UCLA Shooter Mainak Sarkar

Posted on June 21, 2016 by secondsaturn

I remember this incident distinctly. A nephew was once, some four decades ago, being presented with the smallest bar of Cadbury Milk Chocolate and the presenter of the gift insisted that my nephew and he alone will have the chocolate to eat it all by himself. The presenter underscored her generosity by emphasizing that my nephew should not share it with anyone and then casting a glance around the room as if waiting for aghast faces at her exclusion for the rest of us, sank down the divan with a definite smirk. This is the ideal upon which boys in Bengali middle classes are usually brought up. In my family the rules are different. Even the smallest portions must be shared for among us and I say unabashedly, the better off families who have traditionally been materially and eventually culturally more prosperous than most, social relations and family ties have been considered to be stronger than consumerist individualism. But alas for the lower middle class, consumerism has been a way of challenging the supremacy of an entrenched social intelligentsia and while our cultures are more difficult to be emulated, levels of what we consume are far easier to attain. So the underclass of the intelligentsia, or the aspiring middle class have resorted to the maximization of consumption as a means of levelling out. In India, this, I feel is the crux of the story.

Right wing or left wing politics of cadres, the Partition, ethnic or nativist politics have more or less always emanated out of the class conflict between who is the acknowledged middle class and who aspires to be one and the level of consumption has often been made to the measure. The argument I pose here is not new for Prof M.N.Srinivasan spoke of this very early in his idea of Sanskritization which meant that when lower castes claimed the higher statuses of the upper castes, they often used the outwardly and apparent symbols like dress, sacred thread, hair styles, rituals and festivals to appear as though they were at par. Consumerism is not so much of digestion or even ingestion, as much as it is to be “seen” to consume by way of possession. This is why the lady who gave the smallest possible bar of chocolate to my nephew made such a fuss about his possessing the item rather than merely getting to eat it.

My point of this long introduction is to be able to understand the case of Mainak Sarkar. An IIT Kharagpur graduate, a Stanford post graduate and a doctorate from UCLA. At UCLA he was working on a complex coding project which monitors the functioning of the human heart. He was a much regarded scientist at the UCLA, a fondly remembered student for his brilliance in his school, St Michael’s in Durgapur and his academic career is all too sweet and hunky dory, a dream run for any student who moves from a satellite industrial town to the haloed portals of an Ivy League University. Yet he plans, as the grand finale of his life, not the Nobel Prize but a killing. He purchases two licensed pistols and kills his ex-wife and then his boss, Prof Klug. He wanted to kill Prof Garfinkel as well but unfortunately the last mentioned escaped the execution. Why did Mainak sentence the three to die to his bullets?

Prof Garfinkel says that Mainak wanted the output of his research as his own property but this was not possible because the UCLA had funded the research and the research rightfully should have belonged to the UCLA and not to Mainak. While Garfinkel was talking of money, Mainak was talking of authorship. Institutions repress individuals and often subsumes the most brilliant work under its label. What is even more annoying is that a brilliant worker is loaded with seven or eight non- performers as a “team” so that they can piggyback ride into fame. This happens all the time with research institutions where brilliant performers are rendered invisible and silent and are routinely absorbed and camouflaged under a team. What can be even more annoying is that mediocre bosses claim fame by plagiarism when their incumbency in the hierarchy allows them to access intellectual property of any member of the team. Team work is often subservience to ruthless intellectual exploitation of the brilliant by the mediocre. To my mind, both Prof Klug and Prog Garfinkel were using Mainak Sarkar to do the coding while appropriating his research and sharing the credit with the team at large, the team mostly consisting of their cohorts. Would it ever have mattered to put the name of Mainak Sarkar as the lead researcher, or as the team leader or as the principle scientist? But, the idea was not to give credit, the idea was to appropriate the intellectual property, to steal by stealth of the institutional set up and organizational structure and then embalm it through the plethora of rules and conventions of the IPRA which talks only of money and not of credit. American Universities are ruthless in this business. And don’t I know?

Universities and research institutes could be elaborate set ups for the systematic exploitation of the intellect in which gender, race and even social class is systematically oppressed and misappropriated. Most Indians seem to suffer all of this in silence with old parents to send money home, with wife and children to maintain lifestyles with and to compete with dollars against successful cousins earning lakhs of rupees back in India.

But Mainak was brought up in the same way that the elderly lady imagined by nephew to be, everything was to be selfishly guarded for sole consumption of the boy. It is easy to imagine that every resource in the home must have gone to the boy to hone his brilliance and feed fodder to his ambitions. He has been lauded and praised everywhere for himself alone, for what he has done for himself and to himself. His marks, his credits, his accolades were all his, and like the bar of chocolate only for his possession and consumption and so he, with his achievements and accolades was supposed to live for himself alone rarely ever sharing anything of his with anyone else. No wonder then his marriage was such a sham because he was simply not in the habit of sharing; let alone his possessions but may be his own self as well, his joys, his sorrows, his emotions, his successes everything belonged to him and him only.

Mainak and America thus clashed over what was similar to both, common to both, the desire to appropriate everything for the self alone. Against America, Mainak had no chance whatsoever; the rules, the structure, the system, the establishment and the power elite a la C Wright Mills made it certain that a mind notwithstanding how brilliant it was had to be dispossessed from its real owner and pinned on to America. There were team mates who sponged off his mind, there were professors to appropriate his credits, and then there was the entire excuse of the funder to relegate him to anonymity. Raised a Bengali in an industrial city amidst a regime of gritty worker bargain against mill owners and capitalists demanding their pound of flesh, and as a selfish boy who believes that the world must channelize every resource towards him the American University emerged as the very anti thesis of all that Mainak Sarkar was raised upon and oriented towards.

The murder of Ms Ashley Hastis is even more so symbolic for she was his American dream, she was his stepping stone to America. I think she noticed it and may have objected to her being used for his ambitions. But for him, he was used to always having his way, he was the cynosure of every eye in his milieu and imagined that America, its girls and its teachers, the peers in there would bow down to him just as everybody in Durgapur and Kharagpur had done unto him. This was a battle of egos, between Mainak and America and as is usually always the case manifested over the body of a woman, the ex-wife Ms Ashley.

 

The shootout at UCLA is thus the tragedy of a new form of decolonization; this is about the tragedy of the immigrant, whether their babies are washed dead ashore, or their men are shot at, or as scholars and intellectuals, professionals and entrepreneurs they are subject to the worst forms of exploitations as any riff raff in their home countries would be subjected to. In the land of the masters, these immigrants pretend to live fine, gulping down in secrecy their tears and swallowing humiliations and insults and turning out the oppressions upon them as vicious oppressions on their own ilk back in their native lands. Nonresidents are the most valiant supporters of right wing politics, of hegemony, distrustful of popular movements back home and spare no effort to construe those who stay back as losers. Mainak’s story is the secret out, the faux pas of what everyone wants to conceal under the bright smiles of Face Book selfies and photos of achievements.

 

 

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Shammi Kapoor by Rauf Ahmed

Posted on May 10, 2016 by secondsaturn

I knew of Rauf Ahmed as Amitabh Bachchan’s biographer. He used to write about Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970’s when he was just rising as a star and in those days, Rauf analyzed both the persona and the phenomenon of this emergent superstar insightfully. He has been, in my opinion a raving analyzer of living stars. Now Rauf is compiling his stories on stars who are dead, and among them are Shammi Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna. I wanted to meet Rauf in connection to my work on Amitabh Bachchan but I could never connect with him. It was thus sheer serendipity when Rauf contacted me in connection with his work on Rajesh Khanna. Presently I am reading Shammi Kapoor by Rauf Ahmed. Published by Om Books earlier this year, Rauf’s exposition of Shammi Kapoor’s person and persona reveals the processes through which stars in India are made. The book becomes an insight into the entire phenomenon of stardom in Bollywood.

Shammi is divided between a life as a scientist and that of a film star; the former is his passion, the latter his family business. In the former he is not encouraged neither by his teachers nor by his family. His life in the films seem to be made out for him by his father and Shammi is supposed to play a second fiddle to Raj Kapoor, the brother who was none years older to him. Shammi is ambivalent towards Raj Kapoor, while admiring him Shammi was also eager to step out of his shadow. Utterly dominated by his sister, Urmila and thoroughly bowled over by Madhubala who seemed to have enjoyed devastating Shammi, he tried using his masculinity to gain control of his life. Shammi’s masculinity was thus a reaction to his sense of inferiority and helplessness in the face of strong women.

It appears that it was Geeta Bali who very carefully crafted the image of Shammi Kapoor. It was Geeta Bali’s genius which actually created the idea of a star, a standalone personality around who played himself in the film. Before Shammi, the idea of a man playing himself over and over again with a set of mannerisms, a specific style and attitude quite never became the meat of stories of the Hindi popular cinema. Uttam Kumar in the Bengali cinema was a star but the Hindi film world had excellent and glorified actors who played characters. Raj Kapoor stood for ideals and ideology, Dilip Kumar stood for a certain depth of emotions, Dev Anand, for elaan but Shammi stood for himself. This is where Shammi becomes the game changer.

