The egg-headed and extremist Muslim priests (mullahs), in mosques, create so much of noise pollution through their blaring calls for namaaz (prayer) 3-4 times a ay using loudspeakers need to be shown their place by all right-thinking citizens. Be it any organised religion's loud noise or private citizen's loud music/parties there should be zero tolerance shown by the civil and police authorities of any secular state. Across India, the namaaz calls are causing enormous irritation to all non-Muslims and even many common right-thinking Muslims but who are not courageous to defy their religious priests in these matters.
Anyway, as an aside, I came across an interesting two interviews by journalist Jyoti Punwani (who is known to be that rare journalist who is not afraid of taking on religious extremists of any hues) of two right-thinking Muslim citizens. This appeared in Mumbai Mirror dated 9 November '08. Here it is:
ACTS OF FAITH
Jyoti Punwani talks to Hasan Kamal and Sajid Rashid, both vocal critics of religious fanaticism and terrorism.
The difference between terrorism and jihad is a topic central to the Jamait Ulema’s national conference being held over the weekend at Hyderabad. Two of Mumbai’s intellectuals — poet and lyricist Hasan Kamal and journalist and educationalist Sajid Rashid — have for long been speaking out on these issues. Excerpts from an interview:
HASAN KAMAL
Popular Urdu poet and Filmfare-award winning lyricist Hasan Kamal wrote recently in the Delhi Urdu daily, Hamara Samaj: “It would be self-deception to say that no Muslim can do such things,” referring to the bomb blasts. He further wrote: “There are also elements among the youth who actually think that the Taliban are ‘Muslim Mujahideen’, which they are not in any manner, (and who) perform irresponsible acts in a fit of frenzy.”
Mumbai Mirror: Strong words. Why did you write them?
HK: Because in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, the suicide bombers are all Muslim. In India too, there is an extremist SIMI faction. A section of the Urdu press, for popularity, often glorifies Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban and readers begin to think these people are fighting for Islam. Then there are those who have been misled into believing that the only revenge for Gujarat is through terror.
One cannot say that all these people are not Muslims, or that the blasts just can’t be the work of Muslims. But I am equally emphatic about the other aspect: just as all Bajrang Dalis may be Hindus, not all Hindus are Bajrang Dalis. So also, there may be some Muslims influenced by a romanticised image of Osama, but it’s wrong to demonise all Muslims. The majority, like their Hindu counterparts, are secular, tolerant and peace loving. But we cannot deny that we have our share of black sheep.
MM: What about the theory presented by almost every Muslim, that the blasts are a conspiracy by the RSS or IB or Mossad to give Muslims a bad name, and no Muslim stands to benefit by them?
HK: That’s an exaggerated view, which may be only partly correct. There are communal elements among Hindus, the police and the media, but to ascribe the blasts to them speaks of a siege mentality. Terrorists are not normal, sane people who calculate the logic of who benefits and who suffers. They act in rage. Don’t they know that among those who die, there could be Muslims too?
MM: How did readers react?
HK: Without meaning to boast, I can say mine is the most popular column. I have been saying the same things at meetings across Maharashtra and people have mostly agreed. In the past, in a room full of ulemas, I have said that Muslims should stop opposing the demand for a common civil code. There is a growing section of Muslims who feel the old religious leadership is no longer enough.
People know my intention: I condemn the RSS with the same sincerity as I condemn Muslim extremists. I have spoken out against the terror label given to Azamgarh; that’s sheer humbug.
MM: Maybe people see you as part of the film industry and so not a real Muslim.
HK: I do my namaaz, I fast. Nobody can say I’m not a Muslim. If you want to bring about reform within Muslims, you have to be a practising Muslim, or you won’t be taken seriously.
MM: At a time when the community is feeling cornered, aren’t you betraying it by writing all this?
HK: On the contrary, I feel I am helping it. It’s my duty to point out the shortcomings of my community.
SAJID RASHID
Often reviled by religious Muslims as an apostate, editor of the Urdu literary journal Naya Waraq, two time recipient of the Katha Award for Urdu short stories and former head of the state Urdu Academy, Sajid Rashid has been a vehement critic of SIMI in his column in the Hindi daily Jansatta.
MM: When the entire community defends SIMI, what’s your problem with it?
SR: As long as SIMI was a religious organisation, I had no objections. But after 1993, when it put up posters saying ‘No democracy, No nationalism, No polytheism, only Islam’, and eulogising Mahmud Ghaznavi after it began talking about jihad, I started warning Muslims about the impact SIMI would have on the next generation. My own son was misled into becoming a member of its Shaheen Club, meant for kids. In my house, I had to listen to talk about Hindus and Muslims belonging to different nations, about Muslims being idol breakers who could not live with idol worshippers. I made him leave it, and today he is a secular, open-minded young man.
MM: Isn’t it true that no SIMI member has as yet been convicted?
SR: I am opposed to the wrongful imprisonment of even one innocent. But when you include in you r list of ‘innocents’ Safdar Nagori, I start suspecting the list. I know Muslims who left SIMI in 2000 because of his hardline views.
What stopped the government from applying Sec 153 A for the Ghaznavi posters; or arresting those who organised the 1997 SIMI meet at Kanpur, where Bin Laden was eulogised as an idol-breaker, and the chiefs of Hamas and the Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami addressed the meet through phone? Why didn’t they stop SIMI from distributing cassettes of Maulana Azhar Mehmood outside mosques? Simply because it suited the government to have an entire generation of Muslims ruined by this ideology, just as it suits them to have an entire generation of Hindus brainwashed by the RSS.
MM: Most Muslims feel that when all their leaders had sold out, only SIMI spoke up against the injustice done to Muslims by the State.
SR: Muslims have been facing injustice for the last 50 years. But those who have fought this the most have been Hindus. Of the 10 persons who donated a lakh each to fight the Best Bakery case, seven were Hindus. When all Hindus join the RSS, I may reconsider my view of SIMI. The State discriminates against Muslims, but it has done so against Sikhs, and now is doing so against Christians too.
