ping commentary

The students magazine 'Ping' asked me to write something for them - in 400 words. That was a challenge, to write something in so few words; finally made it in about  600 words. The issue came out a week ago.

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Some days back, Rajeev Rajeshuni and Harish Reddy, two UG4 students, presented their experiences of summer internships with culturally/socially active groups sponsored by SPICMACAY. Rajeev spent a month with Tibetan monks in Dharmashala and Harish was with Aruna Roy's MKSS in Rajasthan.

Rajeev's talk was about the serenity of Tibetan Buddhist monks and moments spent with The Dalai Lama. Harish was an angry young man telling us about how miserable the caste, gender and class realities are in rural India.

Both talked about people who are not free and who are struggling for freedom. In one case, the Tibetans, they could run away to India and were provided shelter. In the other case, the people have nowhere to go.

In both the cases, there is a logic that the oppressors present to perpetuate the atrocities. The oppressors do not believe that they are doing anything wrong and they do not accept the logic of the oppressed,who seek freedom and dignity. It is easy for us who are distant from the China-Tibet issue to understand why China is wrong in its logic. But it is not easy for us to see how wrong we are in dealing with our own oppressed.

China has made schools, hospitals, roads, etc., and provided a better quality of life in the modern sense, in Tibet, that may not have happened if it was not under Chinese occupation. The Tibetan society was feudal to the core and most of the pepole lived like slaves, serving the monks or the traders who form the majority of those who escaped. Not everything about the Tibetan society in India is laudable. But this does not make China right in doing what it did. China is an imperial power that has colonised Tibet. We must raise our voice in support of the Tibetan people, who have been fighting a non-violent struggle against the military might of China.

The struggle of the oppressed castes in India is also non-violent. This is surprising, because the intensity of oppression remains high and wide. The constitutional path has provided a solution, not necessarily the best, but one well supported by those who have studied the problem for years. This is the idea of reservation for access to quality education, in employment, etc. For a long time, the policy was not even implemented to an extent that could be called significant. When finally it started looking like a reality and the percentages in jobs started showing, the country went for massive privatisation. In a private educational insititute, there is no reservation policy. It is apparent that privatisation of education is a policy that makes quality education inaccessible to disadvantaged sections.

Ordinarily one expects the youth to question the structure of lies and disinformation that sustains the otherwise untenable institutions of oppression. Our institute provides mechanisms for students to study and question the present. Counterculture is promoted and yet we remain content with extreme underepresentation of large sections of our people in our community. Naturally, the feeling of being a hypocrite is intense in me. In six years of being here, I have motivated only a small number of students to look at real data published in credible journals and inevitably their opinions have changed after a thorough reading. But most of us choose to remain happily gullible because it serves our interests. The arrogance that goes with it is notable. In a more equal society, most if us will not be where we are. With such undeserving power and privileges, how can we be so arrogant?

Insensitivity to issues of social justice indicates a severe crisis of values. The pain of exclusion that a large majority experiences in our country is not going to subside. It will, as Langston Hughes said in his poem 'What happens to a dream deferred', explode one day.

The cartoon yes and no

It all started with a simple insignificant cartoon in the secondary school text book. The great tamasha that Indian parliamentary politics has unfortunately evolved into made it a complicated issue for intellectuals. If you say no to the cartoon, to many it appeared playing into the hands of the opportunist politicians.  What followed at first was pure intimidation from the academic elite. Dont you dare say no - if you do, you are part of the crowd deifying Ambedkar. If you point out the possibility that the otherwise useless cartoon could be used as yet another tool by upper caste kids to harass the dalit children in the school, then you are an age-ist not allowing the adolescents the intelligence due to them. The Hindu published an editorial basically calling all opposition foolish.

In my comments on some FB posts, I  argued - to me, the issue was very simple. I do something, and a large number of people object to it. I will think - is my action really significant that the objection from a large number of persons should be ignored - if yes, I will stick to it. If not, I will erase the marks of my action. Removing the cartoon from the text book did not seem to have any impact on the chapter at all. It does not matter whether or not the demand to remove is justified or not - if it is not greatly significant, we should remove it - just a matter of plain simple decency.