But Shammi had a tough time establishing his image; he had the trinity, namely Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar to deal with but on the other hand, the Hindi film industry was dominated by two formidable women, namely Nutan and Madhubala. Nargis was more or less permanently paired with Raj Kapoor but film scripts used to be written for Nutan and Madhubala and Shammi often filled in for the male supporting role. As long as Shammi would pair with Nutan or Madhubala, he had absolutely no screen space to eke out for himself. Therefore, he needed new faces inexperienced in cinema and made way for a slew of newcomers like Asha Parekh, Sharmila Tagore, Sadhna and others. In roles that were now written out for Shammi, masculinity it was and Shammi Kapoor turned the tables of Bollywood from being women centric into being a male gaze upon the world.

With the invention of Shammi Kapoor’s boisterous and brattish image, the Hindi film music got a fillip. Music director O P Nayyar, singers like Mohammad Rafi and Manna Dey emerged matching up music to Shammi’s level of energy. Nasir Hussain and Subodh Mukherji wrote mainly for Shammi; their stories were such that they put the star’s persona into a profile. It is interesting that Shammi developed an entirely new set of people who he would work with, a very different group than those who would have worked with his father and older brother, Raj Kapoor.

Shammi was not a stable person; he had anxieties of being acceptable to women and the Casanova image he developed was perhaps to cover up for his innate feeling of inadequacy as a man. Raj Kapoor had a huge weakness for women and while girls would queue up romantically for Raj Kapoor they often tied rakhis for Shammi while he was still an adolescent. The tragedy of losing Geeta Bali to small pox perhaps unsettled him further and only after his marriage to Neila Devi, did Shammi find some solace and stability.

Shammi appears to have been born with a huge sense of entitlement; he had friends among the royal family of Jodhpur but his own attitude was no less worthy of a royal lineage. He felt that the world owed him a good life and insisted that he got the best of everything – a marked difference with Raj Kapoor who knew that he had to work hard for a passion. Shammi works in cinema as a star but neither as a director or producer and hence his passion for cinema remains confined to the professionalism and the involvement of a star. Even when he produced a film here or there, Shammi could not evolve the attachment to the entire medium in the manner of Raj Kapoor.

 

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Manipur – The Heart Chakra of India

Posted on April 13, 2016 by secondsaturn

This time I make an exception to my preference and which is that instead of the aisle seat I opt for the window seat on the plane. Yes I am flying from Kolkata to Imphal to attend an industrial meet and conference organized by the Manipur Government for the entire North east India. I always choose the aisle seat on the plane because of my obsessive fear of having to go to the washroom and not wanting to create a chaos by asking the passengers on the two seats in between the freeway and my seat to rise and make way for me. But this time, the flight was a short one and I was going to Imphal for the first time in my life and in order to be able to get a perspective of the city, I needed to literally have a top down view of things. I wanted to have a glimpse of the city from air so that I got a better perspective of things on the ground.

There was a thin cloud almost a mist shrouding the ground of Manipur as the plane started its descent. The green carpet of vegetation I saw on the ground below was sparser than the cover that greets me over Kolkata and even though Manipur is supposed to be home to thick jungles it is barer than Bengal. The river Imphal flowed down below like a large fat python snaking its way through the valley. The Ganga seemed now to me like a thin ribbon compared to the girth of Imphal river; the river seemed to be the true sister of the Brahmaputra. It is said that the Brahmaputra is the only male river of India, the rest are all females. Imphal was the amazon among women; powerful, corporeal, assertive and imposing.

From the clouds, Imphal seemed to me to be a strange city and unlike any other I have seen so far. The city is merely a space that hosts together many settlements, visible in the form of numerous dots from the sky. The dots seemed to be self-contained settlements and quite unconnected with one another. On the ground when I eventually drove through the city these dots were revealed to be small villages that survive around common facilities like the Kandla Fort, the Governor’s House, the City Centre and the office spaces. The cab driver who came from the hotel to pick me up was pointing in various directions at what he said was Irom Chamu Sharmila’s village, Mary Kom’s village, Jayluxmi’s village, all women, all famous in the world, placed there right at the international theatre as India’s pride by Manipur.

The cab driver was a proud Manipuri; he enumerated the various skills of Manipur, martial arts, wrestling, dance, music, poetry, cinema, sports, presence in the army, host to Subhash Chandra Bose, textile and silk weavers, Vaishnavs, brave and a society of women power. I quipped in that in the Mahabharata, Arjun came to Manipur in search of arms and eventually married the princess Chitrangada, who was raised as a boy by her father. The driver said that all Manipuri girls are raised as families would raise their boys elsewhere in India, the vast territory of mainland India being the “world outside.” No state of India, he said hosted the World War II apart from Manipur.

Getting a hang of the lay out of the city of Imphal I was slowly getting an idea that Manipur loves to host the major dramas of the world. During the turn of the millennium when the Buddhist Empire of the Mauryas was dissipated and the Hindu kings emerged under the banner of the early Guptas, Manipur kings granted asylum to the Buddhists, created libraries for their texts. When Vaishnavs were being harassed in Bengal, Manipur granted space to the Vaishnavs and the presence of the huge community called Vishnupuriyas are Bengali speaking people from Vishnupur of Bankura. Bankura is home to silk and Vaishnavism and so is Manipur and the overflow of Bankura into Manipur show that they together formed a pathway leading upto the Silk Road.

I visit the Kangla Fort; laid out in the middle of a moat of water that surrounds it, the fort is not really a concrete structure. It does have a much later addition in stone of a stupa like temple for Govinda, a name by which Krishna is usually known in the southern part of India. A brand new structure by ISCON has come up in the fort area but otherwise the fort is not a set of buildings cordoned off by high walls. The fort is an open area of grounds and groves, signifying sacred spaces of worship. The Kangla Fort is the crux of Manipur, every community, every tribe is represented here for every kind of worship is respected in this space. The Kangla Fort signifies what Manipur aspires to be; its historical aspiration is to be at the centre of the world. There is an enclosed space for the execution of enemies and of captured soldiers in war. It seems that their heads were severed off and the practice continued far into the British era, just before the Anglo Manipur war, after which the British captured and subjugated the kingdom.

Unlike the rest of India, Manipur has been ruled by a single dynasty ever since 33 AD till 1955 when the last of the kings Raja Bodhchandra died in 1955. Every Manipuri is a king at heart; a ruler unto herself and this shows in their body language, confident talk, comely manners and hospitable mood. The Meiti dynasty appears to have ruled the kingdom in an unbroken lineage. I am not too inclined to believe this; it is possible that whosoever ruled Manipur must have done so in the name of the Meitis. Meiti signifies not merely a dynasty, but the whole of Manipur for its script is called Meiti as well. Literally translated, Meiti means, Maati or the earth. Unlike the Nagas, who are inwardly nomadic, people who love to move over large territories, their mascot being the hornbill, a bird that marks a large swathe of land between Mongolia and Thailand, the Manipuri people are tied to their patches of land which they tend over generations and eras. Manipuri tribes are agrarian and settled; and because they do not fight for or fight over territory unlike the Nagas, they are calmer and confident than the Nagas. The Nagas are more aggressive and warrior like and while Manipur is also a set of martial people, such people appear to have pursued warfare as aesthetics of the spectacle rather than an exercise in subjugation and subversion. This makes the Manipuri a confident people, autonomous and self-contained and self-contended.

Being essentially Vaishnavs, the Manipuris are careless about ostentation. Tomba, my driver is slightly embarrassed at the shabbiness of the town’s buildings and he says that people choose to look poor because of the fear of the extortionists, who are also the insurgents. Think that like the Bengalis, the people of Manipur feel guilty of being rich. Culture seems to be the antonym of material prosperity and like the Bengali middle class, the people of Manipur love to live simply. We had food at a Manipuri family home, bare and minimum but the dining area accommodated people who would just drop in for lunch. The Ima, or the mother, was apologetic for she was over with fish, but we could catch some daal and a mixed vegetable, a Manipuri speciality cooked especially for festivals. Unlike their dance and martial arts, or weaving and thoughts, food in Manipur was rude and crude. The difficulty of accessing salt and oil appear to underlie the cuisine of the North east. But unlike the Nagas, who cook well and eat heartily, Manipur appeared to be rather indifferent to food and living. All their attention seemed to focus on the personhood, elevating the personality into a position of high culture with everything else as inconsequential.