To fight this injustice, do you need to take up arms, or go to the ISI? What could have been worse than the massacres of Muslims in Moradabad and Maliana by the PAC in the ‘80s? Muslims were angry; why didn’t they call for jihad then? Because there was no SIMI, with its powerful backers to instigate them. Has SIMI ever done relief work? Did they help Muslims in the Srikrishna Commission?
MM: Muslims dismiss your views because they see you as a non-practising Muslim.
SR: I believe in Khuda; my identity remains Muslim. The letters I get from my Muslim readers show that they agree with me. Till now, they haven’t been told the truth about SIMI. Muslims have mastered the art of sweeping their dirt under the carpet.
November 13, 2008
November 12, 2008
life in journalism: of prattlers and moles!
This happens not just in journalism but across the corporate world.
What do you do about prattling colleagues and colleagues who cunningly serve as moles of the top bosses? I say do nothing much except speak to them strictly on direct work-related matters only.
The prattlers will eventually choke on their own tattle and the moles,
like this another definition of a 'mole' as per freedictionary.com: "a burrowing mammal with velvety dark fur and forelimbs specialized for digging", will eventually experience the earth giving away beneath their feet and they getting buried inside, for the good of the rest of humanity! No offence to the mammals called 'mole'! The pic to the right is of a 'mole' mammal, courtesy nature.com/mammals/talpa_europaea.htm.
What do you do about prattling colleagues and colleagues who cunningly serve as moles of the top bosses? I say do nothing much except speak to them strictly on direct work-related matters only.
The prattlers will eventually choke on their own tattle and the moles,
like this another definition of a 'mole' as per freedictionary.com: "a burrowing mammal with velvety dark fur and forelimbs specialized for digging", will eventually experience the earth giving away beneath their feet and they getting buried inside, for the good of the rest of humanity! No offence to the mammals called 'mole'! The pic to the right is of a 'mole' mammal, courtesy nature.com/mammals/talpa_europaea.htm.November 11, 2008
life in financial markets: killing the access to trading in small companies' shares
Killing a good concept due to one's false assumptions is commonplace. Take the latest example, seen in the Indian financial markets.
November 05, 2008
life in general: no bush-cheney-gangofthugs, no rigging of US elections!
Thankfully, the US presidential elections have escaped being rigged this time unlike in 2000 and 2004, and Barack Obama is the new President of the United States! Credit must also go to John McCain for playing the race to the elections fairly without attempting to rig any state's votes to win two very-close elections (like Bush, Cheney and their gang of thugs did by rigging the vote in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004).
I am happy for Americans, although I want them to also realise the enormous pain their jingoism and their governments have caused to Iraqis and non-combatant Afghans in the last five years and to other peoples of other continents in the last five decades. The emotions that are pouring out in support of Obama on his victory is very rare -- see here, here and here.
From Laos in Vietnam, where he presently is, my good American friend, Sean-Paul Kelley, writing in his latest blog post, says it beautifully, "... at long last I sense hope and purpose in America again. We have a military-imperial-national security state to dismantle, infrastructure to rebuild, a financial catastrophe to work through and more. But, this is a victory for all Americans, and all of America. Indeed, the sense of relief across the globe, as I sit and blog in this Laotian internet cafe, is immense. The sense that America is on the road for atoning for the wrongs of the Bush/Cheney era is real. And the world watched us and began the long slow process of growing up. There is hope. And while hope is not a good policy, I'll take it in a pinch."
The new result also makes Barack Obama the first dark-skinned President of the US. It is great. One of fellow contributor-blogger on Sean-Paul's blog has written a very touching post on this aspect. I present below his entire post. But before that I would like to offer a prayer to the universal energy to protect him from racist bigots who could try to assassinate him (there was a plot that was recently revealed).
Here is that post then:
agonist.org/numerian/20081104/lessons_learned_on_the_loading_dock
Martin Luther King brought his campaign for civil rights to Chicago in 1965, giving my father yet another excuse to rail on and on about Negroes not knowing their place. When he was at home he was restricted to the term “Negro” – our mother saw to that – but to the embarrassment of everyone in our family he was allowed to let loose whenever his own parents held a family party with his many brothers and sisters.
We kids would sit quietly in their living room, while in the kitchen the aunts and uncles, plus Grandpa and Grandma and our Dad, would tell the latest jokes about the coons or niggers or spades or jungle monkeys they met showing off their Cadillacs, or lazing around the streets. There was a decided overtone of superiority to these conversations; it seemed to make my Dad’s family feel much better to talk about the ignorant and indolent blacks they would come across from time to time. But there was also an undercurrent of fear; the blacks were beginning to move into yet another neighborhood, they would say, branching out like a menace to all the nice communities where the sons of white immigrants from Europe made their living as tradesmen, steelworkers, or in other manual labor.
As teenagers we were embarrassed by all this racist talk, mostly because our mother made it clear we were never, ever to use such language ourselves, but also because the suburban high school we attended was intent on educating our baby boomer generation with a higher level of tolerance. This was an easy thing to do because there were no blacks in our high school, not at least until my junior year, which was the first time I ever met a black person.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and riots were beginning to spread across the South and up into northern cities like Chicago. We couldn’t but be aware of these convulsions; they were on the television every night, and my father detested Martin Luther King almost as much as he did the Kennedy’s or Lyndon Johnson. The fear of your neighborhood changing color was now being compounded by the greater fear of physical violence.
Teenagers notice these bigger social developments, but the microcosmic world of high school is highly insular, and we spent more of our time on dating and homework and music – especially music. This was the time of the rise of the Beatles, a social force in their own right, but one that bridged the black and white cultures of the U.S. The Beatles were purposeful borrowers of musical trends emerging from inner city ghettos, and in that sense were oddly more in tune with American racial circumstances than most white kids.
......
