DIPLOMATIC POST FOR AN UNDIPLOMATIC HOT-HEAD - Ghulam Muhammed | Kejriwal and the political vacuum - By Anil Padmanabhan - LIVE MINT

DIPLOMATIC POST FOR AN UNDIPLOMATIC HOT-HEAD

THE MORE CONGRESS TRIES TO PROJECT THAT IT IS NOT BOTHERED BY CORRUPTION AND/OR ANTI-CORRUPTION MOVEMENTS, IT IS DISTANCING ITSELF FROM THE PEOPLE. ITS SHEER BRAVADO AND AUDACITY FLASHED BY ELEVATING SALMAN KHURSHID TO THE POST OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER, AFTER PEOPLE HAD WIDELY WITNESSED HIS UNDIPLOMATIC OUTBURSTS ON THEIR TV SCREENS, SENDS OUT CLEAR MESSAGE FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, THAT CONGRESS AND SONIA FAMILY CARES TWO HOOTS ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE COME TO KNOW ABOUT THEIR WARTS AND WEAK POINTS AND AS LONG AS SALMAN KHURSHID IS PERSONALLY LOYAL AND PROFESSES TO SACRIFICE HIS LIFE FOR SONIA, HE IS A TREASURE FOR THE SYCOPHANCY PRONE CONGRESS TO COVET AND PROMOTE. SO MUCH FOR THE DEPTH AND WORTH OF INDIA'S DEMOCRACY. CORRUPT POLITICAL PARTIES HAVE SPREAD THEIR TENTACLES SO DEEP INTO THE INNARDS OF INDIA'S GOVERNANCE, THAT UNLESS A PEOPLE'S REVOLUTION BURSTS FORTH, INDIA WILL REMAIN ENSLAVED TO A DICTATORIAL RULING CLASS, WHO WILL FEED ON INDIA'S PROGRESS AND HARDLY CARE FOR THE WELFARE OF THE MASSES OF THE DOWNTRODDEN AND DEPRIVED. ENORMOUS FUNDS ARE BEING SIPHONED OFF AND CRIMINALS ARE SHIELDED. INDIA IS A REAL-TIME REPLICA OF FRANCE BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

AT THIS JUNCTURE, THE RELEVANCE OF ARVIND KEJRIWAL COMES OUT IN STARK FOCUS. WILL HE SAVE INDIA AND ITS BILLION PEOPLE BY USHERING IN A CULTURE OF HONESTY, TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY? INDIA HAS NO OTHER CHOICE BUT TO WAIT FOR HIS ASCENDENCY!

GHULAM MUHAMMED, MUMBAI
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
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Capital Calculus | Kejriwal and the political vacuum

Kejriwal is simply a case of being at the right place at the right time and saying the right things

Anil Padmanabhan

First Published: Sun, Oct 28 2012. 04 58 PM IST

Photo: Virendra Singh Gosain/HT

Related

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Updated: Mon, Oct 29 2012. 12 47 AM IST

With almost every passing day activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal is claiming our mind space, if not our votes (as yet). The sheer spectacle of seeing him on prime time television and associated with allegations of expose after expose has made him difficult to ignore and, least of all, forget. Now almost anybody and everybody is struck with one question: What will he do next and will his movement blossom into the promised political alternative? The answer, at the cost of sounding glib, is that it is anybody’s guess.

Actually, the question should be framed differently.

How did the Kejriwal phenomenon happen? It is because Kejriwal is an outcome of a process that is unravelling in Indian politics; he is simply a case of being at the right place at the right time and saying the right things. He is not, contrary to popular perception and what the India Against Corruption group would like us believe, the cause of the phenomenon; instead he is the product of this tectonic shift that is redefining the way this country thinks about politics—like an incoming tide that will reveal itself only when the feet get wet.

Framing it, thus, helps form the right context. More importantly, it also throws up plausible insights into the future course of Indian politics—the only consensus about which is that, at present, it is plumbing historical lows. Suffice to say, regardless of what our politicians claim and say, this is the end of the road of business-as-usual in politics. As always, a change is welcome.

This situation has not come about overnight. It is just that a constellation of circumstances have finally come together to ordain what looks like monumental change; even if they do gang up, like, in effectively stalling the passage of the Lokpal (ombudsman) legislation, it is unlikely that politicians can prevent this round of change; they may be able to slow it though.

