Asia than destroy- amendment to the Constitution seeking no such day since the English claim that ing each other, creating two formidable changes to fundamental rights. He want- they have never been ruled by a foreign empires. Britain became the dominant ed to validate the abolition of huge land power. Perhaps that was so long ago that power because India glistened as the jewel holdings under the colonial zamindari amnesia is forgivable. The Romans invad- in its crown. system and ensure special consideration ed England in 43 AD and left only in 410 for weaker sections, but he was also very AD, when troops were summoned back to certain that limitations were required in Italy, then being ravaged by ‘barbarians’. ndia won independence on August Article 19, which guaranteed freedom of The only memorable, and near-suc- 15th, 1947. When did Indians become speech and expression. The First Amend- cessful, British challenge to Roman might Ifree? ment prevented abuse of this freedom. occurred early. In 60 and 61 AD, the queen A purist might argue that freedom Freedom has survived this qualifica- of the Celtic Iceni, Boadicea, known in her came with the adoption of the Constitu- tion in India, as indeed it has elsewhere. native Welsh as Buddug, defeated Roman tion in 1950 with its golden triangle of There is a mid-point trade-off that can be armies in battle and burnt down the colo- fundamental rights to life, faith and free easily determined by the wisest asset in a niser’s capital, Londinium, forcing Nero, expression. But the generation of Mahat- democracy: the common sense of com- the emperor, to consider retreat. But his ma Gandhi’s disciples made a persuasive mon people. Citizens recognise a tipping general, Suetonius, regrouped and won case for an earlier date: between 1920 and point when they see it. A law against li- the war. Buddug, only 31, poisoned herself. 1921, during the non-cooperation move- bel, provided by Nehru in India, does not Her pragmatic husband, Prasutagus, ruled ment, when Gandhi mobilised the masses throttle freedom. It protects freedom from as an ally of the Romans and left his king- to destabilise the mightiest empire in his- misuse and abuse. dom to the Romans in his will. Colonial be- tory with the moral power of one of the haviour has some interesting antecedents. greatest ideas in history, non-violence. However, the British do retain a soft Gandhi could not win independence ome self-proclaimed rational spot for Boadicea. She is not honoured on in 1921, but he freed the Indian mind from systems consciously eliminate any the holiday calendar, but her memory is subservience. Sopposition in pursuit of what they preserved in a heroic statue at London’s Three hundred million Indians from assert is the higher good. Communism Westminster Bridge and in a romantic Khyber to Burma were not shackled by a is one such ideology. Communists are luxury perfume misnamed Boadicea hundred thousand soldiers and bureau- convinced, with all the passion of believ- the Victorious. crats. They were imprisoned by fear. As ers, that the rightly guided party must be

10 24 august 2020 would disintegrate without their firm hand. In real terms, this is a confession that the nation cannot be held together except by force. Pakistan is a good instance of an army perched on a pedestal above the law, closer to God than the hoi polloi at the base and politicians hovering in-between. The only unqualified freedom is the freedom to exalt the armed forces in every instance. India's first Criticism becomes heresy, punishable by Republic Day inquisition. celebrations in New Delhi, January 26, 1950 he difference between independence and freedom is not Tsemantic. The individual’s quest for freedom, with its many variables, is A purist might argue that freedom came as old as the imposition of hierarchies in social structure. Independence has had a with the adoption of the Constitution in more recent, more patchy journey, becom- 1950 with its golden triangle of ing a dominant reality only in the 20th century. The 21st is the first century in hu- fundamental rights to life, faith and man experience which can be described as a true age of independence. free expression. But the generation of Empires began to erode in the 19th century, but monoliths have a long shelf life Mahatma Gandhi’s disciples made a after the due expiry date. World War I dealt persuasive case for an earlier date: a hammer blow to the Tsarist, Austrian, Ottoman and German empires, but did between 1920 and 1921, during the not affect the credibility of the concept as a workable proposition. Britain and France, non-cooperation movement assuming infallibility after victory in 1918, stretched their realm to taut limits. Small- er European powers from the winning side continued as before. In Moscow, the obeyed, feared and venerated with the zeal ocracy can protect national independence Soviet Union reinvented the Tsarist em- of a religious conviction. The Party is God with commendable commitment, even as pire as a multilateral Marxist cooperative. in an atheist doctrine. When this deity it limits the people’s freedom with similar Till the adoption of the United Na- seeks a sacrifice, it must be offered along fervour. The high priests of both atheism tions Charter signed by 50 countries on with thanksgiving prayer, for the omnipo- and theism also know that a mendicant’s June 26th, 1945 in San Francisco, which tent Party can do no wrong. There can be garb is a useful disguise when they pro- offered equal rights to ‘nations large and no accountability for any policy disaster, nounce, in stentorian tones, that the small’, conquest was legal. You could, and even when mistakes lead to famines that intellectual incarceration of citizens is many did, question the morality of the kill countless millions, for the Party’s be- necessary for the good of the state and the British Empire, but no one questioned its nign intentions absolve it of all sin. Truth well-being of the people. legality. Governments were not always becomes flexible. History is written only High priests are careful enough to keep in the forefront of invasion; merchants to be rewritten. From one perspective, their own backs protected by an obedient could hire mercenaries and raise their such rational deism is not totally distant army; but sometimes an army runs the flag upon any domain, as they did so suc- from the ethos of theocracy. priesthood, particularly if it is incoher- cessfully in India. No guardian of the faith can make a ent or rife with schism. The uniformed Till World War II, the world was mistake in a theocracy either, since service self-appointed wardens of nationalism a violent giant seesaw. Japan could to God sanitises him from infection. A the- then argue with thin logic that the nation sweep through Asia, and be swept back.

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 11 The Freedom Issue

Germany could stomp through Europe he European Union (EU) is a mix public discourse. from Paris to Moscow, and be driven back of idealism and fear converted into Eventually, Britain’s exit was not due to a shattered Berlin. If Japan and Germany Tgeography. The fear was not of the to the price of fish, but born of a belief had not been defeated, they would have other. Western Europe was afraid of its that the country could do better without made their possessions into colonies. rearview mirror; worried that it would Brussels. A perceived loss of independence The United Nations has not ended become what it had left behind if it was persuaded enough Britons to leave the EU. war; far from that. But no warrior power not tethered to a different horizon. This is why champions of the EU pick up now attempts to force the subjugation of And so, European nations willingly their handkerchiefs when they hear the another country, the occasional excep- ceded a part of their strategic indepen- word ‘nationalism’. tion apart. The fashionable justification dence to the North Atlantic Treaty Or- The dilemma is, however, more seri- for war is now regime change, and it is ganization (NATO), and a part of their ous than Britain’s departure. How do you becoming less fashionable by the year. economic independence to a proportion- disentangle the people from nationalism In too many cases, regime change, when al-ratio bureaucracy in Brussels. They in an era of the nation state? In Britain, achieved, has come with an attached bill achieved this without any compromise this was not the nationalism of Colonel that has become a drain on the resources with the freedom of their citizens. The Blimp or the bulldog scowl. In the days of the victor. elixir proved so powerful that Britain, of empire, Britain justified supremacism World War I ended in 1918 on a palate always careful of its distinctive identity, with the propaganda that it brought of grey areas; the second war ended with was drawn in. The decade of exhilaration unmitigated progress to ignorant if not far clearer demarcation between victor came in the 1990s, after the collapse of the barbaric natives. The empire was interna- and vanquished. But both had lessons Soviet Union, when members of the So- tional. Vast spaces subsuming ethnicity to learn. The defeated understood that viet-controlled Warsaw Pact clamoured and language could be painted in a single political colour, and governed from a single capital. What else could explain such British success except inherent su- premacy? Pride was the privilege of the The First Amendment prevented abuse conqueror; the defeated had to place their interests at the feet of the Big Emperor or of the freedom of speech and expression. Empress for their own benefit. Freedom has survived this qualification Today’s Britain is fashioned by pride in itself, not the puff of its acquisitions. in India. A law against libel, provided There are similar populations across the EU, ready to test their fortunes without by Nehru, does not throttle freedom. It a crutch. Britain is also a union, with a flag called protects freedom from misuse and abuse the Union Jack, an emblem of collaboration between the three patron saints of England, Scotland and (Northern) Ireland—George, Andrew and Patrick. aggression brought corporal punish- to join the EU as a guarantor of safety, History never ends, does it? The rheto- ment. More remarkably, victors also re- growth and freedom. ric that restored the waters of the English alised that empires were now untenable. Irony is often just a few steps behind Channel into a hard border is now rais- Independent countries would become success. Security survived the pressures ing and cementing that old Roman wall building blocks of the architecture of of unforeseen events, like the Balkans between England and Scotland built by strategic stability. conflict or the more recent immigra- the conquerors of England 2,000 years ago. With India’s independence, the end tion crisis; and economic cooperation The English want to be British rather than of colonisation became a matter of time. managed to contain, if not subdue, European. It would be yet another twist European empires consolidated over three the difficult fires of regional disparity. in a tale full of unintended consequences centuries crumbled in three decades. Tensions generated by freedom were if they ended up neither European nor But Europe itself, having suffered a more intractable. The drumbeat of me- British, just English. n hundred million dead in the 31 years be- dia criticism, the peals of pub laughter at tween 1914 and 1945, experimented with the occasional ludicrous Brussels regula- MJ Akbar is an MP and the author of, a new dimension in its search for sustain- tion and the easy incitement to national most recently, Gandhi’s Hinduism: able peace within. pride or pretension became staples of The Struggle Against Jinnah’s Islam

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The Freedom Issue TCA Raghavan PAST IS PROLOGUE PAST

Speak, History Returning to the broken fragments of the 1990s to understand the China-driven churn of the present Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration

14 24 august 2020 s reports came in terms and also in terms of narrative interest and in that of our neighbours. of the clash with value. Our own historically adversarial Barring Pakistan—where an adversarial Chinese troops relationship with China has accentuat- mould from the beginning precluded in the remote ed post-Galwan. This has made at least any realistic possibility of this policy Galwan Valley in one core objective of Indian diplomacy being applied—this was the template Ladakh, many in somewhat more elusive: A cherished that we sought to apply to our neigh- India certainly sweet spot has been to have better rela- bours with varying degrees of success at felt that the pres- tions with either great power than they different points of time. Pakistan stood ent conjuncture have with each other. In the triad of In- as the case apart. It brought in outside in our geopolitical history weighed par- dia-China-US, this meant stronger rela- powers—first the US and increasingly Aticularly heavily on us. Domestic polari- tions bilaterally with the US and China China from the 1990s, as the Pakistan-US ties were no less significant on account of simultaneously, or at least stronger than relationship started on a long process of the continuing fallout of contestations the US-China relationship. This now ap- erosion. This was partly on account of arising from the Citizen Amendment pears that much more difficult and the its own internal contradictions and even Act (CAA) and the legislative changes difficulty represents in a concrete way more so on account of greater proximity of August 2019 with regard to the erst- the dilemma of this geopolitical churn in US-India relations from the beginning while Jammu and Kashmir state. The we find ourselves in the midst of. of this millennium. But with our other continuing tensions with Pakistan and Lenin had once famously said that neighbours, one of the challenges of In- recent frictions with Nepal underlined a crisis was “like a flash of lightning dian diplomacy always was how to keep that disturbances in our neighbourhood were combining with larger regional and international situations. All this occurred in the midst of a pandemic of a scale and intensity that was hardly to be The wider environment seems anticipated and with consequences for the economy which are dire. especially turbulent, for there is a The wider environment seems espe- geopolitical churn underway: no less cially turbulent, for there is a geopolitical churn underway: no less than a reorder- than a reordering of global power. A US ing of global power. This process had many symptoms but none more than with a maverick leadership seemingly a US with a maverick leadership seemingly self-engrossed in its own woes self-engrossed in its own woes while while China seemed to be reaching far China is reaching far back into its own back into its own history to assert a newfound strength in disregard for both its history to assert a newfound strength own stated policies and established international norms and precedents that it had always avowed to follow. The traction developing around the which threw more of a glare upon real- others at bay. term the ‘Post-Covid World’ seemed to be ity than anything else”. So the current That template now belongs to his- particularly relevant for us—the future geopolitical moment may have been tory. There is a changed reality today suddenly seems to be more dangerous, amplified into sharper relief by the Co- that we confront, which is that of a great more uncertain and more unpredict- vid-19 pandemic-cum-crisis but its ingre- power in physical proximity to South able. Different internal and external dients, and particularly those relevant Asia so the question of keeping it out factors appear to have converged or at to India, have been maturing for some does not arise. least their impact is being felt together. time and at least since 2015. This applies The global geopolitical churn we are It is the wider geopolitical churn that certainly to the situation with Nepal in in the midst of today then has much to gives this period its exceptional quality. particular but also to the rest of South do with China which has all the assertive The retreat of the US—both real and Asia in general. Our traditional foreign energy of a new power and alongside a metaphorical—is accompanied by the policy toolkit was largely based on the corresponding disengagement and self- consolidation of China in its position premise that keeping great powers out absorption of the US. As far as India as a rival hegemon, again both in real of our neighbourhood was both in our is concerned, this wider geopolitical

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 15 The Freedom Issue churn has the following implications. new Soviet Union, too self-absorbed with India, they wrote, ‘feels orphaned ideo- First, that we are a neighbour of one of its own manifold difficulties to really logically, strategically, economically’ and the two global powers and that this is a have energy left for others. Letting East that ‘many Indians worry too about the neighbour with whom we have a long Europe follow its own separate destiny precarious fate of multinational states’. history of adversarial relations as equally was the next step—and over the latter There were alongside practical, every- a serious territorial and boundary dis- half of 1989 and the first half of 1990, the day concerns, since: ‘The Soviet Union was pute. Second, the economic and cultural ‘Eastern Bloc’ had disintegrated. Poland, critical in India’s economic calculations. One of footprint of China in South Asia has ex- Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria and the world’s leading arms buyers in the 1980s, panded to an extent that erodes to some Czechoslovakia had variants of a peace- India acquired most of its arms from the So- extent India’s position. Third, and finally, ful transition to non-communist rule. viet Union at bargain basement rupee prices. China’s assertiveness has coincided with In Romania, the tran- a sharp downturn in Pakistan-India rela- sition was violent but getty images tions. The downturn is not itself new since with much the same it dates back to 2016 and points also to the result. Yugoslavia, not structural imbalances in Pakistani politics in the Soviet camp but where India is concerned. a close friend of India These three factors, each enormously due to a shared history significant in itself, are at the core of our in the Non-Aligned current political predicament and to Movement, was also which a host of others further contribute: in fundamental tran- the pandemic, the economic slowdown sition but here the and contraction, and the base level static process appeared to be arising from domestic issues such as Jam- akin to a train hurtling mu and Kashmir, the CAA, etcetera. to a crash. Within the Soviet Union itself, the changes were no less ow exceptional or unique is significant. In April this period—beginning with 1990, a law allowed the wider geopolitical churn a constituent unit to resulting from the assertive- secede if two-thirds of Hness of a new global power down to the the population so vot- specificities of regional issues in South ed in a referendum. As Asia and, finally, the economic uncertain- Soviet Republics and ties resulting from the pandemic acting as state-owned enter- a kind of black swan topping? prises, including those It is instructive to look back about in the defence and three decades to the first half of the 1990s, hydrocarbon sectors, for we encounter in that period a similar eyed autonomous A photograph from the book Soviets: Pictures from the End of the U.S.S.R. by Shepard Sherbell cocktail of issues, forces, and dilemmas. futures, concerns in If the rise of a new power is the subject India were intense. By that engrosses us all today—from diplo- August 1991, the process was complete India’s protected and regulated economy fits mats and strategic analysts to the manu- when an attempted coup by communist well with the Soviet Command economy. State facturer and distributer worried about hardliners and military generals failed to trading in soft rupees and rubles linked the two supply chains from China—some 30 set the clock back and, by the end of the economies. Centralized bureaucracies in Mos- years ago, it was the terminal decline of year, only the formalities to announce cow cleared arms shipments. Which republics another that similarly absorbed us. Glas- the formal dissolution of the Soviet now control the arms plants? Where will the nost—free access to information—and Union remained. spares come from, and the hard currency to Perestroika—changes in the economic An American scholar couple recalled pay for them? Now that the rupee-ruble trade structure—unleashed by Mikhail Gor- the mood in India: ‘In India the response was is dead, how will India get and pay for its oil, bachev from the mid-1980s seemed to be guarded, troubled, fearful. The United States newsprint and non ferrous metals?’And there taking the Soviet Union into unchartered celebrated; freedom had triumphed over tyr- was also the political and strategic aspect. territory. The withdrawal of Soviet troops anny. In India the mood was something like ‘The Soviet cast vetoes at UN for India—when from Afghanistan from 1988 heralded a mourning; a dear friend had passed away.’ India used force to erase the remnants of Por-

16 24 august 2020 tuguese colonialism and the Kashmir question more complex and what was involved being against its own interests. Second, disappeared in the agenda…its nuclear arsenal here was a cluster of issues ranging from turbed conditions and internal conflicts helped India to avoid an overt answer to China tensions over trade, internal Nepal politics in Sri Lanka opened the doors for outside and Pakistan.’ between the king and the political class, powers—the US in particular but also oth- The Rudolphs—Lloyd and Susanne, Nepalese arms purchases from China and ers—or so at least it was felt to intervene in close observers of India since the 1950s others. If the Nepal situation was bad from India’s immediate proximity. The IPKF de- and scholars of India in the best traditions India’s point of view—how could things ployment followed an agreement between of Western academia—concluded: ‘The reach this point with a neighbour like India and Sri Lanka in July 1987. By Octo- collapse of the Soviet Union and commu- Nepal so heavily dependent on India?— ber that year, the Indian Army was heav- nism has left India’s leaders ideologically the situation with Sri Lanka at the other ily engaged against the LTTE and what had appeared initially to be a short and swift operation had become a grind and a military nightmare. Through 1988-1989, the IPKF suffered many casualties and in If the rise of a new India its wisdom was being questioned across the political spectrum. The IPKF power is the subject that deployment finally ended in March 1990. The diplomatic and political gains from engrosses us all today, some the operation were non-existent while In- 30 years ago, it was the dia’s reputation had suffered. The final de- nouncement of India’s intervention came terminal decline of in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber unit in May 1991. another that similarly If there is an actor missing or largely absent in this narrative, it is China. It, too, absorbed us. Glasnost drew lessons from what was happen- and Perestroika, unleashed ing in the Soviet Union but these were opposite to what Gorbachev attempted by Mikhail Gorbachev through Glasnost and Perestroika. More, not less, control was the Chinese solution. from the mid-1980s The events of Tiananmen Square in June 1989 set limits on political expression that seemed to be taking remain to this day. Concentrating on the the Soviet Union into economy appears to have been the Chi- nese policy takeaway from all that was unchartered territory happening around, for it is from the economy that hard power would be derived. A photograph from the book Soviets: Pictures from the End of the U.S.S.R. by Shepard Sherbell The Congress led by Rajiv Gandhi was defeated in the December 1989 General Election. A coalition led by VP Singh as- and strategically adrift, aware that new re- end of the subcontinent was worse. An sumed office. The change in government alities call for new thinking but reluctant Indian military contingent—an Indian enabled course corrections both in Nepal to believe that the world they have lived Peace Keeping Force (IPKF)—had been and Sri Lanka—but the Government and worked for was an illusion.’ deployed to keep peace and ensure a cessa- faced its first crisis, and from another di- What gave to these wider concerns an tion of hostilities between the Tamil mili- rection, within days of being sworn in. even sharper edge was the situation in In- tant group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil The daughter of Mufti Mohammad Say- dia’s immediate neighbourhood and with- Elam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military. eed, the first Muslim Union Home Min- in. 1989-90 had seen a major turbulence The Indian intervention was the result of ister of India, was kidnapped by militants in trading relations with Nepal. Nepalese two related causes apart from the strong in Srinagar. This episode more than any- observers were to call this a “blockade” sympathy factor in Tamil Nadu in favour thing else heralded and dramatised the imposed by then Prime Minister Rajiv of the Sri Lankan Tamils. First, the LTTE’s beginning of an insurgency that has had Gandhi to pressure Nepal to abandon its aim of a sovereign Tamil nation was some- its crests and troughs but has nevertheless independent foreign policy. Realities were thing that Indian strategic thinking saw as continued for the past three decades. From

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 17 The Freedom Issue

January 1990, an exodus of the Hindu mi- In Pakistan, there was certainly a mood do not recognise the instrument of acces- nority began from the Kashmir Valley— of triumphalism. Insurgents and mili- sion as meaning that Kashmir is forever one of the numerous tragedies inflicted tias, trained and ideologically motivated an integral part of India”. Pakistan had by an insurgency that would not just re- by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence soon thereafter tabled a resolution in the ceive support from Pakistan but would (ISI), had finally forced the Soviet troops UN Human Rights Commission on Kash- inevitably also bedevil India-Pakistan out of Afghanistan. There were many mir. That resolution went nowhere. The relations in the period since. The insur- who thought that Kashmir was now ripe Indian delegation to that meeting was led gency meant that after a long gap since for this model to be successfully applied. by an opposition leader—Atal Bihari Va- 1965, Kashmir was again a major item on Revolutions in Eastern Europe, accom- jpayee—who had agreed to the responsi- the India-Pakistan agenda—perhaps now panied by cartographic changes in Yugo- bility at the request of then Prime Minister the most important item on the agenda. slavia, Czechoslovakia and Germany, all PV Narasimha Rao. Others in the delega- The fact, however, is also that through the strengthened the perception that maps tion included a deposed Chief Minister of

getty images The VP Singh Government faced its first crisis within days of being sworn in. The daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the first Muslim Union Home Minister of India, was kidnapped by militants in Srinagar. This episode heralded the beginning of an insurgency that has had its crests and troughs but has nevertheless continued

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and daughter Rubaiya Sayeed, after she was released by militants on early 1990s, and up to 1998, India-Pakistan in South Asia could also be redrawn. The December 14, 1989 in New Delhi agenda-setting remained largely notional. impending and then real disintegration For long periods, dialogue or discussion of of the Soviet Union was at the base of such Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah. any kind was suspended—at Pakistan’s optimism. It was bipartisanship—both symbolic instance. As infiltration from Pakistan Notwithstanding tensions in the and real—but also showed how high the increased across the Line of Control, po- US-Pakistan relationship over nuclear stakes were. Alongside, Parliament ad- litical rhetoric sharpened on both sides. proliferation, many in India were con- opted a resolution declaring the whole of Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Benazir scious of the depth of that relationship Jammu and Kashmir an integral part of Bhutto, in a speech in Muzaffarabad in forged through the 1980s in Afghanistan. India and demanding that Pakistan must March 1990, spoke of a thousand-year war Certainly, the US position seemingly was vacate the part of Jammu and Kashmir it for Kashmir and Prime Minister VP Singh more impatient with India and sympa- had illegally occupied since 1947-1948. responded that Pakistan would have to see thetic to Pakistan as far as the situation in This was a bigger change than many at if it could fight for a thousand hours. In In- Kashmir went. At a particularly fraught the time saw. dia, the mood consolidated that Pakistan time in Jammu and Kashmir in late 1992 Two other factors have to be added as was riding an adventurist horse again and (there was a siege underway in the Haz- ingredients to this cocktail of regional certainly the thought grew whether an- ratbal mosque with militants holed up crises amid superpower decline. The other Operation Gibraltar, as in 1965, was inside), a US Assistant Secretary of State Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 being planned to cap the insurgency with said that the US “viewed the whole of led to the first Gulf War as the US decided an external intervention. Kashmir as a disputed territory” and “we to make full use of a clear field provided

18 24 august 2020 by the decay of the Soviet Union. The Iraq war, or the First Gulf War as it came to be later called, became a laboratory to Two seminal events of the new demonstrate how much the nature of war had changed. US technology eroded millennium in its earliest years, the the numerical advantages of the Iraqi war machine and this dominance was trans- Global War on Terror and the Global mitted live across the world on television. Post-Gulf War, the ‘Revolution in Military Financial Crisis, focused attention on the Affairs’ meant no longer just a doctrine or US to such an extent that China for a long theory, but a real military capability albeit one requiring massive investments of in- time remained under the radar of many. tellectual and financial capital. For India, the Gulf War did mean se- That situation is now changing in large riously thinking about finances, but in part on account of the pandemic a different context. It was in the nature of a black swan event and the war led to an explosion in oil prices that tipped the balances of its economy deep into the red. An economic catastrophe seemed immi- narrated in terms of an adjustment to a We do not know for certain whether nent. How India dealt with its financial new world in which a single power had Mark Twain said “History never repeats crisis and the beginning of its economic greater pre-eminence than had been seen itself but it rhymes”. But he certainly reform process is a separate story in itself. in international affairs for a long time. did say, “History never repeats itself, but It is useful to recall, however, how signifi- The US as a hyper power was spoken of the kaleidoscopic combinations of the cant an ingredient the domestic economic frequently in the decade of the 1990s. Even pictured present often seem to be con- situation was in the atmosphere of geo- as this position was being eroded from the structed out of the broken fragments of political crisis in the early 1990s in India. first decade of the 21st century, the narra- antique legends”. So while we need not If the economy also looms large in our tive power of unipolarity obscured the be unduly concerned with the past, some thinking of crisis induced by the global change. Two seminal events of the new awareness of it is helpful. Certainly some, pandemic today, the main difference with millennium in its earliest years, the Glob- if not many, elements of the past are recog- the situation in the early 1990s merits be- al War on Terror and the Global Financial nisable today also, although how we will ing pointed out. The economic crisis from Crisis, focused attention on the US—on steer our way through these multiple 1991 onwards was a national crisis, unlike its thinking, policy and action, to such an moving pieces remains in the future. today. India had to improvise its way out extent that China for a long time—at least There is no readymade template before of it on its own and to that extent, our bur- a decade or perhaps a decade-and-a-half— us and the solutions of the past are now dens appeared all the greater. remained under the radar of many. That also past history. New frameworks have And finally, to the economic woes situation is now changing in large part to be envisaged and constructed and what and geopolitical uncertainties must be on account of the pandemic. By slowing these will be we cannot say. The German added the domestic political crisis of po- everything else down, it enabled a sharper historian Reinhart Koselleck once wrote larisation that was unmistakable in In- focus on the bigger picture of geopolitical ‘it is in the nature of crisis that the solu- dia through the early 1990s. The history churn and the crystallisation of the pro- tion, that which the future holds in store, of the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi cess by which another great power has is not predictable’. The only certainty that agitation shows how it converged with now arisen. remains, therefore, is what belongs to the the multiple external crisis of the time. past and that is what makes such reflec- The serial blasts in Bombay in March tions relevant. n 1993 and Dawood Ibrahim’s and the ISI’s oes this exercise of recalling roles underlined how the internal and the our experience of the times TCA Raghavan is a former diplomat and external can and will intersect—and that when a superpower waned currently Director General, Indian is the nature of all crisis situations. have any pedagogic value Council of World Affairs. His latest book, India in the early and mid-1990s is usu- Dnow in a changed context when another History Men: Jadunath Sarkar, ally summarised as a history of the early power has arisen? Is it only the vanity of GS Sardesai, Raghubir Sinh and Their years of economic reform and liberalisa- historians that makes them believe in the Quest for India’s Past, was published tion. The story of those years can also be lessons of history? earlier this year. Views are personal

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 19 The Freedom Issue PAST IS PROLOGUE PAST Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration Keerthik Sasidharan

His True Nature Gandhi’s experiments with freedom

mong RK Laxman’s politicians work so hard to master the art ments to this template. Over time, as Gan- innumerable cartoons of performative empathy by resorting to dhi became more of a symbol than an idea that critiqued the pri- proxies such as the clothing and food hab- worth sustained reflection, the Gandhi- vate self-deceptions its of India’s poor? ans have been understandably ignored and public lies of In- No group of Indian politicians has by a restless India—and on occasion have dian life, one that I find taken this marriage of sartorial choices even been subject to savage ridicule. VS particularly instructive and political symbolism to its logical ends Naipaul famously—and unfairly—wrote is a single frame sketch (see cartoon) in- than the ‘Gandhians’. But lest we think the about Vinoba Bhave as a ‘foolish parody of Avolving a husband and wife. The husband Gandhians are the only ones who indulge Gandhi’. And then, without a mention of is dressed in a dhoti and a shawl draped in political pantomimes, it is important to the achievements of the Bhoodan Move- around him, with a staff in one hand and remember that other subgroups have sim- ment which involved peaceful handover a jhola in the other, and a Gandhi topi to ilarly followed suit making minor adjust- of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, add to his sartorial flourish. On the right Naipaul goes on to summarise Bhave as, side of the frame, the wife stands in the ‘He had lived for so long as a parasite, and living room, with her hands clasped and away from the world, that he had become a befuddled concern on her face, and ad- a kind of half-man, and he thought that dresses her rather dejected looking hus- Gandhi had been like that too… .’ Despite band: ‘What happened to your safari suit, this ‘peevish sixth-grader’ style assess- the expensive shoes, the Rolex watch? ment by a writer who had himself taken Mid-term polls soon! Right?’ In the back- to becoming a ‘conspicuous hermit’ (both ground, Laxman’s ‘Common Man’ sits quotes come from Derek Walcott’s own and watches this scene of a disturbed do- trenchant description of ‘V.S. Nightfall’), mestic tranquillity with his googly eyes Naipaul saw through Bhave’s wilfully and bland scepticism. Once the chuckle accreted poverty and the egoism of an or smirk of recognition vanishes, the all-too-worldly renunciate. Bhave, like le- cartoon provokes a question that I have gions of Indian politicians, believed that often wondered about, especially during emulating Gandhi was a meaningful way election seasons: where does our laugh- to accrue moral respect. ter emerge from? The obvious and easy When we think of emulation, we of- answer is that it comes from recognising ten end up thinking of mimicry, which the naked hypocrisy of the clichéd Indian in turn is seen as a mere consequence of politician as one who loves all the fancy political expediency. But emulation as a stuff in private, but continues to present means to sculpt moral perfection has been ‘What happened to your safari suit, a face of great penury and piety in pub- often used across history and cultures. the expensive shoes, the Rolex watch? lic. The more obscure, and historically Mid-term polls soon! Right?’ The Christian monks of the Franciscan complicated, question is: why do Indian RK Laxman order wilfully adopted poverty as a way

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 21 The Freedom Issue to be, to emulate St Francis of Assisi. Over tured labourer in South Africa or the peas- centuries, numerous subgroups of Mus- ant in India; to the psychological: Gandhi lims have sought to live in ways—that wanted to rid the educated Indian of their includes wearing similar dress, applying ‘cognitive enslavement’ to the British and henna to their beards and so on—that changing the dress was part of the strat- emulate the life of Prophet Muhammad. egy; to the political: by denying the Brit- In each of these cases, emulation is seen as ish the opportunity to treat Gandhi as yet a prerequisite to living with authenticity another Indian-in-a-suit from the Indian and fidelity to a monastic order or a textual National Congress, he was forcing them reading. These acts of emulation hope to to find new ways to describe this politi- arrive closer to men who had communed cal organiser who had just returned from with God—be it through stigmata as was South Africa with a victory to his name. the case with St Francis or through pro- In each of these portrayals, rarely do we phetic revelations in the case of Prophet think of Gandhi’s choice of dress as inti- Muhammad—which in turn makes the mately linked to his protracted efforts to very act of ‘emulating’ their ways of life un- live life with integrity. And to some of us, derstandably attractive, once you ascribe living in the early 20th century, there is a to the tenets of Christianity or Islam. Their theatricality to Gandhi’s parting with of lives and their manners become means, Western clothes which in turn inspires and even portals, to possibly experience suspicions towards any claims made on God. But when asked the same question behalf of Gandhi’s lifelong tryst with liv- about the followers of Gandhi, or even oth- ing truthfully. er Indian politicians, who adopt Gandhi- To understand the importance of BR Ambedkar an piety, the motivations become more truth in Gandhi’s life, it is perhaps useful obscure the further away we move from to return to his writings itself. From No- the historical Gandhi. There, after all, is no vember 24th, 1925 to February 3rd, 1929, the truth contained in every situation and God involved at the end of such Gandhian Gandhi’s autobiographical articles ap- treat it as a test to evaluate his moral prog- efforts to reconfigure their selves. peared over 166 instalments in the journal ress. From confessionals such as dreaming Navajivan, wherein he documents with of making love to his wife while his father extraordinary scrupulousness about how lay dying to more bland truths about his n his sweeping survey titled he prepared the grounds to become who genteel radicalism in London’s vegetarian The Birth of the Modern World, he was then: a politician with permanent clubs, no meaningful event was seem- 1780-1914, the British historian aspirations to be a man of God. Eventually, ingly beyond Gandhi’s self-examination. CA Bayly notes, ‘In 1780, the most these articles in Gujarati were compiled, There is a certain irony, however. powerful men in the world were edited and ultimately translated by his Gandhi wrote his autobiography in a pe- Idressed in a large variety of different types indefatigable secretary Mahadev Desai riod when he was already the de facto head of garments which ranged from Chinese and brought out with an earnest but at- of the Indian freedom struggle and yet the mandarin robes, through French embroi- tractive title, Satya Na Prayogo Athva At- word ‘freedom’ appears barely 10 times in dered frock coats, to ritualized undress in makatha. In English, the order of the title the text of his autobiography. And when the Pacific and parts of Africa.’ However, was flipped: An Autobiography with the it does appear, ‘freedom’ is merely a minor by the early 20th century, in most soci- subtitle The Story of My Experiments with descriptor or a passing qualifier. ‘Freedom’ eties, ‘important men operating in pub- Truth. In the accompanying essay by the in Gandhi’s text appears early when he lic arenas wore Western-style clothes scholar Tridip Suhrud that foregrounds recognises that political freedoms were wherever they lived’. Gandhi, by virtue the recently published Critical Edition, intimately tied to ‘strength’ which he as- of his own example, sought to stymie Suhrud tells us that the term ‘atmakatha’ sumed meant eating meat; but embedded this trend. But if asked why did Gandhi (literally, self-told-story or, more elliptical- within this recognition was also his reali- himself abandon his three-piece suits in ly, the story of the self) and ‘jeevan vrittant’ sation that while political freedoms were South Africa and take to dressing—in the (life chronicles) often gets translated as important, lying to one’s parents about words of Winston Churchill—like “a half- ‘autobiography’, but what Gandhi had al- eating meat merited greater attention. naked fakir”, most answers rarely speak ways wanted to write was an ‘atmakatha’, On other occasions in the text, he uses to Gandhi's moral worldview. They range not a ‘vrittant’. An ‘atmakatha’ offered him ‘freedom’ to simply describe himself as from the emotionally pragmatic: Gandhi an opportunity to write with self-aware- a via negativa: as one who was respected wanted to identify with the average inden- ness about his past and explore his idea of for his ‘freedom from exaggeration and

22 24 august 2020 explicitly equate ‘freedom’ with his radical innovation called ‘satyagraha’. All in all, ‘freedom’ as a topic worthy of discussion and sustained elaboration is strange- ly missing in Gandhi’s autobiography. In contrast, Gandhi’s autobiography is peppered with ‘truth’: from personal values imbibed through Puranas like the story of King Harishchandra to the substantive questions of how he thought of himself, the word ‘truth’ was both polyvalent and multipurpose. Truth for Gandhi as a category of reality was a tool and a method. He used it to pry open situations that he comes across in life to make it more recognisable. In this sense, Gan- dhi’s truth was like a Swiss Army knife— many things to him, as and when the situation demanded. And yet, concurrently, ‘truth’ to Gandhi was also a singular end in and of itself and thus considered synonymous with God. This has led many to John Dewey think that Gandhi’s radical belief of non- violence can be motivated by analysing his approach to truth. To this end, they rely upon a traditional liberal analytics of truth that is perhaps best explained by the For John Dewey and his disciples British philosopher John Stuart Mill. The argument goes like this: since we now (among them was a young man called know that many things from our past are not truthful, we must concede with Bhimrao Ambedkar), freedom through humility that we may be wrong today as education and democracy was the means well—and so, we must ‘tolerate’ as opposed to impose our views with violence. to arrive at unrevealed truths of our What this argument does is tie together an epistemological constraint (knowing public and private lives ‘truth’ truthfully) with a psychological attitude and practical approach towards fellow humans. In an illuminating essay the philosopher Akeel Bilgrami makes devotion to truth’. As a grown man and nence—at the age of 36. He wrote: ‘… the a convincing case that this is a misread- father of young children, the most inter- freedom and joy that came to me after taking of the relationship between Gandhi’s esting use of the word ‘freedom’ is when ing the vow had never been experienced idea of truth and non-violence. Bilgrami he employs it to describe his recognition before…’. On occasion, he uses ‘freedom’ to argues that what truly matters to Gandhi that ‘vows’ were a way to enter into free- make a social observation such as the joie is that the source of our humility is moti- dom and not close it (apropos, the Israeli de vivre of the Burmese women in contrast vated not by knowledge but by attitude scholar of Tamil, David Shulman, has a to the ‘indolence’ of Burmese men; or to and conduct. Whereas in the Western similarly inflected view that he uses to de- make a religious observation that ‘grace’, tradition, the need for humility comes scribe the traditional rigours of Carnatic which he equates with ‘freedom from er- from our inability to ascertain the truth music as a way to ‘break into bonds’). Per- ror’, comes from complete surrender to content of the world, in Gandhi’s world, haps the most revealing of use of the word God and by relying on mantras like Ra- the need for humility comes from his cut- ‘freedom’ is when referring to his vow of manama. On only one occasion, when he ting the umbilical bonds between ‘moral brahmacharya—including sexual absti- describes his speech in Kathiawar, does he judgement and moral criticism’ of others.