In 1964..... At that moment, the interaction of blacks with whites in a big city like Chicago was almost non-existent, and whites were beginning to pour out of the inner cities to avoid associating with blacks. Eventually my grandparents on both sides of the family lost their homes to white flight. They watched the values of their homes on the Southside fall more than 50% as blacks began moving in and their neighbors moved out, and eventually they succumbed as well, with great bitterness as a result. My grandfather on my mother’s side had always been a genteel person with a decent white-collar job and no unkind word for anyone. Quite to our surprise, once he was forced to move to the suburbs he developed a racist streak every bit as virulent as my other grandfather.
Our Dad provided us a surprise of a different nature in his later years. He kept his job at a Southside steel mill until retirement, and long after the plant had become completely integrated. We would hear creeping into his conversation stories about his co-workers who were black, who were three-dimensional humans with names, and who were friends even. I remember him coming home one day from work and telling us, with great wonderment as if he had made an anthropological discovery, that if black people stayed in the sun too long they would develop a sunburn.
Dad suffered two hernias working on the loading dock, and the company allowed a very limited time for someone to recover from surgery, so it made a big difference to him when his co-workers covered for him on the job for weeks while he took it easy. He discovered blacks were anything but lazy, and it seemed to liberate him when his father died. No one had to sit around the kitchen table anymore competing over who could tell the most racist joke.
In the 80s my parents moved to one of those planned retirement communities springing up in the South. In talking to my Dad on the phone, he was a very different person from the father I knew as a child. I was taken aback one day when he complained to me about some of the white guys in the community who were “really racist.” It was as if they were insulting the friends he left behind at the steel mill. It was then that I began to wonder what sort of person he would have been if his father hadn’t taught him racism, and what sort of person I would have been if my mother hadn’t taught me in a very different way.
If my Dad had kept his family home on the Southside, and if he had lived a few years longer, his state senator in Springfield would have been Barack Obama. What would he have thought of that? I know my wife would have told him to have some pride in his state senator. She met Barack Obama in the mid-90s when he gave a speech at our local chapter of the League of Women Voters. She came home and told me “that man will be President of the United States someday!”
Just as in 1964, I filed that information away to be acted upon by Americans far, far into the future. In our lifetime, a black man would never be President of the United States – I was sure of that. So were we all, except those who met Barack Obama. He had a way back then of making people believe in unlimited, even unthinkable futures. And why couldn’t that future include an African-American as President – maybe even Barack Obama, and maybe even now rather than later? From this sort of thinking sprang up a cadre of people – some important, many unknown – who began working to promote Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate, and then ultimately to campaign for the presidency itself.
Barack Obama was a chocolate child, the sort of white-black link that Ringo Starr prophesied. The type of person who can move easily within and between both cultures. Except the emphasis here is on the verb “was” – Barack Obama is no longer a chocolate child. He has long since adopted his black heritage as his own, without disowning his white roots or upbringing, but always asserting the essential aspect of his character – both how others see him, and how he wishes to be seen.
He wishes to be seen as a man of character, a person of intellect and solid reasoning, someone of prudential judgment, someone who has associated all his life with those struggling with poverty, discrimination, and lack of opportunity. And oh yes, he is an African-American who has been shaped by the black experience in America.
I think – and I don’t believe this is a fantasy – that my father would look at Barack Obama the way Barack Obama wishes to be perceived. I suspect my father would see in him a man who would step up and do the work of others when it was needed, a three-dimensional character who put to rest the stereotypes that whites maintain about blacks. I suspect my father would see in Barack Obama exactly the sort of person he had come to know and respect on the loading dock.
.......
Numerian November 5, 2008 - 1.52 am
I am happy for Americans, although I want them to also realise the enormous pain their jingoism and their governments have caused to Iraqis and non-combatant Afghans in the last five years and to other peoples of other continents in the last five decades. The emotions that are pouring out in support of Obama on his victory is very rare -- see here, here and here.
From Laos in Vietnam, where he presently is, my good American friend, Sean-Paul Kelley, writing in his latest blog post, says it beautifully, "... at long last I sense hope and purpose in America again. We have a military-imperial-national security state to dismantle, infrastructure to rebuild, a financial catastrophe to work through and more. But, this is a victory for all Americans, and all of America. Indeed, the sense of relief across the globe, as I sit and blog in this Laotian internet cafe, is immense. The sense that America is on the road for atoning for the wrongs of the Bush/Cheney era is real. And the world watched us and began the long slow process of growing up. There is hope. And while hope is not a good policy, I'll take it in a pinch."
The new result also makes Barack Obama the first dark-skinned President of the US. It is great. One of fellow contributor-blogger on Sean-Paul's blog has written a very touching post on this aspect. I present below his entire post. But before that I would like to offer a prayer to the universal energy to protect him from racist bigots who could try to assassinate him (there was a plot that was recently revealed).
Here is that post then:
agonist.org/numerian/20081104/lessons_learned_on_the_loading_dock
Martin Luther King brought his campaign for civil rights to Chicago in 1965, giving my father yet another excuse to rail on and on about Negroes not knowing their place. When he was at home he was restricted to the term “Negro” – our mother saw to that – but to the embarrassment of everyone in our family he was allowed to let loose whenever his own parents held a family party with his many brothers and sisters.
We kids would sit quietly in their living room, while in the kitchen the aunts and uncles, plus Grandpa and Grandma and our Dad, would tell the latest jokes about the coons or niggers or spades or jungle monkeys they met showing off their Cadillacs, or lazing around the streets. There was a decided overtone of superiority to these conversations; it seemed to make my Dad’s family feel much better to talk about the ignorant and indolent blacks they would come across from time to time. But there was also an undercurrent of fear; the blacks were beginning to move into yet another neighborhood, they would say, branching out like a menace to all the nice communities where the sons of white immigrants from Europe made their living as tradesmen, steelworkers, or in other manual labor.