Firstly, India has been re-invented demographically. Look around you, whether on the street or in your office, in urban or rural India; what will strike you is how young India is (a colleague who just returned from Tokyo flagged the exact opposite about Japan). All kinds of estimates are flung around, but there is consensus that about 65% of India is less than 35 years of age, that is, two out of three Indians are less than 35 years old.

Not only does this mean that we have a very youthful population, it is also what demographers call the demographic dividend. It is also obvious that this generation has been born mostly after 1980—when the country first initiated steps to remove the policy shackles and what subsequently accelerated into the liberalization wave in 1991. For most of their lifetime they have, materially speaking, known only of good things in life and till recently were not even aware of what it meant to be in an economic crisis. Not surprisingly, therefore, aspiration is their second nature and new India has only stoked their legitimate dreams.

Secondly, in stark contrast to this shift in the demographic structure, the politics and governance of this country has assumed the form of a mass culture: no matter your ideology, once in government you very much pursue the same policies. While foreign investors should be pleased that the direction of reforms is never in question, even though the pace is, the politics has also settled down to a predictable up-down routine. (Which is why the UPA, now that it is in trouble, constantly claims that it is only doing, whether right or wrong, what the National Democratic Alliance did earlier). With corruption going wholesale and elections becoming a contest of individual net worth, the engagement with the public has become more and more disconnected. So, come every election, all parties are still playing the freebie card, even while the public now wants to be taught how to fish and not just served fish. So not only are Indian politicians disconnected with the populace, the allegations acts of graft have created a serious credibility deficit.

Thirdly, all of this has been accompanied by a growing list of accountability parameters; in this, the right to information and an activist judiciary have proved to be a game-changer. In addition, the constant scrutiny of 24x7 TV news channels ensures the general public misses nothing; worse, often distorted and exaggerated impressions gain ground.

So what we have is an explosive mix of a youthful country armed with aspirations and governed by a polity that is well past its sell-by date. This disconnect, together with growing economic pressures from the lack of jobs and persistent double-digit inflation, has transformed this disconnect into a collective anger against politicians. This is manifest in scores of face-offs happening across the country, but rarely find mention in the national media.

The vacuum was waiting to be exploited. Kejriwal—regardless of whether he is the person with the right pedigree for the job—has done precisely this: connect the dots. He may or may not succeed in monetizing this momentum. The good news, for now though, is that it is the end of business-as-usual.

Anil Padmanabhan is deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics. Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews - By Colin Shindler - The New York Times Sunday Review

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/europes-trouble-with-jews.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0&pagewanted=all

Opinion

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

Ed Alcock for The New York Times

The Grande Synagogue de la Victoire in Paris in October.

By COLIN SHINDLER

Published: October 27, 2012

LONDON
LAST week, Twitter shut down a popular account for posting anti-Semitic messages in France. This came soon after the firing of blanks at a synagogue near Paris, the discovery of a network of radical Islamists who had thrown a hand grenade into a kosher restaurant, and the killing of a teacher and young pupils at a Jewish school in Strasbourg earlier this year. The attacks were part of an escalating campaign of violence against Jews in France.

Today, a sizable section of the European left has been reluctant to take a clear stand when anti-Zionism spills over into anti-Semitism. Beginning in the 1990s, many on the European left began to view the growing Muslim minorities in their countries as a new proletariat and the Palestinian cause as a recruiting mechanism. The issue of Palestine was particularly seductive for the children of immigrants, marooned between identities.

Capitalism was depicted as undermining a perfect Islamic society while cultural imperialism corrupted Islam. The tactic has a distinguished revolutionary pedigree. Indeed, the cry, “Long live Soviet power, long live the Shariah,” was heard in Central Asia during the 1920s after Lenin tried to cultivate Muslim nationalists in the Soviet East once his attempt to spread revolution to Europe had failed. But the question remains: why do today’s European socialists identify with Islamists whose worldview is light-years removed from their own?

In recent years, there has been an increased blurring of the distinction between Jew, Zionist and Israeli. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the militant group Hezbollah, famously commented: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.”

Whereas historically Islam has often been benevolent toward Jews, compared to Christianity, many contemporary Islamists have evoked the idea of “the eternal Jew.” For example, the Battle of Khaybar in 629, fought by the Prophet Muhammad against the Jewish tribes, is recalled in victory chants at Hezbollah rallies: “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return,” and the name Khaybar sometimes graces Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel.