Tomba, my driver repeats that Imphal is a Valley, a receiver of all that comes down the mountains, a cauldron of influences, and a unity in diversity. He is my guide and chaperone as well. He is concerned about my food, my safety, and my needs as a tourist as much as the deadlines of the conference sessions. I am in an out of the conference and into the city. Everywhere there are huge bill boards advertising classes for dance and sports; these are the two most important cultural skills one must master. Apart from this, weaving and farming appear to be excellent. In the age of the epics, Arjuna came to Manipur in search of weapons and so metallurgy seems to be of enormous importance. In the aftermath of the World War II, Manipur was left with a substantial quantity of metal scrap. During this time, import of metal scrap was banned and Manipur had a good stock of this material. In those days, small furnaces and foundries produced pig iron using this scrap. The scrap was over and so were the castings and today there are no steel facilities worth the name left in the state. The anti-insurgency drive by the Central Government has cleared Manipur of both its forests as well as of its metal industry especially the castings. Today, the state gets all its supplies through Nagaland and the latter imposes huge octroi tax on the products making things costly in Manipur. The train may make things better for the state especially the supplies of steel.

One has to be in Imphal to see the intensity of consumption of steel. Galvanized sheets have wholly replaced the straw thatch or the clay shingle. Much like in Kyrgyzstan, homes in Manipur are arranged as if in a wall. The front of the homes are covered with a raised boundary wall of thick steel sheet with an entrance door punched into it. One cannot have a glimpse of homes from the road; instead one has to enter literally through a slit in the wall into the domestic spaces.

I attend the conference session on skills and everyone is talking of teaching skills like massage, beauty industry, hotel business, drivers, security guards and electricians and plumbers to the young people of Manipur. These are the very youth who enculture themselves into one of the world’s finest forms of dance and arts, of weaving and castings, of making stuff and to imagine a future for such youth of such a high culture country as only the servants of the urban rich in the newly emerging cities of Delhi or Bangalore was a shame. I wanted to shout down every speaker on the diaz.

In the exhibition there were two classes of stalls; one set which spoke of Manipur’s self-respect in terms of developing their local crafts and local knowledge of medicinal plants and spices and condiments while the other set that only tried to capture the Manipuri youth as recruits into the menial service classes subjugated to the city. Skills must help people develop their self-respect, autonomy of the spirit and elevate their minds and souls; no wonder then the skills mission fails so badly for these create servants out of people. The upper middle class with their fancy degrees become servants of a higher order, the economically less endowed are relegated as low paid heavily worked menials. India’s education is a drive towards servitude, one wonders then why did we at all fight for our Freedom?

The session on logistics was rather weak and most spoke of the railways and a few spoke of the road. It seemed to me that Manipur was divided into two segments, one happy with the road while the others looking forward to the railways. The railways is the right wing nationalist project which seeks the integration of Manipur into the Indian republic as an unpeopled territory without any regard for the high culture, the unbroken history and the uninterrupted civilization of the land. Those who seek the road know that Manipur’s survival will once more be like the centre through which goods would move freely between Bangladesh and Burma into India. The railways would make the state a receiver of goods and a taker of human beings nearly as slaves to the rest of India.

Some bureaucrats in the convention speak of Make in Manipur with hideous propositions such as juice making factories in the state. Manipur people, and for that matter across the north east of India, fruits are preferred to over juice and the crux of the industry of food processing is to be able to keep the fruit as it is, and not pound and grind to extract juice. Everyone in the city praises the purity of its air and I suspected that the government of Manipur cleverly discourages the setting up of businesses that drain its natural resources or pollute its air. Barkat, the bell captain of my hotel says to me that Imphal is the best place in the world. Why does he think so, I ask him to which he says that this is a city which has not the heat of summer nor the chill of winter, neither the ravage of the floods nor the ruin of the earthquake, no raze of the cyclone, and not the wreck of the tsunami. The sun during the day does not scorch, the rain does not hurt, no hailstone hurtles down with angry storms, Imphal is synonymous of calmness, and mildness says Barkat. This equanimity of the climate is taken as a legitimizing force as to why Manipur should be right at the centre of the Universe. Of course back in the hotel I used a shampoo and a moisturizer, both smooth and of very fine quality. Barkat told me that those were produced locally. I laughed at the naivity of the skills mission which was trying to make a plumber out of entrepreneurs who could make cosmetics finer that those of the multinational companies.

The idea that everyone must develop in the same way, irrespective of whether every community wants to develop in a singular manner or not and that development must mean some physical infrastructure, some fast cars and some cramped cities with coffee shops and shopping malls is a special gift of democracy and the idea of citizenship. Citizenship defines every human being in a homogenized relationship with the State and this reduces her to a sameness, desiring similar stuff, wanting the same things and imagining a sameness for the entire course of her life. Tomba suffers from this; though a Manipuri at heart he feels insecure if real estate does not crowd Imphal, he feels defeated if the city does not have traffic jam and these ideas of universality confuse and oppress his mind; whether to become an “Indian” or whether to continue to remain of proud Manipuri. Strangely, the two, never in confrontation earlier now appear to be a matter of choice, either this or that.

I used to think that Manipur meant the land of the gems, but now I realize that it is named after the Manipura chakra, a Buddhist term which signifies the heart or the cardiac system of the body. Just as the heart beats to keep the whole body and its individual parts alive, Manipur prides itself in balancing, harmonizing, hosting and holding together the various kinds of humanity. When it stepped in to host the Buddhists, it imagined itself as being a preserve of a threatened social order. When it hosted Vaishnavism, Manipur thought that this egalitarian system of beliefs must be protected and when Manipur hosted the Indian National Army of Subhash Chandra Bose, it acknowledged the immense role of the hero in the Indian Freedom Struggle. Manipur was an independent kingdom, it need not have risen to any of the above for none of these namely the threat to Buddhism, the persecution of the Vaishnavism and the march of the INA ever really concerned the Manipuris. Yet Manipur has risen to issues even when they have not directly concerned it. This places Manipur far ahead of any other as a civilization, it truly considers itself as having a role much beyond its everyday mundanity.

The atmosphere in the city remains, like Manipur itself obscure while hosting you with kindness. I sensed that the weather in the city almost gave me a bodilessness; there was nothing bothering the body, nothing making you aware of your existence as a human being vulnerable to the heat or the sunlight. I matched this up with the fact that I hardly see a temple or a mosque, or even a Gurudwara in the city. There are some common place buildings and invisible because they are commonplace that belong to the Presbyterian Church or to Christian libraries. Otherwise, the concrete structures are barely visible. The Manipuris are indifferent to things and stuff; there were the usual chemist shops, barbers shops, stationery goods, shops for shoes and umbrellas and motor parts and of course steel retail spaces. But the people of Imphal did not appear to be consumerists, the CCDs and the Baristas being absent in the city. The indifference to stuff also makes their living a bit careless and untidy. The population is relatively sparse, unlike in the Indian cities, people do not spill out in the streets in steady streams. This speaks volumes of the Manipuri culture, they have been able to control their population well within limits. This also speaks of the unity and integrity of the Manipuri culture, a culture that has been protected because of the strange absence of immigration into the state despite a highly cosmpoliton population.

Women are powerful in the city; they are everywhere, bold, assertive, confident and free. I wondered that despite its shabbiness and the absence of restaurants and coffee shops and the lack of “development” why Imphal looked so sophisticated to me; I realized that this was because so many women were out on the streets. Women dominate the society; there are memorials of women freedom fighters, more of girls gang who fought the British, Ima Keithel, market places run totally by women though most shops are run by women. Women cycled, women sat around, lazed on the steps of shops, cooked food, tended to children, minded the traffic as police, and were everywhere in offices. Most women and even the young girls dress in their traditional attire and this says a lot about the inner peace and confidence of the Manipuri culture.

I am in Imphal on the day of the Cheirub, the New Year. People are busy celebrating the New Year by cooking vegetables and fish and exchanging cooked meals as gifts. They have laid out a bowl of rice with the various items around it on a banana leaf and offered this to the Gods. These banana leaves are laid out on the pavement in the open air; Manipuris have thousand deities but all are invisible forces of nature, God here is everywhere immersed in the elements of Nature and does not live inside enclosed structures. Manipur is a centre, and like the centre, it is invisible and without any dimension of its own.

Tomba tells me that on the night of the Cheiraub, there is the Thabal Chungwa, where boys and girls dance as in a school prom. This is a dating festival; boys and girls get to know each other and many develop love affairs after the dance. Chungwa means dance; not just any dance but a special form of dance consisting of jumping steps. Thabal means light, of moonshine, or moonlight. Thabal Chungwa is dancing in the moonlight. I wondered whether this was the reason why the Raas of the Vaishnavs became so popular in this land. Manipur is fond of romance, Khamba Thoiti, the Romeo and Juliet for the locals epitomize unfulfilled love and it is said that their spirit moves around seeking love. The young boys and girls on the night of the Thabal Chungwa are supposed to rise to the spirit of romance and fulfill the incompleteness of the dead lovers.

