Open Letter to Anand Patwardhan

Dear Mr Anand Patwardhan,

Sir,

I have been following the news about how the ATS has charged members of the Kabir Kala Manch in Pune for being Maoists and/or sympathisers and about you setting up a defence committee on behalf of the aggrieved. You have referred to these arrests as undemocratic.

Though many political activists of Pune are quite familiar with the political line espoused by the KKM, I agree that as a civilised nation that hopes to be run by a constitution (as opposed to kangaroo courts run by bandits in forests) every person, even those who take to violent political means or those who support such means by use of civil-intellectual subterfuges, must be given a fair trial in consonance with prevalent laws.

Free Speech Utopia in Economic Dystopia: A rejoinder to the Rushdie debates in India

(An edited version of this was published on The Hoot, 20th April 2012)

Image courtesy India Today

Replying to a question from the audience at the India Today conclave about what he thinks of article 153 of the Indian Constitution, Salman Rushdie said he is not in favour of laws that curb hate speech. Laws like this, according to him, share the same vein as the rationale with which the bullies work – of hurt religious/cultural sentiments. Every other day some book or work of art be it paintings or sculpting or cinema or theatre, is attacked on the pretext of hurt sentiments and citing a potential law and order problem, however tenuous, the Indian State clamps down on the freedom to express and write books. And Rushdie points at his own brush with the vendors of political Islam on the eve of the Jaipur Literature Festival and the hounding out of painter M F Husain as proof of this abuse of the “hurt sentiments” principle. Instead, he says, he prefers the American model; which through its First Constitutional Amendment defends free speech at all costs, and defends it so strongly that it allows hate speech. The abundance of free speech, he believes as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is the best defence against the un-freedom of blocked speech – whether by bigots and fanatics (according to him embodied by the ayatollahs and mullahs) or by an authoritarian regime (according to him embodied by the Soviet Union). A “simple yet grand” idea, as Rushdie labels it, that two competing ideas fight it out in a fair competition with an end that reads “may the best idea win”.

Wishing Kapil Sibal

1st of April – I solemnly dedicate it to one of the best of our generation – Kapil Sibal.

Tahrir not Twitterati: the future of Indian middleclass movements

(First appeared in opendemocracy.net, 14th March 2012)

The issue of widespread corruption in public life in India is incontrovertibly a very grave one. Through its anti-corruption agitations over the past year, various middleclass groups like Team Anna – led by political activist Anna Hazare, the group led by Yoga and Ayurveda magnate Baba Ramdev, were right to foreground the issue. Supported most by the yuppie populace that resides in the major cities of India, they formed an umbrella movement demanding the enactment of the Lokpal legislation which would in turn install an ombudsman invested with sufficient powers to investigate and prosecute all three pillars of the world’s largest electoral democracy – the elected parliamentarians, the executive bureaucracy and the judiciary for charges of corruption.

For a whole knotty swad of reasons – ranging from overreach to lack of cohesive action on to major gaffes by its leaders – the movement failed to pressurise the Indian parliament to legislate the Lokpal. But the apparent failure of the movement notwithstanding, the current ‘middleclass’ of India has undoubtedly made its presence strongly felt on the stage of Indian politics. Moving beyond its rhetoric of apolitical neutrality, it is now testing the electoral waters. Whether through electoral ‘revenge’ on Congress in the Hissar polls (where Team Anna actively campaigned against its first political foe ensuring its defeat) or the plans in Goa, Team Anna, the figurehead of the middleclass movement, is making its political ambitions clear. Also what’s becoming clearer every day is that, politically and elsewhere, the middleclass is demanding its pound of flesh.

To the Critics of the Middle-class

(http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5772&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=1&valid=true)

Its amorphousness notwithstanding, the eponymous “middle-class” of India has most certainly asserted itself in the final frontier of India’s politics – elections. First in the form of influencing elections (Hissar bypoll) and now in the form of citizens’ fronts in the Pune municipal elections, it is well on the path of moving from being an indirect opinion-maker to being a direct player in the political arena. Little wonder that it must now also face the troubles that come with being a political player.