Many contemporary Islamists see little difference between the Jewish opponents of the prophet in seventh-century Arabia and Jews today. Importing old symbols of European anti-Semitism — depictions of Jews as enemies of God or proclamations of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy — has helped cement such imagery. If there is a distinction between Islamic anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism, it has been lost on French Islamists.

The fear of Jewish domination of the Middle East has become a repetitive theme in the Islamist media — which has become more influential as religious parties have gained ground in the wake of the Arab Spring. This is a factor in the general refusal of the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas to publicly meet members of the Israeli peace camp — a far cry from when Palestinian nationalists willingly negotiated with dovish Israelis before the 1993 handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn.

The old left in Europe was forged in the struggle against local fascists in the 1930s. Most of Europe experienced a brutal Nazi occupation and bore witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust. The European left strongly identified with Jewish suffering and therefore welcomed the birth of the state of Israel in 1948. Some viewed the struggle for Israel in the same light as the fight for freedom in the Spanish Civil War.

But the succeeding generation of the European left did not see things this way. Its frame of reference was the anticolonial struggle — in Vietnam, South Africa, Rhodesia and a host of other places. Its hallowed icon was not the soldier of the International Brigades who fought against Franco in Spain, but Che Guevara — whose image adorned countless student bedrooms. Anticolonialism further influenced myriad causes, from America’s Black Panthers in the 1960s to Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela today.

It began with Israel’s exclusion from the ranks of the nonaligned nations more than 50 years ago, when Arab states refused to attend a 1955 nonaligned conference in Indonesia if an Israeli delegate was present. The Jewish state was snubbed in favor of such feudal kingdoms as Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen. And Israel’s collusion with imperial powers like Britain and France during the Suez crisis the following year cemented its ostracism.

Given the deep remorse for the misdeeds of colonialism, it was easier for the New Left of the 1960s to identify with the emerging Palestinian national movement than with the already established social democratic Israel. This deepening hostility toward Israel was present in Europe before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and before the rush to build settlements on the West Bank.

AMID this rising hostility toward Israel, the French philosopher and political activist Jean-Paul Sartre advocated a different way forward. He was scarred by the memory of what had happened to France’s Jews during World War II — the discrimination, betrayals, deportations and exterminations. He understood the legitimacy of Israel’s war for independence and later commented that the establishment of the state of Israel was one of the few events “that allows us to preserve hope.” Yet Sartre also strongly supported Algeria’s fight for independence from France.

This double legacy of supporting Israel and the Algerian struggle symbolized the predicament of the entire postwar European left. Sartre argued that the left shouldn’t choose between two moral causes and that it was up to the Jews and the Arabs to resolve their conflict through discussion and negotiation. Sartre tried to create a space for a dialogue, lending his name and prestige to private and public meetings between the two sides such as the Comité Israël-Palestine in the 1970s. His approach reached its apogee with the many quiet meetings between Israelis and Palestinians in Europe that eventually led to the Oslo accords. But Sartre’s vision was stymied as Israeli settlements proliferated after 1977, strengthening the left’s caricature of Israel as an imperialist power and a settler-colonial enterprise. Some prominent voices on the European left have mouthed time-honored anti-Semitic tropes in their desire to appear supportive of the Palestinian cause. Ken Livingstone, a former newspaper editor and mayor of London, has a long history of insensitive remarks about Jews — from publishing a cartoon in 1982 of Menachem Begin, then Israel’s prime minister, in Gestapo uniform atop a pile of Palestinian skulls to likening a known Jewish reporter to “a concentration camp guard” 20 years later. Today, he contributes to Press TV, the English-language outlet for the Iranian government.

Sometimes the left distinguishes between vulnerable European Jews who have been persecuted and latter-day “Prussians” in Israel. Yet it is often forgotten that a majority of Israelis just happen to be Jews, who fear therefore that what begins with the delegitimization of the state will end with the delegitimization of the people.

Such Israelophobia, enunciated by sections of the European left, dovetailed neatly with the rise of Islamism among Palestinians and throughout the Arab world. The Islamist obfuscation of “the Jew” mirrored the blindness of many a European Marxist. Despite the well-intentioned efforts of many Jews and Muslims to put aside their differing perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the offensive imagery of “the Jew” has persisted in many immigrant communities in Western Europe. Islamists were willing to share platforms with socialists and atheists, but not with Zionists.