I sneak out from the conference disgusted at the idea of development, the idea of progress and of course at the idea of India that all the speakers seemed to propagate for what Manipur needed was autonomy actually. Tomba drives me to Moirang to visit the museum of the Azad Hind Fauj. I don’t know but Subhas Bose makes me proud all the time; I see his journey around the world to reach Manipur, I see the notes he prints in denominations of Rs 1000 and Rs 10,000 !! I see him attending the Asia Conference, I see him with the heads of state, I see him inspecting the guards and I wonder at his sense of confidence and sense of entitlement. He, in his mind has already declared himself as the emperor of India. Manipuris love him, and I fancied that they love him for having chosen Manipur as the final destination of waging war, of having considered himself as the Lord of India, for every Manipuri at heart is Subhas precisely for these reasons.

At the Loktak Lake I see the devastation that the Indian Republic has done unto the environment of which Manipur is so proud and possessive. Indeed the Assam Rifles, against which Irom Sharmila fasts until this day, have demolished and devastated the precious flora of the land. Along with the razing down of forests, the army has endangered the famous Golden Deer of the forests. The Golden Deer lives in the island forests of the Lok Tak Lake, they do not seem to inhabit the mainland but breed in the islands surrounded by water. The species instinctively can control its population because otherwise it will not be able to accommodate the clan within the limited geography. Like the Manipuris, the Golden Deer shares its restraint on reproduction of the species.

There is something about the air in Imphal and I try to sense it; I think that it is the people in that city. They have no stranger anxiety; they seem to be genuinely concerned with your wellbeing. A young girl just learning to ride the bicycle tumbles and falls down on me in Kangla Fort, she gets up and hugs me, caresses my hurt hand. Tomba accompanies me into the war memorial saying that the place may have drug peddlers. Barkat keeps my room ready with the air conditioner and the geyser, I need neither though. When there is a goof up with my dinner order, they immediately give me a glass of Fruit Punch on the house. They appreciate care, they can care. This is Manipur.

India’s challenge is to protect this diversity of the sub-continent, to hone the inner pride of its people, to respect and regard the cultural magnificence of each society, to design a future according to each society’s historical aspirations and to provide opportunities for all to contribute rather than to consume. A nationwide culture of consumerism is antithetical to the Indian ethos; if pursued with any greater intensity, it portends to end this 4000 yearlong civilization in no time.

 

 

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The Banishment of Spring

Posted on March 25, 2016 by secondsaturn

I heard of a poem which began like Phul Phutuk Na Phutuk Aaaj Bosonto from my classmate Madhubani Ghosh of UG I in Jadavpur University. Madhubani was discussing this poem written by Subhas Mukhopadhyay with another classmate of ours, who, I forget now. Intrigued and charged up romantically with the first few lines I searched for the poem far and wide. Since ours was not the age of the Internet with no poem hunter in sight, I had to generally ask around and look for the collection of poetry by the author. I did get a chance to hear the full version when a boy, or was it Tridibda who recited the poem for our Sanskriti. The lines sounded very familiar because I used to listen to Hindi poetry in the Vividh Bharati and though I forget the poet, I remember the lines which went like .. ek ladki, kaali kuti, aankh bhi phuti who bhi mast hai holi me. Subhasbabu’s poetry went on to laud the spring which in a city like Kolkata, defeated and demoralized nevertheless has a plant shooting out through the crevices of moss ridden broken walls and looks at the dark girl who, like many in her ilk can never hope to be married off. I thought that both the poem by Subhas Mukhopadhyay and its Hindi inspiration were anti-feminist and cruel.

I used to love spring; once. Then was a time when I was still to develop my breasts. I was a child and under pressure of my grandparents to always be well covered against any possible threat of “chill”. I was not allowed to sneeze even once for a freak sneeze could cost me my ice cream and more cardigans would be heaped upon me to the point of making my movements difficult. I would often fall down while jumping about unable to bend my knee covered with inners and clad in cotswool trousers and heavy shoes with thick socks. Windows of our home used to be shut tight and though these used to be glass panes, the fact that they shut out the air from the world outside suffocated me. Then came the spring and with “Dol” the windows would be wide open, fans would swirl again, and I would be relieved of my heavy gear. I would run free and then rush to the bathroom to relish the fact that the coconut oil in the transparent glass bottle had turned into a clear liquid again. Throughout the dusky and smoggy days of winter I would peep to see whether the white gelly of the coconut oil had melted or not and then when the oil would start to liquefy, it would be the breakout season for me.

Dol was fun for me as a child; in my infancy I played with my ten cousins at my mother’s place in New Alipore and the earliest memories of spring was about the fragrant colours, Dida’s sweet lassi, some luchi and aloor dom, or was it the plain torkaari with pnaach phoron? I forget now. But in my pre pubertal child hood, Dol shifted to Dover Lane where I had a blast with my paara friends, Chhoto Mithu and Rinkudi. We were a gang of girls and too young for boys to be interested in us, our Dol was a lot of shouting, lot of running, and lots of colours. But as I started growing up and Chhoto Mithu left Dover Lane, my Dol was over. I was afraid of my body, aware of its vulnerability, I bade good bye to spring and its colour festival.

In spring I still loved the breeze that would blow from the south, loved the way the windows were thrown open, the way the home was spring cleaned and fumigated. I loved the music played to celebrate spring over Vividh Bharati and learnt of the various ragas of the springtime. Spring was the best weather to focus on my studies, catch up with my revision and fortunately for me the half yearly examinations were just at the start of summer. I always did better in my half yearly than in my annuals because in the latter the windows would close and the smog would descend throwing a pall over the mood of the sunlight making the weather and my mind heavier. In spring I would have to give up my clothes cover and once again my body I sensed was open to be gazed at; spring would see me bend again in the chest, walk with a stoop despite admonitions to hold my posture straight. In winter I of course got back my heroic gait.

Now that I am in my middle age and live in Delhi, I hate spring. For spring is when the water crisis begins, spring is when the virulent dust storms blow covering your furniture and books with grit and soil. Spring is the prelude to long hours of power cuts, to the rush to get the chik fixed, air conditions serviced. It is the time of vicious mosquitoes leaving homes smelling of the putrid repellants. Besides I have no one to play Holi with. Holi is played not to eliminate social differences but to strengthen bonds of communities. It is not caste that Holi overcomes, it is the tribe that it bonds with. Holi is dangerous too for molesters and rioters are wholly advantaged in Holi.

Unlike in Kolkata Delhi knows no spring. In a land of evergreen flora, spring is the fall in this country. The new leaves, the green stems, the germination of new shoots is typically deciduous and hence Bengal. There is a dry season in Bengal when the fields and grounds look bare and in spring there is breakout of new life. Delhi is evergreen, it only knows of dry leaves, the burnt smell when these are burnt in the open. Spring in Delhi is the month of the income tax, of the budget which never seems to help me. Spring in Delhi is the season of despair, of gloom and pessimism of the impending scorching summer.

I still love some things of spring in Kolkata though; the sale of Chaitra for some reason excites me and the bright yellow of the costumes of the “sanyasis” who beg for alms with the sing song hoarse choroker seba laagi …mahade….b. don’t know why this festival endears me so much but for me these two are spring. When I return to Kolkata, I wont return to Dol I know but definitely to the excitement of life that late spring, or the Chaitra brings with it. After that I will wait for the kaal boishaki with its hail stones, I will wait for 25 shey Boishak, aamer tok, kolai daal, musuri daaler bora and paanta bhaath. Must get my father to make that paanta bhaath again.

Spring cannot deprive me with its efflorescence because of the state of my maidenhood; I banish spring with all its flowers and germinating greens.

 

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In Adda With A RSS Scholar

Posted on February 22, 2016 by secondsaturn

Madhusree and I are part of a Bengali adda which takes place once a month on a Sunday. Like all Bengali addas, it is the adda which is important and while pretending to be only a group for pure conversation, these addas are actually pretty seriously academic. From Tagore to Sukumar Ray, Saradindu Bandopadhyay to Rituparna, folktales to epic, from poetry to poesy all are covered in its ambit. There is a lead speaker, a second speaker and then the floor is open to discussion. The length of the adda can be as long as three hours and never less than two hours. The hosts serve tea, biscuits and some snacks but never more than that. Bottled water, paper napkins and paper cups are kept on a table and the tea is in a flask with sugar cubes and milk saches on the side. One is expected to go and help oneself to the refreshments and otherwise it is all unwavering dedication and devotion to the topic discussed. For the past two sessions, the adda is discussing Ramayana, its many readings and what those readings mean really in terms of the sensibilities of their times, the politics of their authors, the values and morals which they wished to integrate into the Indian culture. The adda is open to all; but because of the level of seriousness of engagement, the entry barrier is somewhat high for the casual dilettante.