Actually there was a lot of merit in the demand for removing the cartoon.

I wrote an article in a Hindi newspaper- perhaps that was the first such article - seeking a dialogue with nondalit intellectuals, reminding them by quoting examples from African American history, the seemingly bizarre consequences of the pain of sustained exclusion. I argued that we need not respond to the politicians, we must respond to our own sense of empathy for the other. Then there were more elaborate articles in English by Dalit intellectuals. Soon the environment changed a bit. But you could bend only so far. Petitions and counter petitions followed. The Hindu continued a debate by leading social scientists.

The arguments for yes were mainly academic and the arguments for no were cries seeking justice. I was reminded of this American saying in Howard Zinn's masterpiece work on people's history of the united states: 'The cry of the poor may not be always just, but if you do not listen to it, you will never know what justice is.' (I am quoting from memory - the words may be a little different).

Now that intimidation will not work any more, adjectives and a bit of emotional blackmail remain.  I am as puzzled today as when it all started - what is it behind all the academic arguments, the thoughtlessly used adjectives; surely it is not prejudices - these are intellectuals with impeccable progressive credentials. I do not know, is it just the way academic activism is done in social sciences today? The little I know about post-modern thought, the yes part of the cartoon debate was a post-modern defence and the opposition appeared more rooted in reality.  Ironically, the beginnings of post-modernism were in the counterculture, in taking sides against the mainstream, in being with the marginalised.

A comment

I was disappointed that Laal Band of Pakistan could not come for their scheduled performance in Hyderabad. It was one of those rare occasions that I had made up my mind to shell out Rs 1200/- for my ticket – I had even settled with the thought of having to pay for a student who would accompany me to the show. But it was cancelled.
Then I read articles critical of ‘Vakratunda Mahakaya..’ sung prior to their performance in JNU – the posts were from Reyazul Haque on behalf of DSU, a radical left student organisation, a rival of AISA that won the JNU students’ body elections recently. As a nearly elderly anarchist with sympathies towards left anywhere in the world, I felt sorry for AISA that they had to take this heat from DSU. I wished these guys could work together instead of fighting on trivia. Specially because the articles mentioned somewhere that someone had actually stopped the singer from continuing to sing the song.
Then there were posts by AISA sympathisers on how JNU turned all ‘Laal’ on 1st May.
And finally these two articles by Apoorvananda and Meera Vishwanathan )intensely critical of JNUSU for stopping Tritha from singing ‘Vakratunda Mahakaya..’ .
I have listened to Tritha on Youtube. And like most privileged people of my kind, exposed to Jazz and Blues to contemporary hip-hop, I like her – I am madly in love with her music. But I started thinking, if I was one of the audience that day, a 25 year old, on May day waiting for Laal, how would I feel listening to Ganapati from Tritha. Specially, if I was a North Indian student, not cultured in listening to South Indian classical temple music, what would I make of that song. I probably would have wondered why was she singing the Sanskrit devotional stuff there. I can very well imagine that I would have done the same mistake that AISA or other left students did that day. It was a mistake on several counts. First and foremost, once on the stage, Tritha should have been respected and she should have been allowed to finish the song. It would have made the DSU kids a little noisier over the next few days, but left can survive this much of a liberal and tolerant behaviour. After all, she had sung the same piece a few days back at Habitat Centre.
Meera Vishwanathan in her post makes a point that Ganesha is a ‘people’s God’ appropriated by the Brahamanical culture’ She translates the words in the song to explain this. But do all the students in JNU know this? Honestly, even I, in spite of a fair amount of understanding of Sanskrit words, did not think of this until I read her post. After reading her post, and then with the general theme of Dravidian and tribal cultures appropriated by the Sanskritic tradition in the back of my mind, it kind of made sense. Do members of the Tritha band know this? Perhaps someone amongst the organisers should have explained this to the audience before she started her song?
Someone among the organisers should have known that her music has no political content. Here is the biggest mistake – knowing that this is what Tritha is, why not discuss the content beforehand and take appropriate cautions – like may be an enlightened MV or some friend like that could have been asked to explain the political aspect of the song.
A good question is – should everything be political, can’t people enjoy music for what it is? This is where I wonder if we are being too naive to think that an event featuring the Laal band on May day is a purely musical event. I also wonder if we are being naive to think that everyone should look at Sanskrit and Sanskritic tradition as apolitical and accept all interpretations as innocent. Since the readers of this comment are likely to be more educated in such matters than I am, let me just say things are more complicated than they seem. Post facto claims that ‘Ganapati’ is as political as Sufi or Bulle Shah is silly. It is like saying that no, they do not symbolise apparently different political values. Well, I wish it was so.
Finally, often I feel upset by overwhelming prevalence of revivalist tendencies at the institution where I work. I can imagine that others elsewhere may similarly feel upset when overwhemed by rhetoric from the left. We see with glasses that are tainted by our location. And in reaction, we often make statements that on later thinking may seem a little excessive in, ahem, rhetoric. Apoorvanand is a friend I respect a lot. But isn’t comparing this case with Sati immolating herself after being humiliated by Daksha a little too much? Tritha is hardly going to be affected by what happened on 1st May and we are going to enjoy her music forever. It was a case of intolerance of a kind that needs to be debated alright, but I would not judge it as harshly as Apoorvanand and MV have done.
An irony is that – Ragtime/Jazz/Blues…– in a way the precursor to most of the interesting fusion music of today and certainly of the kind of fusion that Tritha has – unlike where it all originated, in countries like ours it is the music of the privileged. It is a music that we enjoy while sipping our screwdrivers and bloody Marys, with no feeling of pickin’ cotton on a God damn Sunday in a God damn Southern plantation. It shuns the political space that it came from. Not that this is always true. There are exceptions. And even if there weren’t any, music should be appreciated for what it is.

