DesiPundit

LIKE CHANDRASEKHAR AZAD, Aseem Trivedi, the cartoonist arrested recently in Mumbai, too has family origins in central Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district. The purpose of recounting that piece of trivia is not to compare the revolutionary hero of the 1920s to Trivedi. The two are very different individuals, and any comparison would be odious. However, one intriguing question does link them: was Azad’s relationship with and threat to the British Indian State exactly the same as Trivedi’s relationship with and threat to the Indian State? The answer is plainly “no”. If that be the case, how does one explain that a charge of sedition — the same legal clause that the Raj may well have deployed against Azad and other freedom fighters — has been used by authorities in Maharashtra to arrest Trivedi?

India mourned the demise on Sept. 9 of Dr. Verghese Kurien, whose pioneering work at the intersection of dairy-farming technology, the cooperative sector, and branding and marketing created one of the nation’s greatest business success stories. Kurien, who died at 90, was a revolutionary in the dairy sector, and the brand that he created, Amul, today enjoys more name recognition and goodwill than almost any other.

First off, it is difficult to imagine the scale of this formation. The Mahabharat was one of the largest wars ever fought, and armies used a scale of measure known as Akshauhini to measure strength. As single Akshauhini consisted of 21,870 chariots, 21,870 elephants; 65,610 cavalry and 109,350 infantry[1]. Now, it is said that over the course of the war, 18-20 Akshauhini senas (armies) were killed. I do not have to do the calculations for you to figure out how huge the armies actually were. And this in a concentrated around the Kurukshetra, which is roughly 48 x 128 Km in area[2]. That makes a very dense war.

And it gets more interesting.

Part of the problem is presumably the coterie of advisers who surround Mr Gandhi. Western-educated, bright and eager to cosset their leader within a very small bubble, they appear unready for the messy realities of Indian politics: the shady alliances that are required to win elections; the need to strike deals with powerful regional figures who increasingly shape national politics; the importance of crafting a media strategy in an era of cable TV news. More basically, they seem not to have developed any consistent views on policy. What does Mr Gandhi stand for: more liberal economic reforms; defensive nationalism; an expansion of welfare? Instead they prefer to focus on tactics. Perhaps because of their poor advice, their man too often looks opportunistic and inconsistent.

I don’t read Indian magazines and haven’t since 1996. I stopped reading Indian newspapers five years ago, and haven’t watched news television in the last seven. The thing is—the news is all dated. From the 1700s. Corrupt society, incompetent state, extreme poverty, illiterate population quick to religious violence and divided by caste. A parasitic dependence on Europe. All this is unchanged, and latest reports of the same thing hold no interest for me.

What I am interested to know is why.

Why are we corrupt? Why are we illiterate? Why are we poor? This the newspapers don’t know. If they do, they don’t say. We must all try and figure it out ourselves, assuming we’re interested.

I said I had stopped reading “Indian magazines”. I meant general interest ones. I still subscribe to many magazines in several languages.

This project is an execution in the field of Preserving our “Public Open Spaces”, specifically a lake in an urban setting in Bangalore city, through citizen participation. PNLIT is the first citizens’ group to assume responsibility for nurturing a lake (Puttenahalli Lake) in the city. PNLIT’s focus is on reviving lakes, using the experience that it has with this project as the model.

So what can constitute blasphemy under the blasphemy law, which has killed dozens in the past decade, made thousands homeless and millions live in permanent fear about what might be found in their trashcan. It’s up to the lawyers to argue over how to avoid: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles …” but here are some of the everyday situations that can turn you into a blasphemer:

What is truly worrying is the inability of the Indian state to adequately address and punish political and religious violence. There can be no justification for violence and the argument that insulting certain Gods should mean a descent into fascism is dangerously naïve. It may not be Ghose’s intention but it willy-nilly justifies violence. Indeed, she is merely reiterating the Hindu Right’s claim that because M.F Hussain allegedly insulted religious symbols, it was kosher to trash his exhibitions.

To avoid rib-cage fracture and the frustration that comes from the vague sense of unreachable aloo parathas or sambhar cooking somewhere nearby, study the itineraries of tour companies online. Note down the 10-odd places in Switzerland on their “must-see” list. Don’t see any of them.

Much has been said and written to denounce the real and verbal violence against Hindi-speaking ‘outsiders’; the Thackerays deserve much of the castigation that has come their way. But in our haste to criticise their politics of nativism, let us not forget that parochialism is the other name for regionalism. Nor should we lose sight of the fact that ‘State politics’ across India, as opposed to ‘national politics’, is largely based on pandering to parochial pride and provincial sentiments camouflaged as regional aspirations.

Misinterpretation is an easy stick to beat people with, but if we talk about just one aspect of what McLuhan’s means by “the medium is the message,” let’s just say that we usually focus on the obvious message, instead of the structure that was slowly put in to place to make that thought a reality. Basically, it means that things are taken for granted in communication and we don’t realize it until we try to communicate the same things differently. We are often misinterpreted and the results of a new approach can be very surprising.