The New Left’s profound opposition to American power, and the convergence of reactionary Islamists and unquestioning leftists was reflected in the million-strong London protest against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

It was organized by the Muslim Association of Britain, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain. When some Muslims voiced apprehension about participating in the protest with non-Muslims, the M.A.B. leadership decreed that it was religiously permissible if halal food was provided and men and women were given separate areas. Such displays of “reactionary clericalism,” as the early Bolsheviks would have called it, were happily glossed over.

Sartre understood that the conflict was not simply between Israelis and Palestinians, but between those advocating peace on both sides and their rejectionists. This conflict within the conflict is something that many on Europe’s left, as they ally themselves with unsavory forces, still fail to comprehend.

Instead, the swallowing up of both the Israeli and Palestinian peace camps by political polarization has accelerated the closing of the progressive mind. And static fatalism has allowed the assailant of synagogue congregants and the killer of young children to fill the vacuum.

An emeritus professor at the University of London’s School of African and Oriental Studies and the author of “Israel and the European Left: Between
Solidarity and Delegitimization.”

Why India needs Kejriwal - By Minhaz Merchant - The Sunday Times of India - The Economic Times

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/headon/entry/why-india-needs-kejriwal

Why India needs Kejriwal

Minhaz Merchant
28 October 2012, 05:12 AM IST
Those who call Arvind Kejriwal an anarchist miss the point. Anarchists aim to destroy democracy . They break the law. They subvert institutions . Kejriwal does none of these. We may disagree with some of his methods — i do — but not with his intent. And it is important to separate method from intent.

The intent is clearly right: expose the corrupt , improve governance, unmask collusive politics, and undermine the nexus between businessmen and politicians. All these objectives are noble and necessary. India has for too long been a democracy of, by, and for the few rather than the many. This culture of privilege has corroded governance and created two nations: those who have it all and those who have very little.

In the middle of these two extremes is the small but growing aspirational middle class which forms the core support group of Kejriwal’s constituency. It is not large enough to give him many seats in Parliament or even the Delhi assembly once he launches his political party on November 26. But it will give him enough clout to be a disruptive influence.

Disruption can be constructive or destructive. Kejriwal’s modus operandi has two principal flaws. One, he exposes alleged corruption scams but does not follow them through to their logical conclusion. He says others (media, public interest litigants, opposition parties) should complete the job. That’s not good enough. If you start something, finish it. If you can’t , don’t start it. No one else, for example, is going to nail the allegations against Robert Vadra, Salman Khurshid and Nitin Gadkari. Public memory is short, public attention shorter. These issues will eventually wither away in India’s collusive ecosystem.

Two, Kejriwal often gets carried away by his own rhetoric. Calling Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit names does not enhance his credibility. Bitter medicine is necessary to cure a diseased political system but the dose must be delivered in the right measure or it could prove counter-productive . The system, for all its rottenness, has a huge capability to fight back and discredit its detractors. It is easy for it to play victim.

Anna Hazare, Kejriwal’s mentor, says little but in a few words conveys a great deal. His advice to Kejriwal: don’t be in a hurry. Anna has successfully fought political corruption in Maharashtra for over 30 years. He forced the resignations of six state cabinet ministers across party lines — Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena . It was Anna’s decade-long stir from the early 1990s that led to the Maharashtra RTI Act being legislated in 2003. The Congress and other parties fought the Act tooth and nail till they were finally forced to adopt it.

The central RTI Act, 2005, which Congress president Sonia Gandhi never tires of taking credit for, was initially also fiercely opposed by the Congress. Civil society activists, emboldened by Anna’s success in getting the Maharashtra RTI Act legislated, eventually succeeded in pressuring the UPA-1 government to pass the central RTI Act in 2005, modelled largely on the Maharashtra Act.

But “not being in a hurry” , as Anna advised, does not imply inertia . India is a young country, an impatient country. Kejriwal recognizes this. He is right in saying that the government has tried to undermine many institutions of governance: the Election Commission (EC), the Central Vigilance Commission and the Public Accounts Committee. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) remains under government control despite a 2006 Supreme Court order on police autonomy which should apply to the CBI as well. As a result, the CBI is far too often used as a political weapon rather than a professional investigative agency.

