OPEN Magazine 10 March 2014 by Open Media Network

Why Indian Politics Is Anti-Wealth

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inside Buddha’s Orphans l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

ASSASSINATED

Everyone wants to adopt Rajiv Gandhi’s killers

*Again

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Volume 6 Issue 9 For the week 4—10 March 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

cover photo David Levenson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

10 March 2014

ujjwal

This refers to ‘Out of the Woods’ (24 February 2014). The facts are inconclusive regarding Ishrat and the three others’ link with terrorism or whether there was indeed a plot to target Modi. But one can definitely say that the maxim ‘innocent until proven guilty’, which is the cornerstone of civilised legal jurisprudence, wasn’t paid much attention in this case. The Congress indeed wanted some mileage out of DH Goswami’s testimonial, as is true in cases of politics, but whether Goswami was speaking the truth or not, no one really knows and sadly our The maxim ‘innocent legal system hasn’t even until proven tried to find out. If one guilty’, which is the follows a policy of cornerstone of civilised encounters in case of hardened criminals, it legal jurisprudence, becomes hard to criticise wasn’t paid much such a measure, but if attention in the one starts unlawfully Ishrat case killing first-time criminals/wannabe terrorists who are yet to commit a crime, it becomes tricky. Ranjit Sinha’s actions do seem guided by a resolve to free the CBI of its political masters, but, as this article sort of hints, it may very well be to gain some personal favour of the next government, which, if I am to believe media reports, will be BJP-led.  letter of the week

the Telangana Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha goes to prove that this was done purely for political gains—the BJP wants a foothold in the South where it hardly has any presence and the Congress, knowing well that it would lose in Seemandhra, wants to clutch on to the 17 Lok Sabha seats of Telangana. All of Andhra Pradesh was simmering for years over this sensitive issue, but sadly, the interest of millions of people was put on the backburner and politics gained precedence. New state creation is a major decision and there should have been thorough discussions with all the stakeholders, and all concerns should have been addressed. And Hyderabad, being a bone of contention, should have been given due attention.  Bal Govind

Don’t Write Off AAP

arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party gave sleepless nights to the two mainstream national parties, Congress and BJP, which have dominated politics and ruled New Delhi for a major part of the post-Independence political scenario. AAP also gave hope to the common man in the street (‘The Last Day in the Life of the AAP Regime’, 3 March 2014). The AAP cadres had no political background, nor had been MLAs or MPs before that they could kick-start and perform on an even keel with the required tact and dynamism of seasoned politicians. They were avowedly committed to a government free of corruption, communalism,

crime and dynastic rule, but they failed to get the Jan Lokpal Bill passed as it was destined to be, with the Congress and BJP against it. The Congress has lost its credibility and direction and is not the first choice of people. The BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate may not suit Indian conditions and sensibilities. India is not Gujarat, but a diverse country of 1.2 billion people. The AAP looks capable of improving the lives of common people, and we cannot so soon write off the party for its initial failures.  MY SHARIFF

Birth Pangs

this refers to ‘Betrayed in the City’ (3 March 2014). The way

Jaya Plays the Ethnic Card

there is no doubt that Tamil Nadu’s government acted in haste in its move to set free seven [conspirators] of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (‘Jayalalithaa’s Mercy Is Politically Savvy’, 3 March 2014). Jayalalithaa succumbed to the lure of the ethnic card and has set a dangerous precedent. In fact, the game of one-upmanship among political parties to reap political dividends from every issue has only vitiated the political atmosphere. The Supreme Court rightly stayed the order of the state government, thereby preventing the glorification of a cowardly and barbaric act.  KR Srinivasan

open www.openthemagazine.com 1

small world

The Other Olympian sweet

Meet the only Indian who made it to Beijing, London and the just-concluded Sochi Olympics

athletes took part in both the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics, and none made it to this year’s Sochi Winter Olympics as well. One Indian, however, participated in all three events. Gurgaon-based pastry chef Swathi Venketasan headed the pastry operations for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) venue at all three events. In her 18-year career, Venketasan has worked in several Indian kitchens, and headed celebrity chef Aston Mosimann’s pastry operations in London.

Very few Indian

10 March 2014

A few years ago, after she became a mother, she moved to Gurgaon where, through Great Desserts Company, she runs classes for pastry professionals and enthusiasts. But when Mosimann landed the catering contract of the IOC for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and subsequently for the London and Sochi events, Venketasan was asked to join. “How do you say ‘no’ to an opportunity like that? For us chefs, it’s like our Olympics,” Venketasan says over the phone from Sochi. Preparing pastries for the Olympics is nerve-wracking.