As teenagers we were embarrassed by all this racist talk, mostly because our mother made it clear we were never, ever to use such language ourselves, but also because the suburban high school we attended was intent on educating our baby boomer generation with a higher level of tolerance. This was an easy thing to do because there were no blacks in our high school, not at least until my junior year, which was the first time I ever met a black person.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and riots were beginning to spread across the South and up into northern cities like Chicago. We couldn’t but be aware of these convulsions; they were on the television every night, and my father detested Martin Luther King almost as much as he did the Kennedy’s or Lyndon Johnson. The fear of your neighborhood changing color was now being compounded by the greater fear of physical violence.
Teenagers notice these bigger social developments, but the microcosmic world of high school is highly insular, and we spent more of our time on dating and homework and music – especially music. This was the time of the rise of the Beatles, a social force in their own right, but one that bridged the black and white cultures of the U.S. The Beatles were purposeful borrowers of musical trends emerging from inner city ghettos, and in that sense were oddly more in tune with American racial circumstances than most white kids.
......
In 1964..... At that moment, the interaction of blacks with whites in a big city like Chicago was almost non-existent, and whites were beginning to pour out of the inner cities to avoid associating with blacks. Eventually my grandparents on both sides of the family lost their homes to white flight. They watched the values of their homes on the Southside fall more than 50% as blacks began moving in and their neighbors moved out, and eventually they succumbed as well, with great bitterness as a result. My grandfather on my mother’s side had always been a genteel person with a decent white-collar job and no unkind word for anyone. Quite to our surprise, once he was forced to move to the suburbs he developed a racist streak every bit as virulent as my other grandfather.
Our Dad provided us a surprise of a different nature in his later years. He kept his job at a Southside steel mill until retirement, and long after the plant had become completely integrated. We would hear creeping into his conversation stories about his co-workers who were black, who were three-dimensional humans with names, and who were friends even. I remember him coming home one day from work and telling us, with great wonderment as if he had made an anthropological discovery, that if black people stayed in the sun too long they would develop a sunburn.
Dad suffered two hernias working on the loading dock, and the company allowed a very limited time for someone to recover from surgery, so it made a big difference to him when his co-workers covered for him on the job for weeks while he took it easy. He discovered blacks were anything but lazy, and it seemed to liberate him when his father died. No one had to sit around the kitchen table anymore competing over who could tell the most racist joke.
In the 80s my parents moved to one of those planned retirement communities springing up in the South. In talking to my Dad on the phone, he was a very different person from the father I knew as a child. I was taken aback one day when he complained to me about some of the white guys in the community who were “really racist.” It was as if they were insulting the friends he left behind at the steel mill. It was then that I began to wonder what sort of person he would have been if his father hadn’t taught him racism, and what sort of person I would have been if my mother hadn’t taught me in a very different way.If my Dad had kept his family home on the Southside, and if he had lived a few years longer, his state senator in Springfield would have been Barack Obama. What would he have thought of that? I know my wife would have told him to have some pride in his state senator. She met Barack Obama in the mid-90s when he gave a speech at our local chapter of the League of Women Voters. She came home and told me “that man will be President of the United States someday!”
Just as in 1964, I filed that information away to be acted upon by Americans far, far into the future. In our lifetime, a black man would never be President of the United States – I was sure of that. So were we all, except those who met Barack Obama. He had a way back then of making people believe in unlimited, even unthinkable futures. And why couldn’t that future include an African-American as President – maybe even Barack Obama, and maybe even now rather than later? From this sort of thinking sprang up a cadre of people – some important, many unknown – who began working to promote Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate, and then ultimately to campaign for the presidency itself.
Barack Obama was a chocolate child, the sort of white-black link that Ringo Starr prophesied. The type of person who can move easily within and between both cultures. Except the emphasis here is on the verb “was” – Barack Obama is no longer a chocolate child. He has long since adopted his black heritage as his own, without disowning his white roots or upbringing, but always asserting the essential aspect of his character – both how others see him, and how he wishes to be seen.
He wishes to be seen as a man of character, a person of intellect and solid reasoning, someone of prudential judgment, someone who has associated all his life with those struggling with poverty, discrimination, and lack of opportunity. And oh yes, he is an African-American who has been shaped by the black experience in America.
I think – and I don’t believe this is a fantasy – that my father would look at Barack Obama the way Barack Obama wishes to be perceived. I suspect my father would see in him a man who would step up and do the work of others when it was needed, a three-dimensional character who put to rest the stereotypes that whites maintain about blacks. I suspect my father would see in Barack Obama exactly the sort of person he had come to know and respect on the loading dock.
.......
Numerian November 5, 2008 - 1.52 am
November 03, 2008
life in general: aravind adiga "taking heart from the darkness"
Aravind Adiga's book The White Tiger has come in the limelight recently because of it winning the Man Booker prize for 2008. The book covers the dark si
de of Indian society that we (those among us in India who are sensitive to what's happening around us) already know. But the world needs to know too, not that there aren't enough dark stories in the most developed of countries. But still.On Saturday (1 Nov '08) at about 9 pm, as I was commuting back home in the local suburban train, I noticed a fellow commuter, sitting a bit far from me, reading Adiga's book. I could not resist taking a pic on the sly. See to the right; i have marked the guy and the book in a white circle.
Before the prize was awarded to Adiga, he had written a column for Tehelka magazine that talked about the driving force behind his being able to complete his book.
Here it is:
Taking Heart From The Darkness
Twenty rickshaw-pullers gathered in a dingy shed in Kolkata needed more space than a newspaper article. They spurred a novel
ARAVIND ADIGA
Author, The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga's debut novel The White Tiger, an insightful but also drolly funny worm's-eye perspective of the vast class gap in contemporary India, is on the Man Booker Prize shortlist. In this essay, Adiga, TIME magazine's India correspondent between 2003 and 2005, recalls the encounter that provided the impetus for his book.
IN 2006, I quit my job with TIME magazine, and spent the first few weeks of the year trying to finish a novel that was tentatively called The White Tiger. I gave up by March. The novel was going nowhere; I was restless. I went to Kolkata by train.