To take his political movement forward, Kejriwal needs to infuse clarity into specific issues. He started his activist career campaigning for the RTI Act and deservedly won the Magsaysay award for it in 2006. He then transferred his attention to the Jan Lokpal Bill but has now largely abandoned it in the face of collusive political opposition.

As a politician, Kejriwal needs to articulate a clearer vision than he and his team have done so far. Their manifesto must contain incisive ideas on economic reforms, counter-terrorism , foreign policy, the environment, defence, energy and agriculture. It must also state the team’s agenda on reforming our institutions, including giving the CBI autonomy and the EC statutory powers to conduct a monthly public audit of political party funding and expenditure.

If Kejriwal wants to play a serious, long-term role in India’s evolving democracy, he must shift from the politics of agitation to the politics of reform.

Yash Chopra: A Socio-Political Reading - By Amaresh Misra

            Yash Chopra:  A Socio-Political Reading

                                         

                                                 By Amaresh Misra

The Contemporary Background

           

          During the re-making of the Hrithik Roshan starrer `Agneepath’, filmmaker Karan Johar made a startling revelation: that the movie, originally produced by his father and directed by Mukul Anand with Amitabh Bachchan in 1989, was too violent for him to direct.   Known for making candy floss, Mills and Boons marka `romantic’ films (`Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, `Kabhi Kushi Kabhee Gum’, `Student of the Year’), Karan Johar is part of the breed of directors who emerged in post-liberalisation India in the 1990s with the uncannily aggressive—but softer than tissue—feel—that ended the era of underdog violence—reflected by the angry young man icon—in Hindi-Urdu cinema.

Why is the afore-mentioned instance relevant to a Yash Chopra obituary? Because Karan Johra regards the Yashraj genre of filmmaking his primary inspiration—by this, it is obvious that Johar restricts Yash Chopra’s legacy to so-called romantic and social films. But Yash Chopra was larger than life. He made huge romantic spectacles—and he also directed `Deewar’ and `Trishul’, the two films that provided a new dimension to the subterranean confrontational spirit, apparent in the angry young man.

It is not easy to assess Yash Chopra. If BR Chopra, his equally prolific and good filmmaker elder brother, symbolized the pro-Urdu, secular spirit of the Nehruvian era, Yash Chopra represented truly, the nuances of the Indira Gandhi period. Yash Chopra was a centrist. But like the works of Balzac—the classic French novelist—a political reactionary—who revealed more about capitalist decadence than any official Marxist—Yash Chopra’s films—more than movies made by art filmmakers—echo his times. 

  

 Yash Chopra was a master at combining opposites. Even his romantic films carry social and class contradictions that never get resolved. They are simply, great social documents.

Right Wing Shift in Indian Cinema 

  For many of us who belong to the pro-underdog, belligerent, `Sholay’ generation, the rise of Suraj Barjatya, Aditya Chopra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Karan Johar, and several others in their vein, still signify a hidden political agenda. This was a cinema that made the overseas market look more important than the home one; in its stories of rich NRIs, plush houses and  plastic, semi-westernized `beautiful people’, there was no place for dirt, grime, hardboiled action, the working class hero, the earthy, curvaceous Indian beauty, or even the sophisticated glamour of yore.

Especially in the films of Sooraj Barjatya and Karan Johar,  the landscape did not reflect even the average Indian cinema reality—family replaced the individuality, displays of jewellery replaced human stories of flesh and blood, mush replaced romance, conservatism replaced liberalism,  masochism replaced machismo, surrender to status quo replaced rebellion, homogeneity of culture replaced celebration of plurality, garishly decorated bungalows—with a vapid, neo-rich, quasi-feudal, quasi-colonial reactionary atmosphere—replaced the smells and sounds of slums, middle class homes, sons of the soil, patriotic villages and the Indo-Muslim—or Anglo-Indian—havelis and bungalows—of the traditional elite. Furthermore, soft, infantile sentiments and tears replaced intense, adult emotions; ritualistic wedding music replaced classical and post-classical, original, Indian harmonies of pain, love and longing; soft Hindutva replaced secularism; locales in US and Europe replaced indigenous, regional/local contexts. More importantly, the Muslim social—a genre in its own right till the 1980s—disappeared without a trace. Worse, even the sympathetic Muslim character—an essential ingredient of the average nationalist/patriotic or ordinary Hindi-Urdu film—simply vanished—or was replaced—by the Muslim terrorist villain.