She usually works with about four pastry chefs; another six help out. “Nothing quite prepares you for an event like the Olympics. Every single day, we get between 700 and 1,000 guests. So that means preparing at least 18,000 pieces of different types of pastries... 20 kilograms of chocolate mousse vanish in just one dinner,” she says. Preparations usually begin more than a year in advance, but complications are common. At Beijing, Venketasan realised the pastry chefs helping her weren’t fluent in English. “Sometimes

I would write down hurried notes, for instance ‘10 No of eggs’ in such and such dish. And the other chefs would think I meant ‘no’ eggs.” At Sochi, she had to do without Swiss cheese. “700 kilograms of Swiss cheese was on its way from Switzerland by road. And the next thing I hear, it got lost somewhere in Poland... All sorts of crazy things happen.” After Sochi, Venketasan is headed to London where, she says, pastry preparations for the 2016 Brazil Olympics have already begun. n Lhendup G Bhutia

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contents

hurried man’s guide

cover story

myanmar

Buddha’s orphans

open essay

On dynasty

to Dhoni’s decline

Assassinated Again

34 locomotif

Television

Why Indian politics is anti-wealth

Absconder of the Week Subrata Roy

Conscience keepers

Sahara Shri Bees Hazaar Sahara chief Subrata Roy has gotten away for years, but he may finally have to repay the money his firms owe people Ullekh NP

practical joke. Sahara could have sent those documents electronically to save Subrata Roy’s love for fast cars and SEBI officials the enormous difficulty of the high life is as famous as the man sifting through paper documents that himself. Does he also love a high-speed could stack up several times higher than chase? Looks like it.One would assume the Qutub Minar. that a sum of Rs 20,000 crore would be Maybe Roy wanted to create a world peanuts for someone whose business empire—which the 66-year-old built from record of sorts—he holds many already. His company holds the Guinness Book scratch after founding Sahara in 1978— record for the largest group of people stretches from Lucknow to London, Pune singing a national anthem simultaneousto New York. Strangely though, the man who likes drama, basks in glamour Pawan Kumar/reuters and flaunts traditional family values and ardent patriotism, also has a penchant for courting trouble. After a series of run-ins with India’s market regulator SEBI, and evading court appearances for not refunding Rs 20,000 crore to investors in two of his companies, Roy now faces a non-bailable arrest warrant issued by the country’s apex court. And he has to appear before it on 4 March. On 31 August 2012, the Supreme Court had ordered Roy to refund investors in Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd the amount ‘within three months’. Before that, Roy was involved in a three-year tussle with SEBI over furnishing information on investors in those two companies. In September 2012, his people sent a truck with aluminium cartons containing documents to SEBI’s Bandra-Kurla Complex office, which are now stored at the office of the Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd at Mahape, Navi Mumbai. SEBI officials saw this as a ahara Group chairman

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ly. Over 120,000 Sahara employees sang the Indian national anthem on 8 May 2013 in Lucknow. His company’s grocery business is also in the Guinness Book for opening 315 outlets in 10 states across the country on April Fool’s Day last year. For a corporate heavyweight who rubs shoulders with top Bollywood actors, cricketers and powerful politicians, Roy’s respect for institutions seems in short supply. Or perhaps he feels he has been wronged. Over the past few years, his company has run several ad campaigns in the media against SEBI’s alleged witch hunt against Sahara, whose website describes itself as the ‘world’s largest family’. Roy has played the PR game with zeal, and the last thing he needs amid his legal and regulatory troubles is negative publicity. Senior journalist Tamal Bandyopadhyay incurred his wrath when he wrote a book rich with anecdotes on the Sahara Group. Sahara sued the author and publisher Jaico for Rs 200 crore for defamation even before Sahara: The Untold Story hit stands. Bandyopadhyay is now fighting a case for the immediate release of the book, which contains, among other things, conversations between Roy and the no-nonsense former SEBI chief CB Bhave who put his foot down and said he wouldn’t clear an IPO application by Sahara Prime City Ltd until the company furnished relevant documents— resulting in the biggest crisis ever for the highly flamboyant and networked Roy. n 10 March 2014

vanity

The perils of plastic surgery

books

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

The passion of Pussy Riot

Deepika in Demand

c true life

cinema

Ladies’ special

An intelligent man’s guide to the Oscars

■

Somnat

h Bha

rti

■

f o r leading a mob that

thrashed an MCD official After the midnight raid controversy last month, former Delhi Law Minister and AAP leader Somnath Bharti and his party workers were at it again this week, thrashing an executive engineer who was marking his presence at the biometric machine outside the MCD deputy commissioner’s

office in South Delhi. The AAP workers, who were caught on video cameras, had been protesting outside the office against the civic body’s demolition drive against illegal constructions in the city. According to Ashok Kumar, the engineer who was beaten up, a mob of people wearing AAP caps charged at him minutes after Bharti arrived at the spot. Even though the incident was caught on media cameras, Bharti has said that he had nothing to do with it and that those involved were not AAP workers. His love of leading mobs seems to know no limits. It is one thing to forcibly protest against corruption, but arbitrarily assaulting someone is outrageous. n