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 23 The Freedom Issue

For much of post-Independence India, as a society, we have elevated Gandhi every passing year to ever further symbolic irrelevance, all the while paying lip-service to his ideas of truth. The result is the rise of a political culture that is high on thinking itself as an exemplar of truth and virtues while rarely introspecting on the necessary grounds upon which individual freedoms flourish

For any criticism, according to Gandhi, is an individual’s ‘freedom’ itself emerges? as embodiments of truth but instead we inescapably tied to violence. This view, How must we educate our children to en- will rely on education and democracy as however, poses the obvious problem in sure they are interested in truth not just for the way to build the preconditions neces- a Gandhian framework—for, how are its own sake as an intellectual exercise but sary for truth. For Gandhi, truth was singu- we to get others in society to follow a par- also to become truthful individuals? On larly important and freedom was at best a ticular moral action? For Gandhi, there matters related to the production of these political need of the hour and at worst an could be no compulsion in the matter of virtues, Gandhi’s refrain is often to out- afterthought and perhaps even an indul- performing an act, however desirable. source right action to an individual’s moral gence that lay its snares for the unsuspect- And so, he relied on the idea of a moral intuition to do the thing after having lived ing; for Dewey and his disciples (among exemplar. He believed that his struggle in close proximity of moral exemplars, them was a young man from Satara called to turn his own body and life into a site who would approximate Gandhi’s own Bhimrao Ambedkar), freedom through of moral probity and judgement would example about food and abstinence, non- education and democracy was the means lead others to voluntarily emulate similar violence and commitment to truth. In this to arrive at unrevealed truths of our public choices. Freedom, as far as the individual sense, a Gandhian society lays primacy on and private lives. was concerned, for Gandhi, was merely socialisation through emulation of the vir- For much of post-Independence In- the freedom they possessed to choose or tuous exemplar. Freedom rarely figures as dia, as a society, we have elevated Gandhi discard his own life’s efforts to think and an end goal. It also doesn’t answer the ques- every passing year to ever further sym- live non-violently. tion of how a moral paragon is to emerge bolic irrelevance, all the while paying lip The perils of this unique and subtle in absence of freedom to experiment and service to his ideas of truth. The result is way of motivating the importance of truth depart from the norm. the rise of a political culture that is high through the device of exemplarity is that In direct contrast to Gandhi’s elevation on thinking itself as an exemplar of truth in absence of integrity—a commitment of truth, the American philosopher John and virtues while rarely introspecting on to truth—the whole exercise goes from Dewey offers a different way to allow for the necessary grounds upon which indi- simpleminded emulation to unthinking the conditions that would let truth to bur- vidual freedoms flourish. For 73 years, we mimicry and cynical acts of signalling. ble to the fore. To do so, he says, we need have parroted that truth alone triumphs, in The interiority of Gandhi’s ideas of living to stop thinking about discovering truths the belief that mere restatement of this truthfully is traduced to empty gesturing that would allow us to map our pet theo- mahavakya is tantamount to birthing it that merely colours the political exterior. ries to an external reality but instead begin as a reality. Perhaps it is time to begin ask- The role of ‘freedom’ in a Gandhian world thinking about the freedoms to form and ing if there is another way through which is largely therefore dichotomous: it is either disengage voluntary associations with truth can rise to the fore. Perhaps it is time that of the political kind—freedom from others. This view makes a case that if we to take to heart what the philosopher British masters—or it is a freedom to emu- are able to worry about freedoms that Richard Rorty used to say: ‘Take care of late and struggle to become similar to Gan- individuals experience—through edu- freedom and truth will take care of itself.’ n dhi. Rarely does Gandhi ask in his Autobiog- cation, voting rights, equality under the raphy, or even less so do his political heirs law—then we will have arrived at suffi- Keerthik Sasidharan is an author who ask: How is freedom itself born in a society? cient conditions to let individuals discover lives in New York City. His forthcoming book What are the necessary constituents of that private and public truths. In such a society, The Dharma Forest will be published which we identify as prerequisites before there will be no need to rely on exemplars by Penguin India

24 24 august 2020 The Freedom Issue

Keshava Guha

PAST IS PROLOGUE PAST Apostle of the Active Citizen Why the social vision of Mahadev Govind Ranade is all too important today Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration

very Independence Day, thinkers and politicians offer public reflections on the anniversary of our ‘freedom’ that rarely involve much thought about what exactly freedom is or should be in the In- Edian context. There is much discussion about ‘ideas of India’: is India a modern construct, born first on August 15th, 1947 and then again on January 26th, 1950, or is it a timeless civilisation? When we look backwards, it is usually to the founding of the republic and the writing of the Consti- tution and often to lament how far short we have fallen of the ideals that under- pinned that founding. But the tradition of thinking about freedom in India goes back much further. In 1900, Mahadev Govind Ranade, then a judge of the Bombay High Court, was only 58, but he knew that he was dying, of what we now call coronary heart disease. The next Congress session in Lahore would be the first to take place without him. But in May of that year, he attended

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 25 The Freedom Issue a provincial meeting of the Social Confer- governing India would confidently make crisis in more ways than one. It is at mo- ence in Satara in western Maharashtra her own decisions, free from self-loathing ments of crisis, he said, specifically citing and gave a speech, all but forgotten to- and Western interference. By the 1890s, the ongoing famine and plague that had day, that is one of the most remarkable Tilak and his followers had decisively ravaged Maharashtra, that the interde- Indian inquiries into the nature of free- seized control of the Congress in Maha- pendent nature of different freedoms is dom. This speech, later republished as rashtra, shunting the reformers to the thrown into relief: “If our social arrange- Liberate the Whole Man, speaks directly margins. ments were as perfect as they might be to our moment. In the end, the vision of Ranade and made, half the terrors of famine would Outside Maharashtra, Ranade is his protégé, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, won vanish.” The scale of human suffering in remembered today, if at all, for his eco- out. After Tilak’s death the leadership of India in 2020 is testament less to the dan- nomic writings—just one aspect of a the freedom struggle was assumed by gers of the Covid-19 virus than to the im- life that took in a distinguished official Gokhale’s own protege: Mohandas K perfections of our social arrangements. career as a judge, serving as “the power Gandhi. Using methods that Ranade It was thus imperative, said Ranade behind the throne” (Surendranath Baner- explicitly deplored—civil disobedi- in 1900, for the Congress to not merely jee’s phrase) in the Congress in Bombay ence—Gandhi transformed a movement be a vehicle for political claims, but also Presidency, and, above all, as the leading for political freedom into a broadbased for social and religious change. For, just Hindu social and religious reformer of struggle for human freedom. The Con- like political institutions, social systems his generation. stitution that followed Independence were “the work of human hands”. The op- It is this final aspect of Ranade that I embodied the reformers’ idea of a so- pression and backwardness that marred want to draw attention to this Indepen- ciety that was free and just, not merely Hindu society could not be blamed on dence Day. The Social Conference was self-governing. But in May 1900, the re- ancient texts; and even if it were true that Ranade’s creation. It was not enough, formers were in the minority; and it was caste and the oppression of women were he argued, for Indians merely to pursue to the anti-reform majority of Tilak and in keeping with Hindu tradition, that political concessions from the British his followers that Ranade’s remarks were was insufficient justification: “Above all Raj. Political reform was only one as- truly addressed. mere ordinances of Institutes stands the pect of achieving true freedom. Political Eternal Law of justice and equality, of pity freedom was meaningless in a society and compassion, the suggestions of the marked by near-universal poverty, caste anade began his speech conscience within and nature without discrimination and the subjection of by asserting the inseparability us.” The reform of religion should not be women. The platform of the Congress Rof political, social, religious and left to “ecclesiastical heads” and “caste had to be used to fight on all these fronts, economic freedom for India’s progress. elders”, but was the duty of all Hindus. not just one. Mere political freedom is worthless, he Finally, the task of individual and Standing against Ranade and his proj- said, without “a social system based on collective liberation requires us to work ect of pursuing political and social reform reason and justice”, nor is economic for the liberation of all, not simply our simultaneously was Bal Gangadhar Tilak. freedom possible “when social arrange- own caste or subcaste. Caste, said Ranade, Tilak, unlike Ranade, is a name everyone ments are imperfect”. And “if your reli- was “the main blot on our social system”. knows. But he is unacknowledged as the gious ideals are low and grovelling, you (This in 1900!) And while every caste had true progenitor of Hindu nationalism. cannot succeed in the social, economic its particular features, its own “evils and Almost every aspect of today’s Hindut- or political spheres”. This interdepen- inequities”, the differences between va politics was deployed or pioneered by dence of politics, economics, society and them were minor by comparison to the Tilak—from religious revival as a po- religion “is not an accident but is the law great similarity: “All castes and even litical tool, to the open suspicion of of our nature”. creeds are alike defective in not recog- Muslims, to contempt for civility in Ranade’s speech speaks to our present nising the claims of justice and equality, discourse. Above all, Tilak stood for the single-minded pursuit of swaraj. Al- though (like Savarkar and Jinnah) he was progressive in the conduct of his private life, he opposed the reformers in public Mahadev Govind Ranade’s broad with a “we are like this only” defence of Hindu society. Social reform was a dis- aspiration for Indian society was for traction from swaraj; the reformers had been corrupted by Western ideas and the it to be governed not by ‘the law of Christian contempt for Hinduism; a self- status’ but by ‘the law of contract’

26 dinodia photos

Bal Gangadhar Tilak is unacknowledged as the true progenitor of Hindu nationalism. Almost every aspect of today’s Hindutva politics was deployed or pioneered by Tilak

and according the respect and freedom n Satara, Ranade said that in order sweat of your brow’ is not a curse pro- due to the female sex, and cherishing the to achieve these interdependent free- nounced on man, but the very condition abuse claimed by men as men and by the Idoms, we had to rethink our concep- of his existence and growth.” members of one class of men to the dis- tion of politics and of private and public. In India today, at both the national paragement of other castes.” It was only He lamented the conception of politics and state-level majorities have generally by shedding caste identities and joining a as the mere petitioning for grants and chosen subjecthood rather than having common platform that we could become favours, a business of demands; and, con- it imposed upon us. Authoritarian “taller, wiser and better, individually and versely, that the citizen’s only business strongmen—I use the term in a gender- collectively”. other than making demands of their po- neutral sense—are re-elected more Ranade’s specific exhortations ranged litical representatives was taking care of often than not. The active exercise of from the problems of his time (above all their private life. citizenship is artfully rebranded as banning child marriage and allowing Ranade’s concern was not only with anti-national, whether the offender is a widow remarriage) to those that remain private and public, but with the in-be- journalist asking questions or a lawyer tragically relevant today—the educa- tween place, the collective civic sphere fighting for Adivasi rights, and there is tion of women, the “dependent status” in which social, economic and religious little public sympathy for those who of women and intercaste marriage. progress could be achieved. Citizens had are thus branded. His broad aspiration for Indian soci- to collectively empower each other to That is not to imply that Ranade’s ety was for it to be governed not by “the achieve this progress; they had to see the vision of active citizenship involved law of status”—ascribed group identity construction of democracy, freedom and private civic organisations standing in within an oppressive hierarchy—but by progress as their individual and collec- for the state. We live in an era of the pri- “the law of contract”—a society of free tive task, not simply that of government. vatisation of public goods. Covid-19 has individuals pursuing self-directed lives. In a time when we have allowed our- made this particularly evident in the case A few months after the Satara speech, selves to become infantilised as political of healthcare, but education, electricity, Ranade made his final public appear- citizens, passively acquiescing to ‘strong drinking water, security, transport and ance, unveiling a portrait of Dadabhai leadership’ rather than seeking to take even breathable air are goods which we Naoroji in the Framji Cowasji institute. ownership of social change, with virtu- no longer expect the state to provide; they He spoke of the India of the future: “The ally every political party either a cult of are available privately, to those who can India that is to be born will have no room personality or a family firm, Ranade’s afford them. Far from advocating the pri- for mere distinction of race, creed, colour. account of active citizenship bears par- vate provision of public goods, Ranade We aspire, all of us, to be Indians first, and ticular repeating: “Gifts and favours are was deeply sceptical of laissez-faire eco- Indians to the last, over every other condi- of no value unless we have deserved the nomics in the Indian context. He was tion which has separated us so long and concessions by our own elevation and constantly lobbying the government of made united India impossible.” our own struggles. ‘You shall live by the the Bombay Presidency to increase its

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 27 The Freedom Issue spending on public education, and he or downplaying the record of oppression, sation, Nehru and Patel on state-making believed that without massive public or laundering the reputations of specific and so on. But if one frames the questions investment, India could not industri- figures. It means acknowledging both these ways: Did they see India as a project alise. He was not a proto-socialist—he oppression as well as our forebears’ of creating a free and just society fit for was an advocate of property rights, in real achievements in limiting or even human flourishing, not just the winning particular for farmers—but a believer in defeating that oppression. All one has of political independence? Did they see public-private collaboration of the kind to do is compare the India of 1870 and India as a home for all kinds of people, that, in our time, the Italian economist 1970. The former, a colony more medi- not just Hindus? And, above all, does Mariana Mazzucato has called “the en- eval than modern on every social and the record show that they advanced the trepreneurial state”. economic indicator, a land in which causes of freedom, justice and equality for 10-year-old girls could be raped by their Indians? If we ask these questions, then, husbands with the sanction of law and to appropriate Ranade’s words in a dif- anade’s speech of 1900 is worth all civic and social life was abjured out of ferent context, “the differences between returning to not only for its respect to “purity of touch”; the latter, a re- them merge into minor matters by the Rspecific insights, but for some- public with universal suffrage, a woman side of their great similarities”. thing much broader that it represents: Prime Minister and constitutionally In these terms, the difference be- the past as a resource for the present. guaranteed reservation for Dalits and tween Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, As we collectively seek to achieve what Adivasis. These advances were not Gokhale, Lajpat Rai, Nehru, Periya, Phule, Ranade described as “renovated India”, god-given, but won by the work of mil- Rajaji, Ranade, Vivekananda (and dozens a country in which “famine and sor- lions of Indians of all castes and faiths. of others) on the one side, and Golwalkar,

dinodia photos Before and immediately after Independence, the emotion of patriotism was understood not to mean pride, but the aspiration that comes from love. ‘I recognise no limits to my aspiration for our motherland,’ wrote Gopal Krishna Gokhale

row, oppression and pestilence” will be Told this way, it is a true story of what is Jinnah, Savarkar and Tilak on the other “myths of the past”, a country truly free possible in India. is difficult to miss. Given the needs of because it is free in all ways, we can make We need, also, to kick our habit of the present moment, to focus on the in- use of the past as a wellspring of both treating the past as a zero-sum personal- tramural differences within the former invigoration and insight. We need to put ity contest. The past, unlike the present, group rather than their shared difference aside two ways of thinking politically is not an election where you have to vote with the latter is either to reveal deep ig- about the past. for a single candidate. There is plenty of norance or to prefer dissension and defeat The first is to see the past as merely scholarly interest in debating the differ- to unity and progress. It is to be part of the a source of shame, a site of nothing but ences between Gandhi and Ambedkar on problem rather than part of the solution. oppression. This does not mean ignoring caste, Nehru and Gandhi on industriali- All this matters because the story we

28 24 august 2020 choose to tell of our past speaks to our analysis of the present and our ambitions for the future. In the words of the Ameri- can philosopher Richard Rorty, “Stories Ranade’s drive to reform Hinduism about what a nation has been and should came from theistic faith, from the try to be are not attempts at accurate representation, but rather attempts to forge pursuit of dharma, ‘the law Eternal of a moral identity.” If what we stand for is the project of a free and just society for justice and equality’ which stands all Indians, then we should own the fact that a clear majority of the thinker-actors above all manmade institutions of the freedom struggle are on our side. And any progress we achieve builds on theirs—in Ranade’s phrase, reformers aim “to produce the ideal out of the ac- from the West, and two, that academic/ comes from love. ‘I recognise no limits to tual and by the help of the actual”—by professional philosophers and theo- my aspiration for our motherland,’ wrote the help of all that has gone before. rists are weightier than thinker-actors Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Now much of Reformers like Ranade offer us inspi- who wrote in everyday language for a our intellectual elite is cynical and defeat- ration in the example of their concrete non-academic audience. Generations ist, and sees patriotism as embarrassing. achievements; for more depressing of Indian students have read Hegel Another is Ranade’s religious fervour. His reasons, they remain relevant for their and Marx, and more recently Foucault drive to reform Hinduism came from the- commentary on India’s social, economic and Said, but not Indian authors on istic faith, from the pursuit of dharma, ‘the and moral life. Depressing because the Indian questions. A flotilla of fine recent law Eternal of justice and equality’ which relevance of their insights is in propor- scholarship (by the likes of Gautam stands above all manmade institutions. tion to the persistence of so many of Bhatia, Rohit De, Madhav Khosla and He spent hours each day reciting the ab- the problems they sought to address. Ornit Shani) has examined the forma- hangas of Tukaram and was frequently But in several cases there is also some- tion of Indian constitutional democ- moved to tears by the act. thing shockingly contemporary about racy in the 1940s and 1950s. But the The overwhelming majority of In- both their prose style and their quality corpus of Indian political thought that dians continue to be both religious and of mind. Any op-ed page in 2020 would speaks directly to our present needs goes emotionally patriotic; those elite Indians be improved by Lajpat Rai’s commen- back much further. who are embarrassed by patriotism and tary on, for instance, the Hindu-Muslim Ranade himself, as an economic ashamed of Hinduism only reveal the question. As for Ranade—it is no disre- thinker, was sceptical of universal laws chasm between themselves and their fel- spect to the present Bombay High Court and of the lazy importation of Anglo- low citizens. Reading the likes of Ranade to say that when reading him, one is phone ideas. Human rights were univer- is a way to recover both that lost patrio- easily convinced that, transported to sal, but economic institutions had to be tism as well as the abandoned project of our time, it would take him at most a designed for their particular context. In- reforming Hinduism from within. couple of weeks to get up to speed dian political economy had to fit Indian The task of the social reformer, said with recent legal and social develop- society, and learn not just from Britain be- Mahadev Govind Ranade, “is to comments and, having done so, he would cause she happened to rule us, but from plete the half-written sentence”. Inde- elevate any court’s moral and intellectual cases of greater relevance. His proposals pendence Day, never more than in these authority. for agricultural reform, for instance, were circumstances, is a reminder that the inspired by his study of Dutch colonial sentence of Indian freedom is at best policy in what is now Indonesia. half-written. Completing it will be an fter decades of neglect, we have I said that Ranade often reads like he is easier and happier business if we draw finally rediscovered Ambedkar, our contemporary. But in other ways, to on all those who have taken the writing Aand one prays for the day in which read him is to be reminded of two quali- thus far. As for Ranade—if we give him The Annihilation of Caste is required read- ties that those who wish for India to be his proper place, then the day will come ing in high schools. But most other think- truly free have willingly given up. One is when a reference to ‘MGR’ will prompt ers about Indian politics and society re- the high sentiment of patriotism. Before the reply: ‘Which one?’ n main unread, their books victim to two and immediately after Independence, the kinds of prejudice—one, that important emotion of patriotism was understood Keshava Guha is the author of social and political theory has to come not to mean pride, but the aspiration that the novel Accidental Magic

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 29 The Freedom Issue

Sudeep Paul

PAST IS PROLOGUE PAST The Enigma of Heroes Revolutionary nationalists as guiding spirits

Illustration by Saurabh Singh

he Earl of Minto, better the West, and which the imitative Bengali dramatic action, were admirers of the Car- known in these parts as has childishly accepted’. bonari as well. Where you stood, depended Lord Minto, who suc- Whether Lord Minto’s insight into on which Mazzini you liked better. ceeded Lord Curzon of the Bengali soul was as penetrating as The formulaic description of the Indian Kedleston as Viceroy in his predecessor’s or not, he was not alone nationalist revolutionaries as young and 1905, had found himself in being aghast at murderous methods impatient in their own day and the sub- Tin an unenviable situation. Not because being imported from Occidental revolu- sequent judgment of mainstream history the most brilliant Viceroy ever—and tionaries and anarchists. In Memories of that their methods were myopic and their one of the brightest minds of his genera- My Life and Times (1932), Bipin Chandra achievements ephemeral are mirrored in tion—had just resigned and bequeathed Pal, tracing a significant departure in those two words in Pal’s memoirs: ‘moral him a mess. Curzon was leaving behind Giuseppe Mazzini’s career, wrote: ‘Secret cowardice’. Facts may bear out both ‘young a problem he had supposedly solved. assassinations, Mazzini discovered, paid a and impatient’ and ‘myopic and ephem- Lines had been drawn on a map and a big premium to moral cowardice…The policy eral’. However, posterity might have called troublesome province partitioned. There and methods of the Carbonari could not out the lack of both foresight and hindsight were protests, rakhis exchanged, and the possibly find an effective remedy to this in that assessment, just as much as it could Poet wrote a song. There was far less enthu- moral disease. Mazzini, therefore, left the agree with it. The counter-argument was siasm for the opposition to the partition Carbonari and boldly faced the persecu- always simple: Is it evidence of cowardice in the new eastern province than in the tions of the Austrian government.’ The (and perhaps ignorance) when you don’t western one, not least because of sectarian Genoese revolutionary and founder of value your own life and run risks that can demography. But soon, garden houses in Young Italy was an early and profound in- end in your death? Isn’t willingness to die the then suburbs of the colonial capital fluence on budding Indian nationalism, for a cause, as the cliché goes, the ultimate were being uncovered as bomb-making albeit not the only one. But Mazzini is illus- proof of fidelity to it? Does it take courage to factories, some of which were going off trative. Revered by early nationalists like be ready for death at every living moment? and finding human targets, intended or Surendranath Banerjea and what would This is dangerous territory in the early 21st otherwise, and then an 18-year-old kid and later constitute the ‘moderate’ faction in century, but the context here is the early his slightly older associate ended up bomb- the nascent Indian National Congress, 20th—and posterity, after all, has been in- ing the carriage of a woman and her daugh- Mazzini, like fellow Ligurian Giuseppe terested in rather selective remembrance. ter in Muzaffarpur, mistaking it to be the Garibaldi, were idols in the eyes of the As far as models of heroism and role mod- conveyance of the judge they were meant impatient younger nationalists too, who els in adversity go, some might argue that to assassinate. In a letter to John Morley, would be labelled the ‘extremists’ around we have never had any better. That these Secretary of State for India, the Viceroy the time of the 1907 Surat Split. The differ- men and women, not all of them young, wrote that the conspiracy evidenced ence was that those who thought dialogue were the greatest and sincerest patriots we ‘murderous methods hitherto unknown and depositions would never yield results, have had because they gave their country in India which have been imported from and that the need was for quicker and more all they had—their lives—and like kar-

30 24 august 2020 (L-R) Henry Derozio, Sri Aurobindo, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Swami Vivekananda

the West of this significant instance of a Aurobindo identified three broad phases great European patriot inspiring a politi- in the Bengal-Indian Renaissance. The cal movement in the East. In India too the present generation has little knowledge of first, epitomised by the Derozian Young what Mazzini and Garibaldi meant to the Indian patriots of the nineteenth century.’ Bengal movement, received the Das Gupta attributes much of this to the ‘European contact’ and rejected the ‘old twin facts that the Indian national movement would soon acquire a largely non- culture’. The second, as with Bankim violent character once Gandhi emerged on the scene and that since the 1920s, the Chandra, was the Indian reaction to ‘young men of the last thirty years’ would be more interested in Marx than Mazzini. the European influence. The third, Mazzini, in India, is forgotten but he evidenced in Vivekananda, was a served at one time as shorthand for all Western influences on Indian national- ‘new creation’ wherein Indian genius ism, including the French Revolution, Rus- sian anarchists, and revolutionaries across remained supreme but wedded itself to Europe. Where the moderates wanted the best of the Occident Mazzini’s patriotism and idealism to be picked up, the extremists grasped ‘revolutionary terrorism’, as native historians would label it after the British, and devel- mayogis in the land that formulated that that the Cambridge History of India does oped a penchant for secret societies, clan- code, they did their work and did not think not as much as mention the name of Ban- destine meetings, passwords and conspir- about the fruits of their labour, only hop- kim Chandra-Chatterji whom he calls acy to violently drive the colonialists out. ing that it would be more than a shot in the the “Mazzini of Indian nationalism”. This The more or less convergence of views be- dark on the road to freedom. remark reminded me of the profound in- tween a Minto and a Surendranath Baner- The ghost of Mazzini does not watch fluence of Mazzini on the early phase of jea or Bipin Chandra Pal would apparently over the early history of the Indian freedom the Indian national movement. The his- come to be legitimised by the Gandhian struggle for most Indians. In a forgotten tory of that influence is now forgotten and movement. That, however, does justice to little essay titled ‘Mazzini and Indian Na- except for a few brief and at times unkind neither Gandhi nor the young extremists. tionalism’ (1956), RK Das Gupta lamented: references to it in Englishmen’s books on If Gandhi’s arrival on the scene was the ‘A British historian has recently regretted India there is nothing that may acquaint single biggest transformative event in the

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 31 The Freedom Issue public history of the Indian freedom move- Mazzini, Garibaldi, the French Revo- did not appeal to Muslims but that did not ment, the individual who underwent the lution, the Irish nationalists, and the mean they stayed away everywhere and biggest personal transformation through gamut of European influence on Indian always. On the other hand, those who con- the freedom struggle was Aurobindo nationalism, revolutionary or other- ceived the national rebirth in terms of re- Ghosh. In the public eye, especially in wise, worked their way into this. But it awakening Shakti, did not do so with a de- his home province, it’s usually either Au- was, after all, an Indian regeneration. It sign to keep the Muslims out. Their terms robindo Ghosh, the revolutionary, or Sri was, in Aurobindo’s words, the ‘Shakti of of reference were what the context provid- Aurobindo, poet, philosopher, sage, seer India mastering and taking possession ed, and the context was, as seen earlier, one (Aurobindo was a poet before he became of the modern influence, no longer pos- in which India had just been rediscovered, a revolutionary, but that’s fodder for an- sessed or overcome by it.’ Thus, a Minto her genius of old salvaged and remoulded. other argument)—almost never the two or a Bipin Chandra Pal was both right and (Later, the younger revolutionaries’ increas- together. Aurobindo identified three broad wrong. Notwithstanding secrets societ- ing fascination for Marxist thought would trends or phases in the Bengal-Indian Re- ies, passwords, guns and bombs, these change the character of the revolutionary naissance of the 19th and early 20th cen- were more than romantically deluded movement, or whatever would be left of it.) turies. In 1918, he wrote in Arya: ‘The first young men playing with the law, think- The timeline of the revolutionary step was the reception of the European ing it was just a game. Recall VVS Aiyar’s movement, confined largely to Bengal, contact, a radical reconsideration of many protégé Vanchinathan’s note to posterity Punjab, Bombay, Bihar and the United of the prominent elements and some revo- found in his pocket after the assassination Provinces, extends from the Alipore Con-

The death of Bagha Jatin in 1915 marks an inexact but necessary midpoint of the revolutionary movement. This was no longer Minto’s childish imitation of Western revolutionary tactics but a fully fledged international plot involving warring states of World War I

lutionary denial of the very principles of of Robert Ashe in 1911—words dedicat- spiracy Case of 1908 to the Chittagong the old culture. The second was a reaction ing his life to the motherland and taking Armoury Raid, or the Writers’ Building of the Indian spirit upon the European in- responsibility for his action. He was only attack, both of 1930. (Indian activists and fluence, sometimes with a total denial of a few years older than Khudiram when he their activities abroad, such as Shyamji what it offered and a stressing both of the shot himself on the run. Krishna Varma’s Indian Home Rule Soci- essential and the strict letter of the national Aiyar’s Bharatha Matha Association ety, and particularly the Gadar Movement, past…The third…is rather a process of new may have been different in form from the intersect with this timeline and its nodes creation in which the spiritual power of Anushilan Samiti of Dhaka or Jugantar of but cannot be explored here.) That’s to the Indian mind remains supreme, recov- Calcutta or Rash Behari Bose’s organisa- settle for only two prominent dates at ei- ers its truths, accepts whatever it finds tional activities in northern India, but the ther end, as school textbooks perhaps still sound or true, useful or inevitable of the spirit that animated the revolutionaries do. But those dates are important. Without modern idea and form, but so transmutes across the subcontinent’s geography had a the 1905 partition of Bengal, history is a big and Indianises it…’ The first, epitomised by few things in common, again with regional what-if. And without Bhagat Singh and the Young Bengal movement, signalled the variations: The project to liberate India was the Central Assembly Bomb case, or the resuscitation of thought. Bankim Chandra expressed in a vocabulary and framed in a Surya Sen interlude before Subhas Chan- was the icon of the second while the third worldview that was overwhelmingly Hin- dra Bose’s Indian National Army, little vis- was evident in the words of Vivekananda. du. The pledge to Mother and Motherland ible trace would have remained of revolu-