Last Sunday, it was my turn to do a comparative study of the Aranyakand of Valmiki, Krittibas and Tulsidas Ramayan; Aranyakand because it is the simplest and after Sundarkand, the shortest of the chapters. I thought that I had read the Ramayana but I had only read the renditions of authors who rewrote the epic in prose and this was the first time that I right into my deep middle age actually lifted up what were the original texts of the epic albeit with English translations, word for word.

In this adda, this time was a youngish, bright and energetic man who refused to give his credentials and only said that he read the adda’s magazine in a Bengali library in Delhi and decided to attend the adda on the Ramayana. He was massively read in Buddhist texts and helped establish my case very well that the Ramayana is a conflict of the morals of the householder and the conqueror. He had read many parallels between Buddhist stories and those in the Ramayana and this broadened my evidence base of my prime suspicion that the idea of Ram was drawn indeed from the emperor Ashoka, known mostly as the Devanam Piya Piyadassi. For it was in Ashoka that, much like in the case of Ram, a uniform set of all-encompassing dharma guided both the king and the householder, binding the people and the king, the conqueror and the vanquished alike was established. My thesis of the Ramayana being an attempt at synthesising the Vedic Aryans, the Buddhist and Jain philosophies and the local faith of the indigenous Indians would be fulfilled by a close reading of the Buddhist and Jain sources and here the RSS scholar appeared to be rather useful for me.

The scholar was very well read in Vaishnav texts as well and he knew the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas by heart. But there was one confusion which he asked me to resolve and which was that Tulsidas, it seems had a tutor, Madhusudan Saraswati who taught him Advaitabad. Interestingly, Saraswati was initially an anti-monist person who read the Advaita doctrines only to confront the philosophy but turned into a convert. Hence the Advaita philosophy which marks Ramcharitmanas. But there were three issues which he missed out totally and these are as follows.

  1. Madhusudan Saraswati was a Bengali and hence he was familiar with Krittibas Ojha’s Bengali Ramayana. The composition of Tulsidas was different from the Bengali version but he used the stories in the Krittibas’s version for his own compositions.
  2. Madhusudan’s opposition to advaita and then his eventual acceptance of monism is interesting. The dwaita was useful in Bengali nationalism, which was interestingly the flavour of the Krittibas Ramayana while the advaita was useful in the consolidation of a spiritual empire that would, in the realm of the Hindu world correspond with the attempts at Imperial Unity by Akbar. Tulsi’s work reflected the desire for an imperial unity.
  3. Tulsi’s work is almost a verbal and a poetic rendition of the series of the Ramayana paintings commissioned by Akbar and these paintings seem to have inspired establish the iconography of Ram and the other characters of the epic.

His face lighted up in excitement at getting the broad context of Ramcharitamanas. The scholar was elated on what constituted his very first experience of Valmiki in original and here Ram’s inherent racism, Sita’s pronouncement of being one with the environment as the dharma of the land, Lakshman’s praise of Sita’s devotion for Ram are issues which enervated and energised the scholar. The scholar was excited at the similarities between some Buddhist writings and Valmiki’s Ramayana. He also was immensely elated by learning of Akbar’s keen interest in Krishna and in the Ramayana. He had little idea that Dara Shukoh was a Sanskritist and that Poland, which had one of the earliest Indology centres keenly learnt much from the Rajputs. He also had no idea that Akbar made Janmasthami the official festival for India and that he used to dance as Radha in the celebrations. In fact, legend says that he was so fascinated by Anarkali that he let her take over his performance as Krishna’s paramour; a cue which Mughal e Azam wasted no time in lapping up. The scholar had no knowledge of the epic called Manas, which is famous all across central Asia and contains the stories of Ram and also of the Pandavs. In the geography of the Ramayana, he had little idea that central Asia was the barren land from which Rishyashringa came. But these new facets thrilled him.

The scholar was very well read in the Greek epics and while my position of India being the forerunner of the concept of the State and the King assured him, he was a tad bit disappointed when someone said that Valmiki was influenced by Homer. He quickly calculated the dates of Alexander’s invasion of India but I stopped him to say that India has absorbed far less from the conquerors and kings and much more from scholars and saints. As Tagore says in his four essay long volume on nationalism that India has little interest in kings and emperors, we are more interested in social matters; our gods and heroes, our men and women, characters of stories. This is why our Ram is sometimes a man, sometimes a hero and at other times God but never really in any seriousness a King. Tagore says that neither commerce nor polity has endeared the idea of nation in India; rather it is a set of comprehensive values and morals that has had the purpose of mitigating the differences among races in India. Aryans, Scythians, Huns, Mongols and the Turks had stormed down India or Arabs, Semitic races, Assyrians, Romans, Persians, Poles and Finns, Dutch and the Portuguese have traded with India making India’s cultural goal one of assimilation of beliefs, social structures, kinship rules, inheritance patterns, marriage rules and incest across the multiple races. I tend to view Valmiki’s Ramayana as a great invention of the idea of the family, of the public space, of dealing with issues of making friends and overcoming enemies. Ram is a social role, who extols the society’s construction of him which often stands in antagonism to his individual will. The conflict between the persona and the personality in which the former always win, is the pattern which the Ramayana invents as a unifier and homogeniser of a society across races.

The scholar’s mind opened up for I acknowledged the conflict among races, spoke in terms of races and the irreconcilable differences among them and spoke of how the Ramayana is an invention of the highest order, unparalleled in any civilization of the world in its imagination of the family as an institution and making that institution the very centre of our culture and social cohesion. If we are one civilization, then it is the way India imagines its family and its values; the values of India are the values of the family. The values of the individual are created in a way which upholds the social structure of this society born through a mingling of the races. The scholar had never looked at the Ramayana as a vehicle of social invention; the story of Ram as the hero seemed to recede back in importance compared to the sociology of Valmiki.

The development of the idea of individuals as social roles brought many scholars and adventurers to India and one among them was none other than Babur. Divested of his kingdom by a wicked step mother, Babur wanders in the wilderness; who does he imagine he is? Ofcourse, the exiled hero, Ram. Both Ramayana and the Mahabharata are contained in the epic of central asia, the Manas. No wonder then Babur descends to India, to Ayodhya and after conquering parts of the land, builds his mosque, the Babri Masjid at Ramjanmabhumi. I know that it is the Ramjanmabhumi, because Babur led me to it by building the mosque there for he is Ram himself. This is the power of the Ramayana, the social invention of a sane society, for it appeals to all. Babur had come in as Ram.

I know that the scholar will rethink his ideas and rework his notes which he sends to the BJP headquarters. I did not contest his knowledge; I only widened it by placing it in a context.

 

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Nehru’s Legacy Public vs Private Sector

Posted on January 20, 2016 by secondsaturn

http://www.tehelka.com/2015/12/the-great-invisible-hand/#.Vn6Y7mdrA50.facebook

 

 

 

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Nirmohi Akhra

Posted on December 17, 2015 by secondsaturn

Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla Virajaman: Susmita Dasgupta

October 5, 2010

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[In this guest post, Susmita Dasgupta throws light on some important aspects of the Ayodhya issue that have been misunderstood. First, she argues that there is an anomaly in treating the Nirmohi Akhara as a “Hindu” group, when in fact historically, akharas (aakhra in Bengali) were gymnasiums associated with sects that were usually opposed to organized and/or textual religions like Hinduism and Islam and claimed themselves to be non-Hindus. More importantly, she points out that the worship of the child-God – Ram Lalla, or Balkishan – was an important ingredient of defiance against organized religion. The Hindu appropriation of Ram Lalla, she argues, is therefore the greatest anomaly in the case, and this is the anomaly, she suggests, that historians should have focused on.]

Archaeologists are divided over the issue of whether a Ram Temple at all existed under the dome of the Babri Masjid and the Muslim theologicians are divided over whether the Babri is a legitimate mosque at all because in Islam if a mosque is built over a heathen’s structure of worship then it is not fit for prayers. Historians from JNU are almost universally concerned that whatever the archaeology is, the mosque should remain intact as a historical monument. The secularists are upset that the fictitious Ram Lalla be accepted as a party to a dispute and every structure of the Muslims could be pulled down on the flimsiest belief that the land archaeologically belonged to the Hindus. Such a judgment would then be a precedent in pulling down every mosque in the land and may even cast aspersions on the continued existence of the Taj Mahal and Red Fort !! I, too share similar concerns.