It was meant to be a holiday, but I knew no one in the city and after a day, I was bored. I was too used to being a journalist: I called an NGO and asked if there was anything to cover. “The government wants to ban the handpulled rickshaws of the city so that industrialists will feel comfortable investing here,” the spokesperson said. “Would you meet one of the rickshaw-pullers and present their point of view in an article?”
The man from the NGO took me to meet a group of rickshaw-pullers. There were nearly 20 of them, all from Bihar, living in a large, dingy shed. One rickshaw-puller, as if reading my thoughts, seized me by the wrist and took me around the shed, showing me the brooms, and explaining that there was a twice-a-day schedule of sweeping and mopping. “We are clean people, sir,” he said. “And good people. I am a Muslim, but I live here with Hindus, and there is no trouble. We have separate kitchens, and we respect each other.”
He agreed at once to let me interview him. He had heard of a British correspondent who had written about a rickshaw-puller in a big newspaper abroad; the rickshaw-puller had got the article framed and sent home to Bihar. He hoped I would do the same for him.
Since I knew nothing of a rickshawpuller’s life, I explained, I would like to meet him every evening, after he was done with his work, for perhaps a week. “You can come for a year if you want,” he said. “No one has ever wanted to talk to me before.”
“Will there still be rickshaw-pullers a year from now?” I asked. That got him started. “There will be rickshaw-pullers 10 years from now,” he said. “In 1947, when Pandit Nehru came to Kolkata, he said that rickshawpulling was not fit for human beings and had to be abolished. For 60 years, every Prime Minister who comes to Kolkata says, we must get rid of these rickshaws. And nothing has changed. The Chief Minister of Bengal says he is ashamed of us, but he knows that Bengalis are too lazy to walk from one part of the city to the other. Why don’t these people just admit they need rickshaws, and stop harassing us?”
Although he was illiterate, he had picked up the language of the trade unions, and spoke of his “fundamental rights” as a working man. He didn’t support the Communists, though. “They’ve kept the peace between the Hindus and Muslims, I’ll say that much for them, but they don’t care about the poor. No one cares about the poor, because the poor don’t care about themselves.” He had nothing nice to say about the Bengalis whom he took about in his rickshaw, but he loved Kolkata. “There are no rules here, like there are back home in the village. Even your language becomes free here. People who come here from Bihar are astonished when they hear me talk. They say I get the kaa and kii completely mixed up now,” he said, beaming, as if this were a matter of pride.
As he talked to me about his village in Bihar, a boy sat by his side — “my son”. While taking a customer about the city, he had seen an advertisement for the Indian Air Force. “I want my boy to join the Indian Air Force. He can do something for the nation; when he gets his pension, I can live off that, when my bones are broken from this work.” He made the boy write his name, in English, on my notebook. “Remember to tell the world that my son can write in English,” he said.
On the third evening, he asked me: “You’ve been listening for a long time. But I don’t know what you think of me. Do you look down upon me because of my work?”
“No,” I said. “But I keep wondering why a man who is as smart as you is doing this work. There must be something back in Bihar. Even tilling a field; there is dignity in that. Why pull a rickshaw?”
He smiled. “You’ve seen my boy, sir. But I also have three daughters; they stay with my sister in another part of Kolkata. The eldest girl is now 15 years old. She’s in school. All three are in school. If I go back to my village,” he said, “The first thing I will have to do is take them out of school and marry off all three of them within a year or two. There is no choice for Muslims of my background in Bihar.
When he stopped to catch his breath, I noticed that the other rickshaw-pullers were sitting in a circle around us and listening, in the dim light of the shed.
“This place may seem like an animal’s abode to you, but for someone like me, who has learnt to speak and think in the city, home is darkness: and this Kolkata is like light. I send my boy to the village each year, but my daughters will never go back.”
I couldn’t convince any newspaper to take my article on the rickshaw- pullers of Kolkata. But in December that year, when I returned to The White Tiger, what I had heard in that shed in Kolkata came back to me in a flood.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 38, Dated Sept 27, 2008
November 02, 2008
life in general: update to 'goondaism recycled' post
In my 26 October '08 post I wrote about Raj Thackeray and and how he is using violence to build political capital for himself and his part. Just now, I read a useful insight on the issue by Nikhil Wagle (formerly the editor of Marathi newspaper 'Apla Mahanagar' and now the editor of television news channel IBN Lokmat) who is an editor for whom I have the highest regard (going back to the tension and violence-filled days of 1992 and 1993 when Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and their goons terrorised Muslims in Bombay and tried to brutally supress any one else speaking their mind against their violence). His write-up follows below but there is also a useful historical & current background of the Thackerays-Congress-NCP-politics by IANS.
And here is what Nikhil Wagle has written in the latest (8 Nov '08) issue of Tehelka:
Mumbai’s Secessionist
Raj Thackeray is aping the 1970s politics of the Shiv Sena
NIKHIL WAGLE
Editor, IBN Lokmat
DURING THE last few days, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has dominated Maharashtra politics. The day Raj Thackeray was brought to court, hundreds of buses were burnt, public property damaged and north Indians in Mumbai were attacked by his supporters. The media covered the manner in which Marathi speakers demonstrated solidarity with Raj Thackeray and his secessionist politics. The Marathi intelligentsia, while condemning the violence, in principle agreed with Thackeray’s cause.
The Raj spectacle makes me wonder if anything has really changed during the last 40 years. In the 1970s, it was the Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray who were busy playing the politics being aped by Raj Thackeray today. Then, in order to contain the threat posed by communist parties, the Congress actively used Bal Thackeray. Today, the same party is using Raj Thackeray to restrict and divide the Shiv Sena vote. It is ironical that neither the Congress nor its strategy of using the Thackeray family has changed. The Congress is known to feed monsters for its political gains. The sidelining of Marathi speakers and Marathi language in Mumbai still remains an sore point. Instead of removing this pain, the Congress-NCP Government is trying to use it for political gain.