Have you heard of a name called Panini?

So here was an expert. He is not a scientist. Arrogance is a quality that scientists are often accused of. This guy was supposed to talk on an Indian classic written in Sanskrit. Three talks, I went to listen to him with great expectations.
In his first talk, he probably did talk about the subject text for a couple of minutes scattered through the one and a half hour he spoke. He began with the typical 'I hate lecturing - let us be interactive..' And once he began, he was still going on unstopped when I left after about one and a half hour.  No sign of being interactive until then. So what did he talk on? He talked on things he did not seem to know much - history, consciousness, a whole lot of things with mostly mumbo-jumbo interpretations. Among other things, he said the Moghuls came to India in the ninth century. And the Indian sages had to hide the classic texts - so they went to far away places like Burma and Nepal to save them. And then some scholars (including his own forefathers) in nineteenth century discovered these holy texts back.
The pinnacle was his question - in an institute that prides itself on language technology research - he suddenly asked: Have you heard of a name called Panini?

OMG, did I say arrogance is a quality that scientists are accused of. Needless to say, I chose to remain unenlightened and made better use of the time when he spoke again for the other two talks.

But why are the Indian revivalists so full of it? Great expectations and what a let down!

My rare commnet on FB

A friend posted a Guardian article on the arrogance of the West in not recognising the rise of China. I have recently been talking to friends about the arrogance of the privileged classes in India, one feature of which is the attitude that China is just another country across the border that may have a war with us any day.
Here is a comment I posted on my friend's wall:

The West can afford to do this at least for a century more. How about India? The complete lack of knowledge on China that an average educated Indian exhibits is an indication of the arrogance and stupidity inherent in the casteist and racist Indian privileged classes. Almost all educated Indians are not able to answer a simple question like who is the equivalent of Manmohan Singh in China, let alone any question on history. There are very few China studies department in Indian universities and a miniscule number of students interested in Chinese language & culture. All that we know is whenever there is a talk on spending more money for the already overbudgeted defense sector in India, China suddenly gets in the news as the monster that may gobble us up.
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Indeed the military Industrialist complex is growing rapidly in India. The defense expenditure is about 45% of the National budget (as compared to education budget of about 11%). It is not easy to find all the data on it. If you look up data, you can find figures anywhere from 30 to 35%, the rest are hidden expenses. Needless to say that most problems of Indian economy arise from here. The privileged in South Asia (both India and Pakistan) have been plundering the common people's toil and the natural resources to build up military. A large amount of the money eventually goes to the West in arms deals. A small but significant amount goes in corruption.

