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.
************************8

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. 

The ink spreads

Ishrat

1
Ishrat!
The arteries of the highway spat fire in early dark morning
What were you up to pagli!

You must have come out
knowing that love will be pouring out there for you
Our hearts, millions of us will be beating for you
you will drown in a flood of love
Go to sleep
Now go to sleep pagli!

2
I wait for the heat to subside
There will come rains
Winds will blow

Fingers will move
My mind will move

I wait
my pain will be inscribed on papers
stories will get written

We will dream
You will live, Ishrat!

The heat works for the Government.

3
Many ways walk together
Ways carry stories
Stories carry miseries
a nervous system of miseries
a milky way of miseries
flowing forever

How do I live with so much pain?
blank sheets flying
the ink spreads
where are the words? Ishrat re!

- translated from original in Hindi

Different youth

When I was young, we were a angry lot. Nothing different from today really. I see angry youth everywhere. The difference is that living in a campus that provides a highly specialised education to young people of socially privileged background, I mostly see youth angry for reasons different from the ones that youth elsewhere have or the ones that we had to be angry about.

So, do I hear young friends unhappy about not implementing the constitutionally mandatory provisions of opportunities reserved for less privileged - No, not here. Are they unhappy about the gender ratio in the campus that remains skewed forever, nope. Are they concerned that there is no effort in moving towards a fair share of minority population in campus - no Sir! Or that there are majority biased rituals in official functions ignoring others, no. What are they angry about - they are upset that they have been asked to park motor-vehicles 500 m away from their dorms. And these are young people many of who keep dreaming of going to Western countries some day, where parking at large distances away from residential or office quarters is common. To be fair, there are more reasons, but nothing qualitatively different from the parking issue.

Someone posted on the FB a link to a movie on Calcutta (now Kolkata) made by Louis Malle that shows the student movement of 1968. Not that everything the young people wanted then was correctly formulated. Different times, and we who came to college in the seventies were also different. There were few campuses like ours then. Now there are many more accommodating the slightly larger middle class youth compared to then. Today there are young people in many areas of the country talking about real issues confronting this country. Issues like what Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze have indicated in their latest article in the Outlook magazine - a rising India with a proportion of underweight children population like in no other country of the world. There are events bringing young people to streets across the country - academic bigotry of removing reputed works from syllabi like the one by Ramanujan talking of multiple stories of Ramayana removed from postgraduate studies in Delhi university, or ongoing struggle by Irom Sharmila in Manipur against the presence of armed forces in the state and so on.

Well, I live with youth more concerned about things like right to drive bikes without wearing helmet and often on the wrong side of the road. Different youth, definitely.