Elections are on the anvil. This time, the Shiv Sena commands power not only in urban, but rural Maharashtra too. The support of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra has improved dramatically. The stakes are high. The MNS is a good weapon to divide the Shiv Sena vote, at least in the urban constituencies. Due to reorganisation of constituencies, Mumbai, Pune and Thane districts are going to play a major role in the elections.
It was a sad state to witness the lack of will on the part of the government to punish Raj Thackeray for his violent speeches. He was arrested and brought to Mumbai in a police car like a hero. He entered Mumbai not as an accused, but a king, waving to his supporters. After he got bail in court, the ACP opened the car door for him. The government ensured that he was treated well. He was charged under bailable sections of the IPC. The lack of will on the part of the government to punish him, and the respect of Marathi police officers was obvious.
Raj Thackeray is being supported whole-heartedly by the lower middle class Marathi youth. It is not that everybody is supporting him, but those opposed are silent. Worse is the fate of the leftist intelligentsia in Maharashtra. They are not only cynical, but have not protested.
The feeling of injustice in the Marathi mind needs to be addressed rationally. Mumbai being the financial capital of India, speaks in the language of money. Globalisation discarded the Marathi working class in Mumbai. The service sector driven postindustrial Mumbai prefers cheaper Bihari labour. The feeling in the minds of sons-ofthe- soil is a global phenomenon. Local cultures and languages are threatened by migration. The government, instead of finding solutions to this problem, is letting Raj Thackrey cash-in on this issue.
Solutions are difficult, but not impossible. A threepronged plan could end the violence caused by people like Raj Thackeray. The government should display the willpower to implement law and order. The media should be balanced in its reporting. If people display a strong sense of national integration, the MNS can be contained. My gut feeling says if we all get together, it’s possible.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 44, Dated Nov 08, 2008
And here is what Nikhil Wagle has written in the latest (8 Nov '08) issue of Tehelka:
Mumbai’s Secessionist
Raj Thackeray is aping the 1970s politics of the Shiv Sena
NIKHIL WAGLE
Editor, IBN Lokmat
DURING THE last few days, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has dominated Maharashtra politics. The day Raj Thackeray was brought to court, hundreds of buses were burnt, public property damaged and north Indians in Mumbai were attacked by his supporters. The media covered the manner in which Marathi speakers demonstrated solidarity with Raj Thackeray and his secessionist politics. The Marathi intelligentsia, while condemning the violence, in principle agreed with Thackeray’s cause.
The Raj spectacle makes me wonder if anything has really changed during the last 40 years. In the 1970s, it was the Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray who were busy playing the politics being aped by Raj Thackeray today. Then, in order to contain the threat posed by communist parties, the Congress actively used Bal Thackeray. Today, the same party is using Raj Thackeray to restrict and divide the Shiv Sena vote. It is ironical that neither the Congress nor its strategy of using the Thackeray family has changed. The Congress is known to feed monsters for its political gains. The sidelining of Marathi speakers and Marathi language in Mumbai still remains an sore point. Instead of removing this pain, the Congress-NCP Government is trying to use it for political gain.
Elections are on the anvil. This time, the Shiv Sena commands power not only in urban, but rural Maharashtra too. The support of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra has improved dramatically. The stakes are high. The MNS is a good weapon to divide the Shiv Sena vote, at least in the urban constituencies. Due to reorganisation of constituencies, Mumbai, Pune and Thane districts are going to play a major role in the elections.
It was a sad state to witness the lack of will on the part of the government to punish Raj Thackeray for his violent speeches. He was arrested and brought to Mumbai in a police car like a hero. He entered Mumbai not as an accused, but a king, waving to his supporters. After he got bail in court, the ACP opened the car door for him. The government ensured that he was treated well. He was charged under bailable sections of the IPC. The lack of will on the part of the government to punish him, and the respect of Marathi police officers was obvious.
Raj Thackeray is being supported whole-heartedly by the lower middle class Marathi youth. It is not that everybody is supporting him, but those opposed are silent. Worse is the fate of the leftist intelligentsia in Maharashtra. They are not only cynical, but have not protested.
The feeling of injustice in the Marathi mind needs to be addressed rationally. Mumbai being the financial capital of India, speaks in the language of money. Globalisation discarded the Marathi working class in Mumbai. The service sector driven postindustrial Mumbai prefers cheaper Bihari labour. The feeling in the minds of sons-ofthe- soil is a global phenomenon. Local cultures and languages are threatened by migration. The government, instead of finding solutions to this problem, is letting Raj Thackrey cash-in on this issue.
Solutions are difficult, but not impossible. A threepronged plan could end the violence caused by people like Raj Thackeray. The government should display the willpower to implement law and order. The media should be balanced in its reporting. If people display a strong sense of national integration, the MNS can be contained. My gut feeling says if we all get together, it’s possible.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 44, Dated Nov 08, 2008
November 01, 2008
life in financial markets&journalism: update to 'witchhunt against sellers' post
This is an update to my 29 October 2008 post on the witchhunt being carried out against sellers in the stock market:
In my 29 Oct post I wrote about elements in corporate India using some of the top media editors to plug their agenda. I just came to know that one of the Chandra brothers of Unitech is using 1/2/3 top editors through their obnoxiously close connection with a notorious PR agency (that handles accounts of the several companies of largest corporate group in India, and is now pitching for Unitech's account or already got Unitech's account) to pressurise Sebi to haul up the imaginary short sellers. Unitech, a real estate company, is in deep shit with regard to its finances. A large chunk of its properties are currently lying mortgaged with Indiabulls. There is much more going on in these connections. Its very very ugly. Its a shame on Indian media as well, particularly on these top editors who are batting for Unitech shamelessly.