After threatening to ‘crush’ the electronic media for airing propaganda against the Congress, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde clarified that he meant ‘social media’ w r o n g ta r g e t

“In the last four months there have been efforts by the media to provoke [the Congress]. We will crush such elements in the electronic media, which are indulging in false propaganda, if it [does] not stop” —Sushilkumar Shinde, at a Youth Congress event, 23 February 2014

—Shinde, at a press conference in Solapur, 24 February 2014

around

Submarine Scapegoat The resignation of India’s Chief of Naval Staff Admiral DK Joshi over a series of operational incidents has put the spotlight on defence management under the UPA’s charge. Barely an hour after Admiral Joshi took personal responsibility for a fire on board the Russian-built submarine INS Sindhuratna, the Government accepted the Admiral’s offer to vacate his post. The swiftness with which the political establishment acted clearly suggests that it was anxious to ensure that blame for all the recent underwater mishaps did not fall on

l and a h o y

10 March 2014

“I was referring to social media and the violence incited against students from the Northeast in Hyderabad and Karnataka. My comments were not about journalism”

turn

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of

the Government. Inertia has become the ‘screensaver’ of India’s Defence Ministry ever since AK Antony took charge of it, with his men delaying critical procurements. Experts say that most of India’s 15 submarines are in desperate need of modernisation. Admiral Joshi’s resignation is being lauded as being in keeping with the highest traditions of the service. But India’s political leadership, particularly Antony, chooses to look the other way when questions are raised over the resource and equipment crunch faced by the forces. n

angle

A Hurried Man’s Guide

On the Contrary

to Dhoni’s Decline

After the Indian cricket team’s disastrous New Zealand tour, Ian Chappell said captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni should go. Mohinder Amarnath echoed the same sentiment. Sourav Ganguly said that he is stopping short of asking for Dhoni’s removal because the World Cup is almost here. This is the same Dhoni who led India to the top of the Test rankings and T20 and One-Day World Championship wins. What explains his fall from grace? Dhoni’s plight is not unusual. There are one billion people in India waiting to deify the Indian captain and the same one billion waiting to see him fall. Ganguly, who called Dhoni’s captaincy ‘obnoxious’, must know a thing or two about the Dhoni’s hope is shaky nature of the post. that victories at home will wipe away the memory of losses abroad

What Dhoni has had to suffer is the oldest curse of Indian cricket—overseas pitches and the Indian inability to adapt to them. Once in while, the odd victory abroad gives the feeling that the obstacle has been overcome. But then it is back to square one, as everyone noticed when India played and got wiped out in South Africa and New Zealand.

au-yeung/getty images

Of late, Dhoni’s overseas run has been exceptionally bad. The last time India won a Test abroad was three years ago in the West Indies. Since then, India have lost almost every Test on foreign soil. South Africa and Australia thrashed India four-nil.

Already there is a clamour from some quarters for Dhoni to make space for Virat Kohli as captain. If India wins the ODI World Cup, then everything will be forgotten. But until then, Dhoni’s hope is what all captains before him hoped—that victories at home will wipe away bad memories abroad. But Dhoni is also embroiled in a controversy over the Chennai Super Kings, the IPL team he captains. Accusations of betting and spot fixing surrounding the team owners are gaining traction. After the team won back-to-back IPL titles, it has been runner-up for the past two years. Dhoni’s luck had caught up with him here, too. n

The Unwitting Reformer The silver lining to Sanjay Dutt’s never-ending parole M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

ince the beginning of

Sanjay Dutt’s sentence last year, for every two days he has spent inside jail, he has spent one at home. There was puzzlement when he got out in October citing a hand injury, barely four months after his incarceration. There was mild annoyance when he immediately got an extension. There was astonishment when he got parole for a month in December. This time, the stated reason was his wife Manyata’s illness. There was real anger when the parole was extended by a month. And now that he has got permission to remain home for one more month, there is outrage. On 25 February, the High Court asked the state government to explain all this. Earlier the Centre had demanded a report on Dutt getting repeated extensions. If this alleged manipulation of the system makes one seethe with anger, then there are two ways to deal with it. One is fatalism, because after all what is new in it? In 2001, a Kerala politician, R Balakrishna Pillai, got four paroles in the first five months of his one-year sentence for a corruption case. He was finally released having been only 69 days inside jail. Pillai’s party is a key constituent of the ruling alliance in the state. In Maharashtra, a former minister named Suresh Jain, who was denied bail by the court two years ago in a housing scam, has been shuttling between hospitals, though a television sting showed him to be quite hale and hearty. Anna Hazare, who has had a running battle with Jain for many years now, said the politician was getting five-star treatment. It comes as no surprise to anyone that this is how the system is in this country and if you get upset about it, all it does is get your blood pressure up. But when it comes to Dutt