32 24 august 2020 and 14 years before Bhagat Singh, Sukh- legacy of revolutionary nationalism has Giuseppe dev and Rajguru bombed the Central As- always been for the Indian mind. Mazzini sembly, marks an inexact but necessary Citizens of a free country—with an midpoint of the revolutionary movement. economy the fifth largest in the world This was no longer Minto’s childish imita- and the fourth largest military—73 years tion of Western revolutionary tactics but a after it gained independence might tend fully fledged international plot involving to think differently from the colonial sub- warring states of World War I, their dip- jects of a fallen and humiliated nation, es- lomats, military officers and intelligence pecially when it has just begun to think for operatives. Nor was this a pursuit of secret- itself again, on matters of taking up arms society romance by deluded gun-wielding and attempting to kill fellow humans youth. The likes of Jatin were nothing if no matter what they represent and what not clear-eyed about what they were try- they do. The revolutionary nationalists, ing to do and about their impending fates. barring an official remembrance and a tweet, are ghosts we have long chosen not to see anymore. Their only continuous y 1915, Mazzini, again as home has been the pages of history and of shorthand for much more, had textbooks—and what they do there these getty images been imported, Indianised, and days is questionable. Statues, of course, can executed over and over in all his always be torn down. But if we are looking tionary activity which had been, by then, Bavatars without anybody remembering for inspiration in the midst of a global ca- subsumed under and transformed by the enough to reflect on the origins of that con- tastrophe of a different kind, we have per- Gandhian pan-India movement. Many nection a half-century earlier. Mazzini, of haps no better and brighter examples of revolutionaries, those that did not perish course, did not unify Italy. Garibaldi was heroism in adversity, of fearlessness and on the gallows or by their own hand, had Act V Scene V. The pragmatic man who stoicism, of dedication to duty and self-sac- long ago joined Gandhi, or disappeared in used guile and diplomacy to do the most rifice, than these men and women. And it’s the communist cloud. in real terms for Italian unification was important that we approach them know- Stretching across that timeline and ide- Count Camillo Cavour. Neither moder- ing that they have a psychological space to ological reinventions, the revolutionaries ates like Surendranath Banerjea nor the occupy in our lives today, no more, no less. were united by sacrifice, culminating in extremist fans of the Carbonari had much In a world that sees multiple conflicts, mostly painful deaths or lifelong impris- time for the Count di Cavour. (Maybe that’s albeit no major all-consuming war in a onment, often after years of running and why, despite every kind of movement, long while, terrorism targeting one and hiding, hunting and being hunted. Imbib- strategy, tactic and conspiracy, India had to all, in a country that’s been a longstand- ing Vivekananda and Bankim, the legacy wait for the biggest man-made cataclysm ing victim of secessionist and sectarian of whose Anandamath (1882) to the early in human history to be delivered from its violence and armed non-state conspiracies phase of the revolutionary movement colonial masters.) to overthrow the state, nothing can remain has been explored threadbare for a hun- Revolutionary nationalism achieved free of blight, not even the legacy of its pa- dred years, Jatindranath Mukherjee, aka few of its ends and had hardly any long- triots. But for those looking to both split Bagha Jatin—perhaps the most legendary term gains on the ground to show for all hairs and gather all under easy categories and mythologised figure among the Ben- the blood and pain. In that, the assess- according to the convenience of moment gal revolutionaries, who also a mentor to ment of Lord Minto, the foresight of a and argument, there’s always the not-so- MN Roy—had said: “We will die, and thus Bipin Chandra Pal, Gandhi’s emphasis on subtle difference to ponder between tak- the nation will awaken.” When Jatin died a mass movement involving all Indians, ing up arms to throw out a foreign power from his wounds in a Balasore hospital in Aurobindo’s journey on a different path, from one’s broken land, to unify, integrate September 1915—after the gun battle that had all got it right. Textbooks tend to vary and preserve it and doing the same against sealed the coffin of the Indo-German Con- on pages dedicated to the revolutionary the state of one’s own that came into being spiracy—a surprising tribute was paid to phases in our freedom struggle depend- once said foreigners departed. For a more him by none other than Charles Tegart, the ing on which board’s history curriculum scholarly take on that essential distinction, efficient and hated police commissioner of we are talking about—and what the ex- there’s quite a handy book by a foreigner— Bengal, who admitted his admiration for tant state in question has to show for a the 2004 edition of Peter Heehs’ The Bomb the brave man. revolutionary heritage. Textbooks matter in Bengal, originally published in 1993— The death of Bagha Jatin in 1915, seven because they are supposed to fill the young depending, of course, on availability in years since the Alipore Conspiracy Case mind with matter. And because the real any format. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 33 The Freedom Issue

 PR ramesh I, the Hindu THE MOMENTOUS MOMENT

Prime Minister Narendra Modi performs bhoomipuja at the site of the proposed Ram temple in Ayodhya, August 5

34 24 august 2020 I, the Hindu A religion regains its pride ot long ago, Hindus were made to feel ashamed of flaunting their religious identity, in the name of being secular by nature. While the scars of such humilia- tions are yet to disappear, one cannot but notice the buoyant Hindu assertion that triumphs over the sense of guilt foisted on them by the proponents of so-called secularism who had Nno qualms about promoting public displays of identity for other religions. Breaking free of that cultural entrapment institutionalised by the politically expedient leaders of post- Independence India, Hindus of this country are now proud of their heritage and history and do not want to be seen as effac- ing their beliefs for the sake of Abrahamic religions, such as Christianity and Islam, that received preferential treatment for decades in a contrived effort to champion ‘secular’ ideals. Yes, the initial attempts to de-Hinduise India have hit the skids following the awakening of Hindu consciousness in the land where Narendra Modi as Prime Minister successfully obliterated the political requirement for excessive appeasement of any other religion at the expense of Hinduism. The course correction was rapid and effective. The country would no longer be at the mercy of wokes and the practitio- ners of cultural Marxism who used to set whimsical standards for what was right and wrong in India’s socio-political realm. The first concrete attempt at decolonising the Hindu mind came with Swami Vivekananda’s Chicago address of September 11th, 1893. It was there, in the heart of the US, that he proactively dismissed the myths being propagated about Sanatan Dharma by the ruling establishment in the subcontinent and the missionaries encouraged by them. His intent was not so much to attack Christianity as to own and celebrate the tenets of Hinduism. Of the six speeches he delivered in Chicago between September 11th and 27th, 1893 at the Parliament of Religions, the first was the most dramatic and strident. Re- ferring to those present as “sisters and brothers of America” to thunderous applause, the Swami launched a full-frontal attack on the colonial view of Hinduism on everything, from “idolatry”, “caste system” and “salvation” , as opposed to what prevailed in Christianity. Several religious publications there reporting his speeches refused to even mention the reception the charismatic Swami got from a disenchanted youthful audience who found his critical views on Christian doctri- nal positions on “damning sin and salvation in Jesus Christ” rather heartening. Historian Sita Ram Goel points out that he reiterated, time and again, that he did not aim at making converts to Hinduism ap

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 35 The Freedom Issue but to focus on “the deepening and purifi- gains in reviving pride in Sanatan Dharma gan “Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain” was cation of Christianity which had been vul- which was practised by millions in the coined—a simplistic reinterpretation of garised by theologians and debased by mis- subcontinent. The prevailing worldview Vivekananda’s speech—the resurgence sionaries”. Defying the strong prevailing was reshaped into one of ridiculing and had a ready resonance. But it still looked current of denigrating all things Hindu, disparaging Hinduism and denigrating to be lacking in substance because the elite driven to a good extent by the acute bigot- the community of believers and the rich controlled the intellectual space. Educated ry of several members of the British ruling matrix of history, tradition, culture, social urbanites were by and large still apologetic class and thinkers, Vivekananda asserted norms and civilisational moorings. Glori- about displaying their religious beliefs in this in his address: “I am proud to belong to fication of not just Christianity but Islam public spaces and ashamed to acknowl- a religion which has taught the world both too began—and everything bad or illib- edge that they were Hindu by faith. The tolerance and universal acceptance. We be- eral associated with religion was dumped practice of Hinduism had been vilified lieve not only in universal toleration, but into the Hindu column. and suppressed and de-legitimised for we accept all religions as true. I am proud to Against this backdrop, perhaps try- so long that transformation would soon belong to a nation which has sheltered the ing to overcompensate for his being from come knocking. This was partly also be- persecuted and the refugees of all religions a faith perceived as regressive and from an cause the socio-political echo system was and all nations of the earth. I am proud to esoteric land of snakes and rope tricks, the not conducive to the ruling Congress. tell you that we have gathered in our bo- first Prime Minister was keen to project The Ram Mandir movement of the early som the purest remnant of the Israelites, the newly free country as one that symbol- 1990s revitalised the masses and heralded who came to Southern India and took ised reason, a scientific temper, and a mod- a renewed Hindu pride. Despite that, the refuge with us in the very year in which ern society. Hinduism, and the centuries of ruling elite and the intelligentsia in metros their holy temple was shattered to pieces civilisational history, culture and tradition were still loath to own their faith openly by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong backing it, became key collateral damage. with conviction and confidence. With the to the religion which has sheltered and coming to power of the United Progressive is still fostering the remnant of the grand Alliance (UPA) later, its minorityism called Zoroastrian nation.” hat was crucial the shots for a whole decade. It was a time Prior to this, the only resolute defender about this post-Inde- when civil society activists, NGOs and oth- of Hindu Dharma in this “intellectually pendence pushback ers, in the name of neutrality, revelled in be- hostile atmosphere that prevailed” was against the renewed ing patently unfriendly towards Hindus. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Vivekanan- resurgence of Hindu The political premium on minorityism da himself admired Bankim Chandra’s Wpride was the fact that it came from the reinforced, especially in urban power cen- worldview. Bankim Chandra had come elite class within the country and not from tres, a persistent emasculation of anything to the definite conclusion that Hindus faiths born outside or forces executing a remotely Hindu in nature. had nothing to learn from Christianity. colonial project. This bid came from the Everything changed radically on the af- The speech which Sri Aurobindo deliv- Hindus of India themselves. Though they ternoon of May 16th, 2014 when Modi rode ered at Uttarpara which brazenly and were notional Hindus, they denied the fact to power in Delhi. The incentive to vilify proudly linked Sanatan Dharma directly that they belonged to the faith. It allowed and demonise Hinduism was suddenly with nationalism came years after Vive- this class to criticise the religion with im- gone when he openly embraced his Hin- kananda’s Chicago address in 1909. He punity, claiming a locus which the pros- du faith in public, defying past traditions. not only aggressively defended Sanatan elytisers from outside the geography or With the advent of Modi, two crucial de- Dharma but also inextricably linked it the faith could never have. Any criticism velopments occurred. First, the insidious with nationalism. from the Church or the Ulema could have penalty levied on practising Hinduism and But the juggernaut reclaiming and re- been brushed aside as prejudiced, meant owning the religion with pride vanished. asserting Hinduism with pride, begun by for propagating and expanding their faith Second, the general mindset prevailing for the likes of Vivekananda and Aurobindo at the cost of the Hindus. But since it came long in society, that the Hindu could not do and Tagore was stalled in its tracks. Wea- from Hindus, it acquired a high credibility the very things connected to the practice of ponised by the state and Lord Macaulay, quotient. Therefore, those who attacked his religion that other communities could, missionaries by the droves were allowed Hinduism and its culture had the creden- without feeling diffident or guilty about to spread and propagate Christianity tials, locus, competence—and they went his actions, was radically restructured. Sud- across the subcontinent and pillory Hin- ahead with their task more ruthlessly denly, the stigma around being a devout duism as a faith defined by idolatry, irratio- than any evangelist. Yet, they escaped the Hindu ground to a full stop. nality and ritualistic emotional claptrap. scrutiny that would be extended to evan- In April last year, Modi, accompanied Post-Independence, Nehruvian social- gelists and ambassadors of other faiths. by Amit Shah, attended the Ganga Aarti ism and secularism further impeded the Beginning with 1980, when the slo- in his constituency of Varanasi, sitting

36 24 august 2020 national capital—as the only popular form of devotional music. Modi’s unabashed owning of Hindu- ism and its religious rituals expunged the taboo attached to this for decades among the urban elite. It was here that the new assertion made itself manifest loudest. The bulk of rural India had never abandoned its religious beliefs and rituals despite attempts by missionaries converting Tribals to Christianity in large numbers. Even in Swami Vivekananda with (L-R) Virchand Gandhi, Anagarika Dharmapala, G Bonet-Maury small towns, there was no disincentive on and Nikola Tesla at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in September 1893 being overtly religious. The power of marketing these festivities among consumers through 150 seconds of Shanknaad (conch willing to apologise for being Hindu. We in rural and small-town India only consoli- shell blowing), dressed in a simple saf- are also tired of being the ones who have dated the beliefs and their public espousal, fron kurta and gamchha, hands folded in to regularly prove how secular we are. both in urban and rural India, to the point complete devotion. He quoted from the This agni-pariksha must stop. Do you re- that Modi’s actions mainstreamed Hin- scriptures in public. And from the works ally want to preserve secularism in India? duism and its practice. The domination of famous seers and ascetics across the Then preserve the Hindu ethos first.’ and celebration of Christian and Islamic country and celebrating famed rulers and Following Modi’s arrival on the na- cultures and the high premium placed by warriors, including Rana Pratap, Chhatra- tional stage, the change was evident in those in power on Hindu-bashing started pati Shivaji, Prithviraj Chauhan, and so a pronounced manner among the met- to subside and wane, whittling down the on. Modi was also liberal in his patronage ropolitan middle class. Disdain for the diffidence and the guilt associated with of important places associated with the Hindu believer was still around, but it practising Hinduism in a land where an Hindu religion, as in the reconstruction of had now been forced to the margins. Being overwhelming majority was Hindu. the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi Hindu without guilt had acquired both The overall effect was that of a re-Hin- that had fallen to rack and ruin for dozens acceptance and respectability. duisation, a confident display of faith, a of years and the building of a road connect- faith that had faced many invasions, as- ing the Char Dham. saults, centuries of ridicule and derision, Temples in Kashi, Mathura and Ayod- imultaneously, the Modi but still had enough resilience to insulate hya were symbols seared indelibly into Government has started push- its core and find ingenious and multiple the collective conscious of the Hindu ing for a new economic order, ways to survive. It was a vigorous re-ap- masses, stemming from the brutality of active on gender issues, includ- preciation of the past and a reassertion a thousand civilisational cuts inflicted ing giving women new op- of the secularism practised in the faith, by Mughal rulers such as Babur and Sportunities, enhancing maternity leave, through history, of Sarva Dharma Samab- Aurangzeb and others who razed these permanent commission in the army and hava. Writing in the Pakistani press on the sites of core Hindu faith and belief to new roles acknowledging their place on common cultural moorings of the sub- build mosques in their stead. The open frontiers like space. Aerospace engineer continent that were being denied in the advocacy of their reconstruction and cel- Ritu Karidhal, for example, was the first rewriting of history as viewed through the ebration engendered a massive boost to woman mission director of a crucial prism of modern politics, author Khalid Hindu revivalism and an end to minority space mission, responsible for guiding Ahmed recently pointed out that Pakistan appeasement in politics and society. One Chandrayaan-2 through its space journey. must recall the golden age when Muslims that had, in fact, allowed mollycoddling Flying Officer Avani Chaturvedi created and Hindus benefited from each other. the Church and the Ulemas, the likes history when she became the first wom- Religion, he argued, has got Muslims their of the Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, in an fighter pilot to fly solo after she flew Pakistan but mathematics remains the modern India. Modi’s arrival centrestage a MiG-21. Modernity and a progressive, weakest subject taught in their schools fuelled thousands of youth who refused forward-looking worldview, even while and universities. to be apologetic about their convictions. being proudly rooted in the rich traditions Referring to one of the Central Asian as- As Ashwin Sanghi, bestselling author of and culture, gained new traction. On the tronomers of yore involved in the project of The Sialkot Saga and other books, wrote: artistic front, the bhajan as a musical form measuring the distance between two me- ‘Hindus do not expect an apology from regained popularity and dethroned the ridians, Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa al- anyone. But my generation is equally un- Qawwali—patronised by the elite in the Khwarizmi (780-850), Ahmed writes that

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 37 The Freedom Issue

Hindus and Muslims had much respect dence about what happened more than a been new histories of the Emergency pe- for each other then and that al-Khwariz- millennium ago. Finally, there is the period, but these again are devious: the effort mi—the most influential mathemati- riod in which we live, that is independent is to compare that notorious time when cian during the early Middle Ages—had India. But that is more appropriate to po- democracy was suspended with the pres- learned his most important lessons from litical analysis than historical reflection. ent times, in a bid to cast the current Prime Hindu mathematicians. ‘Al-Khwarizmi In sum, Indian history has spindly legs, a Minister in a dark hue. In fact, a forthcom- got today’s term algorithm named after huge torso and feeble forearms. ing history mischievously describes Emer- him after reading Hindu writings. His A morphological metaphor is not gency as India’s ‘first dictatorship’. Indian booklet penned in 825 called Algoritmi the best description for the past of a na- history, always mired in the swamp of de numero Indorum was picked up from tion but, unfortunately, the gross politi- contemporary politics, can never redeem Brahmagupta,’ Ahmed writes. cisation of history-writing in India has itself until its practice is purged of ideology. This liberal exchange of ideas and brought it to such a pass. Everything knowledge with other cultures and peo- about historians who practised this craft, ples through the ages tied in completely roughly since 1960, has been geared to a peaking at the bhoomipuja with the claims made by the likes of single function: the legitimisation of the ceremony in Ayodhya on Au- Swami Vivekananda about Hinduism— current political masters. How that has gust 5th, Prime Minister Modi, that it was cosmopolitan to its core, all- been done is a sordid tale. Fact-based his- who attended the historic accepting and, unlike other religions, tory and those who wrote it were deemed event, assertively established completely divorced from bigotry in its communal. Painstaking reconstruction of theS link between the Ram Mandir move- fundamental principles. It did not seek medieval India at the hands of academics ment, the freedom struggle and the deep- rooted civilisational nationalism. Com- paring August 5th to Independence Day, August 15th, Modi said: “During our freedom struggle, everyone sacrificed for our Everything changed on the afternoon freedom. Just as August 15th symbolises of May 16th, 2014 when Modi rode to the end of our struggle for freedom, where the entire country played its part, for the power in Delhi. The incentive to Ram Mandir, people have made a number of sacrifices and struggled. And today sym- demonise Hinduism was suddenly gone bolises the culmination of the fight for a Ram Mandir for centuries.” Referring to the when he openly embraced his Hindu Ram Mandir as an instrument for uniting faith in public. With the advent of all of India, the Prime Minister maintained that the temple would prove to be a bridge Modi, the stigma around being a and connect the entire country, and that it signifies truth and sacrifice. Ram is the devout Hindu ground to a full stop thread of India’s unity in diversity, he said. The process of reappraisal and re-appreciation of the past is going to stay. And to amalgamate or claim the principles of as different as AL Srivastava, Parmatma questions will be raised on the attempts other religions for itself but was cosmo- Saran and Jadunath Sarkar among others to push aside a significant part of history. politan and accepting of all men, in its very was ignored and their books discarded as There will be attempts to resurrect na- core. The exchange of knowledge on the obsolete. Instead, interpretative studies tional heroes and this process will become frontiers of learning in all sectors was a key that cast the blood-soaked annals of me- irreversible. By 2024, the execution of this part of the cosmopolitanism of Hinduism. dieval India—from the Khiljis until Far- process is expected to be concretised, set in The historical imagination in modern rukhsiyar—in a glowing light became the stone. Opponents of this should be worried India has curious time warps. Its mainstay norm. Of course, there were aberrations, if Modi stays on beyond 2024. By then, his is medieval India. There is ancient India but then so were Hindu rulers of the past. reassertion of Hinduism would have irre- somewhere, to be sure, but given the dis- All this was called secular history. vocably changed the course of the country tance between our time and that hoary In recent years, there have been tenta- beyond the most nightmarish visions of past, it has little relevance. What we know tive steps towards writing on bits and parts the secularists who sought to de-Hindu- about it is largely epigraphic: there are no of independent India that fit with this his- ise India and deny the subcontinent the memoirs, no court records and scanty evi- torical project. For example, there have spiritual zeal of its glorious past. n

38 24 august 2020

The Freedom Issue

Rahul Pandita The Eternity of Exile

THE MOMENTOUS MOMENT Still waiting for deliverance in Kashmir

40 n November 29th, Srinagar station of the All India Radio and stan’s Northwest Frontier Province, aided 1966, Atal Bihari Va- if so the reason for not announcing ‘This is by Pakistani army regulars, attacked Kash- jpayee, then a Mem- All India Radio’ from the station.’ mir, its Hindu and Sikh minority would be ber of Parliament in In response, the minister replies that, put through the invader’s sword. While Rajya Sabha, puts yes, the radio stations in Srinagar and in some cases the raiders found support up a question in the Jammu have been operating under that among Kashmir’s Muslim majority, most House to the then name for the last 18 years. “The question Kashmiris put up a united front against Minister of Information and Broadcasting, of changing the nomenclature is, however, the invaders. ORaj Bahadur. The starred question No 415 under consideration,” he says. The person responsible for this senti- asks ‘whether it is a fact that an announce- About two years before this, a team of ment happened to be Kashmir’s tallest ment ‘This is Radio Kashmir’ is made be- British geologists arrives in Delhi to take leader, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah. fore broadcasting programmes from the part in the World International Geologi- It was a young National Conference cal Congress. Ninety of them take a trip to member, Maqbool Sherwani, who mis- Kashmir and get stranded there for two led the raiders in Baramulla in Kashmir’s Hizbul Mujahideen commander weeks due to heavy snowfall. north, giving them wrong information Burhan Muzaffar Wani’s After their return, one of the leading ge- about the Indian Army’s presence on the funeral in Kashmir, July 2016 ologists meets a British official and shares outskirts of Baramulla. By the time the his experiences in Kashmir with him. Lat- raiders saw through his bluff, the first er, the official reports this meeting in de- batch of 1 Sikh of the army, put together tail. The geologist, he writes, told him that in Gurgaon and Rewari in Haryana, was “an astonishing number of shopkeepers, airlifted to Srinagar. The raiders were so hotelkeepers and other Muslims said quite furious with Sherwani that they nailed openly that their sympathies lay with Pak- him to a cross and shot him. istan, or in the case of a minority of them, His body lay there for days before the with independence for Kashmir.” While army captured Baramulla. The raiders recounting that the Hindu minority told were repulsed and contained just a few him that “all Kashmiris” wanted to belong miles short of Srinagar. to India, the geologist, he says, also met a A young Kashmiri Pandit, Somnath young English master at the missionary Bira, meanwhile, was part of a group sent Tyndalle-Biscoe School. The official writes as a peace brigade to areas in Jammu region that the master told the geologist that where Muslims were facing the brunt of “there recently had been an incident when communal violence. Bira disappeared a Muslim pupil had attempted to murder a shortly afterwards, caught up in violence, Hindu pupil.” The official, further quoting and his body was never found. the geologist, says that “communal feeling As Jammu and Kashmir became a part was running pretty high.” of the Union of India, Sheikh Abdullah The two events tell us independently of stood next to another Kashmiri, Jawaha- how the developments in Kashmir were rlal Nehru, in the heart of Srinagar and re- being perceived in Parliament, 25 years cited a Persian couplet: “Mann tu shudi, tu before an armed insurgency erupted in mann shudi/ Ta kas na goyed, Mann degram Kashmir in 1990, and how much earlier tu degri [I became you and you became me, communalism and separatist sentiment so nobody can think of us as separate].” had spread in Kashmir. This becoming each other, however, It was a stark deviation from the time did not last long. In less than two years when Mahatma Gandhi had remarked in after Kashmir’s accession to India, there December 1947: “My sole hope and prayer were indications that Abdullah had begun is that Kashmir become a beacon of light in to dither. this benighted subcontinent.” He had said In May 1949, a statement of his ap- it because as the flames of Partition raged peared in Sunday Observer, published t on elsewhere, Kashmir had largely put up from London, where he was quoted as a joint effort in maintaining peace even in saying that accession to either side (India the face of an external aggression. In Oc- or Pakistan) could not bring peace. “Per-

Photo Abid B h a tober that year, as tribal raiders from Paki- haps a middle path between them with

19 august 2019 www.openthemagazine.com 41 a p

The Freedom Issue economic cooperation with each other will be the only way to do it,” he said. In May 1951, in his inaugural address to the State Constituent Assembly, he again dismissed the idea of turning Kashmir into an “eastern Switzerland.” He said: “It is not easy to protect sovereignty and independence in a small country which has not sufficient strength to defend itself on our long and difficult frontiers bordering so many countries.” Sheikh Mohamed Abdullah and By this time, however, New Delhi has Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi, 1951 begun to be wary of him. In January 1948 itself, as declassified US State Department documents would reveal later, Abdullah Six weeks before the Abdullah has met the then US representative at the UN, Warren Austin, who later in a message government is dismissed in 1953, Nehru to the US Secretary of State, George Mar- reminds him that his Government had shall, writes: ‘It is possible that principal purpose of Abdullah’s visit was to make it stood for secular democracy as clear to US that there is a third alternative, namely independence.’ Abdullah had done, too, in the past. But Even as he keeps changing his message to Kashmir’s Muslim majority, Abdullah now, Nehru writes: ‘I fear the tendency goes on to send repeated signals to the in Kashmir is to keep away from it’ West. He meets US Ambassador Loy Hen- derson in Srinagar. In a report to the State Department, it is mentioned that Abdul- lah was in favour of Kashmir’s indepen- missal of Abdullah’s government and he By this time, Kashmir’s leaders have dence and believed that an ‘overwhelming is imprisoned. In April 1964, he is released, developed a novel sense of how to keep population desired this independence.’ but after Nehru’s death, put under deten- New Delhi happy and also keep alive the Abdullah keeps meeting diplomats, tion again. separatist sentiment in Kashmir. Before including Walter Cock, the Australian On May 26th, 1967, in a response to a his death, Abdullah makes a pact with High Commissioner in Delhi in 1952, who question asked in Parliament by Mulka Indira Gandhi. Afterwards, his son signs later recalls Abdullah advocating indepen- Govinda Reddy on how long the Gov- an accord with Indira’s son, Rajiv Gandhi. dence. The same year, Abdullah meets in ernment planned to keep Abdullah in By 1988, a year after the state elections Kashmir the former US presidential can- detention, then Union Home Minister are believed to be highly rigged in favour didate, Adlai Stevenson. YB Chavan replies: “The government of Farooq, intelligence agencies are again By 1953, Nehru himself is under no has not closed its mind. Government can sending reports of young Kashmiri men illusion. Six weeks before the Abdullah renew this from time to time. But at the crossing the Line of Control to Pakistan- government is dismissed, Nehru, in a let- present moment there is no proposal for occupied Kashmir and guns smuggled ter, reminds him that his Government his release.” across tied to the bellies of sheep. In July had stood for secular democracy as he In a question asked by RT Parthasar- that year, two bomb blasts rock Srinagar. (Abdullah) had done, too, in the past. But thy on whether Abdullah was kept as an There are several others, but they are con- now, Nehru writes: ‘I fear the tendency in ordinary political detainee or as a VIP in sidered a handiwork of Sikh extremists Kashmir is to keep away from it.’ Nehru the Kohinoor bungalow in Kodaikanal, operating in Punjab. warns: ‘Unfortunately, that will have its Tamil Nadu, Chavan replies: “A sort of both In September 1989, the first minority reactions in India as such tendencies in the things.” killing of a prominent Kashmiri Hindu India have their reactions in Kashmir.’ Abdullah is later released and becomes takes place in Srinagar. Twelve days later, Around this time, the Intelligence Bu- the Chief Minister of the state in 1975. Af- Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah is danc- reau warns the Centre that arms are being ter his death in 1982, hundreds of thou- ing along with noted dancer Yamini smuggled into the Valley. sands of Kashmiris attend his funeral. He Krishnamurthy during a cultural festival Soon afterwards, Nehru orders the dis- is succeeded by his son Farooq Abdullah. in the famous Martand temple. He says

42 24 august 2020 militancy will end soon. Malik, a resident of South Kashmir’s Shop- was supposed to be a temporary feature, As history would tell us, it erupts in ian district, joined the terrorist organisa- should be seen in the same light of this such a way in Kashmir that New Delhi is tion Hizbul Mujahideen and was killed mindless appeasement. Now that it has brought to its knees. The civil and police in less than a month. Till July, 118 terror finally been done, the political vacuum administration collapses. In December attacks took place. In the same period, was bound to be created. It may not be a 1989, as five terrorists to be released in security forces eliminated 138 terrorists, bad thing necessarily in the short term exchange for then Union Home Minister a majority of them locals. since it enables security forces to consoli- Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s kidnapped In a new policy, the security forces no date their gains against terrorists without daughter are set free, the Valley breaks longer hand over the body of slain ter- fear of interference. It is this interference into joyous celebrations. In a matter of a rorists to their families. Earlier, terrorist from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) few weeks, the exodus of Kashmiri Hin- funerals were a big headache for the gov- during its unnatural alliance with the BJP dus begins. Hundreds of them are killed ernment. It would attract thousands of that led to the mayhem in 2016 in the after- by Islamist extremists; only a handful of people and also lead to an upsurge in the math of Burhan Wani’s killing. them remain behind. popularity of terrorists, leading to a swell Having said that, the challenges re- Farooq Abdullah escapes to London, in recruitment as well. main. Security operations are continuing only to be brought back to Kashmir as its Some mainstream leaders like Farooq as they should, but Kashmir cannot be for- Chief Minister after the first post-militan- Abdullah and his son, put under detention ever run on the shoulders of the security cy elections take place in the state in 1996. after the abrogation, have been released grid. A political process has to start. Even and some are still away. But beyond sym- as the BJP-PDP alliance was in its hon- bolic statements and comments, there is eymoon period, a senior BJP-RSS leader rom here to how we reached hardly any political activity, let alone any confided in me that ultimately their goal a phase where the terrorist vibrant opposition to the Modi Govern- was to look for an alternative to both the commander Burhan Wani’s ment at the Centre. It is mainly because PDP and the National Conference. The death triggered a bitter war in of fear of reprisal and also because main- new political dispensation will not come South Kashmir in 2016, plung- stream politicians are no longer sure what from outside. In all likelihood, it will be Fing the Valley back to relentless violence, message to come up with. from among those who are now willing is more recent history and perhaps better Critics of the abrogation say that po- to play New Delhi’s tune. documented. Kashmiri leaders had never litical vacuum created in the Valley is not Only this time, there cannot be any even thought in their dreams that New good at all, and that in the past it has led adhocism to it. The Modi Government Delhi would go ahead and remove Article to the rise of separatism and insurgency. needs to be careful because the same play- 370 and with it, Kashmir’s special status. But that is a selective analysis of the situ- ers who encouraged and became a part of In 2013, Farooq Abdullah said that even ation that ignores the genesis of Islamist separatism in Kashmir have played this if Narendra Modi became Prime Minister extremism in Kashmir. The extremist el- game in the past. They will sing this tune 10 times, he would not be able to touch ement in Kashmir got emboldened only temporarily and then return to the sepa- Article 370. In April 2019, he again reit- because successive governments in New ratist rhetoric. erated it while addressing a gathering of Delhi encouraged soft separatism in the If the same game is repeated, it will be his supporters in Central Kashmir. Valley. The Centre looked away as Valley very difficult to salvage Kashmir. From Four months later, Article 370 leaders spoke one language in Delhi and the adversity and confusion of several de- was gone. another in Kashmir from Sheikh Abdul- cades, an everlasting peace and freedom Now, to look at Kashmir one year after lah onwards; it created a bipolarity of from religious extremism and terrorism the abrogation of Article 370. Nobody in sorts in the minds of Kashmiris as to where must arise. the security grid in Kashmir was naïve they stood. With the abrogation, Jammu is happy, enough to think that the abrogation All of it was done in the name of and so is Ladakh. But despite repeated would immediately lead to the end of preserving Kashmiri identity. promises by this Government, the minor- terrorism. And it has not. There are over What is this Kashmiri identity? And ity Kashmiri Hindus are still in exile. Look- 200 terrorists, including foreign terror- why is the nature of this identity different ing at the evidence so far, the Government ists, still active in Kashmir Valley. About from, say, a Malayali or a Bengali identity? seems to have no plan for them. As history 35 Kashmiri youth have joined terrorist And why should it be at odds with the would tell us, no permanent solution in organisations this year; it is a significant fact that Kashmir is a part of the Union— Kashmir is possible as long as it remains drop from previous years, but it is still hap- and that academic fantasies of sub-na- home to only a homogenous population. pening. They are barely trained, making tionalism are not going to change that As one year of the abrogation of special their survivability very low. geopolitical reality? status comes to an end, the Modi Govern- In May this year, 21-year-old Nadeem The continuation of Article 370, which ment must take that into account. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 43 The Freedom Issue