Needless to add, in this unreal cinema of the 1990s, phirangs and phirang assessments ruled the roost. Weak, pliable and squeamish values replaced Pan-Indian—Hindi-Urdu belt and South Indian—notions of masculinity—that formerly—constituted the mainstream.        

The Underdog Centric Upsurge of the 1970s

 After going through the elite/middle class fury against old generation values and the corrupt, unfeeling, criminal elite in the 1970s—the note of anger and mutiny—evident in Hindi-Urdu films from the late 1960s onwards—went on to assume—by the 1980s—the form of an anti-system upheaval. In 1983, Amitabh Bachchan played a working class hero—raised in a Muslim household—celebrating composite Hindu-Muslim-Sufi symbols—in  Manmohan Desai’s `Coolie’—a  super hit film. In society and politics, this was the militant trade union/communist/Dutta Samanta era. It was also around this time that the anti-Muslim, anti-working class lobby in Mumbai woke up. Meetings of cinema personalities—boycotted by secular artistes/stars like Devanand—were arranged with Bal Thackarey—the ultimate strike breaker, anti-working class, and anti-Muslim, figure, of Mumbai. If you watch `Cradle will Rock’, a 1999, Hollywood film based on a true story (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150216/), you can see how Rockfeller and other US industrialists and giants of finance capitalism literally sat around a table and decided to sponsor the abstract art movement in the west in order to counter the subversive, working class tendencies of Cubism and other trends of modernist art. 

                

In India, the 1990s thus represented a classic U turn—a betrayal entrenched in class, caste, ideology and notions of taste—made by pro-urban, pro-bania, pro-NRI sections—unleashed by the liberalisation drive—that dominated society—and Hindi-Urdu cinema—by default. These forces did not just overhaul the working or the lower middle class ethos in films. They came down hard on the pre-liberalisation elite—represented by Jawahar Lal Nehru and the communist/Left team of Indira Gandhi—that used revenge, Urdu poetry, and anti-rich anger, as tools, to set a mainstream, secular/composite, pro-poor, Left-of-centre socio-political schedule into motion.

The `Bollywood’ Conspiracy

  On hindsight, the term Bollywood—criticized heavily by Amitabh Bachchan—the hero of the pre-mush era—clearly seems part of this anti-underdog, anti-Urdu politics. Before 1991, no one had even heard of Bollywood. A cinema which always prided itself on its different/eastern style of narrative, aesthetics and mood, was now being marketed in the west as some sort of an extended VHS footage with twists and turns of a Bania-Gujarati-Marwari wedding.

It is another matter—that even as squishy songs celebrating re-invented (for the neo-rich) Gujarati melodies—played out in a Sanjay Leela Bansali or a Karan Johar film—Muslim houses were being burned—men killed and women raped—and Indian working and middle class soldiers of all faiths were dying in hundreds in the remote, hilly, frigid battlefields of Kargil. No one ever thought of making a film on these hardboiled issues. Far away from the cushy, comfortable world of these films, Adivasis and Left activists of all faiths were being killed in fake Police encounters. The fact remains that behind the turn towards the `sab kuch achcha hai, sub kuch meetha hai, sub kuch theek hai’ idiom in Hindi-Urdu cinema, lies the story of a whole, ugly, Nazi style/fascist, right-wing shift of Indian society.

Yash Chopra’s Trajectory

It is here that Yash Chopra struck a different note.  Even in the late 1950s—Chopra—in early films like `Dhool Ka Phool’ (1959) and `Dharmaputra’ (1961)—celebrated Hindu-Muslim unity and composite culture. In `Dharmaputra’ Chopra went as far as presenting the only critique of what we know now as Hindutva fundamentalism; with a RSS style hero—actually the illegitimate son of a Muslim couple raised by a compassionate Hindu family during the pre-Independence days of composite culture—played by Shashi Kapoor—gunning for Muslim blood in a puritan frenzy during the partition days—as its centre-piece—`Dharmaputra’ is simply, too radical a subject. Today, it cannot be said with certainty that even ideologically committed filmmakers would touch say, a subject involving RSS type terrorism unearthed by Hemant Karkare (something which can be seen as a contemporary corollary to the kind of hate and intolerance depicted during the days when Chopra made `Dharmaputra’).