following in such yeomen footsteps, there is a silver lining. Politicians are expected to be devious and manipulative; film actors are thought to be noble souls. The country considers politicians an evil one must live with; superstars are loved and respected. When someone like Dutt abuses the system, it jolts people into recognising how completely flexible ideas like justice and equality have become. It is not a happy coincidence that Zaibunnisa Kazi, a septuagenarian widow who was sentenced in the same case as Dutt, should have her parole denied at first, then have it approved soon after the uproar Reform is over Dutt. They used her parole often the result of abuse to show that there was no of the system special becoming too treatment for shameless to Dutt, but it was a tactic so clumsy ignore in execution that it only highlighted Dutt’s treatment. The High Court is now questioning the discretionary powers the state has in giving one person parole and denying it to others. In abusing the system, Dutt might just have come to the aid of many prisoners who are denied parole because they don’t have the resources to push their case. In a country where few good changes happen unless forced, reform is often the result of system abuse becoming so shameless that it is impossible to ignore. Case in point: the 2G Scam, where even the pretence of a due process was thrown to the winds. It fuelled the Anna Hazare movement and now we have a Lokpal Bill, for whatever it is worth. The Dutt case might not have such a seminal outcome, but in the long term, it might still do some good. n 10 March 2014

real

india

It Happens

Fighting for Dogs and Cats In a battle between housing associations and pet owners, the Animal Welfare Board of India arms the latter with legalese A n i l B u d u r L u l l a B a n g a l o r e

sanction of law. ‘In fact, by limiting or off by aggressive associations. Now, this s the country embraces combanning pets, you are interfering with the circular has given us strength as it is munity living and residences grow vertically, the right to own a binding on those who try to intimidate pet fundamental freedom guaranteed to the citizens of India that includes the right to owners,” she said. pet is becoming an increasingly live with or without companion animals,’ The AWABI is headquartered in contentious issue between resident the circular notes. Chennai, and functions under the Union welfare association members and animal It goes on to say that there are ‘court Ministry of Environment and Forests. Its lovers. Whether it is Mumbai, Gurgaon, rulings that pets cannot be disallowed the Lucknow, Hyderabad, Kochi or Bangalore, circular comes in the wake of various use of lift nor special charges be imposed courts ruling that keeping pets is a right the story is the same—people plot to get for its use. You can request pet owners to for all Indians. Kharb says that even if rid of neighbours with pets. “It’s fast put them on leash while walking though turning into an urban nightmare dividing there is consensus and bye-laws are amended, bans on pets cannot be imposed common areas but cannot insist on people into two categories: either for or muzzles. The law already provides for as they are illegal and do not have the against pets,’’ says Vaishali Mehta, an penalties on negligent owners, which advertising professional in Bangalore who aggrieved parties can avail of.’ has had some experience of it. The AWBI has also advised the public at Mehta bought a pair of cats after she ‘In fact, by limiting or banning large that they can’t interfere if owners rented a flat in an apartment complex; she pets, you are interfering with take the pets out of the house into soon found all her neighbours turning the fundamental freedom common spaces for their morning hostile. “They forced my landlord not to constitutional. ‘If the residents are not renew my lease. I had to shift to a new guaranteed to the citizens of violating municipal laws, you cannot apartment three months ago. Here, they India that includes the right to object... Please remember, you do not have are okay with cats, but they have a live with or without companion the right to legislate and lay down law for problem with dogs,’’ she says. On 20 February, animal lovers like animals,’ the Board’s circular says owners or even tenants.’ Such associations cannot even insist that owners Mehta found some much the hindu archive clean up after their pets defecate needed support from the or impose fines on them. They Animal Welfare Board of India can only request them. ‘Pet (AWBI). The government body owners cannot be intimidated issued a circular asking resident into giving up their pets, such an welfare associations of action is an offence in law,’ ends apartment complexes, housing the circular. societies and gated communiPet owners who have faced ties not to harass or intimidate harassment have welcomed the pet owners. In the circular, the AWBI’s intervention. Like this board chairman, Maj Gen (retd) Bangalore couple who owns a Dr RM Kharb has asked labrador. They say that it is a associations not to impose daily battle for them out there. unreasonable restrictions on pet “Every second day, the neighowners, especially dog lovers, by bours in our complex send the either banning pets, allowing watchman or their maid to our only smaller breeds, restraining door complaining that our dog pets from using lifts or imposing had trampled on a garden patch fines for littering. He has or peed on a washed car. They stressed that all such arbitrary are pressuring us to leave, measures are unlawful and though we have informed the against court rulings. residents association about a Sudha Narayanan, a trustee court ruling in which one lady with CARE, an animal welfare won a case to keep her dog in an NGO, says this is the first time apartment,’’ says the wife. They that the welfare board has taken are hoping that the AWBI a stand on domestic pets. “It’s circular will put matters to rest really a shot in the arm for us NGOs. We keep getting fobbed pet peeve Pet owners are often asked by resident associations to leave in their surly neighbourhood. n