Siddharth Singh The Decline of Dissent

THE MOMENTOUS MOMENT Or the intellectual deficit of protest today

A protestor at a demonstration against the Citizenship Amendment Act in New Delhi, December 2019

44 24 august 2020 opular account has it suspended and the judiciary signed on that India is in the throes the dotted line penned by the executive. of an anti-democratic It does not take much imagination to see revolution. Dissent—the the alleged parallels between the two peri- most precious freedom ods. Finally, then as now, there was a strong available to citizens to Prime Minister at the helm. protest against govern- These parallels are held to have explan- ment—is about to be squashed by a regime atory power and an obvious prescription Pthat has a brute parliamentary majority. as well: whenever a strong leader heads The Decline of Dissent Worse, Indians at large are complicit in the government in India, rights, freedoms, this killing of freedom. India, while for- norms and institutional checks and bal- Or the intellectual deficit of protest today mally remaining a democracy, is entering ances are weakened or dismantled.

getty images an authoritarian phase of the kind that it There is, however, another legacy of has never seen before. the 1970s that is elided in this debate: the If this is to be believed, political India exhaustion of countervailing political is staring at an abyss. Activists protest- ideas and the loss of intellectual traction ing against the Citizenship Amendment for dissent. If one sketches a line from Act (CAA) have been taken into custody December 16th, 1971 to June 25th, 1975, by using the harsh Unlawful Activities one can see two rival political ideas: Na- (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), a law that tionalism and Nothing. In those eventful imposes stiff conditions for securing bail years, India dismembered Pakistan, car- once someone is detained. Then there is ried out a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ and the second-order ‘chilling effect’ of such calmly merged Sikkim with itself, which arrests on the ability of others to engage was until that time an independent king- in dissent. Everything is pretty much in dom. With each of these events, Indira the freezer. Gandhi’s stock went up even as that of The qualifier ‘if’, however, gives away the opposition went down in a zero-sum the game. Matters are more complicated game fashion. Unlike the present era than the standard narrative. This is for the when the opposition is defined in terms simple reason that any story has at least of well-recognised coalitions or powerful two sides to it. This one is no different. regional or national parties, the term op- What is notable about dissent in terms position was fluid then. Coalitions were of ideas and those who propagate them— not known and ‘arrangements’ were intellectuals, activists and some promi- like shifting sands. The weakness of op- nent journalists—is their reliance on the position parties had as much to do with past. Even when dissent is about present organisational disarray as with lack of mo- events, the explanation and, in many cas- tivating ideas. There was a simple slogan es, the genesis of ideas themselves lie in the that acted as a substitute for ideas: “Indira past. In the case of current events, one can hatao, desh bachao.” This is a neat parallel discern two such periods: the 1970s and from that era, one that is fervently held the first decade of the 21st century. by intellectuals today, even if names have Activists and intellectuals often hark changed. back to the 1970s while explaining the Now, as then, there are no counter- present situation. The attempt at linking vailing ideas. There is, however, a feeble the present and the past is clear: just as the attempt at creating a match: nationalism 1970s was a period of ‘chilling’ of dissent, versus a compound of liberal democracy, so is the current time. The Emergency of secularism and federalism. Contemporary 1975 led to a crackdown on the opposi- dissent is about preserving the latter set of tion. Politicians, activists, academics and ideas while trying to contain nationalism. anyone remotely seen as opposed to the At one level, the contest is even more one- regime of Indira Gandhi were locked away. sided than in the 1970s. Then, there was Basic rights such as the freedom of speech a catch-all “Indira hatao, desh bachao” that and freedom of peaceful assembly were Indians at large could comprehend. The

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 45 The Freedom Issue current amalgam is beyond the grasp of autonomy for the province. The famous the interests of the state.’ (See his essay the ordinary Indian. It should surprise no six-point formula for peace in J&K, dished ‘Jammu and Kashmir in the Indian Union: one that dissent has virtually no traction out by the Delhi Policy Group, included The Politics of Autonomy’ in Prospects for except among a microscopic minority of recommendations that were anathema Peace in South Asia, edited by Rafiq Dossani intellectuals. What people see are individ- to any government in New Delhi even as and Henry S Rowen, Stanford University uals booked under the UAPA for riots and they seemed inevitable. The nomencla- Press, 2005.) threats to dismember the country. ture for the governor and the chief min- Whatever be the extent of sugar-coat- While the 1970s provide ‘atmospherics,’ ister was to be re-done. They were to be ing, for all practical purposes, J&K was to so to speak, for the current round of dissent, called Sadar-i-Riyasat and Wazir-e-Azam; be carved out as a distinct zone from the what about the substance of the ideas them- the governor of the state was to be elected rest of India. Seminarists in Delhi openly selves? These are much nearer in time, dat- by the State Legislative Assembly; the state speculated that a political package for J&K ing to the first decade of the 21st century, was to be exempted from the purview of that restored ‘autonomy’ was just a matter roughly from the penultimate year of the Article 356 (that deals with breakdown of time. Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government (2003) to of constitutional machinery); the state If these ideas had some plausibil- the Tadmetla massacre in April 2010 when government was to have a much bigger ity—given the unusual circumstances 76 CRPF troopers were killed in Chhattis- say in appointment of officers to the All- in which J&K acceded to India—those garh’s Dantewada district. India Services; a regional election com- about Maoist-affected states had virtually These seven years witnessed two si- missioner was to be appointed to ‘help’ the no currency, even in theory. But that did not multaneous trends. One, the continued Election Commission of India and finally, prevent intellectuals from arguing for the fragmentation of Indian politics that be- ‘iron-clad’ guarantees to preserve these Union Government to engage in ‘negotia- tions’ with Maoists. Unlike J&K where the security situation was under control, the forests of central and eastern India were ‘no-go areas’ for security forces unless they In the six years that Modi has been ventured there in strength. The absence of any infrastructure—roads, communica- Prime Minister, permutations and tions and basic healthcare facilities among combinations of ‘dissent’ amount to others—ensured that the heated ‘development versus security’ debates of that time nothing more than intellectual were meaningless. It was a common sight to see helicopters ferry injured paramili- vacuum unable to cope with Hindu tary troopers to state capitals from the interior areas of states like Chhattisgarh and resurgence. Much as this class wants Jharkhand after deadly encounters with to ‘intervene’ in Hinduism and make Maoists. One can still remember the grim faces of chief ministers who could do virtu- it ‘safe’, it is too late for that ally nothing. The Centre was powerless in its own way. In the wake of this fragmentation —weak prime ministers, inchoate Par- gan in the late 1980s but dramatically ac- devolved measures. liaments and intransigent coalition celerated from the mid-1990s. Two, India Even a thoughtful diplomat like Chan- partners—a set of new ideas gained appeared ungovernable in these years. drashekhar Dasgupta—whose nationalist extraordinary force. Federalism: India Maoist violence in the ‘Red Corridor’ and re- credentials are beyond doubt—considered could no longer be governed from Delhi curring rounds of mass protests in Jammu it wise that local politics in the state should and progressively powers had to be distrib- and Kashmir (J&K) made the Union Gov- not acquire a too pro-India flavour. His pre- uted to states. In J&K, this was grafted to ernment appear powerless even in those scription: The ruling party in J&K should another idea that was to mutate over time. areas where it set policy. offer only conditional cooperation to the Back then, it was that India needed J&K Clear-sighted analysts and scholars ruling party at the Centre and, at the level for secularism to survive. A decade later, it observed this and based their conclu- of state politics, the party needs to adopt a transmuted into the assertion that ‘auton- sions accordingly. Public intellectuals stance of qualified opposition to the party omy of India’s only Muslim-majority state went even further. For Kashmir, the ‘In- at the Centre ‘in order to maintain the im- should not be tinkered with.’ On the eve dian end-game’ was held to be progressive age of a local party dedicated to advancing of Narendra Modi’s arrival in Delhi, these

46 24 august 2020 express archives itician Yogendra Yadav penned an opinion where he excoriated the liberal class for the destruction of secularism in India. He wrote: ‘Today, we must recognise that secularism was defeated because its custodians refused to engage in a battle of ideas among the people. Secularism was defeated because it disavowed our languages, because it failed to communicate with the language of traditions…specifically, secularism was defeated because it chose to mock Hindu- ism instead of developing a new interpretation of Hinduism suitable for our times.’ These are bitter words but they have truth to them. Ideas have the power of belief in them as long as they lead an independent existence. Once they and their bearers are seen to serve power, changes in the formula of power can endanger Jayaprakash Narayan at a protest before Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975 them. The possibility of their losing traction with people they are supposed ideas were articles of faith. India could no away—possibly forever—by Hindutva. to convince becomes a distinct possibil- longer be run as a centralised state. This is the stuff of conspiracy theories but ity. Secularism, federalism and liberal the vehemence with which the CAA was democracy (but not democracy in itself) opposed—including an outbreak of deadly have met this fate and are widely doubt- n the last six years, these twin riots in Delhi—left many ordinary Indians ed by the people of India. The anger and trends have been reversed in a near wondering. All this came after repeated as- agony of those who pushed these ideas absolute fashion. In addition, other surances by the Union Home Minister that are now sought to be elevated as dissent. threats—such as the demographic the rights of no Muslim citizen would be Put even mildly, this is a shibboleth. In danger to Northeast India from unaffected in any way. The fact that the CAA the six years that Modi has been Prime Ichecked illegal migration—have been is geared towards prospective citizens and Minister, permutations and combina- sought to be arrested by the CAA and not existing ones cut no ice. tions of ‘dissent’ amount to nothing the possibility of creating a nationwide This complete reversal of the trends seen more than intellectual vacuum unable National Register of Citizens (NRC). Ar- in the decade from 2003 to 2013 devalued to cope with Hindu resurgence. Much as ticle 370—that provided a special status each major idea championed by intellectu- this class wants to ‘intervene’ in Hindu- to J&K—has been abrogated. The ruling als during that time: Federalism, secularism ism and make it ‘safe’, it is too late for that. party has secured a comfortable majority and liberal democracy. The psychological Yadav’s analysis is on the mark. in Parliament for the second time in a row. blow from the irrelevance of these ideas, Dissent and voice are valuable attri- All this has demonetised the ideas that resulting from changed political circum- butes and should not be junked in a diverse were formulated when the Union execu- stances, has been immense. This is the fons country like India. But for people to believe tive bled strength. On top of that, another et origo of contemporary dissent. As in the dissenters and dissenting ideas, a degree of symbolic idea—secularism, as imagined by 1970s, the ideational challenge to national- honesty is necessary, one that the current intellectuals—was rendered meaningless ism has been feeble. In intellectuals’ imagi- crop of intellectuals is incapable of. What after the CAA. When combined with the nation, this is close to a lost cause, for Indian can be done? The old saying about retracing NRC, many viewed this as fatally weaken- nationalism is now fatally contaminated steps when one loses sense of direction is ing the prospects for Muslim politics in In- with ‘political Hinduism,’ making it a toxic an obvious starting point. Is that possible? dia. This idea is never elaborated publicly in brew that is irreversibly mixed in the body Here, one enters an uncertain domain. opeds or in any other format. But for many politic. Dissent is now for dissent’s sake and These ideas have been wedded to a certain ‘secular’ intellectuals, this was not just a serves a cathartic function. It exists in some political outlook for so long—from their countervailing idea: the influx of illegal mi- ether far removed from day-to-day realities. gestation after Independence to their be- grants could at some point serve as a balanc- That, however, does not matter. coming governing principles later—that ing force against the middle class and large On the day of the bhoomipuja in Ayodhya any intellectual re-evaluation is likely to be swathes of the electorate that were swayed (August 5th), political scientist-turned-pol- painful, if not impossible. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 47 The Freedom Issue

GN Devy Whispers in the Shadow THE MOMENTOUS MOMENT

48 19 august 2019 Is it the end of language as the digital Whispers in the Shadow reimagines what it takes to be human?

n the times of the current ebrating Imagination as the natural twin global epidemic, a rather of Truth. The multi-layered debates of strange English book comes philosophers, scientists and poets and the to one’s mind. The Pseudo- clashes or conversations between their doxia Epidemica, published ideas were one historical manifestation exactly four centuries ago, of the nebulous expression ‘the human in 1620, was written by Sir pursuit’. That these debates and churning Thomas Browne. Not about of ideas happened in England and other any epidemic affecting the European nations is by no means to be body, it was all about follies in seen as a unique phenomenon. It is just one’s thought, affecting the mind. That that this particular example can illustrate Iwas an era when most of the ‘old thought’, the point with clarity. the orthodoxia, was being questioned and In all civilisations and in many histori- ideas that formed the foundation of ci- cal periods, such debates have taken place. vilisation were being revisited. Francis It may not be wrong to say that every Char- Bacon, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, vak and Buddha has had his advaitin philo- Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rene Des- sophical adversaries and every Archime- cartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, des and Pythagoras has had his adversary Isaac Newton and many others posed new alchemists. Whether ancient, medieval or questions and re-arranged the existing modern, societies all over the world have stock of knowledge in order to position been tacitly guided and led forward by ideas within a rational framework. In the ‘the pursuit.’ But, what is that pursuit? At process, they gave birth to what is known first glance, it may seem that it is all about as the ‘Age of Reason’ extending over two going out, going beyond, extending one’s centuries—the 17th and the 18th—and material and physical control over Nature. collectively produced what historians of It may seem that satisfying man’s deep- civilisation call ‘the Enlightenment.’ An seated desire for greater control, triumphs interesting product of the Enlightenment and glory is the driving spirit behind this was Robert Burton’s monumental work pursuit. However, a more careful engage- The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), which ment with human history may reveal that pointed to any excess of Imagination in it is not just about the human conquest of a person’s mind as the source of insanity nature or about successful epical voyages leading to evil thoughts and acts. or any physical conquest of tall mountain It is now close to two centuries since peaks and great depths of oceans. It is some- Reason was vehemently rejected as a way thing of a far greater significance. At the to reaching Truth and the Enlightenment risk of over-simplifying, let me describe it as the harbinger of Justice. Exactly two as ‘the desire to journey from substance to centuries after Burton’s Anatomy was its shadow, or an attempt at reconciling a published, William Blake completed given material substance and its shadow.’ his prophetic long poem Jerusalem, the It all began in the most ancient times and Emanation of the Giant Albion (1820), cel- tracing its advent through millennia can

19 august 2019 www.openthemagazine.com 49 The Freedom Issue be quite fascinating. materially quite intangible—was not easy brains, their movements, reflexes and A synoptic view of man’s arrival at the to handle, mould and regulate. In the ini- responses do get regulated by the brain. point in evolution where the Homo Sapi- tial fifty or sixty millennia spent after this However, the human brain, which ens have arrived can be presented as fol- ‘pursuit,’ man accomplished the difficult does all that is necessary for regulating lows. An event, none of which has either art of learning to speak, to coin and circu- movements, reflexes and responses, been seen or known or whose scale and late literally thousands of verbal forms and also performs, in addition, a task that the manner can be grasped by using the laws evolved complex languages. Completing brains of almost no other animal species of Physics so far known to us, is imagined this epic journey was, however, only a part can. And that is, in addition to think- to have taken place some 14 billion hu- of the pursuit. There was yet another and ing, the human brain can think about man years ago. Our solar system appears far more complicated challenge before thought. Language makes it possible for to have acquired its rhythm and balanced our ancestors of seventy millennia before us to articulate our thoughts, also our structure probably 6 billion years back. our time. That lay hidden deep within the thoughts about thinking. We are able The Earth itself settled down to its shape body. Humans had to train their constantly to make a fairly good guess about the around 4.5 billion years ago. Emergence evolving brain to learn how to absorb the thoughts passing through the brain of a of life in its most rudimentary form and verbal signs, to store them in memory, to fellow human, even when those thoughts its gradual evolution, too, took nearly develop the fascinating art of interpret- are not articulated. It is a tremendous 2 billion years; and within this mind- ing them and making sense out of them. achievement of the Homo Sapiens that boggling timeframe, the kind of Sapiens that humans are arrived not much before two million years back; and the ‘modern humans’ have a history barely of 200,000. It should not take one long to see that, in Training the vast number of neurons, the context of cosmic history, the species described as ‘Modern Man’—not to be some 85 billion of them, in the art of confused with Modernism or Modernity in recent centuries—is an extremely new recognition, interpretation and instant and, therefore, fragile part of the advent recall of the verbal impressions was, no of biological evolution. The fragility becomes clearer when we consider that even doubt, simply unprecedented in the entire within this very short history, this new species developed the ability to speak, cosmic history. When accomplished, the form languages and exchange thought through symbolic linguistic icons and human brain had become fully recursive form ‘thought communities’ just about 70,000 years ago. All of what the Sapiens attempted to do in order to situate themselves in the world—the earth and the Training the vast number of neurons, they could bring their naturally given extra-terrestrial cosmic phenomena— some 85 billion of them, in the art of rec- brain to becoming a recursive brain. since then formed the foundation of ‘the ognition, interpretation and instant recall However, it is the recursive quality of human pursuit’. It has its purpose as well of the verbal impressions was, no doubt, the brain functioning that brought the in- as direction, though determined very long simply unprecedented in the entire cosmic dividual members of the early prehistoric time back in prehistorical ages. history. When accomplished, the human hoards of ‘Modern Man’ into becoming The acquisition of language was at once brain had become fully recursive. ‘inter-subjective communities’. The lin- the discovery of an immense freedom as guistic equipment acquired by humans well as a grievous loss of the autonomy of represented the shared space of subjectiv- the human animal. One does not know word about the recursive ity; and the recursive brain provided the precisely how long it took for our distant brain may be in order here. neurological space for constructing the ancestors for the making of language and Having a brain as an organ subjectivity as a ‘perspective for formulat- developing the ability to produce mean- in the body is not unique to ing the image of reality surrounding us’. ingful verbal signs. But, it is possible to the Homo Sapiens. Many In other words, whatever be the nature imagine that the time taken must be of Aother insects, animals, fish and birds too of the world outside one’s consciousness, tens of millennia. The medium used for have brains as an essential component of it is the semantic abilities of a given lan- shaping the verbal signs—just thin air, their anatomical structures. And, having guage that started mediating between that

50 24 august 2020 getty images ‘external’ and its perception, its im- It abounds in Indian philosophy age formed within our cognition. and literature even more obses- Thus there was the World; and sively. The Vedic verses turn again then there was the Word, within and again to Surya, ‘the giver of life the confines of which alone the and the assailer of shadows.’ ‘Isha’, worldview had to be formed. primarily light, was seen by the Ve- It is difficult to say if humans dic and the Upanishidic thinkers as had a good sense of the slip between ‘that which pervades everything’. the ‘world as it is’ in substance The Isha-Vasya Upanishad—the and material, and the ‘world as one that Mahatma Gandhi hailed grasped’, a mere semantic shadow as the essence of all ancient wis- of the ‘real’ out there. There is no dom—declares in its very opening tangible evidence to establish that line—isha vasyam idam sarvam— our early-historical ancestors had the ‘pure’ (light) pervades all and articulated the unease arising out of there is not ‘any’ that it does not their perception of the slip between pervade. Its most superlative de- the two. However, the possibility scription of Truth is ‘hiran mayena cannot be denied, for we have an patrena satyasya phhitam mukham’, extremely loud and clear articula- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) ‘The face of Truth is covered with a tion of the bewilderment caused in golden disc’; the ‘pure’ being is pos- the earliest linguistic, literary and sible only in the shadowless space philosophical texts known to us. One can- thing which seemed to be and not to be, such as the face of the sun disk. Lest I may not overlook the fact that an inquiry into that would be the thing to lie in-between drift into discussion of Metaphysics, I turn the relationship between substance and what purely Is and what altogether Is Not? to the paradoxical dialectic between thing its shadow forms the core of the cultural Neither knowledge nor ignorance would and its shadow, between Object and its Im- expression in ancient Egypt, Greece and In- have this as its domain.’ Thus, neither the age, or, one may not be wrong in saying, dia. By now, the world knows how impor- substance nor shadow can be a ‘pure Is- Shadow and its Object. Which of the two tant a role the understanding of shadows ness’ , unless the shadow can be entirely is prior, and which subsequent, is, in terms played in the construction of Pyramids. dissociated from the substance and the vice of Philosophy, very difficult to say. And not just now, but nearly two thou- versa. Plato’s description of the cave man, sand years after ancient Egyptians built arriving at the mouth of the cave to see that these wonders, Thales of Miletus, six cen- his shadow had fallen inside, is the quint- amuel Taylor Coleridge, a turies before Christ, accurately guessed essential statement of all of the ancient 19th century English poet, in that if he could measure the shadow of a Greek sciences, literature and philosophy. his enigmatic autobiography, staff held in place, he could figure out the After Plato, despite several epistemic shifts the Biographia Literaria, men- precise height of the Pyramid of Giza. His in various fields of knowledge, the per- tions that in his father’s home, theory—the proportion of a thing and its plexing relation and association between Sthere was a certain painting of which the shadow, identically the same for all ob- substance and its shadow have been the child Samuel was very fond. The painting jects and their shadow, if all are measured central preoccupation for Western knowl- depicted a violently stormy sea, tossing at the same fixed time—may appear too edge traditions. Without overlooking the waves and a ship helplessly floating on simple to us, but could have emerged numerous breakthroughs in sciences it. He mentions that despite the frighten- that long time back only out of an obses- and philosophy in that vast and complex ing turbulence, the ‘painting’ was all very sive interest in the relationship between tradition, I am tempted to point out that still. The still image reflecting a highly dy- objects and their shadows. Despite the at the beginning of the twentieth century, namic set of objects remained etched in self-assuredness of the ancient Greek even the Irish poet WB Yeats was trying to his consciousness. It returns several times trigonometry, Plato, about two-and -a- unravel the puzzle. In his celebrated poem in his poems, most famously in The Ancient half centuries later, could not be so sure if on Byzantium, he wrote, ‘Before me floats Mariner, in lines such as ‘All alone, all all the relationship between the ‘beings’ and an image, man or shade, Shade more than alone’ describing a ship coming to a stand- their ‘shadows’ could be stated in such a man, more image than a shade; .. I call it still in the middle of vast seas. Coleridge, it straightforward manner. In the section death-in-life and life-in-death.’ is believed, wrote most of his poems under devoted to the discussion of knowledge Was this continued philosophical pre- the spell of opium, in a mental state of hal- and ignorance in Republic he queries, ‘But occupation unique to the Greek, Roman lucination where objects suddenly start did not we say that if we could find any- and European thought? By no means so. floating free of their object-references and

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 51 The Freedom Issue become mere images. The first of these is the development of the human brain now responds to lan- Without returning to Gottfried Leib- artificial memory, artificial sensibility guage quite differently than it previously niz, mentioned earlier and the one thinker and artificial intelligence. The second is used to do. The entire activity of analysis of who was responsible for stabilising the the development of digit as a vehicle of linguistic signals takes place in the Broca’s method of breaking large chunks of col- semantic content and development of area in the left part of the brain. Wolf no- lective memory into strings of ‘zeroes’ efficient digital gadgetry. All of these to- ticed that the Broca’s area is now experi- and ‘ones’—a method that is pivotal for gether are propelling the species towards encing a greater fatigue in carrying out constructing computer machines—let becoming what social scientists describe the linguistic activity. One does not need me add that from the end of the nine- as ‘Cyborg’, mostly a gadget and AI, and to to go to a laboratory to see this result. We teenth century, Image, rather than Object, some extent, a human of natural origin. are all surrounded by people who no lon- came to be the main occupation of most Are we already there? Not quite; but the ger like to read; and writing is a far cry. We sciences. Images captured in pin-holed day is not far when we will have turned are all deep inside forests of free-floating boxes soon allowed the makers of those the evolutionary corner. In preparation imagery, through which one can surf at images to print them out, shuffle them of that new existence, the human brain will, mixing the present, the past and the around, free them from the confines of is, as scientists working in Cognitive future—something that natural languag- physical time and physical space, and Sciences tell us, already showing clear es will not allow. We are now turned into get them strung together into a moving symptoms of fatigue for verbal signs and digital addresses, digital identities, digital train of shadows and create an entirely an irresistible fondness for visual images. beings without the slightest of a shadow, unprecedented genre of narrative. The Language, which has been the founda- kind of ‘pure beings’ who can exist outside physical space and physical time. In our time, the digital is more real than anything that is non-digital, the shadow superior to its objects, image more power- Memory chips have already started ful than its originator. Long back in history, some seventy regulating the life of most people in thousand years ago, humans freed themselves from the fear of the unknown and the world; and instead of linguistic the undecipherable in Nature, by learning communities and affinity-based to name things. The method developed for doing this was language. Language made it society, myriad networks are possible for humans to put together and to articulate thought. That, in turn, brought arising, making humans networked for humans many subsequent forms of freedom. In the process of evolution, we have and a ‘wired’ animal come to a decisive turning point which has opened before us yet another and far more fascinating vista of freedom, the freedom from physical Space and chronological moving image, in short ‘movie’, or in tion of a community’s inter-subjectivity, Time. It is just that the turning point makes most Indian languages the ‘chalat-chitr’, appears to be on its way out of man’s evo- the journey forward irreversible. And, as we the walking imagery, opened before the lutionary journey. Almost two-thirds of take the next step forward, which we shall world for the first time the tantalising pos- the existing 6,000 languages in the world in near future, our freedom to be human sibility of completely separating Objects are estimated to be extinct in the next fifty may get forgotten and lost altogether. from Images, shadow from its substance. years. Memory chips have already started The perpetual surfers in the Cyberspace A philosophical problem that had both- regulating the life of most people in the and Cyber-time, the ‘Cyborgs’, sustained ered the thinkers for nearly two-and-a- world; and instead of linguistic commu- by artificial memory and artificial half millennia was cracked by this new nities and affinity-based society, myriad intelligence, may rarely be able to technology. During the last fifty years, the networks are arising, making humans a experience what in the past it meant moving imagery has attained a pitch and ‘networked’ and a ‘wired’ animal. to be human. Can one naïvely ever-after a scale that can soon turn Homo Sapiens At the turn of the century, Maryanne hope that they will be? n into a completely different species. This Wolf, a cognitive scientist working to- possibility, unfolding before our eyes, was wards understanding why children no GN Devy is Chairman, The People’s spurred by two independent phenomena. more want to write or speak, found that Linguistic Survey of India

52 24 august 2020 While Inside Look Outside For FREE With access visit www.openthemagazine.com The Freedom Issue

 Riyas Komu An Oath ART OF THE TIME ART OF THE to Keep with a Final Breath man of tomorrow The work titled Fourth World represents Ambedkar in conversation with the word and the world. These statues, unlike the traditional ones of Ambedkar, are without the Constitu- tion and the gesture of hand leading to a conclusion. Here Ambedkar is reworked as a figure who is always already awaiting, anticipating, conversing and is seen embracing an open conversation through the gesture of his hands. These were installed in 2019 at Nirox Founda- tion, close to Sterkfontein caves in the cradle of humankind, Johannesburg. Given India’s colonial linkages with South Africa and Gandhi’s formative experiences there in a politics of struggle against racism and segregation, the work tries to situate the other half of the missing past, merging it with the present in the form of bringing back the missing imperative of the dialogue. Ambedkar continues that tradition of struggle against atrocities everywhere.

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 55 The Freedom Issue

mbedkar had once talked about the freedom of the mind, which, he averred, was the real freedom. In hindsight, I am sure, he was referring to thought control that is symptomatic of an ailing society, ail- Aing not because of lack of natural resources or world standing, but because of a disequi- librium that arises from people being judged harshly for their frank opinions. The idea of a free person is vastly different from a slave, a term that throws up multiple images of a person condemned to servitude, especially physical confinement and debasement, the arrogant assumption being that they don’t think or are incapable of thinking. Great thinkers have and continue to influence societies we live in. They have all wanted to make the world a better place, yet we continue to relapse and fall into entrapments of dogmas and beliefs that refuse to set us free. The trend of followers of great ideators veering away from the original vision shows no signs of course correction. A constant intervention is imperative to keep the world from receding into a reckless- ness of old habit, of letting go of one’s control over choices, individual or collective. We have a lot to learn from both Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers. They inspire us to strike the bal- ance and to not allow life to become mere existence or subjects of anarchy. We still let discriminations persist, by force of habit, over gender, faith, age, race, ethnicity, region, intelligence, sexual orientations, occupation, body shapes and more. True, the world has come a long way from early migrations and advanced at a breakneck Fear II (Preamble)2018 speed over the past century thanks to techno- A diminishing Preamble to the Constitution, Fear II is not just an logical advancement. Mindnumbing as it may archival document or a general document to be misplaced, but a be, we cannot afford to lose sight of our priori- daily reminder of past struggles along with present resistances. Reading ties, especially the right to dissent. It was in this the inscribed text as words glued together separated by blank spaces context that the great John Adams reminded makes the Preamble as a text for everyone to follow, as a prayer, not only us, “If conscience disapproves, the loudest ap- when the text is in crisis but to put every crisis at a distance. People plauses of the world are of little value.” reading the Preamble through acts of repetition then becomes a Being a free person, therefore, is an unend- gesture of seeking speech, freely, and disseminating the axiomatic call of ing fight against forces that tend to chain our equality in a time which seeks it most. Reading again and again becomes instinct to resist and disapprove. My works a motif for making the text reappear against the culture of fear which here, however grim they may appear, I believe, serves to erase from the public memory what has been written by and mirror that conviction to fight on.n for themselves.

56 24 august 2020 Dandi Bridge 2019, oil on canvas, 200 x 72 inches (diptych) This work overwhelms the viewer by the strength and support of its physical dimen- sions, 6ft tall and 17ft wide. The Dandi Bridge is a historic site that connects the present through its linkages with a certain past, thought and action, dreams and possibilities through the visual site of the bridge as metaphors of distance and closeness. Here, the bridge is known by its opposite—in keeping two landscapes apart, it also unites the two horizons. It’s a visitation from history, a wake-up call, or an appeal to just remember. When our hopes turn into shambles of despair or when we become the victims of tragic injustice and exploitation, we are forced to remember the sacrifices and history of Disobe- dience and become truth-seekers.

Dhamma Swaraj 2018, oil on canvas, 72 x 54 inches each (triptych) Dhamma Swaraj is an intimate conversation with the tradition of being and philosophical ways of living in discur- sivity—a communication with the self and the outside. Today, it is not lack of ideas or technological solutions, or dearth of material and human resources that limit humanity’s capacity to address conflicts and dilemmas; it is the forgetting of the very long tradition by way of which our ancestors dealt with everyday conflicts. Today in the realm of thought, modes of action, ways of being and possibilities of becoming what we need is cross-pollination, grafting and weeding of sorts—tradition, figures and political time. Dhamma Swaraj is conceived as a proposal for indulgence in the middle path evoked by the thought of Buddhist tradition. It can be conceived as a work that does not limit itself to the frame. The figure of Gandhi is evoked as a mode of understanding the limits of being inside a frame. Here, Gandhi, pushed out of the frame, is seen merging with the figure of Ambedkar and into the worldli- ness that transcends the image and imagination itself. The work deframes Gandhi and disperses this figure to form communes of possibilities and promises, beyond borders (most notably our own) to seek potential friends rather than enemies, in the figures of outcasts of history.

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 57 The Freedom Issue

I Think Therefore I Am 2018, wood and bronze, 71 x 76.5 x 23.5 inches I think therefore I am is an attempt to invoke civilisational depths against the vulgar display of modernity laden with symbol- isms of power. Dancing Girl is also one of the oldest archival artifacts from the Indus Valley and is considered the first art object found in India. It evokes the deeper layers of the meaning of aesthetics as inheri- tance of forms that still have the element of surprise and speak truth to power; in a differential hermeneutics of change. Juxtaposed against the design of the chair of the presidential palace of Lutyens’ Delhi, I think therefore I am is an attempt to trigger aesthetic, historical as well as political questions, if you will, by a subtle movement of ideas, materials and the gaze.

Song Unsung, 2019, iron and aluminium, 24 x 18 x 11 inches (set of six) Song Unsung is a new way of coming to terms with the genealogy of torture as bequeathed to modern democracies by medieval times. This work is among a series of other works that as an artist I am tremendously drawn to. Torture in the 21st century is still a medieval form of pun- ishment for securing confessions for the ends of 'democratic' states. Also of note is the way in which the entire procedure is worked upon to stop speaking and thinking from happening with the medieval imageries of locking the mind before the tolling bells. This work represents, allegorically, the entire system and procedures of so-called modern democracies where speech, through which democracy represents itself via the phenomenon of voice, is silenced by the power of terror and torture.