Two events.

The first was a sit up comedy show 'Make chai not war' by three ABCDs - America born confused Desis at Rabindra Bharati a week ago. Kind of like the Peter Russel show. Lots of laugh but not much substance really. The third guy Usman Azhar had something good to say, specially to the young. He used a traditional eastern metaphor - we are all in cages and we take the cage to be the real thing and forget ourselves. He was good. I was there with friends Giri and Rekha after a hectic drive through the rush traffic. Later, relaxing over dinner at their place, the usual chat and the day ended.

The second was on Sunday at Taramati Baradari - a dance performance by Astad Deboo and his troupe of young boys from the Balak Trust set up my Meera Nair. These boys were runaways from home, picked up by the NGO workers and trained into creative performers, now globe trotters. This was probably the best dance performance I have seen in Hyderabad. The show was called 'Interpreting Tagore' and it was a revised version of what Deboo conceived several years ago and is now performing since Nov 2009. There were four pieces with readings of Tagore poems in translation. Astad himself, now obviously a fairly aged man, danced as the main performer. The dances had nothing to do with Tagore's dance dramas, except the spirit of seeking creative ingenuity in modern forms. Deboo's dances are modern western dances in form with an Eastern flavour. In the piece 'Devi' four masked and blood-red tongued 'Kali's come from the middle of the audience on to the stage and are part of the choreography. The last piece 'awakening' was a Darvesh swirl dance by Astad himself to a Jazz piano recital. Great stuff.

But, of course, twice Astad had to stop the performance becuase of camera flashes. Of course, there was the usual commentaries from behind my seat that began before the show started and never ended. What began as 'see that lady, she is the keep of that man over there' grew into a free interpretation of 'iterpreting Tagore'. The guy next to me was nice enough to have taken seriously my request to not let his camera light bug me. But then could you stop a few citizens of the great Indian civilisation talking on the cell phone in the middle of the performance! How dare you even think of such a thing!


Yet, it was good. I was very happy to have put myself together for a lone scooter ride of about 15 kms each way. Even the ride was worth it - the light chill of breeze blowing by the Deccan rocks of the outer ring road, it felt good.

Modernity, Nation-state and questions from a talk

Listened to Akeel Bilgrami live for the first time on Friday night.
It was good to listen to a renowned philosopher talking what seemed like my tongue. Formally the talk was on clash of civilizations, but he commented on notions of Nation-state and Nationalism among other things. An interesting point he made is that the modern Nation-state came into being with the ruling classes creating a feeling among populace that included hatred for an enemy within. And to him, Gandhi rejected this kind of Nation building while Savarkar owned it. And in India Savarkar won the battle against Gandhi.
I asked him at the end why Savarkar, the modernist, could not go Lala Hardayal way. Lala Hardayal became a theoretician for the radical inclusive Nationalism. I could have asked him on Subhash also. Subhash took help from the Nazis, but his Nationalism did not require hatred for an enemy within.

Is a pathological situation over and beyond the modernity project not necessary for one to become a Savarkar or a Hitler? After all, modernity has an inbuilt avant-garde-ism as we can see the strongest critique of modernity coming from within modernity, namely by Marx.
European modernity has ways of rectifying its weaknesses, as can be seen in the human rights charters of UN and later of European Union.

The talk made me think a lot about my scattered ideas on Nationalism, on Gandhi and related issues. May be some day I will get enough time to work on these.