10 March 2014

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business

e ne r gy The Government wants to institute a regulator for India’s coal market, and it is so keen on one that even though such an entity is envisaged by a Coal Regulatory Authority bill pending in Parliament, it wants to do this through an executive order—as the Coal Ministry has declared. For a market that has only one player as of now, Coal India Ltd (CIL), this is an odd move. According to Lydia Powell, an energy analyst with Observer Research Foundation, it “is just symbolic boldness on the Government’s part”, the objective being to “create an illusion of reform in a sector struggling miserably to meet domestic demand for coal”. Such a coal regulator will achieve little, says Powell. The body will be empowered to specify a method for determining domestic coal prices and will have some say over its quality, but actual sale prices would still be set by the State-owned monopoly, CIL. Since the quality of coal is closely tied to price, she says, a regulator that sets quality standards without any authority over prices for different grades looks meaningless. It is also doubtful whether the regulator has any power to arbitrate on disputes between consumers and the supplier over, say, poor quality of coal; last year, India’s competition watchdog slapped a penalty of about Rs 1,700 crore on the state-owned miner for abusing its dominant position by supplying inferior coal to utilities. Given

ben doherty/fairfax media/getty images

Coal Market Regulator as a Damp Squib

mart of darkness Despite recent reform attempts, there seems little respite for India’s forlorn coal sector

all this, the regulator “would end up being just a ceremonial post” says Powell. In a country where coal is the raw stock for most power A badly generation, confusion conceived over this sector is regulator would worrisome. It would be serve no in the market’s purpose in this interest, say analysts, crucial sector for the monopoly of CIL to be dismantled and forces of competition allowed to shape its future. If this is too difficult in the near term, then at least CIL should be asked to

forge partnerships with foreign mining firms with expertise to develop coalfields in India with modern technology. Outdated mining practices and traditional mindsets need to be shaken up for India to reduce its dependence on imports. Perhaps the setting up of a regulator is a signal of a relatively open coal market to come in the years ahead. As of now, its future looks bleak. The only silver lining in this development, feel analysts, is the creation of another power centre—the regulator—that India’s harassed coal users can appeal to. n SHAILENDRA TYAGI

Concentration of Wealth ‘The richest 10 per cent have acquired a much greater share of national income than the poorest 40 per cent over the past 30 years, with the trend set to continue,’ says Oxfam. 40 35

Wealth (USD)

Percentage of the world’s population

Number of adults

Total wealth

(million)

Percentage of world’s wealth

<10,000

68.7

3,207

3.0

10,000– 100,000

22.9

1,066

13.7

> 1 million

0.7

41.0

INDIA

Income share held by highest 10%

25 20

Income share held by lowest 40%

15 10

While 8.5 per cent of the global population hold 83 per cent of the world’s wealth—defined as assets—the poorest 70 per cent hold just 3 per cent

($ trillion)

1981 1994 2005 2010 2011

Source: World Bank (2013) Poverty and Inequality Database

Source: ‘Global Wealth Report 2013’. Zurich: Credit Suisse compiled by Shailendra Tyagi