In my 29 Oct post I wrote about elements in corporate India using some of the top media editors to plug their agenda. I just came to know that one of the Chandra brothers of Unitech is using 1/2/3 top editors through their obnoxiously close connection with a notorious PR agency (that handles accounts of the several companies of largest corporate group in India, and is now pitching for Unitech's account or already got Unitech's account) to pressurise Sebi to haul up the imaginary short sellers. Unitech, a real estate company, is in deep shit with regard to its finances. A large chunk of its properties are currently lying mortgaged with Indiabulls. There is much more going on in these connections. Its very very ugly. Its a shame on Indian media as well, particularly on these top editors who are batting for Unitech shamelessly.
October 29, 2008
life in financial markets&journalism: witchhunt against sellers
{Update, 1 Nov '08: In the post below I wrote about elements in corporate India using some of the top media editors to plug their agenda. I just came to know that one of the Chandra brothers of Unitech is using 1/2/3 top editors through their obnoxiously close connection with a notorious PR agency (that handles accounts of the several companies of largest corporate group in India, and is now pitching for Unitech's account or already got Unitech's account) to pressurise Sebi to haul up the imaginary short sellers. Unitech, a real estate company, is in deep shit with regard to its finances. A large chunk of its properties are currently lying mortgaged with Indiabulls. There is much more going on in these connections. Its very very ugly. Its a shame on Indian media as well, particularly on these top editors who are batting for Unitech shamelessly}
Elements in India Inc are playing their dirty games in the financial marketplace yet again. This time they are on a witch hunt against sellers, including short sellers, in the market by attributing the motive of market manipulation to them. Unitech's promoters, the Chandras, have already complained to Sebi to probe the fall in their stock's prices. Others are doing it subtly and one of their tactics is to use some of the top media editors to play up their agenda.
With their market capitalisation down they are finding it difficult to raise funds to repay earlier debts or fund committed expansion plans. A brokerage firm official from UK called up his friend in an Indian brokerage firm to tell him that some of Tata Steels debt issues were going for an effective yield of above 20% per annum in the UK market. That meant Tata Steels is not able to raise debt without having to offer a 20% effective rate of interest to lenders.
Through their confederations/associations they made the finance and commerce ministries they even got Sebi to direct FIIs not to lend shares abroad, with effect from 20 October, through offshore derivative instruments that was otherwise not prohibited.
When excessive leverage and massive long buying took up the markets to unrealistic heights then these very companies were silent because they could tap funds from the market (through new issue of shares from the public in the primary market) at any price they deemed fit. The DLFs and Unitechs of the Indian corporate world raised capital at absurd valuations during the 2005-07 bull run.
Witch hunts, says this website, "According to American Heritage Dictionary, a witch hunt is a political campaign launched on the pretext of investigating activities subversive to the state." In the context of the Indian stock market, it is a corporate campaign launched on the pretext of investigating short sellers and other sellers of stocks in the equity market. It is similar to the McCarthyism in the 1950s in the US when almost every Tom, Dick and Harry in the US was alleged to be a communist and anti-American.
I did some analysis of (i) world markets movements that showed Indian market being in sync with others in the world, (ii) trading pattern of FIIs, domestic institutional investors (DIIs), brokers proprietary accounts and retail+NRIs+non-institutional corporate investors and it showed the dominance of FII selling but also showed the buying by DIIs and retail-plus category, and (iii) the amount of shares lent by FIIs abroad before they were stopped from doing so from 20 October and after they were made to disclose their lent shares positions from 10 October. The three visuals below bring these out. Click on each one of them to enlarge and see clearly.
October 26, 2008
life in general: goondaism recycled
Exactly a week back, fanatic followers of Raj Thackeray (Raj T), the founder of the split faction of Shiv Sena (SS), Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), brutally attacked some Railways-exams' giving students who had come from outside Bombay for giving the exams. Shocking though it was to see it happen, it was not the first time Raj T was stage managing such attacks against north Indians. This has been happening since about two years now. But this time the hue and cry was so much that next day, Raj T was arrested by the police and kept in the police lock-up for 24 hours. This was a simple implementation of the rule of the law and MNS hooligans went on a rampage holding Bombay, Thane, Nasik, Nagpur and Pune cities to ransom.
My heart goes out to the ones who, in the past many months, have been injured—or whose shops/property have been damaged—by MNS goons. But I don't get much shocked anymore by such violence. This is India's—and in this particular case—Bombay's and Maharashtra's ugly truth.
Raj T and his MNS have now replaced SS in such violent and extortionist techniques. Shiv Sena, under an ailing and aged Bal Thackeray is more or less dead now. The rowdyism of SS is now the rowdyism of MNS. Raj T is the son of Shrikant Thackeray (Bal T's brother) and Kunda (sister of Bal T's wife Meena).
During 1966-7, Bal Thackeray, and his newly-formed Shiv Sena, rose in prominence due to their violent agitation against south Indians. Just like Raj T is now building his political capital with the huge Maharashtrian voter base using the loss of jobs for locals due to north Indians, so had Bal Thackeray used the same excuse (but against south Indians) to build his fledgling SS into a larger political party. Subtle, yet shameless, encouragement and handing out respect to such goon parties is given by Congress party to Bal T in the 1960s and 70s and now Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance to Raj T. The Bombay police, and Maharasthra police, are, as always, puppets in the hands of the ruling parties (be it Congress-NCP, or SS-BJP, or in the future a potential MNS-BJP alliance).
The south/north Indians issue is just a ploy to gain political capital and Bal T never meant it to be permanent nor does Raj T mean it to be now. Sooner or later, these goons come back to Hindu identity politics. Two decades after his first agitation, Bal T, turned his violence against Muslims (the horrendous SS violence on Muslims in January 1993). I do not rule out Raj T doing the same 5-10-15-20 years from now. Such is one of India's ugly faces. The mindless violent reaction that one is currently seeing in Bihar and Jharkhand to MNS is another one. In fact, it is not just Bombay and Maharashtra where one such sees dirty political games. Go to Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Pune etc and one gets to see the non-locals being treated unpleasantly.