But historians of such caliber have failed to note the greatest anomaly of the case and which is the confounding of the Nirmohi Akhara as Hindu. The akhara is a gymnasium, a place where people are supposed to do their exercises, train in weights and various kinds of martial arts and athletics. Akharas were somewhat like the youth clubs and became as central to various mystic cults like Sufis, Bauls, Vaishnavs and Rampanthis and even certain sects of the Sikhs. The akhara was the same to these cults as the temple was to the Hindus and the mosque for the Muslims. Important saints like Ramdas, Namdeo, Eknath, Tukaram and others had veritable akharas. These sects were usually opposed to organized and/or textual religions like Hinduism and Islam and claimed themselves to be non-Hindus. They were influenced by Vaishnavism, the Bhakti and even some surviving remnants of Buddhism and Jainism.

These sects also had influences of the yogis, a cult based around the yoga method of exercises, which developed around the 12th century AD. The confounding of physical exercises with spiritual achievements is not new to India because such have been the ways of the Ninja in Japan. In fact, martial arts have invariably been tied to monasteries that were outside the fold of ecclesiastical religions. Nirmohi Akhara as the name suggests was one of the numerous instances of a “non-Hindu” sect.

An important ingredient of defiance against the organized religion was the worship of balkishan and ramlalla, infants or child gods. This is because the child has no sense of social discrimination, and because of its defecation and urination breaks the purity barriers constantly, the image of the God as a child is therefore a profane one. In due course of time, the Krishna worshippers could climb into the Hindu fold because Krishna has a Puranic backing. Unfortunately Ram who was only a fiction hero without a Puranic text to validate him, remained a God worshipped by these marginal sects, eventually the untouchables. Nirmohi Akhara is one such sect of marginals who exist autonomously and with equal mixing of Hinduism and Islam.

The Ramlalla Virajaman as God literally means a star, a fictitious character that evolves, grows, matures, ages and even dies rather than the absolute and fixed God like a Hindu deity or a Semitic God.

Therefore, the Hindu appropriation of Ram Lalla is the greatest anomaly in the case and the cause for the dispute.

The historians should have ideally argued over the Hindu claim over Ram rather than proceed to sieve archaeological evidence of whether there was or not a temple beneath the mosque. One has no idea of how the Hindus could suddenly lay a claim on Ram worship, which typically has never been a God in the Hindu pantheon. There are numerous deities across the country, tasla devi, bhadu, phullara, ashaan bibi and many others who are worshipped by the local persons irrespective of their religion. These deities pertain to sects that do not belong to the mainstream religions. The worship of Ram Lalla at the premises of the Babri Masjid, where the Muslims also prayed together with the Rambhakts have been a vindication of practices in India that are neither wholly Hindu nor fully Islamic.

The anomaly in this case was that a local worship became appropriated and hijacked by interests of the metropolis and this the historians of eminence should have noticed and investigated rather than fall into the trap of having to categorize something in terms of mainstream religions

T T Sreekumar on the 6th of December 2015

നിര്‍മോഹികളുടെ ഡിസംബര്‍ ആറുകള്‍

ബാബറി പള്ളി പ്രശ്നത്തില്‍ ഏറ്റവും കൂടുതല്‍ നേട്ടം കൊയ്തത് നിര്‍മോഹി അഖാരകള്‍ ആണ്. 1853-ൽ നവാബ് വാജിദ് അലി ഷായുടെ കയ്യില്‍ നിന്ന് എങ്ങനെ അവുധിന്റെ ഭരണം തട്ടി എടുക്കാം എന്ന് തക്കം പാര്ത്തിരുന്ന ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഈസ്റ്റ് ഇന്ത്യാ കമ്പനി ഷിയാ നവാബ് മാര്ക്കെതിരെ സുന്നി-ഷിയാ തര്ക്കങ്ങള്‍ കുത്തിപ്പൊക്കി അവിടെ കാലുറപ്പിക്കാന്‍ ശ്രമിച്ചിരുന്നു. സുന്നികളെയും ഹിന്ദുക്കളെയും നവാബ് മാര്ക്കെ തിരെ തിരിക്കുക ബുദ്ധിമുട്ടായിരുന്നു.

ഷിയാ നവാബുമാര്‍ ധാരാളം ഹിന്ദു ക്ഷേത്രങ്ങള്‍ നിര്മ്മിക്കുകയും ഭരണത്തിലും പട്ടാളത്തിലും കായസ്ഥ ഹിന്ദുക്കള്ക്കും ശൈവനാഗന്മാര്ക്കും വിപുലമായ പങ്കാളിത്തം നല്കുലകയും ചെയ്തിരുന്നു. അയോധ്യക്ക് ഇന്ന് കാണുന്ന ഹൈന്ദവ തീര്ത്ഥാടന കേന്ദ്രം എന്ന പദവി തന്നെ നവബുമാരുടെ കാലത്ത് ലഭിക്കുന്നതാണ്. അയോധ്യയില്‍ ആരും നോക്കാനില്ലാതെ പൊളിഞ്ഞു കിടന്നിരുന്ന പല അമ്പലങ്ങളും അറ്റകുറ്റ പണികള്‍ തീര്ത്തു ആരാധനാ യോഗ്യമാക്കി തുറന്നു കൊടുത്തത് നവബുമാരുടെ ശ്രമഫലമായാണ്.

ഹനുമാന്ഗാര്‍ഹി ക്ഷേത്രം പണിയാന്‍ അവിടെ പുതുതായി ഉടര്ന്നു് വന്ന ഒരു വൈഷ്ണവ കള്‍ട്ടായ നിര്‍മോഹി അഖാരകള്‍ക്ക് സ്ഥലം സൌജന്യമായി നല്കിയതു നവാബ് സഫ്ദര്‍ ജങ്ങ് ആയിരുന്നു. ഈ നിര്‍മോഹികള്‍ പേര് സൂചിപ്പിക്കുന്നത് പോലെ നിര്‍മോഹികള്‍ അല്ല. യഥാര്ത്ഥ ത്തില്‍ ഇവര്‍ ഹിന്ദുക്കള്‍ പോലുമല്ലെന്നു സുസ്മിത ദാസ്ഗുപ്ത എഴുതിയിട്ടുണ്ട്. യോഗയും മറ്റും പരിശീലിക്കുന്ന, നമ്മുടെ കളരികള്‍ പോലുള്ള, ജിംഖാനകള്‍ ആയിരുന്നു നിര്‍മോഹികള്‍ നടത്തിയിരുന്നത്. ഹിന്ദു മതം അടക്കം ഒരു മതത്തെയും ഇവര്‍ പിന്‍പറ്റിയിരുന്നില്ല. എന്നാല്‍ പതിനെട്ടാം നൂറ്റാണ്ടിന്റെ തുടക്കത്തില്‍ ഇത് ഒരു വൈഷ്ണവ സംഘമായി പുനവതരിക്കുകയും ഹൈന്ദവ സങ്കല്പ്പങ്ങള്‍ സ്വീകരിച്ചു പ്രവര്ത്തിനക്കാന്‍ തുടങ്ങുകയും ചെയ്തു. 1853 -ല്‍ വാജിദ് അലി ഷാ യുടെ കാലത്ത് ബാബറി മസ്ജിദ് നെ മേല്‍ അവകാശം ഉണയിക്കുകയും ചെയ്യുക ആയിരുന്നു. ഇത് മുന്പ് ക്ഷേത്രമായിരുന്നു എന്ന് അവകാശപ്പെട്ടു അക്രമങ്ങള്‍ ആരംഭിക്കുകയും അങ്ങനെ ഹിന്ദു-മുസ്ലീം കലാപങ്ങള്‍ക്ക് അവിടെ തുടക്കം ഇടുകയും ചെയ്തത് ഈ നിര്‍മോഹികള്‍ ആയിരുന്നു.

ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് പ്രേരണകള്‍ അന്ന് പ്രധാനമായും ഹിന്ദു മുസ്ലീം വൈരം കുത്തിപ്പൊക്കുന്നതിനായിരുന്നു. എന്നാല്‍ നവാബ് ഈ കെണിയില്‍ വീഴാന്‍ കൂട്ടാക്കിയില്ല. അവുധ് ഏറ്റെടുക്കാന്‍ കാരണം നോക്കി ഇരിക്കുന്ന ഈസ്റ്റ് ഇന്ത്യാ കമ്പനി പ്രശ്നം വഷളാക്കാന്‍ മാത്രമാണ് തുനിഞ്ഞത്. അവുധ് പിടിച്ചെടുത്തു പള്ളിക്ക് ചുറ്റും കമ്പി വേലി കെട്ടി ഹിന്ദു മുസ്ലീം വൈരം എന്ന സ്വന്തം ചരിത്ര നിര്മിതിക്ക് ഈസ്റ്റ് ഇന്ത്യാ കമ്പനി പ്രതീകാത്മകമായ ചൂണ്ടുപലകയും തീര്ത്തു . നിര്‍മോഹികള്‍ ആണ് കോടതി വ്യവഹാരത്തിലേക്കും ഈ നിയമ സമാധനപ്രശ്നത്തെ വലിച്ചിഴച്ചത്. ഹിന്ദുക്കള്‍ പോലുമല്ലാത്ത നിര്‍മോഹി അഖാരകള്‍, 1720 ല്‍ മാത്രം ഒരു വൈഷ്ണവ സംഘമായി രംഗ പ്രവേശം ചെയ്ത നിര്‍മോഹികള്‍, തങ്ങള്‍ കാലാതീത കാലം മുതല്‍ ആരാധിക്കുന്ന ക്ഷേത്രമാണ് അത് എന്നാണ് കോടതിയില്‍ അവകാശപ്പെട്ടത്!