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10 March 2014

lo co m ot i f

Why Indian Politics Is Anti-Wealth

W S PRASANNARAJAN

hen you are on the side of the

people, the nameless and the shirtless, there is no bogeyman more useful than the bloated plutocrat. You don’t have to be a demagogue from Caracas or a revolutionary from Havana to demonise the capitalist who thrives on the misery of the masses; you could very well be the average Indian politician from the Left or the Right or the Centre—or from nowhere. Lately, it is Arvind Kejriwal, the only common man among our leaders, or maybe the only leader among common men. This one from one of his most reported stump speeches: “Mukesh Ambani is running this country. Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi are just his two masks. You think that Modi, Rahul or Sonia Gandhi will run the country? Mind it, Ambani will again run this country… In this country, not many can dare to blame Mukesh Ambani.” The speaker and his object of derision fit a familiar Indian narrative in which the David armed with nothing but the truth is pitted against the pinstriped Goliath. Here, the lone fighter is always dedicated to the state, and the state is a wretched place where poverty is the slogan that sustains the rage of the fighter, and where the enemy is the Corporate Man, the reaper of the wretchedness, the power behind the puppet king. This portrait of capitalist as national villain has a hoary history. It goes back to our nation-building days when Third Worldism was in vogue, socialism was the State religion, and ideas such as market liberalism were hallucinations of minds corrupted by Western capitalism. It was a time when the liberated nationalist in a Nehruvian straitjacket internalised socialist virtues of Soviet vintage and placed himself on the left side of history. A time when the wisdom of the State sought to overrule the instincts of the individual. When national happiness was a huge State enterprise, which resulted in the so-called public sector, and when the State’s monopolisation of resources was a necessary condition for growth. India was then the model developing country, an inspiration for other newly-decolonised Third Worldists taking their first steps of self-sufficiency. In the beginning, it was said that our Five Year Plan (which continues to be the enduring legacy of the socialist state) was an ideal guide for countries such as South Korea. Maybe in freedom’s day after, we needed the intrusive state with a social con-

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science to set the stage for growth. The trouble began when the State refused to withdraw and became the maker and controller of growth.

he socialist state was a closed state, and a darker place. It institutionalised the resistance against the evil of lucre. The man who made money was not a success story worth emulating in a country fed on the legends of mendicants and austerity. By the time Indira Gandhi came to power, there was hardly any difference between nationalism and socialism. As Mother India sought direct access to the mass mind, a certain amount of nationalist hysteria was inevitable; and she was exceptionally successful in marketing populism as pulp patriotism. The enemy was a prerequisite for the survival of the compassionate nationalist, and she found an effective one in the businessman, the private entrepreneur. Even as the nationalisation project went on, there was a parallel political enterprise of poverty. ‘Garibi Hatao’ was a powerful slogan then, and it is so even now. No one realised the uses of poverty as much as the Third World socialist did, and India, where Third Worldism became the mindset of the left-of-centre ruling establishment, was poverty’s most photogenic address in the East. Our politicians made best use of it; they are at it still. The pornography of poverty is the aesthetic of the desperate populist. And there is no place more rewarding than India for him. Pornography sells, and when poverty is marketed as wretchedness over which we have no control, it sells more. Prototypes of Kejriwal are easily identifiable in the back pages of socialist rhetoric. So the average Indian politician in power worked hard to keep poverty at a visible level of utility—and the capitalist at bay. The labyrinthine Licence Raj was the socialist’s protective mechanism against the capitalist who dared. In Independent India, the market still remained fettered because the State abhorred the spirit of the individual. The Licence Raj not only perpetuated economic unfreedom, it made India more unequal by banishing fair play. The industrialist still failed to win the trust of the State. It took the sagacity of two men, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and his finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh, to unshackle the Indian market. It was not full-fledged freedom in the marketplace, but for a country steeped in social10 march 2014

hat said, nobody from the Right was

rereading Adam Smith. Unlike Western Conservatives, the Indian Right was busy marketing life-enhancing mythology instead of celebrating wealth creation, thereby retreating from the economic argument it was born to win. Today, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi wants to turn his blockbuster stump speeches into a conversation with the future of India. It would have been easier for him to slip into the Great Yesterday, which is still the natural habitat for quite a few of his colleagues. Still, Modi’s bestselling self portrait as moderniser is incompatible with the party, which at times behaves as if its economic vision is written by a shopkeeper, its argument against

FDI being the best example. There is political consensus on the immorality of being rich. You may argue that it is not entirely Indian. The historian Niall Ferguson writes in his book The Ascent of Money: ‘Angry that the world is so unfair? Infuriated by fat-cat capitalists and billion-bonus bankers? Baffled by the yawning chasm between the Haves, the Have-nots—and the Have-yachts? You are not alone. Throughout the history of Western civilization, there has been a recurrent hostility to finance and financiers, rooted in the idea that those who make their living from lending money are somehow parasitical on the real economic activities of agriculture and manufacturing.’ The Crash of 2008 came as a vindication for those who wanted some kind of Biblical retribution visited upon the few who controlled wealth. When the Masters of the Universe fell, moralists with a socialist streak rejoiced because the fallen were solely responsible for the unequal world. When capitalism collapsed, the moralists argued, it was the socialist state that came to the rescue. They even cited Barack Obama’s stimulus package as a perfect case study of socialism in the time of capitalist crisis. India too got its moment to play out its socialist script when crony capitalists thrived in the sheltering shadow of this government and gave us so many headlines on corruption. The socialist state struck back with market regulations, stifling the good businessman as well as the bad one. This aggravated the mistrust between the State and the wealthy. So a Kejriwal doesn’t look out of place when he demonises an Ambani who runs the new “East India Company”. The latest pornographer of poverty is made possible by a political culture that sees wealth as the source of an unequal society. ‘The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man,’ writes Ferguson. In an India that prefers poverty to prosperity, wealth accelerates the descent of man. We are condemned to fall. n