Riyas Komu is a Mumbai-based artist, curator and educationist. He co-founded the Kochi-Muziris Biennale

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Lhendup G Bhutia The BEST

MOVING SPIRIT of Times Mumbai's iconic bus service defies the pandemic uring the monsoon When the virus began to spread and a last year, when lockdown was enforced in Mumbai, most Ashwin (name forms of transport were halted. There was changed upon request) no way the city’s fabled lifelines, its crowd- would look out from ed local trains were going to be allowed to A BEST bus outside the window of his flat, operate. Even now, its use is restricted to the Chhatrapati Shivaji his heart would swell individuals belonging to some essential Maharaj Terminus in Mumbai with pride. A driver in Mumbai’s BEST services. The metro and monorail was D(Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and shut down; taxis and auto-rickshaws dis- Transport) bus service who had lived in appeared; even private cars became rare. a slum located outside his bus depot all But for essential services to function, his life, he had only recently moved into a which would involve people living in flat he had purchased right outside Mum- far-flung places to reach their workplaces, bai’s city limits. “The rain would look so some form of public transport had to be beautiful,” he says. “It is so green, so many opened up. The city’s authorities turned trees, and such quietness.” to its bus service. The buses with their The pleasure he took from having distinctive red colour, the word ‘BEST’ moved his wife and two children out sprawled on their sides, came alive on from a slum meant, he says, he did not now desolate streets. The service added even mind the nearly two-hour long jour- more routes, ones that would incorporate ney it now took him to get to work every hospitals and quarantine centres; it even day. It was a small price to pay for living in began to move outside the city, to pick up a flat. After the novel coronavirus broke and drop those that lived there. When the out in the city, Ashwin would be plagued lockdown came to an end, with trains still with fear throughout this journey to shut for a majority of the people, the load work. Several individuals at the depot he on the buses has only increased. But it has reported to, one of the largest in the city, come at a cost. were getting infected. “I kept thinking, So many months since the virus first ‘What if I caught it? What if I brought it hit the city, it is now becoming clear that back to my wife and children?’” he says. those working in the bus service have “But I had no option, I had to go to work.” suffered a high number of infections. The

Photos getty images The Freedom Issue service’s authorities have been reluctant to share the number of their infections. In fact, by the end of May, it declared it would stop disclosing its death toll over fears of creating panic among workers. According to reports, by the end of July, nearly 1,400 employees had been infected. Union leaders claim the figure is around 1,500 now, a majority of them conductors and drivers. The organisation has nearly 35,000 employees (6,500 of them working in the electricity department). BEST has claimed around 16 individuals have died so far. But according to union leaders who’ve gone about tabulating those that have died from each depot, around 110 have succumbed to the infection. When contacted, both the service’s spokesperson and general manager Surendrakumar Bagde declined to com- ment or reveal figures. Ashwin remained jittery over fears A conductor (left) selling tickets on a BEST bus at Kurla bus depot in Mumbai, June 9 of contracting the virus all through the lockdown. But he reasoned he had a less- er chance of contracting it. Unlike con- one hospital and then another. His condi- its future. Many buses have been retired, ductors, he didn’t need to interact with tion began to deteriorate. This was also routes have been scrapped, and fares have passengers. Moreover, he worked the the time when he learnt that one of his been raised, but the service has contin- night shift, from 11 pm to 7 am, where his colleagues at the depot had died from the ued to flounder. It is reported to be over job entailed driving buses to pick up and infection. “Mereko laga mein toh full off ho Rs 2,000 crore in debt. Jagnarayan Gupta, drop the employees in the bus service. He jayega [I thought I was going to die],” he a general secretary of the BEST Kamgar took extreme precaution. Throughout says in Mumbai’s colourful slang. But Sangathana union, claims from over his late-night rides, he would constantly gradually he recovered. 4,000 buses in its fleet, the number came wash himself and wipe his seat and be- down to around 3,300 last year. “After we longings with a hand sanitiser. When he went on a strike last year, the BMC [the returned home, he would bathe along he city has had a changing city’s civic body Brihanmumbai Munici- with his clothes, and began to stay away relationship with its bus pal Corporation] promised they wouldn’t from the rest of his family. But by the end service. Started first as a reduce this size. But it has gone down to of May, he was running a fever. He had tramway back in 1873, later just about 2,900 now,” he says. caught the infection. incorporating a power sta- There is also an increasing anxiety This was a period when the city’s Ttion to supply electricity and then buses, among its workers—with the service healthcare infrastructure was under for a long time, it was Mumbai’s ubiqui- roping in private players to operate immense strain. Hospital beds were tous form of travel. But this has changed buses under the BEST brand—that the becoming increasingly difficult to find. rapidly in the last decade. The number of city’s civic authorities could eventually Ashwin couldn’t find a hospital either. passengers have declined, from around wash its hands off the transport division. BEST’s management then, he claims, 45 lakh daily passengers over a decade “I think the way BEST has gone about in weren’t arranging ambulances to take ago to at one point in 2019, just 19 lakh. the city during this outbreak, with driv- employees who lived outside the city’s The way people travel was changing. ers and conductors putting their lives at official limits to hospitals they had tied The crowded local trains continued to risk, when no other transport was avail- up with. So Ashwin used the bus service’s remain the cheapest and fastest mode, able, the city has realised how valuable it informal channels. His friends placed a but auto-rickshaws, ordinary and app- is,” says Shashank Rao, the leader of the call with the manager of his depot, who based cabs, and private vehicles were BEST Sanyukt Kamgaar Kruti Samiti. in turn placed a call to a politically-con- taking the bus service’s passengers When the outbreak began to spread nected conductor. Ashwin was shifted to away. A large question has hung around rapidly through the city, Sharad (name

62 24 august 2020 us in fairly crowded rooms,” he says. His “But I know it is coming.” leave cancellation made him surly. He is With the authorities not coming forth seen, he says, as a troublemaker, someone openly about the number of people who who would tell on his immediate superi- have died, some like Rao from the BEST ors if they didn’t follow rules. He began to Sanyukt Kamgaar Kruti Samiti, have get into disagreements with them. Before begun to float online petitions with de- the outbreak occurred, he had been op- mands such as the establishment of Co- erating one particular route for several vid-19 facilities just for BEST workers and years. “Everybody knew me. The passen- their families. Jagnarayan Gupta from gers waiting at a stand would call me on the BEST Kamgar Sangathana union, us- the phone asking how far the bus was. It ing his contacts, has managed to source was that kind of relationship,” he says. data that shows the number of employ- After he got into spats, he was given ees who have died in the last few months. routes that swept by some of south Mum- “All of last year, 81 employees died. But bai’s most crowded neighbourhoods like in just three months, from April to end Byculla or ones that went to hospitals like of June this year, 94 people have died. So Nair Hospital that treats Covid-19 pa- if only 15 or 16 people have died from tients. Although current rules stipulate Covid, what is killing all these people?” that every alternate seat in BEST buses The outbreak has put employees now must be left empty and not more and their family under severe stress. than five allowed to stand, in these areas, Sameer (name changed upon request), A conductor (left) selling tickets on a BEST bus at Kurla bus depot in Mumbai, June 9 after the lockdown was lifted, it is impos- the 25-year-old son of a bus driver in the sible to follow such rules. “I tried to be city’s western suburbs, has now come to strict. But there would be so many fights assume the role of the family head. About changed upon request), a conductor in a that I wouldn’t be able to help it. Some- two weeks ago, his father tested positive south Mumbai depot, applied for about times there would be old people and you for the virus. Since then everything, he a week-long leave to make his house con- can tell they have been waiting for such a says, has gone downhill. The infection ducive for his son to participate in his on- long time,” he says. Before the lockdown led to a form of paralysis. “He couldn’t line classes. Around this time, BEST was was lifted and the crowds were sparse, be- even move and he has been in an ICU for issuing notices to employees too afraid hind a flimsy mask, he would watch with two weeks,” Sameer says. “I’d watch my to report to work. Sharad’s leave was fear the doctors and ward boys who made father go to work every day. I knew his cancelled. “Many were afraid to come to their way into his bus. “By god’s grace, I job was risky, but he wouldn’t talk about work because no social distancing was haven’t fallen sick yet. But I feel that it can what was happening.” Sameer also lost maintained at depots. Even if you were happen any day now. I try my best. My his job a few weeks ago. He spends all his very careful on the bus, when you came wife gives me a glass of milk and kadha time in the hospital lobby now, sleeping to the depot, it would just be so many of [an ayurvedic drink] every night,” he says. on a chair, arranging the money for his father’s treatment and trying to keep the rest of his family in good spirits. “I can’t afford to tell them [mother and sister] how bad it is. For now, I’m just holding When the virus began to spread and a on,” he says. lockdown was enforced in Mumbai, most Ashwin returned to work just two weeks after his discharge. He tried to forms of transport were halted. The city’s run on the stairs of his house to see how well he has recovered only to find him- authorities turned to its bus service. The self disappointed. His depot manager has pulled him off from driving buses and buses came alive on now desolate streets. The put him on administrative duty in the service added more routes, ones that would office instead. Every few weeks or so, he finds himself sitting in the canteen with incorporate hospitals and quarantine centres; colleagues who have also recovered. “We talk of how lucky we are,” he says. “How it even began to move outside the city close we came to it.” n

www.openthemagazine.com 63 The Freedom Issue

Nikita Doval There Shall Be No Love Lost SOCIAL REALISM

Mohit Nagar and Amreen Malik

V Shankar and Kausalya

Pranay and Amrutha Varshini

Photo imaging by Saurabh Singh 24 august 2020 Death does not deter intercaste There Shall Be No Love Lost and interfaith couples

y the time Kausalya’s less than a year. hair, waist long earlier, “My time in the hospital is a daze... after started growing back, I came out, many activists came to meet she knew it would be me and pledged support. People would her first symbol of defi- leave books for me to read. One of these ance. It was the sum- was Periyar’s Penn Yen Adimaiyaanal?,” she mer of 2016 and a few tells Open. The book Kausalya is referring months had passed since her life had to is a powerful book on female empower- Bchanged completely. On March 13th of ment by social reformer Periyar EV Rama- that year, she and her husband, V Shan- samy and had a direct bearing on her deci- kar, had gone to Udumalpet, the town sion to not grow her hair long again which closest from Shankar’s village, Kumaral- had to be cut as she had received blows on ingam, to buy a shirt for him. When they her head. In the four years that have fol- exited the clothing shop, the couple was lowed Shankar’s death, Kausalya has shed set upon by a group of five men. Grainy her old skin, of being a quiet homebound CCTV footage captured shows Shankar girl, to become a prominent anti-caste ac- being repeatedly hacked even as Kausalya tivist. She is also the principal witness in is hit and attacked. By the time they were the case against her father. In 2017, a dis- taken to the nearest hospital, Shankar had trict court had awarded him and five of the succumbed to his injuries. The men had assailants death penalty even though her been sent by Kausalya’s father; Chinnasa- mother was acquitted. However, on June my, a financier who was enraged that his 23rd, the fiery activist who now drives a daughter, a Thevar (a politically power- motorcycle to work and counsels other ful OBC community in Tamil Nadu), had couples suffered a setback when the Ma- married Shankar, a Dalit. Shankar was 22, dras High Court acquitted her father while Kausalya, 19. They had been married for reducing the death sentence of the other

At the centre of most honour killings is the woman’s caste but that’s not the only ‘problem’. At issue is also women’s assertion of their sexuality and independence tied closely with economic concerns such as share in family property

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 65 The Freedom Issue five to life. “I will not rest till Shankar gets ost honour killings Arunthathiyar, a Dalit. We are landless justice. This case will go all the way to the centre around the wom- labourers who have traditionally worked Supreme Court,” she says. an’s caste, especially if in the fields of the Kongu Vellalars. My In a 2006 judgment, Lata Singh vs State she marries a Dalit. But wife and I met in college in Salem while of U.P. & Another, the Supreme Court of that is not the only ‘prob- studying engineering,” says a Tamil Nadu India had held that right to marriage is Mlem’. At issue is also women’s assertion government employee who did not wish an essential right under Article 21 of the of their sexuality and independence tied to be identified. Their love story blos- Constitution and people had the right to closely with economic concerns such as somed in 2018 but the ghost of Shankar choose their partners without fear and share in family property. These marriages and Kausalya’s fate hung heavy over compulsion. But it is not a right which are also seen as an assertion of identity them. “She told her family I am a Dalit is given easily, especially to those who by Dalit men, even small acts of which, but not the exact caste. There was a lot of want to marry outside of their caste or such as wearing jeans or sunglasses, can emotional pressure and every day I used faith. Honour killing, in which people are result in higher-caste violence. With lo- to wake up in fear of being attacked.” murdered by their own family members cal government officials also slow to in- The couple eloped and eventually rap- for choosing their life partners, is still terfere when the perpetrators are from a prochement took place though he says practised today. It is still not recognised higher, and often powerful, caste, living for a few weeks it was touch-and-go as the in law as a crime being under murder without fear becomes unimaginable for father-in-law was under pressure from (Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code) intercaste couples. “Caste purity can only his community to take action against and culpable homicide (Section 304 of be maintained through endogamy and a them. “Today I go to meet her parents in IPC). In 2014, it was finally recognised as woman’s assertion besmirches not just my official government vehicle and it a separate category by the National Crime the family but the entire community. It gives them great pride,” he says. His eco- Records Bureau, leading to data report- sets a dangerous precedent for others. nomic situation plays a huge role, he says, ing. That year, 28 cases were reported; the The family worries about her claim in the but even that has limitations; his in-laws

Ambedkar wrote that caste will cease only when intermarriage becomes common. As politicians continue to pay more heed to dominant sentiments, that does not seem like a possibility anytime soon

figure rose to 192 in 2015; in 2016, only property as well as ostracisation from the still don’t know his specific caste. 77 cases were reported—Kausalya’s was community. For the sake of the honour In 2018, the Supreme Court in a land- one of these. of the family and the community, action mark judgment had ruled it was illegal “There is a perception that honour has to be taken,” Kathir explains the for village elders to interfere in a marriage killing is a north-Indian phenomenon, higher-caste mindset. between two consenting adults and to but it has roots everywhere,” says Kathir Seldom, a couple escapes violence if punish them. It also said that all cases of who runs a Madurai-based organisation, the man has a promising future such as honour killing, including pending ones, Evidence, fighting caste discrimination being in a prestigious job. Educated and were to be tried by fast-track courts ear- and social injustice. According to Kathir, economically independent couples are marked for that purpose. The judgment Evidence has been tracking these killings more likely to escape murder by their also directed the police and the state to set and helping survivors get legal help since families than poorly paid and unem- up safety houses for couples on the run 2005 when they started. He reels off cases ployed runaway couples, according to fearing the wrath of their communities. from several villages and districts that tell research by Haryana Women and Child In fact, both Punjab and Haryana have the same story: non-Dalit woman marries Development Department’s Puneet Kaur had safety houses for couples since 2010. Dalit man; both get attacked by members Grewal. “My wife is a Kongu Vellalar [a “The Ministry of Social Justice and Em- of her community—often brutally. powerful OBC community] while I am an powerment has launched the Dr Ambed-

66 24 august 2020 kar Scheme for Social Integration under which the Government provides a certain amount to an intercaste couple if the Educated and economically bride or bridegroom is Dalit, but there is very little awareness on the ground about independent couples are more likely these things or even their rights,” says Asif Iqbal, cofounder of Dhanak of Hu- to escape murder by their families manity, a Delhi-based NGO that works than poorly paid and unemployed to promote the right to choose one’s partner. They provide a safety house among runaway couples other facilities to couples who come to them but only after vetting. Open met Mohit Nagar, 25, and Am- reen Malik, 22, at one such house. The n The Annihilation of Caste, Picking yourself up after your world couple belong to Khadoli village near BR Ambedkar writes that ‘caste has been upended violently by those Meerut and have been in Delhi since will cease to be an operative force closest to you is difficult for those who March, though they got married only in only when inter-dining and inter- choose to defy their families for love. For the last week of July. “We have been to- marriage have become matters of Kausalya, it was complete breakdown of gether for a few years now, but there was Icommon course’. According to the Cen- faith and trust which she has not been strong opposition to our match owing sus 2011, only 5.82 per cent of marriages able to restore. When she thinks about to our religions,” says Nagar. They had reported were intercaste, with no major her parents, there is anger and sadness but met at the medical store he ran in her growth in the absolute figure for decades no desire for reconciliation. “How could locality. They were forced to run away now. Interfaith marriages were even lower I have gone back to the very people who after Malik’s marriage was fixed with at 2.6 per cent, according to recent National had killed my husband? I came from a another man. “We tried to talk to our Family and Health Surveys. “For intercaste family where I was adored but even walk- families, reason with them, but all we got and interfaith couples to be able to come ing fast was frowned upon for girls. After were threats and emotional blackmail out openly, without any fear for their puberty, even my visits to relatives’ homes in return. I even asked her father, ‘What safety, we need government to get more were curtailed. Shankar gave me the free- is your objection to this match? I am involved,” says Iqbal. However, as politi- dom to be. I could do anything, be anyone. educated, I am capable of providing for cal parties continue to pay more heed to The question of going back to my parents her, I don’t have any bad habits’? Is it just dominant sentiments, that does not seem never even arose.” because my faith is different?” The same like a real possibility anytime soon. Kausalya’s words echo those of Am- question was posed to his parents also. The one thing that could serve as a rutha Varshini who too lost her husband Nagar initially sought legal recourse, but deterrent to violence by higher castes is of a few months after marriage in 2018. every lawyer he approached suggested a law against honour killing, a demand A resident of Miryalaguda, Telangana, conversion for Malik. “But we weren’t of activist groups for some time now. Amrutha, 21, married her highschool ready to do that. We accept each other “Honour killings are currently tried un- sweetheart, Pranay, against the wishes with our faiths.” Trawling YouTube led der Section 302 which is murder but this of her influentiual father Maruthi Rao, Mohit to Dhanak of Humanity. It was is more than that. We have to see honour whose objection was centred on his Dalit only after they came to Delhi in March killing as a crime in its own category caste. Pranay was hacked to death by ma- did the couple even found out about the which involves conspiracy. The concept chetes in front of his then pregnant wife Special Marriage Act of 1954 that solem- of domestic violence was a struggle until it and mother as they were coming out of a nises as well as registers marriages be- was recognised as a crime with the passing hospital, allegedly by persons sent by Rao. tween interfaith couples. Their families of the Protection of Women from Domes- Varshini remained steadfast in her refusal have been informed though they have tic Violence Bill, 2005. Honour killing is to return to her parents or withdraw the no plans to return as of now. “I don’t murder in the name of izzat and we have case against them, even going on record know what we are supposed to go back instances of it being carried out even years to say that her father should be hanged. for. They are my family, but then they after the union has been solemnised,” says Rao killed himself earlier this year, which should stand by you through everything Mariam Dhawale, General Secretary, All led to widescale trolling of Varshini, who and that didn’t happen,” says Malik. Eid Indian Democratic Women’s Association. remains unperturbed. Theirs is not an was a bittersweet occasion for her as she A separate law will also ensure that the uncommon story: despite the lethal was finally with Nagar but estranged local state machinery, often complicit, is price, people continue to find their way from family. held up to some level of scrutiny. in love. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 67 The Freedom Issue

Kaveree Bamzai The Broken Class

learning curve How are India’s 18-year-olds coping?

nd of school is the show and tell, which is perhaps why much is out of their control, and as a re- beginning of freedom. the disappointment is acute. Earlier, sult, they are grappling with disillusion- It’s the moment to a few congratulatory calls from fam- ment and hopelessness. “They are also seize the day and make ily and life carried on. For these restless grieving over the fact that they didn’t get young lives extraordi- people, coming out into the real world to say goodbye to their friends, teachers nary, at least according was the first big test, not just for them and were almost instantly thrown into a to the most magical but equally for their families.”' Instead, state of limbo,” says Mumbai-based psy- and hence fictional the uncertainty is exacerbating mind chologist Sonali Gupta. high-school teacher ever, John Keating, in games—some are rightly worried about Abandoned by schools which even EDead Poets Society (1989). At a superficial losing a year, others have had to change in normal times cut the cord as soon as level, it’s the time for uniforms to be laid their study plans mid-way with several children graduate, confronting to rest, hair to be grown long, skirts to be admission exams deferred. conventional coaching classes which worn short, nails to be painted and arms There is sadness, unpredictability and are in turn coming to terms with teach- to be tattooed. It’s when timetables are no uncertainty about the future. There is a ing through new technology, and longer sacred and canteens are no longer finger on the pause button that refuses to forgotten by a state more concerned about regimented. Long bus rides to college can be removed and an unfinished air of ritu- a new national education policy than initiate intimacies and dorm rooms can als. Grounded since December last year in announcing schedules for existing public engender independence. It’s the time of preparation for their board exams, they universities, they have had to endure a lot: life when every experience is to be sa- had planned their freedom days after exams postponed, then cancelled, campus voured and every liberty enjoyed. It’s the board exams down to the minutest de- experience put on hold, and the idea of time to defeat the sameness of death by tails: which getaways to retreat to with independence interrupted. embracing individuality. their friends, which movies to watch and In America, their peers at least got a For the Class of 2020, though, this very even which restaurants to hang out in. virtual send-off from a glittering array public rite of passage has been stolen from Then it was going to be back to the grind of stars in ‘Graduate Together: America them by a global pandemic. Once, gradu- preparing for their entrance exams. Honours the Class of 2020’. A gorgeous ating from school was not just about go- Instead, says Misba Firdose, an Alicia Keys played the piano for them, ing to college but also symbolically a com- 18-year-old from Mysore who was plan- Malala Yousafazai counselled them, and the ing of age. For the batch of 2020, though, ning to take the Common Engineering Jonas Brothers sang for them. No gen- the prom night was replaced by a virtual Entrance Test (CEET), it has been an inter- eration has been better positioned to be graduation ceremony, the black gowns minable house arrest, with no one ready warriors for justice and remake the were worn in the isolation of their homes. or willing to even acknowledge the psy- world, said Barack Obama, while Tom As Jyotsna Mohan, the author of chological stress these young adults are Hanks called them the “chosen ones” and Stoned Shamed Depressed: An Explosive going through. A lot of them are finding it Oprah Winfrey assured them the entire Account of the Secret Lives of India’s Teens, hard to plan for their future, whether it’s world was graduating with them. says: “In recent times, social media ex- a job or further education. Most of them In India, the Class of 2020 had to posure has made even graduation a are struggling with the feeling that so make do with Netflix nights and PUBG

68 24 august 2020 Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration

Once, graduating from school was not just about going to college but also symbolically a coming of age. For the batch of 2020, though, the prom night was replaced by a virtual graduation ceremony, the black gowns were worn in the isolation of their homes

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 69 The Freedom Issue

“This is a period, where learning through “Their time’s spent reminiscing an unconventional way of teaching has to about the past good times, and creating be accepted as a reality— plans for their future. It’s for educators, parents like being in a weird and student” time warp” – kanak gupta director, – shikha rathore Seth MR Jaipuria Schools former teacher

days. Gurugram mother Kamal Malik wholetime director of Seth MR Jaipuria used to distant turmoil, whether it was says children have been at a loose end. Schools, which has 34 schools across 24 global terror, climate change or economic Not being able to go out, meet friends and cities across India: “This is a period where recession, this is the first time they have the fear of Covid-19 looming large, they learning through an unconventional felt real life punching them in the gut. have to be content chatting with school way of teaching has to be accepted as a Maybe, they will feel more impelled friends, some of whom they might not reality—for educators, parents and stu- to prove themselves at university. meet in person anytime soon, and getting dents. In April, my daughter Sara who is Maybe, they will understand that exam acquainted with future friends in college. ten years old, asked me a question: ‘Once grades are less important than perhaps As former teacher-turned-homemaker schools re-open, whenever it is, will I be they thought. Maybe, it has made them Shikha Rathore says: “They are balanc- able to share lunch with my friends?’ And, slightly more mature and resilient. ing the past and the future. All of this is I said, I don’t know. As an educator, respon- For so many individuals, the straight virtual through WhatsApp groups and sible for 30,000-plus students, I feel this is path—exams, graduation, career—has Zoom calls. Their time’s spent reminisc- a normal feeling.”' become more curved. Perhaps at some ing about the past good times, and creat- What would have been a phase of new deeper level this will shift the mindset of ing plans for their future. It’s like being in beginnings has become a state of suspen- these students. Says Gupta: “In smaller a weird time warp.” sion. Will it make this generation stronger cities, there is possibly a seminal change It is as much a crisis as it is an oppor- or will it break them? Some are even strug- in attitude in Indian students and their tunity. As Malala Yousafzai said to the gling with the terminology. In the West, families. For most Indian families, the Class of 2020: “The world is yours now a gap year is a common occurrence. Here Western concept of a gap year has been and I can’t wait to see what you make of students are wondering whether to call an anathema, almost as if it were shame- it.” Some have chosen to approach it in it drop year, or lost year, or simply, a gap ful. This despite the fact that surveys of good spirit, using this time to hone their year. Attulya Kumar Singh of Bengaluru, major industries, such as software, con- skills and catch up on their reading, con- who plans to take his engineering exams, sistently show the sort of experiences in templating how best their undergraduate is in no hurry. He has decided to work for terms of internships that a student can degree fits into their ultimate career path. the common entrance exams for next year have in this gap year, often weigh more Neeha Gupta of Mumbai, who has already and with his smartphone as his lifeline, in job interviews than which degree they published two books, is preparing to go takes coding classes online. “It’s no big obtained or from where it was obtained.” to University College in London in Janu- deal,” he says. But in smaller cities, lack of bandwidth ary, postponed from September, to study Educator Vishnu Karthik believes and access to smartphones are problems. information management for business, this is a moment that will transform this Many families have only one device but not before finessing her skills at public generation that had taken prosperity for and the father is working and takes the speaking and her interest in reading how granted. They will understand that they phone with them. The children have to the mind works. can stop the treadmill and get off, contem- wait for him to return so that they can But it is a crisis for those unused to plate what they really want to do and then access videos and worksheets. online learning. Says Kanak Gupta, step back again if they wish. For so long Some students have used the lock-

70 24 august 2020 “The lockdown was a wonderful “In recent times, social media exposure opportunity to explore, experiment and has made even graduation a show discover different things. and tell, which is perhaps I realised that life exists why the disappointment outside of academics” is acute ” – jeevesh saxena, – jyotsna mohan, student author

down well, upgrading themselves to her chartered accountancy foundation and have a higher adaptability to the cur- learning beyond content and classroom; course while pursuing her undergraduate rent pandemic than the adults around new skills have been acquired, as in the course by correspondence. “I have always them who are not associated with educa- case of Kartik Kajaria from Delhi, who believed that it is best to utilise the time tion. They have the capability to take risks while waiting for his online classes to be- that we have in our hands regardless of if the older generation loosens the leash. gin at UCLA on October 4th, has decided the prevailing situations,” she says crisply. Co-founder of College Solutions, Renu to try his hand at investing in the stock Dhawan, believes this generation has its market. There is an awareness about real own challenges: of lack of job opportuni- issues beyond the classroom, as in the qually, there is an increased ties, absence of job security and an ever- case of Jeevesh Saxena from Lucknow, interest in Indian univer- changing work environment. “Add to that who calls the lockdown a lottery. “Usu- sities. With the National the peer pressure, and a lot more access to ally, the college process after school is Education Policy proposing drugs, alcohol and pornography.” very rushed, leaving little or no chance at least 100 foreign universi- For parents, it’s been a time of never- to introspect what we really want to do. Eties in India, it may also mean a reversal ending stress as they see their children’s There’s absolutely no exposure to other of what is popularly known as the brain dreams for 2020 quashed, and theirs too. things. The lockdown was a wonderful drain and a loss for the exchequer as well. But as Arundhati Nath, content head, opportunity to explore, experiment and With over 300,000 Indian students study- Teamwork Arts, and mother of a bright discover different things. I realised that ing overseas, India is the second largest 18-year-old who is expecting to go to a top life exists outside of academics, and life source of international students after UK college to study Politics, Philosophy is not unilateral, it is necessary to have China. If Indian universities can match and Economics, says: “Our child’s safety different interests.” From cooking to the requirements of the new world post- and health are paramount and I don’t see bonsai courses on Coursera, there was a Covid, then we could be looking at the any harm in keeping plans on hold for lot to try. And because of the lockdown, beginning of something big. a year [hopefully, we will have a vaccine almost all paid EdTech resources were And what of the future? The class of by then!]. In my opinion, academic years made free in goodwill, so aware students 2021 has also been hit hard, having behave been disrupted in the past when the benefited immensely from it. The stron- come the guinea pigs for a new system of Naxal movement raged in Kolkata in the gest support, says Jeevesh, was on social online learning. Some have really strug- ’70s or when the Mandal Commission agi- media platforms. Students are appreciat- gled to motivate themselves to learn in tation happened in the ’90s.” A year, as she ing application-based learning too but the isolation. Those who have overcome this points out, is nothing in the larger scheme uncertainty about college admissions in are naturally stronger, more resilient stu- of things as long as the family stays safe India, especially with public universi- dents, able to consider more possibilities and well. ties and universities abroad, is creating in life. Their skills in critical thinking and For the Class of 2020, a delayed ascent a turmoil for them. They are coming up analysis are stronger so they trust their into adulthood may well come with a with solutions. Vidhi Jain of Varanasi, judgement while finding solutions. They greater appreciation for the adults in for instance, has decided to prepare for will have a wider perspective to problems their lives. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 71 The Freedom Issue

V Shoba

LEARNING CURVE LEARNING A Higher Degree Where it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake

s a student at the Sir JJ words like soul and spirit” and invoking draw perspectives from political science, College of Architecture the Theosophists and the Vedantic theory philosophy, ethics, sociology and history. in Bombay in the 1980s, of the five koshas (levels of embodied self). But while many companies are talking when Ajit Rao proposed a “The formal education system makes the about lateral thinking, when it comes to joint building for art and rational brain king, relegating the intui- hiring, it usually boils down to choosing architecture in his final- tive brain to the background. In India, es- a marketing specialist or a finance profes- Ayear thesis, he was simply told to consider pecially, it is not easy for a student to take sional,” says S Raghu Raman, a professor architecture an aspect of engineering, the intuitive decision to switch disciplines of organisational behaviour and human and not the fine arts. The college shared a even within the humanities. But what I resource management at the Institute campus with the Sir JJ College of Art, but have found from experience is that if you for Financial Management and Research an invisible wall separated the two. Rao, jump, the net magically appears.” (IFMR)-Graduate School of Business however, wasn’t one to colour within the The draft New Education Policy, 2020, (GSB), Krea University. Most students lines. An architecture degree, followed by envisions making this net a permanent come to management after a degree in apprenticeship under pioneer-architect fixture. Rather than view universities as science or engineering, with the quan- BV Doshi—he was awarded the Pritz- conveyor belts to the job market, it ap- titative entrance test acting as a filter, he ker Prize in 2018—did not stop Rao from pears to adopt a higher ideal of education notes. The best way to expose them to cartooning for newspapers, creating and for personal development. A sketchy the liberal arts is to offer interdisciplin- exhibiting art and sculpture, and eventu- policy document, the NEP lacks detail but ary training along with core professional ally becoming an animator. “Once I was redeems itself by arguing for a ‘knowledge courses. In India, this is a fledgling idea at fairly established in one field, I tended to of many arts’ and directs all institutions, best, with some of the IITs offering courses move on to another. It took me a while to including the IITs, to become multidisci- in the social sciences and IIM Kozhikode realise that I was essentially in search of plinary by 2040. Globally, academicians just announcing a postgraduate degree in what lay at the heart of creativity,” says and policymakers have been arguing to “Liberal Studies and Management.” Rao, 60, over the phone from his cottage bring the sciences and the humanities to- In a discussion at Ashoka University— in Lonavala, Maharashtra. “I haven’t made gether to meet both material and personal a modern-day institution that bridges a lot of money, but it has been a fulfilling aspirations, restore confidence in institu- the binaries of the liberal arts and the sci- life.” Learning the principles of architec- tions, prevent the ‘graduate premium’ ences—in 2014, Gurcharan Das, author ture from Doshi, printmaking from Wal- from flatlining and spur innovation. In and former managing director of Procter ter D’Souza, sculpture from Ravinder India, where students are forced to pick & Gamble, posed a rhetorical question, Reddy, animation from Ram Mohan, and a discipline in high school, transitioning drawn from an old parlour game, to stu- cartooning from Mario Miranda, he says, to a late specialisation system, as in the dents: “What would you do if you knew taught him something more than the sum US, could improve the chances of post- you had three months left?” He then went of all these skills: the idea that “a vocation millennials finding their place in a rapidly on to answer it himself: “You certainly is just a voice with which to realise and ex- evolving economy. wouldn’t enrol for an MBA.” What he left press oneself.” Rao now studies pedagogy “To solve business problems today unsaid was that professional courses in en- and delivers guest lectures at architecture, you need to understand the increasingly gineering and management had reached design and business schools, where he en- complex world around you. A student of the point of diminishing marginal util- joys shocking audiences by using “taboo management should ideally be able to ity, and become so blinkered that they no

72 24 august 2020 In India, where students are forced to pick a discipline in high school, transitioning to a late specialisation system, as in the US, could improve the chances of post-millennials finding their place in a rapidly evolving economy