അലഹബാദ് കോടതി വിധിയിലെ എല്ലാ പോരായ്മകള്‍ക്കും മുകളില്‍ മുഴച്ചു നില്ക്കു ന്നത് വഖഫ് ബോര്ഡിനോപ്പം നിര്‍മോഹികള്ക്കും അവകാശമുണ്ട്‌ എന്ന കോടതിയുടെ തീര്‍പ്പാണ് ! “Whether Nirmohi Akhara, Plaintiff, is Panchayati Math of Rama Nandi sect of Bairagies and as such is a religious denomination following its religious faith and per suit according to its own custom.” എന്നത് കോടതി അംഗീകരിക്കുക ആയിരുന്നു. ബാബറി മസ്ജിദ് വിധിയിലെ ഏറ്റവും നീചമായ വശം ഈ പ്രശ്നത്തെ ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് കൊളോനിയലിസത്തിന്റെ ചട്ടുകമായി, ഹിന്ദു മുസ്ലീം വൈരം കുത്തി പൊക്കി, ആദ്യത്തെ സാമുദായിക കലാപങ്ങള്ക്ക് തുടക്കമിട്ടു, വിശ്വാസികളെ തന്നെ വഞ്ചിച്ചു ഉയര്ന്നു വന്ന ഹിംസാത്മകമായ ഒരു കള്‍ട്ടിനു ഈ വിധിയിലൂടെ സാധൂകരണം കിട്ടുന്നു എന്നുള്ളതാണ്. ഈ നിര്‍മോഹികളുടെ രക്തദാഹമാണ്, കുല്‍സി്തരാഷ്ട്രീയമാണ്, രണ്ട് നൂറ്റാണ്ടുകളിലൂടെ നിരന്തരമായ സാമുദായിക സ്പര്ദ്ധയുടെ കൊലവാള്‍ ഉയര്ത്തി ഇന്ത്യയെ ചോരക്കളം ആക്കിയത് എന്നത് എളുപ്പത്തില്‍ വിസ്മരിക്കാന്‍ കഴിയുന്ന കാര്യമല്ല.

1992 ഡിസംബര്‍ 6-നു കര്‍സേവ നടത്തിയത് ബി ജെ പി യും ആര്‍ എസ് എസ്സും ഹിന്ദു മഹാ സഭയും ഒക്കെ ആയിരുന്നു. പക്ഷേ യഥാര്ത്ഥ വേട്ട നിര്‍മോഹികളുടെതായിരുന്നു. രണ്ട് നൂറ്റാണ്ട് കാലത്തെ ചരിത്ര വിരുദ്ധ രാഷ്ട്രീയത്തിലൂടെ അവര്‍ തകര്‍ത്തത് ഒരു സമൂഹത്തിന്റെ ഏറ്റവും പ്രിയപ്പെട്ട നൈതികസങ്കല്പ്പങ്ങളെ ആയിരുന്നു എന്നത് ഓരോ ഡിസംബര്‍ ആറുകളും അവരുടെതാക്കുന്നു. ചരിത്രത്തില്‍ എങ്ങനയാണ്‌ ഇത്തരം ഭീകരസംഘങ്ങള്‍ ജന്മമെടുക്കുക, എങ്ങനെയൊക്കെ ആണ് അവ വള്ര്‍ന്നു വരിക എന്നത് പ്രവചിക്കാന്‍ ആവില്ല. ഒരു സമൂഹത്തെ ഒന്നാകെ ഒരു ചെറിയ ഭീകരസംഘം എങ്ങനെയാണ് വാള്മുുനയില്‍ നിര്ത്തി ശിഥിലീകരിക്കുന്നത് എന്നത് പഠിക്കാന്‍ ഏറ്റവും നല്ല ഉദാഹരണം ഇന്ന് ഈ നിര്‍മോഹികളുടെ ചരിത്രം തന്നെയാണ്

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Individualism and Voids

Posted on November 27, 2015 by secondsaturn

Individualism is a difficult proposition for human societies; it offends the sense of human classifications, which is essential to human societies. Social orders and institutions must have classifications for the dispensations of accumulation, distribution and legacies.

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Is Rama Really Purushottam?

Posted on October 29, 2015 by secondsaturn

Is Rama really a Purushottam? What does the term Purushottam, which denotes the ideal man, or even the ideal human really mean? When was the term Purushottam coined to describe Rama and what would the term meant during the time of its coinage? What are the standards of ideal for an Indian male or a human? Why are those standards known as the ideal? What is an ideal and why and when does something become an ideal? One may attempt an answer to this problem through a wider understanding of the Ramayana and its central hero, Ram. Ram, is an ideal human and in his idealness almost a rank holder as a Divine. He is the perfect hero in the sense he can kill any demon, he can survive any crisis, he is the perfect son who obeys every word of his parents, he puts the needs of the institution before his personal wishes and has absolutely no semblance of anything which is selfish or self centred. He is free of ego and desire and is a perfect player of the roles assigned to him by the society. His agency is exercised only to further the execution of his responsibilities as the incumbent of a social role. In Rama, the social role rather than his personality presides.

Contenders to the Divinity of Ram insist that there are clinks in the hero’s armour precisely in the three episodes of his life viz his treatment of Sita, his assassination of Bali, his murder of Shambuka. The Bengali literati add yet another, namely the killing of Meghnad, Ravana’s son while he was unarmed in his morning worship of his deity. Though Lakshman was the one killed Meghnad with the help of Bibhishan, Ravana’s own younger brother who had crossed over to Rama’s side, yet the murder took place with the full knowledge and acquiescence of Rama and hence can well be attributed to his intentions. Rama’s assassination of Bali and the stealthy murder of Meghnad may be attributed to the theory that everything is fair in war and that ethics which apply to conditions of peaceful conduct of life may be abrogated while the parties are at war. But Rama’s treatment of Sita at the instance of public opinion against a rape victim and his murder of a Dalit boy, Shambuka at the instance of the Brahmins in his royal court. The last two, namely Sita and Shambuka are used to show how Rama is loyal as a king towards his subjects so that he gives into their will even if that involves sacrifice of his own attachments. The more endearing the character of Sita is or more devout Shambuka is, the greater appears the sacrifice of Rama the person to Rama the social role. Such sacrifices are used to extract Rama out of his personhood and establish him as a post, a social role. What is the sociology of this?

Let us take the instance of Shambuka. On a personal level, Rama is open and amiable. He has friends among strange people; Guhak is a good friend, his affections towards Hanuman even at times exceeds his attachment towards Lakshman, his treatment of Bibhishan especially his complete trust towards him is exemplary and his deference and love for Jatayu is legendary. Rama and Lakshman actually perform his last rites as the legendary bird’s sons. Shambuka was a celebrated ascetic born in a Shudra caste who Rama was forced to behead because a Brahmin insisted that his child had died because of the “sins” committed in Rama’s kingdom and identified Shambuka’s enormous talent as the “sin”. Shambuka on his own was allowed to survive and even thrive as an exceptional individual in Rama’s kingdom. Why did Rama listen to the Brahmin? Why did he choose to believe that Shambuka was the sin for which the Brahmin’s child died? Did he genuinely believe in the caste system? Or did he sustain a difference between personal beliefs and community beliefs? He was prepared to sacrifice his personal ideas to the prevailing traditions of his community? Was Rama the ideal because he laid a greater stress on the community values and norms instead of insisting that his beliefs had their way? Rama was no social reformist but a pliable king who inevitably has given in to social conservatism. Here again, Rama the person is sacrificed in the altar of Rama the social role, the king in this case.

Rama’s treatment of Sita was in no measure any more merciful than a veritable murder in which Sita was goaded to commit suicide as the great epic ends. Rama does not have anything to say about his dispensation of Sita’s claims as a loyal wife except that he finds it to be his bounden duty to honour the wishes of his people, the people being always right irrespective of the tragedies these may involve for the royalty. The ideal king must give in to the wishes of his subjects even if that means sacrificing his own attachments, his principles, his personal beliefs and ideologies. The sovereignty of the subjects, rather than that of the king is the ideal sense of the State and it is because of this that Rama is the Purushottam.