Rejoinder to Criticism of EPW Edit

I read the EPW edit only after Subhanil Chowdhury linked to his letter about it on Facebook (http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16951.pdf). Its a very good & succinct letter and I intend to add nothing to his note. These are my own independent views and have been going through my mind for some time. Subhanil’s reply was a cue for me to jot them down.

Warmth of a Winter Sunday

A very big and thick branch of the Mimosa had dried in the summer gone by. During the monsoons it rotted and white patches of fungus sprung up at many spots. The Mimosa stands right beside the road spreading its huge arms and wide umbrella of leaves and flowers that spreads out over the road.

The dead branch had been hanging precariously for a really long time over the heads of handcart wheeling hawkers, children who come to play in the park beyond the mimosa, couples old and young who stroll around leisurely, the dogs and cats of the area who play, fight and sleep below it, the cobbler who sits below it every day from a fresh eight in the morning to a hooch drunk eight in the evening and a host of other passers by. Someone amongst the residents is said to have approached and requested the local civic authorities to cut the branch down. But despite them having the most expensive truck mounted tree cutters they did not come. They were busy. They always are – with some work which is inevitably more important than what you take to them.

Of Bats and Crackers

The place where I live, there’s a mango and a jamun tree that have grown intertwined. They grew at the same spot and now as tall matured trees, have their thick woody trunks snaking around each other like a plait until they rise up to a height of about three metres and then freeing themselves of the other’s embrace, spread their respective foliage plumes out, competing for the patch of open sky. Earlier a very big fig tree in our neighbours’ yard ate up nearly the entire sky and the mango and jamun trees meekly surrendered to its might. The fig tree was cut down to less than a fourth of its height a few years back and as a quaint hobby I still spend time looking at the present tree and try to recall what it had once looked like.

মদ খান

মদ খান- দেশী খান
অল্প না, বেশি খান।

দাম উঠে আকাশেতে কিছু নেই নাগালে,
তবে বকবক ফাউ দেয় মিডিয়ার পাগলে।
ভাঁড়ারেতে নেই তেল, নেই ডাল, নেই ধান,
ডোন্ট ওয়ারী মেরি জান, মদ খান দেশী খান।
আলবাত! অল্প না – যথেষ্ট বেশি খান।

ইস্কুলে কলেজেতে মার মার কাট কাট!
শিক্ষক মেরে বাড়ে মন্ত্রীর ঠাঁট-বাট।
ডাক্তার পন্ডিত কারো নেই কোনো মান,
তবু বাজে কবিগুরু সিগনালে শোন গান।
ছেড়ে দিন সংস্কৃতি ওটা শুধু ওনাদের,
বাপ-ধন কয় যারে ভাষাতে এই আমাদের।
তাই বলি ভুলে মান – মদ খান দেশী খান,
অল্পেতে কুলাবে না বেশি বেশি করে খান।

চারিদিকে খুনোখুনি, প্রশাসন প্রহসন,
কে যে কি করে যাবে ঠিক নেই আর এখন।
বোম ছুরি নলচে এইসব জল ভাত,
গুন্ডা কার কন্ট্রোলে মনে আছে সেই বাত?
রং ছেড়ে মা বোনেরা কেন সবে সাদা থান
সেই দুখ ভুলতে মদ খান দেশী খান।
ব্যথাতে অনেক লাগে তাই বেশি করে খান!

মদেতে মাতাল হয়ে দেখবেন মজাটা,
সুইত্জারল্যান্ড বাহামা সব নাচবে তাধীধীতা!
ছেড়ে দিয়ে কাজ কাম হবে শুধু মস্তি,
পাগলুর নাচ হবে ডনের হবে কুস্তি।
গরিব বা উলঙ্গ, কিবা হোক না নিরন্ন?
জানেন তো মাতালের করে নাকো প্রশ্ন?
আর যদি মদ খেয়ে কোনক্রমে মারা যান,
তাহলে তো কথা নেই টাকা পাবে লাখ খান!
তাই বলি সব ছেড়ে বসে শুধু মদ খান
আরে অল্প তে হবে না যে! আরো বেশি বেশি খান!

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