Amit, there is a error in the name list of back cover... Can you ask Rupesh to correct the spelling of ‘’ and add the name ‘Sumana Roy’ in the same list. Volume 4 | 2020 FAILURE F AILURE Brinda Bose | Nauman Naqvi | Manash “Firaq” Bhattacharjee VOLUME 4, 2020 | Prasanta Chakravarty | Vivek Narayanan | Bhuchung D. This issue of AROOP is about Sonam | Jane Da Mosto | Ashish Kothari | K. Satchidanandan Failure. The theme emerged from discussions between | Mithu Sen | Nilanjan Bandhyopadhyay | Devina Dutt and Pepe the editors in the summer of 2019, as a response to the Gomes | Rani Neutill | Parthiv Shah | Umar Khalid, Banojyotsna historical moment. Subsequent developments in 2020 have only Amit Mehra Lahiri, Anirban Bhattacharya | Astad Deboo | Kavita Krishnan | confirmed that the choice of topic was appropriate. Between Photo: Samit Das | Manu Devadevan | Aranyani Bhargav | Maya Joshi fascism and populism in politics, | Arshia Sattar | Tridip Suhrud | Madan Gopal Singh | Sumana global warming and climate Volume 4 | 2020 Volume change in the environment, Ananya Vajpeyi is a scholar Roy neoliberalism and inequality in and writer, based at the Centre economics, and finally, an utterly for the Study of Developing debilitating and intractable Societies, New Delhi. She is the public health emergency in the author of Righteous Republic: form of the Covid-19 pandemic The Political Foundations of in 2020, we are plunged into the darkest possible phase in Modern India (2012) and the recent memory. Democracy co-editor of Ashis Nandy: A has failed. Conservation Life in Dissent (2018). She has failed. Feminism has is working on two books, a failed. Socialism has failed. political biography of Sanskrit Capitalism has failed. The slide and an intellectual life of Dr. towards authoritarianism, the B.R. Ambedkar. She writes and The Raza Foundation undermining of liberal values, the lectures widely on ideas and ecological collapse – these are arts in India and overseas. all planetary afflictions. Are we ready to face our own complicity in bringing about this situation? Are we able to fight back and rebuild, or are we prepared to surrender? Or, to quote the philosopher Charles Taylor, is what we can do describable only in terms of the expression of human dignity, that we stand The Raza Foundation “unconsoled and uncowed in the C-4/139, Lower Ground Floor, Safdarjung Development Area face of the indifferent immensity A Journal of Arts, Poetry and Ideas New Delhi - 110016, India of the world”? E mail: [email protected] A Journal of Arts, Poetry and Ideas Volume 4 | 2020 FAILURE Editor Ashok Vajpeyi Asst. Editor Manish Pushkale Guest Editor Ananya Vajpeyi AROOP: An Annual Journal of Arts, Poetry and Ideas Volume 4 | 2020 © The Raza Foundation, New Delhi, and the contributors No material from this series can be reproduced without permission of the Raza Foundation and the contributors concerned. Editor Ashok Vajpeyi Guest Editor Ananya Vajpeyi Cover Calligraphy Nilanjan Bandyopadhyay Copy Editing Shachi Seth Editorial Office: The Raza Foundation C-4/139, Lower Ground Floor, Safdarjung Development Area, New Delhi - 110016, India E mail: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Subscription Rates: Single Issue: Rs. 800 4 issues subscription ― Individual: Rs. 2,500; Institution: Rs. 3,000 Published by: The Raza Foundation Printing: Archana - www.archanapress.com The Raza Foundation provides an open and free forum to the guest editor and other contributors. It does not necessarily agree with the views expressed by them. Contents Foreword Ashok Vajpeyi 05 Editorial Ananya Vajpeyi 07 Slouching toward an Aesthetics of Failure Brinda Bose 15 On Failure and the Experience of Divinity: A Noha in Prose Nauman Naqvi 21 Satya and Karuna: A Critique of Reason in Indian History Manash “Firaq” Bhattacharjee 27 After the Civil War Prasanta Chakravarty 33 Un Trou Vivek Narayanan 41 Snafu Bhuchung D. Sonam 67 On Failure: The Venice Paradox Jane Da Mosto, Carolyn Smith, Kasia Ruszkowska 71 Civilisational Failure and its Discontents Ashish Kothari 81 Poems K. Satchidanandan 91 An Old Poet’s Suicide Note 91 Distances 93 Letter from a Soldier 95 My Motherland 96 Questions from the Dead: An Essay on Nationalism 98 On Failing to Write About Sadness Sumana Roy 101 Notes on (Un) failing Language Mithu Sen 105 Kokoro: Imagining Japan in Santiniketan Nilanjan Bandhyopadhyay 113 Eyes Wide Shut Devina Dutt and Pepe Gomes 129 The Night Stalker Rani Neutill 143 Anomaly Parthiv Shah 149 The Limits of Universalism Umar Khalid, Banojyotsna Lahiri, Anirban Bhattacharya 153 Interview Astad Deboo 159 The Responsibility of Failure Kavita Krishnan 169 Lakshmi, the Goddess, Doesn’t Walkout Anymore Manu Devadevan 173 Doing Justice to Past and Future Aranyani Bhargav 179 ‘Yeh kahan aa gaye hum’: How our Present Dystopia Fails a Bygone Utopia Maya Joshi 187 When the King Fails: Stories from the Hindu Epics Arshia Sattar 193 Act of Mind Samit Das 201 