Rama is always willing to let go whatever is dear to him; the idea of the Kingdom and his own coronation which is a miss between the cup and the lip, his wife, his friends. Rama is emotionally attached to his father and is extremely pained at the separation between the father and him and has constant nightmares about his father’s imminent death and yet when Bharat says that Dasarath has summoned him back into the kingdom, he refuses to go. Rama splits Dasarath into two, the father who he loves and the father who commands him. He clearly chooses the latter over the former. Sita is split into two as well, the beloved wife who he loves very much and never ever doubts her attachment and loyalty towards him but as the principal queen of a good king, he lets her go as she has been tainted by a crime committed against her! Here too, individuals are sacrificed to social roles and imagined ideas of perfectness.

Rama is born a nice person; he knows no envy, no anger, no greed, and no lust. He is not envious when he hears that Dasaratha has chosen Bharat instead of him as the heir apparent. Rama is more hurt because father has cold shouldered him, not hugged him. He is upset because his father’s behavior appears changed and which it has because Dasarath can no longer face Rama as he is overcome by grief. Rama is not really happy when Sita wishes to accompany him to the forest for he can live the life of an ascetic, he lets Sita tag along since she nags so much. Even as Surpanakha descends upon Rama in the guise of a beautiful woman, he remains unmoved. Rama weeps openly for Lakshman when he gets nearly fatally hit by an arrow in the war and yet mercilessly kills Rakshasa women even as Sita winces at his cruelty. Rama appears to be a set of contradictions; kind and cruel, affectionate and indifferent, attached and detached, he seems to make a clear separation between personal values and morals and the mores and traditions of the larger society. Yet, all of these makes him into an ideal person as is implied by the term Purushottam. Purushottam refers to the ideal human, or the man and not necessarily the king. Interesting why should the person who sets aside his own set of beliefs even if they are kinder and more refined to let the values of the larger community have its way be the ideal human being?

Clearly in the Ramayana, there is an attempt by the society as a whole to prevail over the individual will. The talented individual, the woman especially the learned and the self-assertive ones are systematically snubbed and decried. Karna, Shambuka and Ekalavya are destroyed but also a person like Rama is tortured as well by making him murder Shambuka, assassinate Bali and abandon Sita not before forcing her to walk into the fire. The society is a set of commands by the elders and the superiors and also a source of moral pressure through tongue wagging, scandal mongering ordinary subjects. Rama is a Purushottam because he gives preference to the society than to his own idea of justice, which also means that he prefers the collective will over individual rights an entitlements. What kind of a society did the Ramayana try to promote? One in which the Brahmin dominated over the king; in which age was such a society in ascendance?

The Ramayana is not confident when it discusses Rama’s treatment of Sita, or or Bali or of Shambuka. It is not also confident when it discusses how Rama kills the females among the Rakshasas and especially where Sita is concerned, the Ramayana appears to change its voice from lauding Rama into lolling in Sita’s grief. Ramayana is a composed epic; why did its several versions not eliminate the possibility of Rama abandoning Sita, or Rama killing Bali? One has to understand that the Ramayana is a series of folk tales, recited by folk artists, travelling tale tellers, and of bards and musicians, of players and performers. It is not easy to put forth a legitimate text of the Rama’s tale which does not take into account all the episodes that go to unmake the status of the perfect man, Rama.

Rama’s ideal hood is repeatedly challenged by citing his weaknesses in which Rama as an individual and a human being has been constantly faulted. Rama’s pursuit of greatness as a king has been severely compromised by his emerging into a good human being and in his ambitions to be king, Rama has to repeatedly compromise his values as an individual. Yet, the writers have not dared to weed out the contradictions in Rama’s character and in fact continued to apologize for these pitfalls through elaborate justifications from the Puranas, Brahmanas and a host of other Sanskritic sources by saying that Rama and Sita were bearing the curses of previous lives, or that they were Divinities playing up the part of ordinary mortals and hence trying to make the contradictions more and more acceptable for the sensible and sensitive readers.

To my mind and logical inference the Ramayana speaks of an important moment of conflict and that which is between the institution of kingship and the society of the subjects. The Ramayana is a tale of moralities among members within a patriarchal family set up and between the king and his subjects, also the extension of patriarchy. The family and the king together constitutes one large family; Rama is therefore an imagined king whose is metaphorically subjected to an ordeal by fire by being forced to sacrifice his loved ones. There is a subtext of the Ramayana in which Rama accepts humbly his fate as the most unfortunate son who loses the father, the husband who loses his wife, the father who cannot witness the birth and growing up of his children, the older brother who snatches the happiness of conjugal life from both his younger brothers namely Bharat and Lakshman. He is enticed by Sugriv to kill the valiant Bali, instigated by a Brahmin to kill Shambuka, and because of Sita’s error of judgment he is forced to enter into a battle with the blemishless king Ravana of Lanka who is also a high grade Brahmin. Rama is therefore a man for who everything ends in a net loss. Yet he goes through this and suffers in silence and in complete surrender. Rama’s suffering is the direct victory of the society over the State, the victory of the subjects over the king. Dasaratha the father, Sita the wife, Shambuka the devout all become subjects who through their respective sufferings embarrass Rama.

The Ramayana is a critique of the king as the giver of values, as a social reformers, as a law maker. It is a template for kings to be forever subjected to the subjects and the society. It is the saga of the society’s discipline of the king.

 

 

 

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My Own Death Bookless Series

Posted on September 12, 2015 by secondsaturn

 

 

No, I have not reached Baghdad, I am bookless in my own home in the Delhi suburb. Our small flat sparsely furnished with hostel type wooden plank beds, woven wooden chairs and no sofa, minimalist dining table is infinitely difficult to clear because of the five thousand books it contains. I am a bibliophile, and if I ever wanted to earn money, have a full fledged career, a home of my own and not marry at all was to be able to lead a life all by myself among my favourite books. And today these books were being taken down from their states of ensconce meant in their respective shelves, tied up together in bundles, packed and moved by carts to a warehouse which Madhusree and I have rented for the month for the house jobs to be done.

As the books are dismantled, lain on the floor, ritually classified and eventually tied it gave me the sense of my own death. I felt that I was now a corpse, lying down on the floor, my attendants come in and tie me up to the bier and carry me into the hearse van. As the books are loaded on to the rickshaw van, I can hear my neighbours shriek with dismay wondering whether we were shifting out of the locality, never knew we were popular. I can again see my own death, as my body is moved out of the premises, my neighbours will despair, if for nothing then at least for the electricity complaints I always made for them. Anyway, neighbours were amazed, never before they have known people shift homes for paint and tile jobs!!

Anyway, books are now all gone, the house looks empty, I sit alone watching television. My favourite show the CID is on but without books I sit as if without my body. Is this how it feels on the day of death? Television does not seem as it always is, the door bell rings, the magazine boy comes in with issues of Sananda and Bartaman. I do not seem to relate to these magazines at all in my state of bodiless ness. I am no longer anybody I feel. The living room looks totally empty now, cleared of all furniture, just the way it would look on the day of my final departure. People would come in to pay their respects I suppose and to accommodate so many of them, space would have been created by removing everything. My house manager Suraj is busy handing glasses of cold water to the workers, just the way he would do on the day of my death.

Years ago when I joined a course on past life regression, the life coach asked me to imagine how I died in my past life. I said that I was on a big ship, all white amidst a quiet and calm ocean with azure blue waters and the sky was dazzling bright with golden light. This morning, the sky dazzled with that same light. Only recently I read of the ship of Theseus, the ship that brings death of Socrates. My ship of death fits so well with the Theseus. I wonder whether I could have been Socrates in my other life. May be, possible still have to take a play us quiz to find out.

Georgia was moving about aimlessly, extremely distressed at our things going out of the door. Just the way I try to distract myself with the television, she tries to distract herself by barking at the neighbour’s cat.

Then all is quiet. I sleep off in the afternoon. Madhusree comes home and Suraj returns once more to the house to a quiet dinner and some hot teas afterwards. We sit future less, vapid, aimless, gazing at a tomorrow that promises nothing. Tomorrow the work will begin. The bed has to be dismantled and so the television. But that hardly matters, for we are now dead, and these are only the process of the rituals.

Madhusree crashes down in the bed and sleeps off; she is relieved of the burden of our possessions. She revels in the ashram like atmosphere in the home. Our lampshades are packed too in the warehouse, the vanity of soft lighting is gone and we are left with drab yellow cfl mounted on the wall. The reprints of masters on our walls look lifeless as well without our lamps around them, they appear as actors in the greenwood without make up.

Night has now fallen, our first night in this bodiless state. It is,unsettling, this death of mine, I must plan better for the eventual one. For that d day, I will have to forego my worldly attachments especially to my books. For that to happen, I must read each of my books thoroughly, absorb and assimilate them so thoroughly that it could well have been written by me. Only then will I carry my books in my soul, be liberated from the bodily attachment to them and only then be death ready and really enjoy my cosmic journey to the other world. That is my aim now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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