(An update on the above is in my 2 Nov '08 post)
My heart goes out to the ones who, in the past many months, have been injured—or whose shops/property have been damaged—by MNS goons. But I don't get much shocked anymore by such violence. This is India's—and in this particular case—Bombay's and Maharashtra's ugly truth.
Raj T and his MNS have now replaced SS in such violent and extortionist techniques. Shiv Sena, under an ailing and aged Bal Thackeray is more or less dead now. The rowdyism of SS is now the rowdyism of MNS. Raj T is the son of Shrikant Thackeray (Bal T's brother) and Kunda (sister of Bal T's wife Meena).
During 1966-7, Bal Thackeray, and his newly-formed Shiv Sena, rose in prominence due to their violent agitation against south Indians. Just like Raj T is now building his political capital with the huge Maharashtrian voter base using the loss of jobs for locals due to north Indians, so had Bal Thackeray used the same excuse (but against south Indians) to build his fledgling SS into a larger political party. Subtle, yet shameless, encouragement and handing out respect to such goon parties is given by Congress party to Bal T in the 1960s and 70s and now Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance to Raj T. The Bombay police, and Maharasthra police, are, as always, puppets in the hands of the ruling parties (be it Congress-NCP, or SS-BJP, or in the future a potential MNS-BJP alliance).
The south/north Indians issue is just a ploy to gain political capital and Bal T never meant it to be permanent nor does Raj T mean it to be now. Sooner or later, these goons come back to Hindu identity politics. Two decades after his first agitation, Bal T, turned his violence against Muslims (the horrendous SS violence on Muslims in January 1993). I do not rule out Raj T doing the same 5-10-15-20 years from now. Such is one of India's ugly faces. The mindless violent reaction that one is currently seeing in Bihar and Jharkhand to MNS is another one. In fact, it is not just Bombay and Maharashtra where one such sees dirty political games. Go to Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Pune etc and one gets to see the non-locals being treated unpleasantly.
(An update on the above is in my 2 Nov '08 post)
October 24, 2008
life in journalism: shameless availing of diwali gifts
There is large-scale corruption among journalists and editors in India during Diwali festival (this year's is on right now) when companies and press relations companies send Diwali gifts. These gifts could range from a box of dryfruits/chocolates (that would otherwise cost about Rs 500 in the market) to a physical article costing between Rs 1,000-Rs 10,000.
The way I look at it is that a journalist or an editor should not accept any of these -- not even the box of dryfruits/chocolates costing Rs 500 or more. But I have seen, over the years, senior-level journalists and editors shamelessly accepting these and setting an ugly example for other journalists in their offices. They may not take all these boxes home and instead distribute the contents of some of these boxes internally, even among the peons and office assistants, but I still think this is a pernicious practise that needs to be strongly condemned by all right-thinking individuals.
If the editors and senior journalists do not care about ethics on their own it is high time that readers remind them to start caring. If you are a reader of a newspaper or a magazine, or a viewer of a TV news channel, fetch their email address (Letters to Editor or some other) and email them saying you would not approve if their journalists/editors are availing of Diwali gifts or gifts during any other time either.
As a journalist, myself, I am too sent such boxes. I have given a standing instruction to my office reception to whom the courier deliveries come to refuse to accept any boxes that look like they would be Diwali boxes. But sometimes the corporate communication officials or the PR company officials visit offices directly and leave boxes at the reception. Like, for instance, earlier this year, sometime in March I think, during the Holi festival, 2-3 corporation communication officials of Multi-Commodity Exchange of India had come to my office to distribute Holi sweets. They had got boxes for 3-4 journalists in my office including me. Now, without telling me anything about the box they just left it behind. I was furious. It becomes a time-consuming exercise to trace these guys back and tell them to take back their boxes. Last year (2007) during Diwali, Vaishnavi Communication, the PR company for the Tata Group, had sent me a dryfruit box on behalf of one of the Tata group of companies (I forget the name). It was left at the reception and I was not in office on that particular day. Later, I had to call them and ask them to send their person to take it back.
If all journalists and editors return all the gifts it will send a strong stinging message to the companies and PR companies not to take us for granted.
The way I look at it is that a journalist or an editor should not accept any of these -- not even the box of dryfruits/chocolates costing Rs 500 or more. But I have seen, over the years, senior-level journalists and editors shamelessly accepting these and setting an ugly example for other journalists in their offices. They may not take all these boxes home and instead distribute the contents of some of these boxes internally, even among the peons and office assistants, but I still think this is a pernicious practise that needs to be strongly condemned by all right-thinking individuals.
If the editors and senior journalists do not care about ethics on their own it is high time that readers remind them to start caring. If you are a reader of a newspaper or a magazine, or a viewer of a TV news channel, fetch their email address (Letters to Editor or some other) and email them saying you would not approve if their journalists/editors are availing of Diwali gifts or gifts during any other time either.
As a journalist, myself, I am too sent such boxes. I have given a standing instruction to my office reception to whom the courier deliveries come to refuse to accept any boxes that look like they would be Diwali boxes. But sometimes the corporate communication officials or the PR company officials visit offices directly and leave boxes at the reception. Like, for instance, earlier this year, sometime in March I think, during the Holi festival, 2-3 corporation communication officials of Multi-Commodity Exchange of India had come to my office to distribute Holi sweets. They had got boxes for 3-4 journalists in my office including me. Now, without telling me anything about the box they just left it behind. I was furious. It becomes a time-consuming exercise to trace these guys back and tell them to take back their boxes. Last year (2007) during Diwali, Vaishnavi Communication, the PR company for the Tata Group, had sent me a dryfruit box on behalf of one of the Tata group of companies (I forget the name). It was left at the reception and I was not in office on that particular day. Later, I had to call them and ask them to send their person to take it back.
If all journalists and editors return all the gifts it will send a strong stinging message to the companies and PR companies not to take us for granted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)