The Man Who Failed to Die Tridip Suhrud 205 A Stitch Between Insights and Obscurity: The Ontology of Contested Failure Madan Gopal Singh 211 CONTRIBUTORS 215 Foreword FAILURE Ashok Vajpeyi We are in times when failure is oppressively present in many areas; in daily life, in social discourse, in politics, in creative endeavour. These are not only troubling times, but also, more crucially, failing times. Some of the hitherto sustaining and nourishing sources such as democracy, liberal ideas, economy, spirituality, dialogue and solidarity all, more or less, seem to be failing us. Or, maybe we are failing them. It can be argued that one should not confine oneself to measuring success or failure. There may be significance in both of them. Equally, the notion of significance itself is under severe assault. To understand and explore failure, ‘Aroop’ journal of arts and ideas, requested the eminent social thinker Ananya Vajpeyi (who is deeply interested in contemporary forms of creativity and imagination) to guest-edit an issue on ‘Failure’. The next issue, also under her guest-editorship, would explore ‘Future’. The Raza Foundation is happy that Dr. Vajpeyi has gathered substantial material which reveals the multiple, complex and illuminating ways in which some of most interesting minds from varied disciplines view failure both in personal terms and in the broader imaginary and reality. 5 6 Guest Editor's Note FAILURE Ananya Vajpeyi In Hind Swaraj, Mahatma Gandhi delineated two currents of human culture in history: sudharo “the appropriate way”, and kudharo “the harmful way”. He translated these Gujarati words into markers of identity and difference – Indian civilization (sudharo) versus Western civilization (kudharo). He could think in terms of these two paths in 1909 because there was still at that time a real dilemma, despite 150 years of British colonialism already having inflicted deep and lasting injuries on India. Some recovery, some healing was still imaginable; India could even then stay on its own course, which was the auspicious and beneficial one for it (implied in the positive prefix “su” before “dhara” or stream). Not only was it the right way for India – it was a universal claim Gandhi made, that this was in fact how all of humanity ought to proceed. But through the 20th century, despite decolonization, in fact only kudharo prevailed. What was merely Western civilization became global civilization, and in the process, from a Gandhian perspective, the whole world lost its way. And this we now know to be true. Between fascism and populism in politics, global warming and climate change in the environment, neoliberalism and inequality in economics, and finally, an utterly debilitating and intractable public health emergency in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, we are plunged into the darkest possible phase of recent memory. Democracy has failed. Ecology has failed. Feminism has failed. Socialism has failed. Capitalism has failed. Not just in the United States or Russia, not just in China or India, not just in Germany or the United Kingdom, not just in Israel or Brazil, not just in Iran or Turkey, not just in Pakistan or Sri Lanka – the failure is comprehensive, all encompassing, and complete. Gandhi’s swaraj, satyagraha and ahimsa, flaring like brief beacons of hope in impenetrable darkness, are now difficult to even recall, in their meaning, in their purpose, in their promise of that other word, sudharo, and of the world it could have stood for. We can ask who is to blame but we are better off asking if anyone is blameless, because the answer is simpler – no. We are all, each and every one, complicit in the failure of the human endeavor that appears to be unfolding all around us. x x x 7 The thought of dedicating this issue of AROOP to the theme of “Failure” came to us last summer. The outcome of the 2019 general elections suggested that most Indians no longer believed in a plural, diverse, and egalitarian India. Events throughout the latter half of 2019 – the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, the bifurcation of the state of J and K into two union territories, with the larger portion going to Ladakh, the indefinite incarceration of the entire political leadership of the state, and the imposition of a complete and utter communications and mobility ban in the region that lasted many months, seemed to usher in a dark chapter in the unraveling of India’s liberal democracy. The subsequent introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, soon passed into an Act of Parliament; and the Supreme Court verdict on the Babri Masjid case, agreeing that the mosque had been wrongfully demolished in December 1992, and yet a Ram temple could be constructed at the site, came as seismic shocks, shaking the very foundations of the Indian Republic. The ideological defeat of the ‘Idea of India’ and the failure of state secularism seemed everywhere in evidence.