Illustration by Saurabh Singh The Freedom Issue longer dealt with real world problems. A ing high-end consumer tech to tackling Navaratna gave up a tenured position at liberal arts education, on the other hand, a pandemic, we now know that it takes Harvard Medical College, where she was prepared you for life and taught you to experts of every kind, from designers working in experimental neuroscience, to think critically, said Das, who had gradu- and software engineers to economists take up a two-year Masters’ programme in ated in Philosophy, Politics and Econom- and supply chain managers, to put their contemporary music at the New England ics from Harvard University. “I changed heads together to come up with workable Conservatory. A Carnatic musician by my major every semester. I took courses solutions. In fact, intersectionary work is training, Navaratna found new joy in jam- in chemistry, biochemistry, economics, vital to most cutting-edge scientific re- ming freestyle. “I was like a racehorse that even architecture,” he said, talking about search today, so much so that a scientist’s had forgotten its wild side, and this was why he gave up corporate life at the age of success is directly proportional to his or my wilderness training.” Since moving 50 after working on some of the world’s her ability to think creatively and to forge to India to take up the position at IGNCA best brands to return to philosophy and connections with other labs. And yet, in- four years ago, she has worked on esoteric writing. At Ashoka University, under- terdisciplinarians who straddle a pure multidisciplinary projects, including a graduates can pick from a total of 21 pure science and the liberal arts, or a ‘serious’ raga laboratory that uses a software plat- or interdisciplinary options to major in— social science like economics with, say, form to translate brainwaves into Indian interdisciplinary majors include history the languages, often draw the short straw. classical music, a mandala meditation ki- and international relations; politics, phi- “There is so much pressure to excel at osk, an AI-based robotic raga player, and a losophy and economics; and computer a profession that when you get there, you theoretical exploration of Indian music science and entrepreneurial leadership— are expected to settle down and devote cognition in the Natyashastra. “I did not and are not expected to declare their major your whole life to it, to the exclusion of want to join mainstream academia be- until the middle of the second year. all other knowledge,” says Deepti Na- cause that would mean being boxed into While academic specialisation is not varatna, the 39-year-old regional director a category once again,” she says. Navaratna about to go out of style, the need for cross- of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for has just wrapped up a biography of Jaya- fertilisation among disciplines as well as the Arts, Bengaluru. “No one tells you it chamarajendra Wodeyar, the last maha- universal broad-based liberal arts educa- is okay to pursue many interests concur- raja of Mysore who was a composer and tion has never been greater. From build- rently, or to switch to another discipline.” an intellectual maverick. The book is up for release later this year, and Navaratna can already imagine being heckled by scholars. “What right do I have to go into “There is so much pressure to excel at a history? Well, I can research the hell out of profession that when you get there, you anything and use my analytical skills as a scientist to look for the truth in primary are expected to settle down and devote sources. I can be more agnostic than most your whole life to it, to the exclusion of historians in India.” As a society, we are not conditioned all other knowledge” to accept intellectual interlopers who –Deepti Navaratna explore the world on their own terms. regional director, Indira Gandhi National Centre The pursuit of new ideas and challenges, for the Arts, Bengaluru however, is its own reward. “I am not interested in publishing in academic journals,” says Bibek Debroy, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Council, and “I picked rhyming verse, not only because it had a a renaissance man in the mould of the Bengali bhadralok who says he was “born familiar ring and an association with childhood, in the wrong century”. Debroy, whose in- but also because I work well under tellectual journey is marked by an array constraints. It was an instant hit, and it of impressive endeavours in economics, law, Indology, Sanskrit and technocracy, made me want to write more” would rather direct his energies to poli- cymaking or translating ancient texts. Mala Radhakrishnan – An economist by training, he has been a associate professor of chemistry, journalist, advised governments and au- Wellesley College, Massachusetts thored dozens of books. “I find it difficult

74 24 august 2020 to describe who I am,” says the scholar for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, Yadav for me,” says Yadav. He has since worked who holds honorary doctorates in both was working on applying molecular on photographing stories in ecology and economics and Sanskrit. After a Master’s techniques to understanding how large evolutionary biology involving reptiles, degree in economics from Cambridge, De- carnivores move. “For a boy from Nagpur big cats and plants. Seven years after he broy returned to India to pursue a career in who had trouble speaking English until won his first National Geographic grant, he policy. “It took a while for the Alex Haley a few years ago, I was getting interested has a big story out in a recent issue of the phenomenon to kick in, and I found my- in science communication, and found magazine on snow leopard conservation self searching for my roots and crossing myself spending a lot of time talking to in Spiti. “I set up a perch in a village in the into Indology and the study of epics,” he villagers while out in the field to try and hills and spent a year-and-a-half there, in- says. He began work on an unabridged explain the project at hand,” he says. “It tegrating into the community and work- translation of the Mahabharata, eventu- was a sabbatical that never ended. I did not ing systematically with the best scientists ally publishing 10 volumes, some of them finish my PhD but I realised that what I and conservationists.” For every project, to mixed reviews. “In 2010, a respected needed from academics was to be able Yadav spends as much time researching it Indologist tore at a part of the work in a to understand science. Now I wanted to as he does shooting, he says. “I go over re- piece in The Statesman and I was upset. If make others understand it using visual cent scientific papers and read every news report on the subject before even making a field trip. The one drawback of having “Once I was fairly established in one been a researcher in a past life is that I can’t do helicopter storytelling. Fortunately, I field, I tended to move on to another. am good at writing grant proposals and It took me a while to realise that I was I have been able to support my work so far.” Yadav now wants to shoot some of essentially in search of what lay at the the interesting work underway at Indian heart of creativity” labs and explore molecular photography. It was a similar drive to communicate –Ajit Rao architect-turned-teacher science that inspired Mala Radhakrish- nan, associate professor of chemistry at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, to “It was a sabbatical that never ended. I did not finish my write poetry—a pursuit entirely alien to scientists. Or perhaps not. Radhakrish- PhD but I realised that what I needed from nan uses analogies, personification and academics was to be able to understand storytelling elements— “molecular soap operas”—to make chemistry accessible. science. Now I wanted to make others She segued into poetry entirely by chance understand it using visual media” when a friend took her to a performance venue in Boston. “I picked rhyming verse, – Prasenjeet Yadav not only because it had a familiar ring and molecular biologist and ecologist an association with childhood, but also because I work well under constraints. It was an instant hit, and it made me want that happened today, it wouldn’t matter to media.” Ecologist Uma Ramakrishnan, to write more,” says Radhakrishnan, who me. Yes, I am a dilettante and I still stop shy his PhD advisor, was nice enough to give has published two volumes of poetry. “I of calling myself a Sanskrit scholar, but all him his first project, which involved doc- do feel like an impostor because I haven’t three unabridged translations of the Ma- umenting the effects of climate change had decades of training in poetry, and also habharata till date have been done by dil- on the ecology of Sikkim at different el- because more than literature itself, I am ettante Bengalis. If the scholars had done evational gradients. “I came back with a interested in humanising science,” she their job, we wouldn’t have had to dabble.” short photo story and I remember how says. “We don’t talk enough about the There is enormous potential at the in- thrilled the scientists were. For the first people who do science. Papers are written tersection of the sciences and the arts, says time, they took a bunch of photos, instead in passive voice, as if things magically fig- Prasenjeet Yadav, a 31-year-old molecular of a 100-page paper, to the funding agency ure themselves out. The exclusivity that biologist and ecologist who turned sci- [the Department of Biotechnology, Gov- permeates science is actually hurting us.” ence photographer nearly eight years ago. ernment of India]. When they came back For both the sciences and the humanities, As a PhD scholar at the National Centre with great feedback, it was a turning point it’s supra-specialists to the rescue. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 75 The Freedom Issue THE MIND IS ITS OWN PLACE

Illustration by Saurabh Singh Madhavankutty Pillai Praise the Stoic The inevitability of suffering and surviving

he Human Immu- more than two million cases at present. regular progress, and visiting camps, cit- nodeficiency Virus These are not anomalies. Through ies, and villages, excepting only the hill- (HIV) and Novel Coro- the history of disease, India has borne forts; its continuance in each place being navirus are entirely dif- the brunt of epidemics and that includes generally limited from fifteen days to six ferent creatures. One both viral and bacterial ones. There have weeks; seldom returning, and then in a is a retrovirus hiding been seven global epidemics of cholera milder form, and with less frequent oc- patiently in nooks for and the first was from here in 1817. A pa- currence. Its progress has been remarked the right opportunity to proliferate and per written in 1819 by Dr William Stuart to be at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles Tthen slowly eat life away. It can take years Anderson described it: ‘The epidemic is a day…In many places its appearance and or even decades before its final conquest. It said to have originated in Bengal. We disappearance have been very sudden, never leaves once it enters. The other, Co- find it raging in the camp of the Grand bursting forth like an explosion of com- vid-19, comes and goes with speed as an Army under the Marquis of Hastings, in bustibles, and, as if the pabulum were all unwelcome house guest with a battering November 1817, and it has since spread consumed, being extinguished in a simi- ram aimed at the lungs. It is often impo- to the south and to the west, apparently lar manner.’ tent and unnoticed in the few weeks that unaffected by the vicissitudes of climate, Towards the end of the 19th century, it infects a human body. Every single HIV and but little influenced by the nature of the third plague pandemic hit the world. patient used to live a death sentence in the country, making a gradual and pretty It began in China but India saw the over- the virus’ beginning. As a percentage risk for each individual, Covid-19 is nothing to worry over. Anyone who gets it doesn’t really have to be afraid unless he or she is very old, severely unwell or extremely un- All told, people here have succumbed lucky, and even then the odds are in their in greater numbers than probably any favour. But because of the large numbers it infects, for the world at large, it is a catas- other country in the world. The reasons trophe. Their differences notwithstanding, HIV and Covid-19 have something shouldn’t be hard to deduce. One is in common. It didn’t matter where they began or which communities or countries population and, in particular, density. were brought to their knees first, eventu- Another reason is abject poverty, which ally India ended up being their centre of attention. Just this week, India saw itself get meant bodies without nutrition and into pole position as the country with the largest number of daily Covid cases and weakened immune systems. Plus the with every passing day, it widens the gulf with the runners-up. With HIV, India only absence of any meaningful healthcare trails a couple of African countries and has infrastructure right up to the present

24 august 2020 The Freedom Issue whelming number of fatalities. A World that make such a culture suffer also make technique that had come to them from a Health Organization document said: ‘The it able to get through them. Eighteen mil- circuitous route that began with China third pandemic began in Canton and lion might have perished in 1918 and 1919 and then Arabia. Mukherjee’s use of their Hong Kong in 1894 and spread rapidly but it is as if there was no scarring left be- example was only to make a point on inoc- throughout the world, by rats aboard the hind. Almost as soon as a calamity is over, ulation and viral loads, and so he does not swifter steamships that replaced slow- India resumes its ordinary pace because dwell at length over them. But consider this moving sailing vessels in merchant fleets. inbuilt into its gene is fatalism and sto- question. What difference can one imagine Within 10 years (1894-1903), plague en- icism honed over millennia. between the practice of the Chinese and Ar- tered 77 ports on five continents. Plague abs and these Brahmins? The answer will became widespread in a number of coun- lead to who they would be willing to cure. tries. In India, there were over 6 million he oncologist-cum-writer Three centuries ago, is it possible to imagine deaths from 1898 to 1908.’ In 1918, the Siddhartha Mukherjee these Brahmins, sole experts of potential Spanish Flu would kill 18 million Indi- wrote an incisive essay in life-saving medical treatment, touch any- ans, the maximum of any country in the The New Yorker at the begin- one considered an untouchable? Or even worst pandemic of history. Even right up to ning of Covid-19 looking at treat the Shudras, who are part of the four- the moment the smallpox virus was eradi- theT connection between viral load, or the fold caste system but relegated to menial cated, India would see an epidemic in 1974 amount of virus exposed that led to an in- status? The two caste groups of Dalits and that killed 15,000 over a couple of months. fection, and its subsequent severity. Titled Shudras would make up more than two- All told, people here have succumbed in ‘How Does Coronavirus Spread Inside a thirds of the population and they would all greater numbers than probably any other Patient’, he began by recounting a visit to have little hope of the treatment because country in the world. The reasons shouldn’t Kolkata in February this year to the temple those who knew were bound by clear rules be hard to deduce. One is population and, of Shitala, a goddess whose USP is to protect on who they could physically and socially in particular, density. The plague referred against smallpox. He wrote: ‘The temple engage with. Dr BR Ambedkar, the first to above was called the Bombay Plague and was two hundred and fifty years old, the make a political force of Dalits, asked what the 1918 flu too entered India through attendant informed me. That would date progress or strength could a society hope Bombay, a crowded city without to achieve if most of the population’s hygiene, and the first port of call for intellectual output were deliberately migrant labour. Another reason is kept away. He laid the pitiable condi- abject poverty, which meant bodies tion of India through its history di- without nutrition and weakened rectly at the doorstep of caste discrim- immune systems. Plus the absence ination and, by extension, religion. of any meaningful healthcare infra- Extrapolate that to India’s abject structure right up to the present. state of healthcare and sanitation, Covid-19 is a good example of and there is no surprise that diseases the only manner in which India has and epidemics find such a welcome been able to meet epidemics—take home in India. it on the chest and hope. The total But even those as exploited and lockdown of the beginning was trampled upon as the Indian lower merely a forced pause and earlier castes found an avenue to meet ad- exclamations of a successful Indi- versities. If there was no medicine, an blueprint has now been torn to there was the potential for salvation shreds. The country has reverted to A priest at the Corona Devi temple in Kollam, Kerala in the afterlife. Or a munificence of its historical mean. Already, there gods for succour, because one of the are more than 60,000 cases a day and it it to around the time when accounts first elements of Indian civilisation, perhaps be- might soon touch 100,000. Like 1918, if appeared of a mysterious sect of Brahmans cause it was so bereft of real relief, has been there is a mutation in the virus to make wandering up and down the Gangetic plain to offer as many gods to cater to as many it lethal in a second wave, the story might to popularize the practice of tika, an early sufferings there are. Mukherjee’s essay play out as it did a hundred years ago de- effort at inoculation. This involved taking mentions the goddess Shitala in Kolkata. spite all the economic and social advances. matter from a smallpox patient’s pustule— But she is present everywhere in north In- But if India has been able to do not much a snake pit of live virus—and applying it to dia. There is a temple for Shitala in Mahim, more than wait diseases out—from rabies the pricked skin of an uninfected person, Mumbai, at the other end of the peninsula. to tuberculosis, each one seems to have the then covering the spot with a linen rag.’ Not everyone used to be allowed inside longest shelf life here—the same factors These Brahmins became adepts at this those temples, but the right to ask her for

78 24 august 2020 Even in the rest of the world, people would go to pray in a church or mosque when a disease was in the air. But you would be hard put to find new gods coming up specific to a disease anywhere else. Even now, like Corona Devi in Kollam, Kerala. A man built a shrine for her and the idol looked like the virus with spikes. It might be a gimmick but there have been reports from across the country of new rites and chants to ward off the coronavirus

help when the disease struck was every- ‘Consequently, the ritualisation of Cholera eases were met. In the absence of govern- one’s right. South India had its own ver- is believed to have started after the pandem- ments providing healthcare, the only ru- sions of such a goddess. In Kerala, when a ic of 1817. “Only in deltaic Bengal, is there dimentary assistance was the caste group. goddess began to be beseeched for help dur- known to have been worship of a specific For instance, in the 1918 flu pandemic, ing a smallpox outbreak, a market sprung Cholera deity, called Ola Bibi by Muslims, when the British were bogged down by the up and it was not too long back. An article and Olai-Chandi by Hindus,” writes Arnold. war and threw up their hands in India. The in The Hindu said: ‘This over 100-year-old He adds that “before 1817 the Goddess en- book Pale Rider about that pandemic says: market has its origin in a smallpox epidem- joyed far less popular devotion than Sitala, ‘Though more people were dying in cities ic that flared up in the outskirts of Kochi but she was thereafter extensively propiti- than in rural areas, therefore, it was only city, towards Cherthala. In those times, ated during the season when cholera was in cities that help was to be had. Villages when medical advances were few, the virus most prevalent.” Reports by European mis- and remote communities were left, for was unknown and virulent. The worst af- sionaries mentioned in Arnold’s book sug- the most part, to fend for themselves. The fected were the malnourished and under- gests that reverence for the Goddess often government appealed for help, and it duly privileged farm hands, as well as artisans manifested itself in young girls dressing up came—mostly from organisations with from socially disadvantaged communities. as Ola Bibi/Chandi to receive her worship. close links to the independence move- With a mounting number of deaths and no Apart from Bengal, she is also worshipped ment. Many of them were active in social cure in sight, the people took to praying to in Rajasthan as the deity who saves her reform, meaning they were well placed to the Goddess at the Azhakiyakavu temple devotees from cholera, jaundice, diarrhea, mobilise dozens of local caste and commu- that’s believed to be nearly 800 years old… and other stomach related diseases. Few nity organisations. They raised funds and The families of the sick began coming in other deities invoked by the fear of diseases organised relief centres and the distribu- hordes to worship the goddess, camping include Ghentu-debata, the God of skin tion of medicines, milk and blankets.’ around the temple for weeks. Slowly a diseases, and Raktabati, the Goddess of Caste, by design to keep itself going, small market sprung up that sold essen- blood infections.’ ingrains fatalism. If a life of inferiority was tials as well products—terracotta ware, Even in the rest of the world, people ordained by birth, then everything, even coir and palm leaf items—made by the would go to pray in a church or mosque disease and death, was just the natural commune that assembled. Today’s Pula- when a disease was in the air. But you order. The only way to accept the iniquity vanibham market, a colourful bazaar of would be hard put to find new gods com- of caste, if one were at its lower ends which indigenous handmade items, is a result of ing up specific to a disease anywhere else. is most of the population, is to believe in that epidemic a century ago.’ Even now, like Corona Devi in Kollam, Ker- rebirth to set the scales right. Once that Another disease for which a goddess ala. A man built a shrine for her and the idol is drilled into the psyche, then disease is was born was cholera. The Indian Express, looked like the virus with spikes. It might also a route in that direction. Prayers to in an article on gods and diseases, referred be a gimmick but there have been reports disease gods might rarely be answered but to a book Colonising the Body: State Medicine from across the country of new rites and it still doesn’t test faith. In a better world it and Epidemic Diseases in Nineteenth Century chants to ward off the coronavirus. shouldn’t be needed, but the stoic strength India, in which its author David Arnold de- Caste, in all its reprehensibility, also, of Indians is often the only arsenal in scribed the cholera deity. The article said: however, had a historical role in how dis- their armoury. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 79 The Freedom Issue

Ullekh NP Desire Unbound

THE MIND IS ITS OWN PLACE OWN ITS IS THE MIND Social distancing versus sexual intimacy

ore Indians, especially thanks in general to the conveniences curse to one year. It turned out to be useful women from small of the internet and discreet e-shopping in the 13th year of vanavasa of the Panda- towns, are craving sex- options. vas when they had to go incognito. Arjuna ual fulfilment with or Though carnal hedonism similar to became a eunuch, named Brihannala, at without companions. that of the country’s erotic past is still a far the court of Virata and taught Uttara, his A recent survey done cry, yet the land of Kamasutra is shedding daughter, dancing. Mon 2.2 crore online shoppers of sex toys its image of recent past of being a sexual Historian Nayanjot Lahiri, a noted in India by Thatspersonal.com, which sells wasteland. scholar of ancient India, wrote two years such products, confirms the trend. The re- Remarkable about that lost glory is ago in her book Time Pieces: A Whistle-Stop port shows that the Covid-19 lockdown that there was once a great emphasis on Tour of Ancient India that ancient inscrip- has not only been a blessing in disguise making women happy under the cov- tions across the subcontinent, especially for the sex-toy industry, but also an op- ers or facing consequences outside of it. those in the caves of central and north In- portunity for young people, irrespective Now, Indian women seem to be coming dia, reveal heterosexual as well as same- of gender, to tap new ways of seeking out of the woodwork of domestic and sex postures of intercourse that lay stress sexual pleasure. familial entrapment in a journey of re- on providing women pleasure. ‘Such In some tier-3 cities, women bought discovery and reimagining freedom. Be- representations were made part of the more such toys than men, indicating that ing independent and in command of the repertoire of art in clay a couple of thou- even in the country’s non-metros, more situation comes on top here. In the days sand years ago. Small terracotta plaques young men and women want to break of yore, if our mythology is anything to go show couples copulating: a first-century free of norms that curb carnal joys. The by, women were vocal about their sexual example from Kausambi in Uttar Pradesh survey, titled India Uncovered: Insightful needs and unabashed in their demands. renders a couple in sexual intercourse Analysis of Sex Products’ Trends in India, is Most even got what they asked, at least with the legs of a presumably climaxing the fourth such report by Thatspersonal. among a certain section of women who woman raised as high up in the air as she com. Small towns that saw women make commanded respect and equality. The is emotionally.’ Lahiri rues that ancient more purchases than men include Vi- story of Urvashi, the celestial nymph India is a far cry from ‘the censoriousness jayawada (Andhra Pradesh), Jamshed- who desired Arjuna, is a memorable one. and prurience that now dominate the pur (Jharkhand) and Belgaum (Karna- Urvashi cursed Arjuna to become a eu- Hindu ethos and curtail sexual freedom’. taka), which are rather more famous nuch for the rest of his life for spurning She notes in the book that it is ‘a great pity for temples or industries than sensorial her advances. Arjuna’s dilemma was un- that the mythic glories of ancient India stimulations. derstandable: he did not want to get into so fancifully touted by right-wing The key takeaway from this report is a physical relationship with a woman Hindus now fail to include that regardless of companionship, wom- considered the mother figure of his clan. the golden age of sexual en seek sexual satisfaction and are aware But Urvashi unleashed her wrath on him. enjoyment’. of how to get it. While this trend is true Luckily for Arjuna, his father, Indra, the Some histo- of men, too, women are increasingly em- king of the gods, intervened and managed rians and soci- boldened to take decisions on their own, to convince Urvashi to limit his eunuch ologists have

80 The Covid-19 lockdown has not only been a blessing in disguise for the sex-toy industry, but also an opportunity for the youth to tap new ways of seeking sexual pleasure Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration The Freedom Issue blamed the caste system, which insisted be called an ‘identification with the ag- periments such as sleeping naked with on societal rigidity and nixed freedom of gressor’, and our own deepseated strain young women to test himself. choice for a majority of Indians, as the of Brahminical asceticism, held aloft reason why sex got a raw deal in Indian through the centuries by the Hindu ver- life over centuries. Brahminism certain- sion of the poet William Blake’s ‘priests f the rays of hope during the ly disallowed a vast majority of people in black gowns… binding with briars my lockdown in India are anything from enjoying unrestricted freedom, joys and desires’”. to go by, the country may be at an and therefore their sexual exploits as In Hinduism, over time, renuncia- inflection point of what is euphe- well. (A small section of India, however, tion was also seen as a way to conserve mistically called ‘self-reliance’ in such as the royals, remained insulated energy for other purposes that include seekingI pleasure. Between March and July from such provisos imposed by man on attainment of spiritual goals. Mohandas this year, sales of sex toys rose 65 per cent man and woman.) A few other historians K Gandhi, for instance, drew inspiration year-on-year. That more women and men blame foreign invasions of the medieval from religions and took a vow of celi- are climbing the social ladder may fuel period and the prudishness of Victorian bacy and later devoted his time to fight more sexual freedom, expect behavioral British imperialists who came later for a non-violent battle, which he termed economists and businessmen. Escape throwing Indian men and women into ‘satyagraha’, to win freedom for India from poverty and existential struggles a world of curtailment and constraints. from British rule. He had conceived and prompt people to look for hobbies as Clearly, organised religions insisted on practised this idea back when he was a well as avenues to pamper themselves. control of emotions, but sexual repression prosperous lawyer in South Africa where Miguel A Capilla Moreno of Fleshlight In- is something that needs a closer study of he honed his skills as a politician who ternational, who manages the European India’s long battle between eroticism and championed the cause of ethnic Indians business of the Austin, US-based maker asceticism, the latter promoted by monks there. His obsession with gaining control of dildos and artificial vaginas, says the of various Buddhist and Hindu orders. of his basic instincts, including sexual lockdown saw sales of the company rise as Pleasure became something to be looked appetite, led him to try controversial ex- high as 60 per cent on the Continent, sug- down upon even when in moderation. Renunciation became an overarching theme of Indian society. While Hinduism encouraged brahmacharya as one of the essential stages of life, Jainism and Buddhism, which had tremendous impact on Indian society, promoted lifelong renunciation of worldly pleasures, just as Christians did. The Ro- mans had looked down on celibacy and virginity as an aberration, but with the rise of Christianity, the idea of extreme self- restraint, also called con- tinence, began to spread wider. In an interview to Scroll.in four years ago, psychoanalyst Sudhir Ka- kar said that India became a sexual wasteland “due to a combination of British prudery, adopted by the alamy upper classes in what may Sex dolls undergo quality check at a factory in Ningbo, China

82 24 august 2020 gesting a global trend. He tells Open that There is greater access these days in the have to queue up outside shops and face this could be because people are forced country to foreign drugs such as Pfizer’s the embarrassment of being seen and no- to be single and away from partners due trademark Viagra, which treats erectile ticed as buying products of their choice, be to the lockdown. He adds that despite dysfunction, and cheaper generic vari- they sex toys or porn videos. As the latest the lockdown being lifted in most parts ants. Indians are also curious about home- lockdown survey confirms, a majority of of Europe, the sales have not shown any grown products that enhance sexual the buyers were between 25 and 34 years slide. “Human behaviour is such that performance. Open had reported earlier old. Interestingly, these Indian millenni- when people get used to certain plea- about a wellknown south Indian actor als are no longer tightlipped about their sures, they stick to it long after the situa- known to experiment with various po- sexuality and preferences. The lockdown tion that forced them to do something has tions that traditional physicians prepare has provided Indians—just as others else- changed,” he says. for him to increase his sex drive. “Aswa- where—an opportunity to find ways to Samir Saraiya, who owns Thatsper- sonal.com, offers a similar logic. “We had a problem with the sales of lubricants because Indians did not seem to appreciate it much. But after we started giving small sa- India may be at an inflection point chets of it for free when they bought other products, they returned to buy lubricants. of what is euphemistically called They needed to acquire a new habit and ‘self-reliance’ in seeking pleasure. then discovered the fun,” he says. According to his company’s survey, the Demand was highest for electric sex-toy business in metros grew by 24 per cent, by 29 per cent in tier- 2 cities and by 33 massagers, penis pumps and lubricants. per cent in tier-3 cities, indicating greater demand in the hinterland. The top prod- Assam is the ‘kinkiest’ state, with ucts among women in small towns were highest sales of BDSM products massagers. Purchases were highest in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. More people bought electric massagers, penis pumps and lubricants than other products. The survey states that Assam gandha and Chittamrit are very much enjoy themselves in solitude. With restric- is the ‘kinkiest’ state in the country order- part of this lehyam [tonic]. Then there are tions and social distancing guidelines set ing large numbers products for bondage, other normal raw materials such as cin- to ease, they are expected to carry the new discipline (or domination), sadism and namon, fenugreek, saffron, milk, honey, learnings to spice up intimacy and com- masochism, popularly known as BDSM. shallots and so on. Temperature manage- panionship. Behavioral economists and Sales were highest in Mumbai during the ment is crucial to making this formula- psychiatrists also anticipate that people lockdown, which was followed by Ben- tion. We have some of the best traditional are likely to spend more time on their sex- galuru and Delhi. Lucknow, Jaipur and vaidyas [doctors] preparing it,” a person ual wellness, buoyed by the experience of Chandigarh posted high sales among tier- close to him had told Open (‘Smell the the lockdown, for elaborate experiments 2 cities. Surat made the most expensive Beetle and Play’, January 8th, 2018). in bed. buys with an average per capita order of Online shopping scores in this matter We may not yet enter an era of libidi- Rs 3,900. “More people are shedding their because it offers buyers anonymity. Before nous experiments with multiple partners inhibitions and are open to experiment- the advent of sex shops online, people or orgies except among a certain layer of ing with these products,” Saraiya says. often ended up being taken for a ride by India’s epicureans, but it appears that a True, sales through Amazon and other crooks and quacks who promised them new beginning is on the horizon for peo- online platforms have also seen a rapid the moon while bamboozling them for ple seeking to spice up their sex lives. Co- growth, says a senior executive in the in- the wonder drug and for keeping the in- vid-19 may be an unexpected catalyst that dustry, with people postponing spending formation a secret. As of now, complaints will break inhibitions about recreational on other segments and kitchen tools and can be easily made to companies that are sex. Indians who seem to have lost out on thanks to what he calls “lockdown lust”. accountable for the quality and validity of opportunities to live it up in the grime and Open had earlier reported on Indians’ their products. Porn viewership has also dust of life in the fast lane may now pause quest for modern medicines and tradi- gone up across genres and genders. On- to reignite the spark in their relationships, tional cures to enhance sexual prowess. line buys also mean that people no longer short or long-term. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 83 The Freedom Issue THE MIND IS ITS OWN PLACE OWN ITS IS THE MIND

Woman and Child on the Balcony by Berthe Morisot

84 24 august 2020 Nandini Nair The Woman on the Balcony Home as rebellion and respite

woman clad in a black and which hands her the outside. When While cities across the world open chiffon-like dress leans Morisot, one of the great French, female up, the risks from Covid-19 increase over the railing of a painters of Impressionism, painted this manifold. The unlocking doesn’t suggest balcony. The ruffles watercolour, with touches of gouache, in a victory over the virus, rather it shows our of her dress cover her the 19th century, women were still denied fallibility when dealing with risks. For rea- from neck to toe. Only access to the public sphere. This painting sons of public (and personal) health, we the flesh of her arms shows the clear demarcation between the should continue to remain cloistered in Acan be seen through the transparency of public and private, where the balcony acts our homes, but economies and our mind- the sleeves. The woman holds a closed as the portal between the two. It also high- sets dictate otherwise. Till the vaccine has umbrella, which stands on the ground. lights the remoteness of the city. One can been discovered and administered, or A small girl, shorter than the umbrella, see it, but one has little interest in or access herd immunity develops, the house will leans beside the woman, peering through to it. In the 19th century, the city was es- continue to be our realm. the bar of the railings. The woman’s body sentially out of bounds for a woman (un- The house is not free from perils. arches in a way that seems to shelter the less she was escorted); in a post-corona We know from anecdotes, data, reports girl while also giving her space. A canal world, we now see the city not as the hive (and perhaps, even personally) that the and a city spread out before them. A dome of our lives but as a Petri dish for viruses. pandemic has fractured relationships, resembling the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris towers above the cityscape. While the woman and the child face the direction of the city, their interest lies elsewhere. They both look lost in their To look at Berthe Morisot’s Woman thoughts, in the grip of their interior world and not the exterior. The black of and Child on the Balcony, painted the woman’s dress suggests funeral wear. The shut umbrella hints that they’ve ei- in 1872, is to feel an uncanny ther just returned or are heading outside. To look at Berthe Morisot’s On the Bal- affinity. Morisot's woman in black cony (also called Woman and Child on the could be any of us in 2020. One Balcony), painted in 1872, is to feel an uncanny affinity. Morisot’s woman in black can see the city from our balcony, but could be any of us in 2020. She stares out at the city from a balcony which holds her in one has little interest in it