The pornography of poverty is the aesthetic of the desperate populist. And there is no place more rewarding than India for him. Pornography sells, and when poverty is marketed as wretchedness over which we have no control, it sells more

illustration anirban ghosh

ist shibboleths, it was partial redemption nevertheless. At long last, Asia’s most evolved civil society got a market to match. Still, somewhere deep within our national psyche, the venal capitalist lurked. Today, the pioneer of liberalisation is in power, counting the last days of his infamy. Dr Singh had a chance to be the moderniser of India. He had the mind, and the perceived disadvantage of the accidental politician could have been his biggest qualification to lead India—a country let down by the worst habits of politics. He may have succeeded in calling the Marxists’ bluff when he refused to make the apparatchiks of AKG Bhavan in New Delhi the unofficial commissars of the UPA regime. But Singh, the much feted architect of market freedom, as Prime Minister was pretty Marxist in his economics; when the fear of the foreign pervaded the political establishment in the wake of FDI-in-retail, he was not there to speak for 21st century India, for its aspirations and possibilities. The erstwhile reformer became the patron saint of restrictions and regulations. It was still not glorious to be rich in India.

Mark Lennihan/AP

memories of that day The carriage with the remains of Rajiv Gandhi leaving Teen Murti Bhavan in New Delhi on 24 May 1991

politics

Feast Most Foul Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa saw the opportunity and seized it. She wanted to cash in on the perceived anti-Congress mood and upstage her arch-rival M Karunanidhi. She was tapping the rich vein of Tamil subnationalism when she demanded the release of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assassins following a Supreme Court verdict commuting their death sentences to life. Her decision may have come under sharp attack from various quarters, but having pandered to regional passions, she has won support from Tamil parties and human rights activists Âand she may win votes too. Her move, praised by her acolytes as a political masterstroke to appeal to Tamil sentiment and consolidate her position ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, has also brought into focus the debate over abolishing capital punishment. The loser in this murky politics is justice for Rajiv Gandhi and other victims of one of the biggest terrorist attacks on India.

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open www.openthemagazine.com 17

Dividends of Death Tamil sub-nationalism and political opportunism over Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination PR RAMESH

in new delhi

ast week, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief

Justice P Sathasivam commuted to life imprisonment the death sentences awarded to three men involved in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination of 1991. The three—Perarivalan, Murugan and Santhan, two Sri Lankan Tamils and one Indian Tamil—got a reprieve on account of an 11-year delay by the State in taking a call on their petitions for mercy. The court order evoked strong reactions across India, even as the last photograph of the explosion scene in Sriperumbudur went viral overnight on the internet, reviving memories of the assassination carried out by activists of a terrorist group that was finally crushed by the Sri Lankan army only in 2009, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). What transpired next, however, was shocking: an outpouring of sympathy for the former Prime Minister’s killers from political parties across the ideological spectrum in Tamil Nadu. Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa announced that her government would release all seven indicted in the case, including the three taken off death row. In doing so, she was playing politics with an issue that still haunts the nation well over two decades later, mainly to checkmate archrival and ardent Eelam enthusiast M Karunanidhi. The DMK chief, reacting to the court order, had said that he would be happier were the assassins freed from custody. Ironically, Jayalalithaa had once been a vociferous critic of the LTTE, letting the DMK monopolise a votebank that empathised with the long-suffering Tamils of Sri Lanka and their struggle for a separate state of Eelam carved out of Sri Lanka. It was an empathy that began turning to anger at Rajiv Gandhi’s 1987 decision as PM to send an Indian Peace Keeping Force to Sri Lanka at the behest of its then government, a force that ended up in a bloody conflict with the LTTE. With a general election due soon, a revival of this emotive issue could not have come at a more opportune time for Tamil Nadu’s top politicians. Jayalalithaa’s pre-poll gambit resulted in the unseemly spectacle of populists tumbling over one another to be seen as better espousing the cause of the three killers. The MDMK’s Vaiko, a longstanding apostle of Tamil Eelam, promptly thanked the 18 open

Ironically, Jayalalithaa had once been a vociferous critic of the LTTE, letting the DMK monopolise a votebank that empathised with the longsuffering Tamils of Sri Lanka and their struggle for a separate state of Eelam carved out of Sri Lanka CM for her “considered” gesture. Her decision to use the state’s power to free them irrespective of the Centre’s stance, however, was challenged by the UPA, leading to the apex court staying the decision on the three while leaving open the fate of the other four. On his part, Karunanidhi accused Amma of resorting to a political ploy to hoodwink voters. 10 march 2014

reuters

amma’s smart gamble MDMK chief Vaiko has praised Jayalalithaa’s “considered decision” to free seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case