  `Dharmaputra’ generated controversy and violent protests from the far-right. In the mid-1960s—at a time when the post-Independence consensus of an alliance between classes was giving way to violent class conflicts that would change Indian polity for all times to come—Chopra re-introduced the concept of class in the making and unmaking of love and destinies. Earlier, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Shammi Kapoor’s apolitical, pro-rich romances had obliterated all traces of class. Besides inaugurating the trend of multi starrers, Chopra’s `Waqt’ (1965), redefined romance as a stylish emotion carrying the vicissitudes of fate, class to class relations—in this,  a poor boy’s shy missives to his rich girlfriend gets strangled from within. `Waqt’ also brought into focus the behavioural aspect of class; the pain a man—raised in a rich household—undergoes after learning of his original orphan status in which his foster parents found him—as he prepares himself—to give up his rich fiancée—voluntarily.

        

 After `Waqt’, Yash Chopra made `Aadmi aur Insaan’ and `Ittefaq’—the latter, a nerve racking, song-less thriller; earlier, in the 1960s, BR Chopra, Yash Chopra’s elder brother, made the highly successful `Kanoon’, another suspense drama without songs.

Deewar and After 

By the 1970s, Yash Chopra set up his own banner. `Daag’, his first film as a producer, tackles issues of bigamy and compromises a man has to make in order to shed the burden of past—and to come to grips with the often numbing, varied faces of love; seen today, `Daag’—termed a romantic film—overturns the very idea of a Mills and Boons romance. 

  

 Soon, Yash Chopra—in Deewar (1975), Kabhie Kabhie (1976), Trishul (1978), Kala Patthar (1980), Silsila (1981)—the films he made one after the other in a tumultuous era of Indian politics—took head on the challenge of exploring the various/multiple/darker shades of the angry young man. `Deewar’ can be seen more, as a Salim-Javed script than a Yash Chopra film. Here, Amitabh Bachchan’s anger transcends the status-quo—it becomes a weapon for the underdog to enter the big game, make money and live a good life before tragedy—and the strange, idealistic values of a society bound by dated duty, law and rigid morals (a semi-feudal society were notions of good and bad, right and wrong stand twisted in cinematic subtext)—strikes him down. Played by Parveen Babi, Amitabh Bachchan’s lover too originates from the lower depths of society. The 1970s were perhaps the only time when the woman from the wrong sides of the track—the prostitute—or the call girl—a word that could have appeared only in those morally ambiguous times—was shown without pity—as an individual in her own right—capable of making or breaking decisions. The absence of maudlin drama was a product of Salim-Javed’s astoundingly encrusted and well-heeled writing. But Yash Chopra’s filming of Parveen Babi’s first encounter with Amitabh—at a time when Amitabh’s character—originally a Bombay dockyard coolie—has literally put his life on the line  to rise as a cool, handsome, well-dressed gangster—and Parveen Babi’s character—with the famous `I am falling in love with a stranger’ song—playing tenderly and tantalisingly—in the background—a minute ago—saves him accidentally—through the 786 number—considered auspicious by Muslims—badge—which Amitabh’s Hindu character carries—from his coolie days—is the stuff of legends. Danger, glamour, the threat of betrayal, inherent everyday secularism of Hindus and Muslims of India, sexual undercurrents, baritone of the base guitar, the elusively posh words from female lips, come together to create perhaps, the most modern of all scenes in Indian cinema as a whole.

                       

Chopra followed `Deewar’, with `Trishul’—in which an `illegitimate’ son seeks revenge—in another unforgettable piece of writing from Salim-Javed—the script writers of this film as well—on his `illegitimate’ father. To achieve his goal, Amitabh Bachchan’s character is willing to go to any length, even trying to woo with cold but intense, brooding detachment his stepbrother’s fiancée. In this moment of cinema, Amitabh’s character crosses the line reserved for heroes playing negative characters in Hindi-Urdu cinema. `Trishul’ harks back to an earlier era—the films of Mehboob Khan—who showed in `Amar’ (1955)—a perfectly respectable Dilip Kumar character—engaged to a beautiful Madhubala—suddenly raping Nimmi—a village lass—without motive—in an abrupt moment of passion, heat and desire. It is at this point that you finally realize that Chopra knew men. And he knew that like any passion, revenge too carries a darker side.