24 august 2020 The Freedom Issue increased domestic violence and made the house a site of adversity. But even within the confines of home, moments of relief, maybe even rebellion, can be found. Tra- Thérèse Dreaming speaks directly ditionally, the home has always been considered the woman’s space; women were to our Covid-19 times. It is about not to loiter the streets, women were not rebelling against societal diktats in one’s to claim the public sphere. Today, perhaps, we can see a hint of own room. It is about seizing agency in how the home can be reclaimed. The outside world is now a danger to both men one’s own den. The room itself grows and women. Without the demands of the outside world, the home (for the for- into a platform for protest tunate) becomes a nest from the public sphere. It will take some time before films, books and art emerge from the pandemic and tell us how the home has evolved dur- demands of her husband and the whis- A July 2020 article in The Guardian was ing this time. But in the interim, we can tles of a pressure cooker, and a woman appropriately headlined: ‘The thought look to ads and short movies that reveal trying to rescue another woman from of skinny jeans makes me ill!’ The article the possibilities of home. an abusive relationship. In just seven asked whether the pandemic had taken The Asian paints ad campaign, ‘Har minutes, Das exposes the many chal- jeans to the graveyard. What were the new Ghar Chup Chaap Se Kehta Hai’, which pro- lenges faced by a woman, ranging from rules of beauty? moted its #StayHomeStaySafe series and demands for time, care and attention to I often ask myself, if the new rules came out in April 2020, is a good example cruel physical abuse. Towards the end of mean no rules, the greying of hair, the of how the house is being reimagined. The the movie, as Das listens to a woman on non-threading of hair? Are we going to ad series uses stills of real families in their the phone recounting her travails with embrace leisure wear for good and aban- households engaged in leisure and work. her partner, she tells her own male part- don ‘formals’ altogether? Are we going to While an ad, of course, sells a product, ner, ‘You do it’, when he asks her to run finally concede that ‘office shoes’ serve no it also creates an aspirational and lived yet another household chore. Just those purpose other than shoe bites? reality. The Asian paints ad consists of a three words—‘you’, ‘do’, ‘it’—establish Reading the article, I kept thinking series of shots, such as a man on all fours Das’ moment of rebellion in the home how the ‘fashion of privacy’ is dawning scrubbing the bathroom floor, tile by tile, space. With that single rebuke to her hus- upon us. Previously, fashion was essential- with a brush; a woman on a ladder chang- band and by closing the door on him and ly what we wore for the outside world, it ing a light bulb; a man putting a toddler listening to the aggrieved woman on her hinged on us creating our most confident to sleep on his chest. With the choice of phone, she implements her choice. She face and avatar for the faces and avatars images taken from actual households, chooses to be a comrade to the woman, that we would meet. Fashion helps us the ads tell us that happiness can be cre- and not a clerk of her husband. conjure up our personalities for ourselves ated when families stay home together. and for others. But if the ‘other’ is removed While it might seem contrived to the from the equation, then we have in-house cynical viewer, the ad also equals out oday, as our opportunities fashion. It is a fashion that conflates com- gender roles: if a woman can climb a lad- to go out and meet people fort with confidence, ease with poise. der to change a light bulb, a man can put plummet, or as our occa- A painting that richly illustrates the a baby to sleep. While gender (most often) sions to dress up vanish, fashion of privacy, which reminds us that defines and cements roles at homes, this one often wonders when fashion is not only about what we wear ad (less than a minute long) shows us the Tone will wear a saree next, or stilettos, or but how we wear it, is Thérèse Dreaming possibility of parity. jewellery. And while one can always revel (1938) by Balthus. A first study of the Nandita Das’ lockdown movie on in accoutrements and accessories, right painting will show a girl caught in a mo- domestic violence, Listen to Her, released now all of it seems pointless, outlandish, ment of leisure and repose in her own on May 25th, provides a powerful mes- even. Staying at home has bestowed upon room in a moment of solitude. She seems sage about gender disparities. Das plays us the ‘fashion of privacy’. It is a fashion to have just fed her cat, who licks from a the role of a professional handling work that rejects the donning of belts and bras. bowl near her feet. The girl’s eyes are gen- calls and presentations, a mother answer- It spurns trousers and tight-fits. It looks tly shut. Her arms are held together above ing her son’s queries, a wife heeding the askance upon make-up and make-overs. her head, her limbs are not a shield to her

86 24 august 2020 ling the way we look at Thérèse Dreaming Thérèse Dreaming would erase an interior life.’ Like Elkin, I by Balthus too choose to see this portrait not as a girl in a vulnerable position, but as a girl in a moment of privacy. It is a painting that reminds one of every parent and grandparent who has told girls to sit with their legs together. It is a painting that shows us that Thérèse is present in the room physically, but men- tally she is far, far away. And that is why this painting speaks directly to our Covid -19 times. It is about rebelling against societal diktats in one’s own room, it is about travelling distances within one’s room. It is about seizing agency in one’s own den. The room itself can grow into a platform for protest. The Asian paints ad also displays how space within the home is being reconfirmed as we are all forced to stay in and for longer. The dining room floor now morphs into a picnic space, with a rug laid out on the floor and a basket of fruit at the centre; the dining table becomes office; the balcony with plants becomes a wonderworld; and school is no farther than a door away. Over the last few decades, as a society we’ve always relied on the outside for adventure and experiences. And while that will always be the default mode, we are now slowly adapting. As we continue to gauge the outside with suspicion, it is our homes that we now pay more attention to. We clean them ourselves, we beautify them, we wrap them around ourselves to create our bespoke cocoon. We’ve all become the woman and the child on the balcony. The cityscape might body, instead they are their own entities. re-examined by legions of scholars and spread out before us, but it’s not ours to She appears completely at ease. She could critics over time. Some hail him, others enter. To stay at home is to be limited, be any woman from today in her own condemn him. but at these times, it also affords us au- room. In the expression of her face and But today, it is in Lauren Elkin’s (author tonomy and security. Urban spaces and the positioning of her arms and legs one of the excellent Flâneuse: Women Walk the crowds have always excited us because senses a freedom from outsider eyes. City) examination of this portrait that I of their endless possibilities, the chance The viewer’s interpretation of the por- find resonance. She writes in Frieze, a mag- to meet strangers and stumble upon hap- trait, however, is complicated by the fact azine on art and culture, in the December penstance. But in a post-corona world, that the artist is Balthus who is known to 2017 issue, ‘It is not the work of art to make cities have become liabilities, we now have asked underage models to pose for us feel safe; if it does, it probably isn’t art wrestle our way through them because him. This, of course, raises the troubling at all.’ Addressing a controversy around of compulsion and not choice. As we are question of consent and power. Balthus the work, she adds, ‘Our culture is terri- forced to unfriend them, it is at home that and his art have been examined and fied of sexually-awakened girls; control- we will have to find our world. n

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 87 The Freedom Issue

 Ira Mukhoty In This World I Only Weep The exile and exaltation of Meerabai Phenomenal Women

t might seem like an familiarity of all that she had grown up was an abomination. The worshipping of unlikely sort of freedom to with—sisters, mother, father, friends. This the marital kuldevi by a new bride, it was roam the wildering forests family, she was constantly reminded, was stoutly believed, ensured long life for her and dusty tracks of north In- only temporary. Her marital family was to husband and prosperity for the clan. In- dia, barefoot and dressed in be her ultimate home, and one that would deed the worshipping of a new kuldevi was rags. Especially if fate had an require a complete realignment of her be- only the first step in the complete transfor- altogether more opulent life liefs, her traditions, her name and even her mation of these young women, who were earmarked for you, as a cos- god. For every Rajput clan had a kuldevi, expected to forget altogether the cadence seted and bejewelled bride the goddess of their kul (clan). New brides of their natal songs, the flavour of their in an elite Rajput household. were expected to demonstrate immediate hometown’s food and the rites and rituals And yet, more than 500 years allegiance to this kuldevi, no matter if they that had been the heartbeat of their child- ago, that is exactly the fate that Meerabai had grown up worshipping another de- hood. Even their personal identities were chose for herself. Turning her back on the ity. And this was where all Meera’s many to be erased, as they became anonymous Ihuge forbidding walls of her desert home, troubles began. and impersonal, known only by the clan she stepped out of the consecrated circle For Meera, who adored Krishna, this name they had married into. of home and honour into the uncertainty was an insurmountable problem. Accord- So pervasive was the custom of send- of a restless existence in search of divine ing to legend (for very little about Meera is ing young girls far away from their child- love. In the end, it was precisely in leaving actually documented and a great deal of in- hood homes that an entire genre of song, the comfort of her cocooned marital home formation is oral), the young bride refused the ‘bidaai’ lament, evolved over the years, that Meerabai found not only freedom but to worship her marital kuldevi, her heart normalising the excruciating pain and immortality. filled only with love for Krishna. For the isolation of child marriages, exogamy The prosaic truth was that life for wom- family that Meera was marrying into, this and the complete disinheritance of girls en in an elite Rajput home in the 16th century was one of crushing restrictions and denial. Given often only a cursory education, girls were brought up while being constantly reminded that they were ‘paraya Meera found a brotherhood of dhan’, someone else’s, living in abeyance in their natal homes till they were married singers and devotees all similarly off. Elite Rajput clans practiced exogamy and natal alienation, marrying women to consumed by Krishna love. For in higher-status clans, physically far removed the 16th century, the scorching from natal homes, to secure better status and prospects for their own clans. When a ardour of bhakti was blazing young girl was married, therefore, often at a very young age, she left the comfort and through the hinterland of India

88 Meerabai with Krishna by MF Husain The Freedom Issue upon their marriage from all that was an increasing amount of time, singing outside the family home, without a guard- comforting and familiar. the glory of her god and trying to forget ing male by her side. But Meera’s refusal to worship the the constant, gnawing criticisms from And yet Meera left her cloistered world, kuldevi of her marital family was only the her husband and his family. But as Meera driven out by a society that would allow beginning of a long period of unhappi- began to veer ever further away from the not the slightest concession for a woman ness, brought about by abuse at the hands accepted behaviour of an ideal bahu, the who deviated from the mould of perfect of her in-laws. In the poems she would attacks upon her became more malicious. feminine behaviour. The sources do not later write, Meera talks of a patriarch, the There were even attempts upon her life, tell us exactly when Meera left her home. ‘Rana’, who constantly harasses her for it is believed, when on several occasions Was she widowed, or did she leave a hus- not conforming to the inflexible rules of poison and snakes were sent to Meera, band behind? What is certain is that she elite Rajput society. Joining in the left within a few years, when she strident condemnation are Meera’s getty images was still a young and attractive sisters-in-law and her mother-in- woman, and therefore one whose law, all united in their malignant chastity and honour was entirely distrust of a woman who would at risk. But despite the dire predic- leave the welfare of her husband tions of her family Meera found and clan to the whimsical ways of freedom outside her home. She fate, instead of securing it through found a brotherhood of singers a strict adherence to the codes of and devotees all similarly con- conduct and kuldevi worship. sumed by Krishna love. For in the For Meera was a distracted 16th century, the scorching ardour bride, immersed in divine love. of bhakti was blazing through the It is believed she brought with hinterland of India. In reaction to her a small statue of her beloved Brahminical orthodoxy and the Krishna from her maternal home. spread of Islam, bhakti’s seductive This small idol, and the vortex of message of a love divine beyond dif- love it demanded from Meera, ferences of caste and class was prov- slowly consumed the young bride ing irresistible. Meera abandoned as the physical world began to her jewels, her veil and her costly slowly constrict the breath out of clothes with relief, wrapping her- her. Elite Rajput homes practised self in a saffron robe and loosening strict purdah and the women were her hair. Once again, Meera sang cloistered within the zenana deorhi, of the many transgressions that shielded behind high walls from she was committing while finally even the scouring light. No men claiming her freedom; apart from family members were Meerabai Temple in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan Like the casting off of the veil, allowed into the zenana and young Honour, shame, family pride are women were even required to veil disavowed themselves from other elder matriarchs. hoping to eliminate a problem that had Respect, disrespect, marital, natal home Meera would later sing verses listing the become altogether too complicated. Renounced in the search for wisdom relentless attempts to control her: It was at this point, when her world The dusty road in the unguarded spac- Mother-in-law fights, my sister-in-law had narrowed to one of constant belit- es outside the confines of her home had teases tling and torture that Meera decided to set always been presented to Meera as forbid- The Rana remains angry herself free. The courage that this decision den. But Meera travelled the endless miles, They have a watchman sitting at the door required cannot be overstated. Everything tracking the sacred geography of her be- And a lock fastened on it in her upbringing would have instructed loved Krishna, through Mathura and the The lock that Meera wrote about may Meera in the correct etiquette of Rajput so- forests of Vrindavan, safe in the company not have been a figurative one for she ciety. She would have been told that there of other mystics and errant travellers, and may have tried to visit a temple, which in was safety within the narrow walls of the her own, impeccable honour: some cases was forbidden to the women zenana, that the unknown world outside Of father, mother, brother, kinsfolk I have if it was outside the home. In despair, was full of dangers. And that her honour, none Meera had a small temple built within the her ‘izzat’, that thing of paramount impor- Having cast aside familial tyranny zenana walls, where she began to spend tance to a Rajput, could not be defended What people say is of no consequence

90 24 august 2020 and claimed for herself a rare space in the scroll of bhakti saints. She lived and died Under the wide open skies of north only by her own rules, needing no son, brother or husband to protect her ‘izzat’: India Meera finally found the freedom Nothing is really mine except Krishna. O my parents, I have searched the world she had been looking for. Freedom from And found nothing worthy of love. the jewels and silks, which she had I am a stranger amidst my kinfolk And an exile from their company, realised were poisoned gifts, asking in Since I seek the companionship of holy men; There alone do I feel happy, return her complete allegiance. Freedom In the world I only weep. Five hundred years after Meerabai’s also to love as she wanted to, through incredible journey, the lakshman rekha song and dance and tripping steps that defines a woman’s behaviour in In- dian society remains firmly in place. The strictures and rules that tell young girls and women what clothes to wear, what Because I sought to keep company with war, war would not relinquish its claim journeys to make and whom to love are sadhus on Meera. Martial valour and excess were often as inflexible as they once were. Pub- People say I have shamed the community’s the very raison d’etre of the constantly lic spaces are fraught with danger and the honour fractious clans of Rajasthan. The physical onus for female abuse is firmly on the These verses of Meera’s show that she bravery of Rajput men in battle bolstered woman—her choice of attire, friends, had gauged the full weight of the sacrifice by the impeccable chastity of their wives spaces, laughter, education. Female voices demanded of her to gain her freedom. The were the twin standards that defined Ra- of dissent and rebellion over the years are entire gamut of familial relationships, jput honour. And that honour, it was now stifled or denied. The very word ‘honour’, brushed aside simply as ‘tyranny’. Within claimed, was at stake due to Meera’s per- when used for women, is synonymous a very short time, Meera had gained im- sistent refusal to abide by her clan norms. with brutality and regressive anger— mense popularity and a huge following, ‘honour killing’. Expectations for girls pointing to the resonance that her verses remain depressingly familiar—marriage found within a large section of the disen- delegation was sent to and children. It is perhaps not surprising franchised and forgotten. From the Meera Dwarka from Meera’s mari- that in a recent show, Indian Matchmaking, verses that remain we know that her fol- tal home, because their clan in which a ‘matchmaker’ sets up potential lowers included Muslims, Dalits, prosti- had suffered a number of brides and grooms for an arranged mar- tutes and a litany of lower-caste folk. In defeats in battle. If Meera riage, the women on the show are expect- Brajbhasha sprinkled with Gujarati and Areturned to an ‘honourable’ life within ed and encouraged to ‘adjust’ and ‘compro- Rajasthani dialects, Meera’s verses, echo- society, they argued, all wrongs would be mise’. If those women expect more from ing the longing of all her followers, sing of righted. But Meera had lived for too long their life partners, then these women are freedom from society’s endless barriers. a life without the usual constraints on a judged ‘flimsy’. But behind the genteel Under the wide open skies of north In- woman in society. The freedom she had veneer of these words there is a simmer- dia, Meera finally found the freedom she experienced was intoxicating, and she ing violence. ‘Compromise’, to a woman, had been looking for. Freedom from the found it intolerable to think of returning is code for giving up all they once believed jewels and silks, which she had realised to a life of darkness, of walls and veils. Did in fiercely. It is a code for sacrificing your were poisoned gifts, asking in return her Meera quietly slip away into the anonym- own desires, ambitions and beliefs. It is a complete allegiance. Freedom also to love ity of her ragged companions? Did she price, as Meera found, too high to pay. as she wanted to, through song and dance choose to sink into the warm waters of the (Most of the Meera Bhajan lyrics are and tripping steps. sea behind the temple, rather than tie the from John Stratton Hawley and Mark Towards the end of her long life, hav- fetters upon her bare feet once again? The Juergensmeyer’s Songs of the Saints ing spent years in Vrindavan in mystical legend claims she preferred to unite with of India.) n ecstasy, Meera made her way towards the dark idol of Ranchor, sublimating her Dwarka, to the temple with the black physical body with that of her beloved Ira Mukhoty’s most recent work of idol of Krishna in his Ranchor, deserter of god’s. In either case, Meera scripted her narrative history is Akbar: war, avatar. But if Krishna had deserted own end, as she had her wandering life, The Great Mughal

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 91 The Freedom Issue

Sabin Iqbal

Phenomenal Women The Legend of Nangeli She cut off her breasts to kill the male gaze

t is said she was bold, her pyre. It was early 19th century Travan- revolted against the atrocities of caste, con- beautiful and devout. It is said core. Most women never even thought verted to Christianity. Two of them who she asked questions. It is said about rebelling against the system. had covered their breasts were stripped she wouldn’t cow down before From the Ezhava community, Nangeli and hung in public. either the feudal, casteist hier- is believed to have lived in today’s Cher- Would Nangeli have paid the tax if she archy or the lewd male gaze of thala in the district of Alappuzha. In and her husband had the means? Histori- the upper class. Travancore, which had levied some strange ans like Manu S Pillai believe that Nange- Her name was Nangeli. taxes on its lower-caste people, breast tax li’s act of cutting off her breasts was not She is no heroine of the was slapped on lower-caste women if they just a protest against the upper-caste gaze written history. Some say she wanted to cover their breasts. but a revolt against the caste system itself. is just a legend of the times. Some say she “The incident happened in 1803. It cre- “The Nangeli story, as it is related popu- is part of folklore. Some say, ‘Show us ated a lot of anger and the practice of col- larly today, is somewhat misunderstood. Ithe proof.’ lecting breast tax was put to an end,” says There was a poll-tax chargeable on avar- Nangeli is not to be found in the pages Sugathan, who has mentioned Nangeli’s nas by the state or the feudal lord, depend- of history of Kerala, nor of Travancore, story in his book Oru Desathinte Katha, ing on where in Kerala we are speaking of, the erstwhile princely state. Nor is she in- Kayarinteyum. and this, for men, was called talakkaram, cluded in the curriculum to educate and Nangeli cutting off her breasts was a and for women, mulakkaram. Sometimes, inspire the younger generation to learn trigger for women’s struggles for libera- it was simply called talappanam for every- about what she did to stand up against an tion in the region. Nadar women, who one. But beyond nomenclature, it had no inhuman system—be it caste or the lecherous leer of the upper caste. But why does the name of Nangeli still prevail when we make strides in women’s development in the 21st cen- Apart from fighting the prevalent caste tury? Why is she still a point of reference for women’s liberation struggles and the system and discrimination, Nangeli fight against casteism or other systems of combines two protests in one act. By cutting discrimination? In the early 19th century, Nangeli cut off her breasts, she removes the ‘sex organs’ off her breasts in protest against a horrific tax called the ‘breast tax’, and presented to protest the lecherous gaze of upper-caste the bleeding organs on a plantain leaf to the king’s official who had come to collect men (or, in today’s context, any brazen tax for covering her breasts. male gaze). By removing her breasts, She died bleeding. Her husband, Chiru- kandan, killed himself by jumping into Nangeli also equates women to men

92 inside the Sri Padmanabhas- wamy Temple, kept a record of administrative details of Travancore. “But just because I couldn’t find it anywhere in the Records, I am not saying Nange- li’s incident didn’t take place,” explains Gopalakrishnan. However, Manu S Pillai refutes the argument. “Writ- ten records are usually left by upper-caste, literate elites. Avarnas and others recorded their tales and stories in song, lore, and collective memory. Nangeli is one such source from oral history. As such, it is not surprising: Dilip Menon [academic and scholar], for instance, has shown how in Malabar, often individuals who were wronged or died because of unjust causes were soon memorialised in groves and little shrines. Their stories were passed down orally. So, too, in Travancore, Martanda Varma’s cousin who is forced to kill herself after he murders her brothers ‘becomes’ a Yakshi—it was the local people who enshrined her that way. There is much in oral history that is of value. The story of Nangeli is communi- cating resistance. Just because it is not written down on a palm leaf manuscript does not dilute its significance.” Nangeli's Sacrifice by Chithrakaran Murali (Murali T) Women in Kerala across the board, like men, did not cover connection to the breasts, or to covering had a loose shawl, which even they took themselves—it was only in the 1920s that the breasts,” says Pillai. off in the presence of their superiors: Nairs the first Namboodiri Brahmin women “She was not fighting for the right to before Namboodiris, Namboodiris before wore blouses (and they were promptly cover herself, ‘protect her modesty’, or the deity in the temple. In fact, ordinary ostracised by the orthodox). There was, anything like that. She was resisting an Brahmins had to take off their upper cloth however, a loose shawl that was the privi- oppressive, caste-based tax. The battle is before the king as well. lege of savarnas, men and women both. about caste, not about virtue or the ‘right’ There are some who argue that Nange- But it was not really intended for covering to cover up. That was not a ‘right’ in local li is a fabrication because no ‘records’ exist the breasts as much as a mark of honour. eyes at all till the late 19th and early 20th of her. Malayinkeezhu Gopalakrishnan, a “That is why when in the 19th century centuries,” he adds. Travancore historian, says that he couldn’t the Nadar-Nair conflicts took place, the is- In Nangeli's day, no woman thought find any mention of, forget Nangeli, even sue was not about Nadar women cover- her virtue depended on whether or not ‘breast tax’ in Mathilakam Records. The ing their breasts. They were permitted to she covered her breasts. The savarnas Mathilakam Records, which were kept wear kuppayams or blouses and nobody

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 93 The Freedom Issue

objected to that. The issue arose when Kerala is so strong in all classes and com- gender stereotypes and a paranoid fear of they wore the loose shawl, because the munities,” adds Jeffrey. empowered women. Condescension un- latter was a caste privilege, and the pre- “The kudumbashrees and the presence der benevolent patriarchies has its limits.” rogative of the Nairs as their superiors,” of women on local government bodies “Everything is relational. Women have adds Manu S Pillai. produce plenty of talented women, but achieved social development indices in Visual evidence as well as portraits of the obstacles to political careers are big Kerala that are enviable. But at the same women—Namboodiri women includ- and not just in Kerala. When Julia Gillard time misogyny is rampant. Many women ed—even into the 20th century shows was Prime Minister of Australia, senior are more sabotaged in the intimate and them topless, including the queens of male opponents were happy to address private spheres of life,” she adds. Cochin. “It was the Victorian gaze that meetings under banners saying, ‘Ditch the Gopinath shares that point of view: brought in the idea that the female body witch’—and the whispering campaigns “Women in Kerala constantly fight a ought to be covered up, as a result of which were far worse.” battle for their rights within the domestic the blouse and the upper-cloth assumed Even though representation of women spaces. Even as the woman reaches great a new significance as a mark of modesty. is made on paper, it remains a tokenism heights with her education and work, the The loose shawl that was a caste privilege when it comes to reality. Scholars and battles have to be fought fiercely.” for men and women both now assumed experts on women’s issues believe that Manu S Pillai says that, apart from an added significance when referring to we will not see a woman chief minister the well-known names of women who women, as essential to their virtue, de- in Kerala in the near future. Academic have excelled in their given field over the cency, etcetera.” Swapna Gopinath says: “I don’t think it years, there are many ‘nameless’ women will happen anytime soon. As a society, who have contributed significantly to we have regressed in terms of gender eq- Kerala society. n many indices, Kerala uity since saffronisation. Just look at the “Besides the poets and queens (Manora- tops the table. It is true in ratio of women’s participation in jobs or ma Tampuratti or Sethu Lakshmi Bayi), the case of women’s de- public spheres.” doctors (Mary Poonen Lukose) and legal velopment. Women have Meena T Pillai, Professor, Institute of luminaries (Anna Chandy), there are played their part in the English, and Director of Cultural Stud- countless women who have remained Oevolution and development of Kerala ies, University of Kerala, says: “It will still nameless. The agrarian economy of feudal society—from the days of Travancore take some time because, of late, the crisis Kerala depended to a great extent on the till now, especially when we compare in Malayali masculinity shows no signs labour of avarna women: this is a material them with women from other societies of being resolved. This has paved the way contribution they have made. Every temple in the country. for a popular culture that remains tied to built, every historical monument erected, Robin Jeffrey, social historian and every physical reminder of the past came scholar on Kerala society, says: “I think it from revenues that were derived from a has been one step forward and two steps Raja Ravi Varma's portrait of Rani Bharani working class in which women and men backward for many women. Many of to- Thirunal Parvathi Bayi of Travancore were equal partners. Lower-caste women day’s Malayali women are expected to be especially made immense contributions earners as well as household managers— to this, even in the advancement of their and, at the same time, to be subservient to communities in the period of the Kerala men, both at home and in public life.” Renaissance,” he says. Jeffrey’s words echo the hypocrisy of Jeffrey’s Decline of Nair Dominance the general attitude towards women in shows, for example, how women were Kerala. Educated and progressive, the integral to the rise of the Ezhava commu- women in Kerala are expected to be at the nity, and they also contributed through forefront of society but the fact remains the pidiyari scheme to the Vaikom Satya- that women are still ‘supposed’ to play graha, though they were far from the actu- second fiddle to men in leadership. al site of the protest. “Songs that used to be Even with its tall claims of women’s de- sung by workers in the fields—these had velopment, Kerala is yet to have a woman a strong gender component since women chief minister. “I think it was a mistake were also among these workers. Though it and an injustice when Gowri Amma did is easier to find the stories of elite women not become Chief Minister in 1987. She in positions of influence, we must not was an outstandingly experienced admin- forget those who worked on the ground istrator and politician. But patriarchy in and, physically, helped build what Kerala alamy

94 24 august 2020 society is today,” adds Manu S Pillai. referred to the eldest woman, even if she Kerala that crack open the bunds of its Many questions are raised these days were younger than him, as ‘mother’; in conservative, regressive, social fabric. about gender and power. Manu S Pillai the Arakkal Muslim family, women had I have utmost faith in the powerful says though matriliny has its own pros a direct claim to the throne over and above language of subversion that Malayali and cons, it has given the women in Kerala their brothers, if they were born first.” women writers and poets have histori- “a deal fairer in many respects” than what But once power became gendered cally unleashed on the literary public in was available to them elsewhere in India. through influences, women, gradually, Kerala,” says Meena T Pillai. “Matrilineal society was not an equal began or expected to play second fiddle to Dwelling on the life and works of society between men and women—it was the man or men in the family, and as an K Saraswathy Amma (1919-1975), only less unequal than patriarchal systems extension in society and in other ‘spaces’. J Devika, historian, feminist and aca- elsewhere. Even so, it certainly created ave- “Gender policies [in Kerala], especially demic, writes: ‘The younger generation nues of power for women, and in matrilin- with regard to transgender rights, are all of women-writers in Malayalam whose eal families, the women of the house could set brilliantly on paper. That is definitely anti-patriarchal writing is now a powerful often exercise tremendous influence, in- a first step, no belittling that. But it is in voice in Kerala’s literary public, are clearly her literary granddaughters. Consider, for instance, the writings of K.R. Meera, who depicts a world of patriarchy in utterly de-romanticised terms and whose nar- On many indices, Kerala tops the table. It ration is marked by black humour. Or, Sara Joseph’s wickedly sarcastic tales of is true in the case of women’s development. marriage and its follies, such as in ‘The Women have played their part in the Scooter’. The present generation laughs at patriarchy like never before.’ evolution and development of Kerala Power balances and gender equation changes are temporal and connected to the society—from the days of Travancore socio-political context. Even though Jeffrey says that women in Kerala are much better till now, especially when we compare off than in many other societies, he is quick them with women from other societies to add that Kerala is no Finland, where the prime minister and the leaders of the four in the country parties making up the coalition government are all young women. Apart from fighting the prevalent caste system and discrimination, Nangeli cluding in management of the lands and social attitudes and the cultural uncon- combines two protests in one act. By cut- other economic areas. There is often a mis- scious that paradigm shifts have to be ef- ting off her breasts, she removes the ‘sex conception that in matrilineal families, it fected,” says Meena T Pillai. organs’ to protest the lecherous gaze of was the male Karnavan who was the ‘real’ “It’s all tokenism,” adds Gopinath. upper-caste men (or, in today’s context, power: this, as some research has shown, “Look at the women’s studies centres in any brazen male gaze). By removing her was actually a consequence of colonial rec- our universities. They do nothing to em- breasts, Nangeli also equates women to ognition of the male as the ‘head’. power young girls.” men—or a social equality. In the days before power was gendered, Contemporary Kerala society and But the question lingers: Is it about if a woman was the eldest in the family, media are rife with incidents of ‘objectify- equality or uniqueness? she was the highest authority of the fam- ing’ or ‘problematising’ women’s calls for By cutting off her breasts, Nangeli ily. “Missionaries had often commented liberation or social equity. Be it the Sabari- proves that it is not about man and wom- on this,” points out Manu S Pillai. “Au- mala issue regarding women’s entry to the an being equal or not, but about being gusta Blandford, for instance, wrote how temple or the women’s collective in cine- unique in their respective roles.n the eldest woman in a Nair family com- ma, they are often watched through a lens manded much regard and how even her of prejudice or conditioned male psyche. Sabin Iqbal, a journalist and novelist, is sons would not sit in her presence, with However, women writers have always the Director of Mathrubhumi the lady enjoying complete obedience; in written powerful stories about women, International Festival of Letters. the Zamorin’s family, while there were and their concerns for the gender. “There His debut novel The Cliffhangers no ruling queens, the Zamorin always are brilliant writings by women from was published earlier this year

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 95 The Freedom Issue

Sumana Roy

Vanity Fair Vanity Bio Dictatorship When the writer succumbs to the monumental Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration

96 ome time around the about Duckworth-Lewis—not what they focused use of the word—I did not quite early years of the millen- looked like, nor where they lived, neither know. In hardback copies of the Indian nium the ‘CV’ became an where they had been educated. English novels I bought, it came printed on important middle-class When we had studied the poems what, I would later discover, was called a sound. It was shorter and from the readers prescribed on our sylla- ‘jacket’. None of this had been taught to me easier to pronounce than bus—Radiant Reader in the first years of in the classroom, and I was educated about the word it was replac- school, and later a selection called, ambi- the existence of these extra-textual props ing—the ‘biodata’: which tiously and a bit cheesily, Panorama— our by the book review pages of the newspaper Indians often pronounced as ‘bio-daata’. teachers spent no more than a couple of that came home. I usually unclothed the SAnd it had the forced gravitas of acro- minutes on telling us about the poet. jacket from the ‘real’ book—I was clum- nyms—like VIP. Everyone began getting Biographical criticism—the phrase that sy, and the jacket got frayed at the edges. themselves a CV—it was becoming the I’d learn soon after school—was of no While I read the book, my mother often second most important document after real importance to our teachers. Also, dusted the things that I’d left on the table. the birth certificate. Both were certificates the teaching of poems was not helped She called the jacket ‘advertisement’—I of proof, and, as a result, ridiculous—one by the near-complete identification of laughed at her deduction, though I am had to prove that one had been born, the the poet and the poetic persona, the first- able to make sense of it now. The author’s other was about proving what one had person speaker in most of the poems we photo, their ‘bio’, the description of the done. It was one more instance of living read. The questions asked to us were a book, all of these were not very different in the age of evidence supply. Yet, it wasn’t direct manifestation of this equivalence: from the colourful handouts that came so much the CV—for all purposes a profes- ‘What happened to the poet’s mother with newspapers and often with things sional document circulated only institu- on the night the scorpion bit her?’ That purchased. My father, who has never lost tionally—as its synopsis, made available was how we formed our impressions of an opportunity to sound serious, called all to the public in journals and magazines the poet—all we needed to know about the printed material that came with things and books and posters for lectures, that Nissim Ezekiel we knew from Night of the ‘literature’ (‘What does the literature about became the mantelpiece. Like almost ev- Scorpion: that his mother had been bitten the hair dryer say?’). My mother thought erything else that had come to it from the by a scorpion. That was, for all purposes, it unnecessary—if I didn’t need it while West, Indians corrupted the original file his ‘bio’. There is no justification for such a reading the book, what was its use—or immediately by exaggerating it. pedagogical approach, but that was how it purpose—anyway? I tried to justify its ‘Bio’, for the first two decades of my life, was—generations of readers raised on this existence, but she, not argumentative was a diminutive—it stood for Biology. It indifference to the biographical personal- by nature, casually brought in a copy of had more meaning than the other two ity of writers. Rabindra Rachanabali, a volume from abbreviated sounds it had to share space To have this conditioning challenged Rabindranath Tagore’s collected works, with: Phy and Chem. Even teachers used in the last fifteen years has been an educa- where there was no photo or information the word, thereby legitimising it. A few tion unto itself. It was a book by an Indian about the writer on the jacket—just the of us, for instance, were scared of the ‘Bio English writer in the early 1990s where I title and the ‘khanda’, the number of the Lab’—a human skeleton stood behind its first discovered this phenomenon: there volume in the series. The weirdness of my green door. One of the boys shook hands was a photograph of him, and below it, his family—or their lack of education in this with its bony hands as we looked studi- year of birth, his achievements as a student, new world of the bio—returned time and ously at the dissection trays in front of us. where he had studied, and where he had again. After Wikipedia became a part of I mention this only because that is the lived in his life. It was a piece of history that our lives, one of my youngest cousins, on sense I began to get as I saw the world of was meant to be as interesting as a histori- encountering an abandoned book jacket literature and arts as an outsider: of shak- cal novel. And perhaps it was. Except that it in my room, called the author’s bio the ing a writer’s bony hands in their bio. I had began to seem repetitive after the first few ‘printed Wiki page’. not, until I entered college, read a single books—all the ‘bios’ looked similar. The book which had the author’s ‘bio’ in it. It is author had studied in England or America, possible that Dewett-Verma, the authors and now ‘lived between’ two cities or con- t some point of time, owing to of a book on Economics that my room- tinents. I had no idea what to do with this Awhat must have been a series of ac- mates Anvita and Lakbir read, had their piece of information. It was as useless to my cidents only possible in our times, I too be- bios in it, but, like James Bond, the name delight or understanding of the book as my came a writer. An ‘Indian English Writer’, itself was enough: Dewett-Verma had the knowledge of whether the writer had had no less. I must have worried as much about sound of bureaucratic importance, not diarrhea or constipation when writing it. getting published as I did about the ingredi- quite unlike Duckworth-Lewis. But we What kind of a text the bio was— ents I’d put in my ‘bio’. I’d read and watched knew as little of Dewett-Verma as we did though I still hadn’t learnt the specific and interviews of Rishi Kapoor rushing to

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 97 The Freedom Issue

‘practice his autograph’ when told by his t-shirt—that I was trying to be someone be as well-known as god, with a reputation father Raj Kapoor that he’d been selected else. And, as if for the first time, I began to that is as well-travelled as god’s: the adjec- to act in the film Mera Naam Joker. The understand what it is about such a bio that tive is supposed to bestow the equivalent title of the film was appropriate to my first disturbs me. It was an imagined version of of accumulated flying miles on the person. thoughts about my bio after the first email I the person—the facts mentioned might I had a professor at university who intro- received from my publisher. I needed to get have been true, but by highlighting them duced himself with just that word, and my bio right even if I faltered in the book. so as to emphasise them, they distorted the not as adjective but as noun: ‘I am interna- This is actually not true, though it also is—I living essence of people. I once watched a tional’. I must hasten to add that ‘interna- did not have these thoughts, though, had writer staring at his shoes as his bio was tional’ continues to stand largely for the they come, would be completely natural. read—at first he looked like his own par- white world—its white institutions, not, I did the opposite: among the requests I ent, the way a parent is excited to share their say, Africa or Latin America—and being made to my publisher, the silliest was not little one’s first achievements, but, soon, published in well-regarded journals made to have a bio at all. In the end, after much even he looked bored. When he eventually one ‘international’ immediately, so that pleading and coaxing and consoling and read a poem, it was shorter than his bio. I mentioning these places became part of the counselling, we settled with ‘Sumana Roy felt sad for him even though I did not know bio. Elitism is a word that is now used like writes from Siliguri …’ Among the many him, nothing except his bio of course—that a sanitiser, so that one cannot be sure of its things that a bio is expected to mention, I one quote from his life had become more efficiency, but the arrogance of these bios is had had to succumb to one: location. I had important than the other. For, what, after so obvious that it doesn’t need my mention- tried to break free of its conventions, not as all, is a bio but a quote of events from one’s ing. What is published ‘internationally’ is much from a sense of rebelliousness as the life? I would have preferred to discover the dependent on a mix of good fortune, the conviction of these words being redundant poet from his poem; everything else that I flavour of the season, and a willingness to and unnecessary, but I had failed. was told was unnecessary to my pleasure provide Festival of India-like broadcasts of By the time the second book arrived, and knowledge. one’s culture to a largely white world. Not the bio had grown beyond my control. a single Kamtapuri poet, just to mention It was now like an FIR that lists all sus- writers from my part of the world, would picious activities. I was reluctant—but cannot really say whether it is the be able to use ‘international’ in their bio— what is reluctance in the face of exag- I bio I’d like freedom from or its current the editors of Granta, The New Yorker or gerated truth? It is no different from the format. Why is it important for the reader The Paris Review are not interested in their desire to fit into a pair of jeans bought at to know where the writer was born, where poems. When I was in school and teachers fourteen when one is twice that age. My they grew up, or even the cities they now spoke of America as if it were a tasty cloud, editor had condensed the life of the first live ‘between’? Is it because we are going to I would think of the flavour of the word ‘in- book into a few sentences—it was a collec- look for representation of the geographical ternational’, for that is how I imagined the tion of its good life, the awards it had been places that have formed them? Why, too, word. I wondered—and still do—how ‘in- shortlisted for, and so on, but I, ungrateful is it important for us to know their age or ternational’ felt about the taste of my world. to circumstances that had made that pos- their age group? ‘Senior poet’ and ‘junior sible, thought it akin to reports of misdo- poet’, and even ‘veteran poet’, seem like ings that class teachers wrote in my class designations that have their equivalence wonder whether anyone wakes up diaries. It was a report of the first book’s in academia: professor, assistant professor, I feeling like their bio, and, if there were to behaviour and responses of the world to and emeritus professor, respectively. Two be such a situation, what would be its con- that behaviour—I disliked reports of any other words are used like salt and pepper sequence and cure. A bio is a terribly adult kind, and did not understand why a report in these bios: ‘eminent’ and ‘international’. thing. In it, life begins after eighteen—the about the first book should be mentioned The first is a semi-mystical word—I imag- colleges and universities one went to, the in the second. In school, the ‘report card’ ine that god is an ‘eminent’ person—whose scholarships and fellowships one has man- was called ‘progress report’. The author’s perimeter is one of space: one becomes aged to get, the jobs held. One is not free to bio was not very different from that. eminent when a large number of people, be a child in it, not just mention one’s child- By the time my last book was published, in different locations, becomes aware of hood, but not be a child at all. Just as the I had lost control—a bio was erected by a their presence. Also, because of its semi- bio likes to pretend that childhoods were kind editor. When I read it, I had the sense mystical nature, one can’t really tell when useless and perhaps also non-existent, it of someone speaking to the person sitting someone suddenly becomes eminent: 99 has no space for dreams either. I recently behind me—it wasn’t me who had been people knowing a poet’s work might not argued for the inclusion of dreams as part written about in the third person. Every make them ‘eminent’, but 102 might. The of what is nowadays fashionably called time I had to send my bio to an editor, I had other word ‘international’ is also about ‘critical thinking’. I will argue for its inclu- the sense of wearing a Michael Jackson reach and expanse—in both is the urge to sion in the bio as well, but before that I will

98 24 august 2020 argue for freedom from the bio. of delight during the reading or listening of of her life as a domestic worker, not trusting The bio is, in the end, a lie. We use the a poem—there is no resistance to it, such the text of her book Aalo Aandhari, reading word ‘whitewash’ for others even as we is the voltage of our self-interest. which we would come to know of this fact. continue to portray a one-dimensionality The bio is a marginalising catapult. The bio is thus distrustful of the reader. about our own lives: of our so-called suc- Sapna Didi, who has cooked and cared for Is the bio a footnote then? In paper- cesses. It privileges a monumental or ‘event- me for the last twenty years, has no bio. backs, though, it appears as the first page ful’ understanding of life without show- She wasn’t educated in a culinary school, of the book, thereby dismissing the idea of ing any respect for the moment and the and so there is no possibility of that being it being relegated to secondary knowledge, momentary, to the harvests and delights highlighted in her list of achievements. She as might be the case with a footnote. Wher- of dailiness. It is perhaps this that I dislike has previously worked at Chhoto’s house ever it might be positioned—and no pub- most about it—its epitaph-like nature, as and Sheela boudi’s, but that too would not lisher, as far as I know, has put the author bio in the middle of a book, just so that the reader is reminded of the greatness of the person whose words we are reading; nor has any artist put their bio in the middle of A bio is a terribly adult thing. In it, life a canvas—the biosphere (which is what I begins after eighteen—the colleges call this genre of the bio) allows no space for humour. Some writers and artists, to show and universities one went to, the their resistance to the bureaucratic nature of the bio, insert unexpected details about scholarships and fellowships one has themselves: a tic, a fetish, a line about the colour of their house, a detail about their managed to get, the jobs held. One is old life as pizza delivery boy. These details, not free to be a child in it instead of revealing idiosyncrasy, when brought into the inert space of the bio template, becomes a performance. What the bio does is instill awe, and if the book was my grave and the bio my find place in her bio—they are not marks following that, fear. It is meant to keep the cenotaph. There are also the invisible bits of distinction. She ‘lives between’ her home reader’s rebellion— just in case they don’t of author bios that are never uttered: we and ours—this is so obvious that it doesn’t like what they are reading—in check. In might not know where she was born and even need telling. Her life—and her having this, it is a comrade-in-arms to the blurbs how she came to poetry, but we know of got by without a bio, and not for having, as that praise what one is about to read, so that two nouns in her bio, one proper, the other sociologists will remind me, worked in any disagreement one might feel with the common: Ted Hughes, and an oven. the unorganised sector alone—reminds blurb-writers, usually people with well-fed me of the difference between Robinson reputations, is prevented. The common Crusoe’s life and Friday’s. The white man’s reader is bullied into obedience—if they he bio is, without a doubt, bio is the first sentence of the first novel in fail to like the book, it becomes evidence of Tanalogical to the caste—or class— the English language: ‘I was born in the Year the reader’s lack of taste or intelligence. This mark. In the adoption of the bio as the pri- 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, is the invisible terror unleashed by bios and mary self-promotional tool, writers and tho’ not of that Country, my Father being blurbs—it decries and disallows indepen- artists, no matter what their politics, have a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at dent reading and judgement. Readymade remained politics-agnostic. The writer Hull: He got a good Estate by Merchandise, reputations, produced and repeated in bios, who rejects the monumental in their writ- and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward transform lies into truth. ing will highlight the monumental in the at York, from whence he had married my Freedom from the bio—and its atten- bio. The scholar writing against power will Mother, Relations were named Robinson, dant props: blurbs, stickers on book cov- highlight the power of their bio, one that a very good Family at Country, and from ers mentioning shortlisting of awards—is entitles—and legitimises—their power- whom I was called Robinson Keutznaer; one of the very few means that remain to decrying voice. As much as we recognise but by the usual Corruption of Words in protect whatever survives of literature and the extra-textual nature of the bio and the England, we are now called, nay we call the honesty of reading. n displacement of attention it causes—so our Selves, and writer Name Crusoe, and that the wah-wah moments come when so my Companions always call'd me.’ Fri- Sumana Roy is an author. Her most one encounters the ‘achievements’ of the day has none. Also, Sapna Didi is no Baby recent book is My Mother’s Lover and artist, and not, for instance, as expression Halder, whose author bio mentions the fact Other Stories

24 august 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 99 The Freedom Issue fiction Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustrations 1922 girls called Tara stupid. They said she was a demon. They hid our things and made up stories about how we oday Tara and I are girls, but stole sugar or butter from the pantry or didn’t say grace soon we will be wolves. Reverend Sen says so before lunch or dinner so that the nuns would cane us. after he orders us to walk on all fours. ‘Never I dreamt of running away with Tara, but I didn’t know stop believing,’ he says. ‘The Lord is great.’ where we could go. Then Reverend Sen visited the The hem of his robe is a black cloud billow- missionaries and asked if they could spare two girls for ingT around his ankles. his orphanage, and the missionaries fussed over him It’s our first week at his orphanage, and we have spent and said wasn’t it a miracle, look at how God had all our time inside a red-and-white house that huddles answered their prayers. against a forest where real wolves live. We aren’t allowed I draw my knees up to my chin and sit with my hands to go outside even though outside there’s a garden, a wrapped around my legs. Reverend Sen frowns but says, chicken coop, a hyena cub in a cage, and a dog named ‘You’re just starting, so I will let you be.’ He brushes off the Foxy. Inside is the mud floor on which we have to dust on the cushioned seat of an armchair and sits down to wolf-walk, pocked with the feathers of dead birds that read with a sigh. Foxy dragged in before he was chased out, Foxy’s tawny Tara watches him from the rug on which she’s lying. I hair, strands of white hair belonging to the reverend think she’s still rattled by the long bullock cart ride from and the cook, and black hair belonging to Mrs Sen, the Hazaribagh, when we jounced past the Central Jail that two maids Mithu and Usha, and the three girls who are the reverend said was packed with heathens opposed to our seniors at the orphanage. Reverend Sen never talks the British, past rice fields and sal trees and a river that we to the senior girls, maybe because they’re too old to followed for a long way before it jumped off a steep hill grow up into wolves. with a roar and ran away from us. Tara’s eyes are searching I’m fed up of being inside. In the afternoons, when for the nuns in their grey habits and the light-haired Eng- light noses into the house past the bamboo blinds over lish women who visited us once a week and wondered if the windows, I stick my tongue out to lick the stripes of we shouldn’t be renamed Mary and Elizabeth. Maybe Tara sun on the floor. Reverend Sen says my behaviour is more is all jumbled up because here there’s no Jamabai, the cook dog than wolf. He says I’m not a quick learner. Tara doesn’t at Hazaribagh who whacked her with a ladle if she spat even understand what he wants her to do, but Reverend out her food. Sen calls her a natural. The reverend has forbidden us from walking, so I crawl ‘Look at the strong jaw,’ he says now, cupping her chin. towards Tara and lean against a settee. Tara sits up and ‘This one can teach a wolf to howl.’ snuggles against me. With her right hand, she points to a Tara wants to be a princess, not a wolf. But she can’t tell doll on a wooden shelf behind Reverend Sen’s armchair. Reverend Sen that because she can’t speak. I’m the only The doll wears a cream frock with lace trimmings. It has one who understands her. At the Institution for Orphaned golden hair, smooth cheeks flushed pink, and eyes glint- and Destitute Native Girls in Hazaribagh, where Tara ing blue. and I lived before we came here, the missionaries said she ‘It’s pretty,’ I whisper to Tara. I can hear her breathing, had the devil in her. I like it best when the devil is sleep- feel the rise and fall of her chest. She screams and shoves ing, because then Tara is quiet too. When he’s awake, the me aside. Reverend Sen leaps up from his chair. devil makes Tara grab other people’s hair, and kick, and ‘She wants to play with that doll,’ I explain to the bite. Sometimes he stomps around her head, making her reverend. shriek, and sometimes he shakes her and causes white ‘It’s not for playing,’ he says, and he has to raise his voice foam to bubble out of her mouth. because Tara keeps screaming. The three senior girls come The missionaries said we were twins because they running into the drawing-room. found us on the whitewashed steps of the institution on ‘The doll will break easily because it’s made of porce- the same morning, two babies swaddled in ragged cotton lain,’ the reverend says. ‘It’s precious, quite old. Belonged blankets and placed in wicker baskets lined with torn to my mother.’ saris. But I don’t think we are sisters. I’m bigger than Tara, Tara starts thumping her head against the settee. and we look nothing like each other. ‘Listen to me, Tara,’ he says, but she doesn’t. ‘This is At Hazaribagh, Tara and I spent all our time together most distressing. Paro’—he turns to me—‘tell her that I’ll because no one else would be friends with us. The other give her the doll after she has turned into a wolf.’

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‘Wolves don’t play with toys,’ I say. Tara grabs a head. ‘Can we be girls again please?’ I ask. book lying open face down on the settee and flings it at ‘Practise,’ the reverend snaps. I start to wolf-walk. Reverend Sen but luckily it misses him. I hear the stifled Stones cut into my hands. Tara keeps chasing chickens. giggles of the senior girls and then their footsteps bolting The reverend stares at her, his lips trembling. He calls away from us. for Mithu and asks her to take Foxy away. Then he looks across his shoulder to the porch, where the cook, an old man with rings tattooed on his fingers, is waiting with a ur second week at the orphanage, Reverend plate in his hands. ‘Dada, you can bring out the meat now,’ OSen says we have failed to master the four-legged the reverend tells him. The cook places a plate heaped walk as quickly as he had hoped. Tara is good at crawling with raw, red meat on the ground. on her knees, but the reverend wants us to walk on the ‘You can come inside only after you and your sister tips of our toes and our fingers, our backs curved like sick- have licked this plate clean,’ the reverend bellows at me. les. He follows us around the house with a long stick that Then he leaves. The cook smiles, but sadly. he says is not for beating us. I don’t believe him. Our hands Trees groan in the forest. I look at the front windows of turn scaly like the skin of trees. the house to see if the reverend is watching us. A hand juts When the devil in Tara’s head starts swatting anyone out from under the blinds and waves. I recognise the red within a foot of her, including me, Reverend Sen looks glass bangles clinking on the wrist; it’s Sonu, the youngest pleased. ‘We will start our second step tomorrow,’ he says. of the three senior girls. I wave back. The next day, Mithu and Usha give us only a fistful of Tara and I crawl towards the shade of a mango tree rice for lunch and a ladle of gruel for dinner. Tara starts that’s a few feet away from the hyena cage. The chick- putting the scraps she finds on the floor into her mouth, ens peck the ground around the plate of meat. I lace my even when they have hair stuck on them. The reverend fingers with Tara’s and we breathe with the breeze looping stops us from washing ourselves. He says wolves don’t through the forest. take baths. We wait for a long time. No one comes out of the house. By the end of the week, we are filthy and itchy. Our stink I free my hand from Tara’s and walk to the plate and pick trails behind us like clouds of steam. I ask God to send us it up. The meat is black with flies. They whirr around me, Ma, or Baba, just one of them because asking for both is too cross I have snatched away their lunch. I take the plate to greedy. But no one cares about us or maybe only Mrs Sen. the hyena cage. The cub jumps up towards me, spider- Every other morning, she hands us frocks that she says webs of spit crisscrossing its jaws. I pick up the meat belonged to the girls who once lived in the orphanage. chunks one by one and toss them inside. The cub bounces When I ask her where those girls are now, she doesn’t an- around the cage, trying to catch the pieces before they fall swer. She steals into our room at night when the reverend to the ground. is asleep, or working in his office. On our palms, she places When all the meat is gone, I set the plate down on the slices of mango or banana. She never stays to watch us eat. porch steps and wipe my hands against the cotton smock ‘You can’t hit her,’ I tell Tara. ‘God must have sent her Mrs Sen gave me to wear that morning. I wonder what because I asked for Ma.’ happened to the girl who wore it before me, if Reverend Sen locked her out and wolves ate her up.

fter a week of rationing, Reverend Sen Aannounces it’s time for us to wolf-walk outside. The sun stings my eyes. Tara screams and runs behind hens and chicks, and Foxy chases after Tara, barking madly, tail wagging so fast it’s blurry. From the porch, Reverend Sen Tara is good at crawling shouts at Tara to stop, you’re frightening the poor chickens, my on her knees, but the dear. ‘Girls, girls,’ he says, ‘what have I been teaching the two of you all this while?’ reverend wants us to walk Tara and I have forgotten to wolf-walk. Reverend Sen scutters down the porch steps to loom over me. on the tips of our toes ‘What’s wrong with that girl?’ he asks, looking at Tara. ‘Was she always like this?’ and our fingers, our backs ‘Yes,’ I say. Then I say, ‘No.’ curved like sickles ‘How can your twin be so much smaller than you?’ Foxy trots towards us and I put my hand out to pat his

102 24 august 2020 asleep. In the dark, I lie on the mat, waiting for Mrs Sen. But she doesn’t come. I open my eyes when I hear pots and pans clattering in the kitchen, and at first I think I’m in Hazaribagh, and then I hear Foxy’s barks. It’s morning. Mithu bustles into the room, with two long strips of white cloth in her hands. ‘You have to get dressed,’ she says. ‘Can we have a bath?’ I ask, but she shakes her head and says, ‘Take off your clothes.’ I don’t mind because I’m used to changing in front of hundreds of eyes. I must smell bad because Mithu scowls when she comes near me. She makes me stand with my arms outstretched as if I’m about to fly, and then she ties a loincloth around me. ‘I have to pee,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll have to wait until the reverend has finished,’ she says. ‘With what?’ I ask. Mithu doesn’t answer, just ties a cloth around Tara too. I cover my chest with my hands, glad it’s flat unlike that of the senior girls. Tara tugs at the edge of her loincloth but Mithu has secured it with a twine and it won’t budge. Mithu drags us out of the house and into the garden. Sparrows fly out of shrubs. Tara tries to run off behind one but Mithu holds her back. ‘All fours, now,’ the reverend shouts from behind us. I curve my back and stand like a wolf. Tara copies what I’m doing. ‘Turn your heads around. Only the head,’ the reverend says. I crane my neck and look at him. He’s standing a few feet away from us, holding a small black box that has a pig’s nose and a trunk crinkled like a punkah. The reverend points it at us. Mithu jumps out of the way. I hear a click, but the box doesn’t shoot arrows. It doesn’t hurt us. he sun pulls its warm hands away from the ‘Forward. Noses in the flowers,’ the reverend shouts. Tforest. Little bumps come out of my skin because I’m Tara and I sniff the white flowers in the shrub. cold. Grey clouds drift over a white moon that’s rising in The cook comes out with a plate and I think it’s raw the sky. Tara hums to herself. I look for the giant rabbit meat again. But it’s only cooked rice and we have to lap it that lives on the moon so that I don’t have to think about up with our tongues the way Foxy does. Mrs Sen and the scorpions and snakes hiding under stones. I decide it’s senior girls watch us from the porch. better to be a wolf than a girl because wolves aren’t afraid The reverend asks Mrs Sen to stand next to us, with of anything. her hands on our raised heads. He fiddles with his box. Mrs Sen opens the front door and calls us in. I hold Tara’s Mrs Sen whispers to me softly. ‘Don’t worry. He’s only hand and we dash into the drawing-room. No one is there. taking our picture,’ she says. I don’t care. She’s worse than Mrs Sen takes us to our room, which lies past the dining my real mother who dumped me in a basket and trusted room. Usha has cleared the dining table and swept away strangers to bring me up. If I were to become a wolf, the crumbs under it. Mrs Sen points to the mats on the floor I’ll eat her first, and then the reverend. I imagine on which we sleep every night, and says, ‘You’ll go hungry hunting with a pack of wolves at night, my eyes glowing tonight.’ white in the dark. Tara flaps her hands in the air and jumps up and down, jerking her head this way and that. I make her sit still by telling her a story about a little girl who lives with an eagle ithu takes us to the well after the reverend high up on a tree. Tara likes hearing stories, even the ones I Mhas finished, makes Tara sit on the washing stone, have told her a hundred times before, and slowly she falls and starts cutting her hair with a pair of scissors. ‘Birds

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will fly out of this nest,’ Mithu says, and my task is to hold Sonu sits down next to Tara. ‘There were fifteen girls Tara’s hands and distract her with a story. in the orphanage last year,’ she says, playing with the red I tell her again about the girl who lives on a tree with bangles on her wrist. ‘Now it’s just us.’ the eagle. Today I make the eagle steal the reverend’s doll ‘Where are the others?’ and gift it to the girl, but she drops it from the tree and ‘They fell ill. We all did. Mrs Sen says it was because of breaks it into a hundred pieces. something we ate.’ ‘What kind of nonsense story is this?’ Mithu asks. ‘How ‘Is that why he’s crying?’ can an eagle carry something so smooth, so heavy?’ Sonu puts her hand out towards Tara and strokes her Tara giggles. head the way I pat Foxy. By the time it’s my turn, Mithu is bored and almost ‘He doesn’t feed girls to wolves?’ I ask. scoops out my eyes with her scissors. Then she draws wa- Sonu laughs. ‘Of course not. What a silly thing to say.’ ter from the well and pours it over our almost-bald heads. Tara starts pulling Sonu’s hair. The water is cool and sweet and Mithu scrubs away the ‘No, Tara, no, don’t do that,’ I say. dirt on us first with coconut husks and then with leaves. ‘It’s fine,’ Sonu says, her face crumpling in pain as she My scabs fall off. Mithu wraps us up in cotton towels and slowly prises her hair free from Tara’s fingers. marches us to our room, where there are two old-new ‘The reverend has a plan for you,’ Sonu says when Tara frocks laid out for us on our mats. lets go. ‘I won’t wear this,’ I say. ‘It belongs to a dead girl.’ ‘Plan?’ I ask. I’m only making up a story but Mithu looks at me as if A door opens somewhere in the house and Sonu stands she has seen a ghost. It’s true, I think. The reverend throws up. ‘God sent you here to save us,’ she says. ‘You must girls like us into the jaws of wolves. believe.’ Mrs Sen glides into the room, holding metal bowls filled to the rim with rice and mutton. I’m so hungry I could eat a mountain, but I smash my fists into the bowls onu isn’t like the girls we knew in Hazaribagh or and Mrs Sen drops the food onto the floor. Mithu gasps. Sthe other two senior girls here at the orphanage. They Tara wails. The reverend hurries into our room, out of snort when they see us, but Sonu tells them to be quiet. She breath, face glistening with sweat. says Tara and I should do what the reverend wants us to do, ‘I won’t let you feed us to wolves,’ I shout. ‘You’re a devil because he’s a good man. in priest’s clothes.’ I become fast on all fours. When Reverend Sen tells me ‘Mithu, clean up this unsightly mess,’ the reverend to find a dead chicken hidden in the garden, I don’t mind. says. ‘As for the girls, I dare say they will be all right without The reverend takes pictures of me picking it up, but I food until such time as they learn to repent for their sins.’ shake my head when he asks me to bite it. One evening, the reverend calls everyone into the drawing-room, even the cook and Mithu and Usha. ‘Next week, an fter everyone leaves the room, I hold Tara and Englishman is coming from Calcutta to see Paro and Tara,’ he Awhisper stories to her but she’s hungry and the devil says. ‘Everything I have been teaching them has been for this in her head makes her hit me until I lose my temper and day. Paro and Tara, you will show him you’re much better hit her back. Then I hold her and try not to cry. wolves than the wolves in the forest, won’t you?’ In the afternoon, when the house is quiet, Sonu sneaks ‘Yes, reverend,’ I say for both of us. Sonu grins at me. into our room with a plate of rice. She sets it down in front of us, sits cross-legged by the doorway, and watches as I feed Tara. When we finish eating, Sonu places a finger on her lips I become fast on and gestures that I should follow her. We tiptoe across the drawing-room towards the reverend’s office. He always all fours. When keeps his door shut. Sonu points to the keyhole and asks me to look inside. Reverend Sen kneels in front of a chair Reverend Sen tells me to on which his mother’s doll sits. The reverend sobs loudly, hands clasped in prayer, and the doll shudders on the chair find a dead chicken as if it’s crying too. I turn around and we run back to our hidden in the garden, room. Tara is in the exact same spot where I left her. Sonu says, ‘He’s not what you think he is.’ I don’t mind ‘What is he?’ I ask.

104 24 august 2020 he Englishman, when he turns up in a bullock hen the Englishman leaves, I’m allowed to Tcart, is red because of the heat. The reverend apolo- Wplay with Foxy in the garden because I was a good gises to him for the long journey he had to undertake and wolf. Tara doesn’t want to be outside, so it’s just me and asks Mithu to fan him. Mrs Sen offers him tea and biscuits Foxy running around until both of us are panting with on the porch. We watch from the drawing-room, taking our tongues hanging out. I sit on the washing stone to turns to lift the blinds with our fingers. The reverend catch my breath. Mithu and Usha come out with a pile shows the Englishman our pictures, and the picture box of dirty clothes and Mithu says, ‘Out of my way, Paro, that he says he has to return soon. Sonu whispers that quick.’ I get up. once the Englishman prints our pictures in his newspaper, ‘You told the white man you lived with wolves? In an we will be famous, and the reverend will get lots of money. ant mound?’ Mithu asks me as Usha draws water out of Then Mrs Sen takes Tara and me to the Englishman. the well. I shake my head. She turns to Usha and says, ‘See, The reverend calls him Arthur, this Englishman who I told you, even a man who looks like that wouldn’t be a watches us with his eyes that are as blue as the reverend’s big enough fool to believe it.’ doll. The reverend says he has been teaching us to shed our ‘Why would a wolf live in an ant mound?’ I ask. ‘Won’t wolf-like ways. ‘Show this gentleman how you used to it get bitten?’ walk when you first came here,’ he tells us. ‘Go see what that sister of yours is up to now,’ I wolf-walk down the steps of the porch and then Mithu says. up again. The Englishman writes in his notebook. From the kitchen, I spot the senior girls standing Tara doesn’t move. I show the Englishman the calluses outside our room, whispering about Tara. Sonu is with them too. ‘She’s a devil-child,’ the oldest of the senior girls says. ‘She speaks in tongues.’ ‘That strange noise she makes,’ the second girl says, ‘it He bends down and tries drives me mad. She never stops.’ ‘Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm,’ Sonu hums, and they all to coax Tara into laugh. Then they see me. wolf-walking until Tara ‘Paro, do you want to borrow my frock?’ Sonu asks. ‘The green one you liked?’ slaps him across the face. ‘That frock is ugly,’ I shout as I dash into the drawing- room, where I stand on my toes and reach for the The reverend stumbles back porcelain doll. The office door opens and Reverend Sen steps out. and smiles sheepishly at ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asks. the Englishman ‘We’re wolves now,’ I say. ‘You said we could have the doll.’ ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he says, but before he has finished speaking, my hands are clutching the doll and on my hands and feet. He makes me turn around and I’m running towards our room. ‘Stop her,’ the reverend runs his left hand up and down my spine, over the blue screeches but the senior girls let me pass. Tara is sitting frock I’m wearing. I growl through clenched teeth on the floor, rocking herself. because I don’t like him touching me. The reverend says, ‘Here, take it,’ I say. ‘Paro, he’s a friend.’ He bends down and tries to coax The reverend barges in and shouts, ‘Paro, no!’ Tara into wolf-walking until Tara slaps him across the I give Tara the doll. She holds it close to her chest as face. The reverend stumbles back and smiles sheepishly if it’s a baby. Then I turn around and bare my teeth and at the Englishman. lunge towards the reverend with a snarl, blood shooting ‘They aren’t used to visitors,’ the reverend says, one into my ears and, for the briefest of heartbeats, he pauses, hand covering his reddening cheek. ‘But you can see from and I see the lightning flicker of fear in his eyes. n the photographs that their transformation is nothing short of remarkable.’ © Deepa Anappara 2020 A strand of hair—Mithu’s or Mrs Sen’s—floats in the Englishman’s cup of tea. Deepa Anappara is the author of ‘There is a lot that they have to learn,’ the reverend Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line says. ‘But the Lord will help me teach them.’ (Hamish Hamilton)

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RAJEEV MASAND

Sucker for Thrillers importantly, the return of the friendly blue-skinned alien Jaadu. Turns out that Bipasha Basu wasn’t looking to make another While thanking everyone associated with the film for making movie with husband Karan Singh Grover anytime soon. The a movie that was ahead of its time, the actor also wrote: ‘Some pair met on the set of their horror film Alone (2015) six years friendships defy space and time. Someday hopefully they will ago, and while there were a few offers to team up again in the meet again.’ It is this line, accompanied by a sign-off from the years since, the actress tells me she always sought out a reason actor, that reads ‘Miss you Jaadu’, that has led to a fresh wave of to say no. “We’re professionals. You don’t want to give the speculation and excitement. impression that we only work with each other,” she explains. It is no secret that Hrithik and his filmmaker father But when her old friend Vikram Bhatt (with whom she’s Rakesh Roshan had been working on a sequel to Krrish 3 made a few films over the years) came along with the script of before the senior Roshan took ill. Then, while the filmmaker Dangerous, Karan was signed first and then she was asked if she was in recovery, there were rumours that he had handed over might consider doing the female lead. “My first reaction was, directing reins to Kaabil helmer Sanjay Gupta, who, it has no,” she reveals. But when Vikram insisted she read the script, been learnt, was also working on his version of the script. she discovered it might scratch an itch she’s had. “I’m a sucker Nothing appears to have come of that either. The Roshans for a good investigative thriller. So whether it’s Marcella, Killing have insisted that a new film is very much on the cards, and Eve or Gillian Anderson in The Fall, I’m hooked.” industry sources are saying the father-son duo is prepping Dangerous gave her the opportunity to play an officer the new project currently, with an announcement likely to assigned to investigate the kidnapping of a millionaire’s wife. be made before the end of the year. “The timing is perfect, The millionaire, as luck would have it, happens to be the cop’s coming on the heels of Hrithik’s back-to-back hits Super 30 ex-lover, the role that Karan had signed up for. It became hard and War,” a trade pundit points out. “And the return of Jaadu to find an excuse to turn down the gig once she’d read the could be the icing on the cake. It’s a sure shot way to script. So the next thing she knew they were filming ensure that kids drag their families to the cinema.” in London. The film was always planned for a theatrical Hot Right Now release but with the coronavirus and the ensuing Showing the world that there is such a thing lockdown pressing a pause button on cinema as love in the time of corona, Baahubali star releases, the producers of Dangerous decided to Rana Daggubati and his entrepreneur send the film straight to streaming. Except that it’s fiancéeMiheeka Bajaj tied the knot in been chopped up into 20-minute episodes and is Hyderabad this past weekend. After a being released as a series instead of a full-length private engagement some weeks ago that feature. “The director went back and looked at was attended only by close friends, the all the stuff we’d shot and re-edited it so there wedding was reportedly a flashier affair was enough material for multiple episodes,” but still relatively private. Spotted she explains. “And we’re not complaining among the revelers were some of because the streaming business has changed Rana’s close friends (and fellow the game completely,” she says. Telugu stars), including Ram Charan with wife Will the Alien Return? Upasana Kamineni Konidela, Hrithik Roshan’s social media post this Naga Chaitanya and past weekend marking 17 years since Koi Samantha Akkineni and Mil Gaya’s release appears to have got Allu Arjun. Everyone is believed his fans excited about the possibility of to have kept their masks on, except a third film in the franchise—and, more while posing for pictures. n

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