   

After `Trishul’, Chopra explored Amitabh’s dark side even in `Kabhie Kabhie’, perhaps one of the best romantic films of the 1970s. Starting as a poet, Amitabh’s character turns his passion into a brooding, self inflicted drive of pain and outburst, with vengeance always lurking around in the corner.   In `Kala Patthar’, Amitabh plays an ex-naval officer turned coal mine worker; a man—much like the characters of Joseph Conrad—haunted by the burden of a past guilt—where—in a moment of weakness—he betrayed his comrades. Then in `Silsila’, Chopra extended the line of romance to bring in extra-marital issues—a forbidden topic then—with the dream cast of Amitabh playing the husband, Jaya Bhaduri the wife, and Rekha, the other woman.  

The Lamhe Moment

Chopra flirted with unconventional issues even in `Lamhe’ (1991), a film about a young girl’s obsession with an older man who once nurtured unrequited love for her late mother; unlike films today, `Lamhe’ was not a copy of a Hollywood movie—previously, Chopra made `Chandini’ (1989), that ended his post-`Kala Patthar’ dry run at the box office during the 1980s. This was a time when Chopra made films like `Mashaal’ (a critical success but a commercial failure) and `Vijay’.

   

But, and this is important, Chopra did not fall prey to the philistine mayhem of the 1990s. He made the unconventional `Darr’—that launched Shahrukh Khan—as a phenomenon in his own right—a hero with negative shades and positive potential. From DDLJ to `DON’, Shahrukh just seems to walk around the territory by Yash Chopa for him.

     

Despite containing candy floss elements, ‘Dil To Paagal Hai (DTPH)’ still retained a whiff of Chopra’s strong grounding. DTPH also introduced new age jazz dance style in Hindi-Urdu cinema.

With `Veer Zaara’ (2004)—actually a passionate cry at the lost strands of Hindu-Muslim unity dressed as a cross border romantic story of an Indian Hindu man and a Pakistani Muslim woman—Chopra appears to have come full circle. He wanted to retire. Then he thought about making one last time—`Jab Tak Hai Jaan’; this film—is ready for release. But Chopra is no more. Maybe he would have liked it this way—maybe not; not time—but his last film—which his fans and audiences have yet to see—will provide the answer.  

The World of Urdu: Babur Ki Aulad in London

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: British High Commissioner's interference in Indian politics

Monday, October 22, 2012

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

British High Commissioner's interference in Indian politics

It is with great sense of outrage that Indian TV audiences viewed British High Commissioner to India, in his press conference, declaring with a straight face, that Britain is not endorsing or rehabilitating Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi by the fact that it is now initiating a re-engaging of Gujarat by calling on the Chief Minister, who is widely believed to be the mastermind behind the genocidal communal riots of 2002 in the State of Gujarat.

Nine out of ten questions from the press were addressed to the High Commissioner, to find out what made the sudden decision to make a call on Modi in the wake of the coming State Assembly elections.

Does this not amount to a gross political interference in the democratic processes of sovereign state of Indian Republic?

The High Commissioner was however; very truthful and persistent that any such move is to serve the best interest of his country.

However, how does UK's best interest coincide with Indian Government's own best interest in letting a foreign ambassador make such a drastic move that for all practical purposes, will amount to an international conspiracy for regime change in India.

It is true, that if it is in the best interest of UK, it can haul African leaders to International Court of Justice for any similar wholesale slaughter of people in their respective countries. How does the crimes committed in Gujarat by state authorities through either acts of commission or omission of its duties towards its citizens, do not appear to UK, the paragon of worldwide standard bearer of Human Rights, to be a fit case for international persecution of the criminals?

Instead of issuing an international warrant against the criminals to be hauled in British courts, especially when 3 British Muslims were killed in those riots, UK's conservative government of David Cameron deems it fit to ignore crimes committed against Muslims everywhere in the world and stick to its new interpretation of the best interest of Great Britain.

After all what can be expected from those themselves alleged to have committed war crimes in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is a great dereliction of duty by the UPA coalition government of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Gandhi, to have allowed the old colonials to come back and meddle in our internal affairs, so directly, so blatantly, so audaciously.

Imagine, a similar indiscretion by a US Ambassador visiting say West Bengal, would have unleashed a storm of protests all over the country. Why David Cameron's UK government is being treated by Sonia and Manmohan Singh with kid gloves.

Indian Government must lodge a strong protest with the UK government, fully adhering to the sentiments of its own people, requiring UK to stop all such interference in the internal affairs of Indian Republic.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>