Human rights activists were quick to join Tamil Nadu’s politicians. While the state government is set to argue its case legally, the court’s order remains debatable—for it involves the assassination of a former Prime Minister. A similar order in any other case, doubtless, would get far less public attention, let alone trigger this kind of political jousting. Although the death penalty has been on Indian statute books for a while now, it has seldom been executed, reserved as it is for ‘rarest of rare’ cases. By official records, the country has about 500 criminals currently on death row. Political parties in Tamil Nadu, including the latest entrant to ‘clemency politics’, Jayalalithaa, have entered the debate not because of their revulsion to the principle of retributive justice; even in routine dealings with archrivals, for instance, they are known to prefer ‘a whole-jawfor-a-tooth’ as their penal motto. Opponents of capital punishment often argue that since it is irreversible, those falsely adjudged ‘guilty’ could well fall unintended victims. Moreover, they contend, the justice system should rest on rehabilitation and not retribution. Weighty arguments, indeed. But then, there exist justifiable arguments to the contrary: among them, nothing assures victims of a particularly heinous crime, espe10 march 2014

cially murder, a better psychological sense of closure. The closure argument has been rejected by Rajiv’s son Rahul, who, in his response to the Judiciary’s reprieve, asserted that he was against death penalty. On the Tamil Nadu CM’s subsequent statement in the Assembly, however, he expressed sadness that the state government was trying to free his father’s killers. “When even those who killed a Prime Minister of this country are released with abandon, how can an ordinary person get justice? In this country, even the Prime Minister begs for justice,” he said. It is this crucial question of justice for the families of victims—and there were many—of the Sriperumbudur attack of 21 May 1991 that is being subverted by political expediency in Tamil Nadu, a phenomenon that seems to loom larger than the gigantic cut-outs of politicians that dot Chennai’s urbanscape. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has condemned the state government’s decision. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was an attack by the foulest of terrorists on the very soul of India, he said. And the Union Cabinet has now moved the Supreme Court seeking a review of its order. None of this, unfortunately, will deter Tamil Nadu politicians from feasting on the death of Rajiv Gandhi. n open www.openthemagazine.com 19

The Tamil Brotherhood Dravidian pride returns to rule Tamil Nadu politics Shahina KK in chennai

been stayed by the Supreme Court, has made Tamil subnationalism the focus of the poll campaign in the state. This time, with both the DMK and AIADMK refusing to tie up with the Congress, the grand old party would find it tough even to see Union Finance Minister Palanivel Chidambaram through from Sivanganga. With the DMK as the senior partner in the alliance in Tamil Nadu, the Congress had won eight of the 27 seats bagged by the UPA in 2009. After parting ways with the DMK over the 2G scam and the heartburn over the Tamil-Sinhala civil war in Sri Lanka, the Congress has been in isolation in the state.

here is little that is surprising about the downfall

of the Congress in Tamil Nadu, a state where the party held power till 1967. The entire political platform in the state as it stands today has been built on the work of a man who was an ardent critic of the Congress, a champion of the self-respect movement and a fighter against casteism and Brahmin hegemony: EV Ramaswamy. Affectionately called Periyar, he was the founder of the Dravida Kazhagam, the mother organisation of the DMK and AIADMK. “We stand only for the dignity, peace and justice for our brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka. For that, we demand nothing short of the liberation of Eelam—a M.Lakshman/AP

he parking lot of Sathyamoorthi Bhavan, the Congress office in Chennai, is almost empty. There is only PCC President BS Gnanadesikan’s white Innova with a tricolour at its mast, and a couple of other cars. There are less than ten people in the office. There is little sign that a general election is round the corner. The Congress has not yet been able to strike any major deal on the poll front in Tamil Nadu, though it has not yet given up on discussions with the DMK and DMDK, the party led by actor Vijayakant. According to Election Commission figures of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the DMDK has about one-tenth of the state’s vote. “I personally feel that in Tamil Nadu, Congress should contest the polls alone. We may lose one election, but we would perform better in the future if we do so,” says Gnanadesikan, who took charge of the PCC in 2011. Over the past four decades, the Congress has never been able to look beyond the temporary goal of winning a few seats and sharing power in the state. Pre-poll deals have always been cut on the basis of convenience, never on principle. The Supreme Court verdict to commute the death sentence of the three accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case has come at the worst possible time for the Congress. Further, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s decision to free all the seven accused in the case, a move which has

dravida shining A worker checks an electric illumination outline of DMK chief Karunanidhi

slippery slope The Congress is looking so forlorn in Tamil Nadu that P Chidambaram might find it difficult to get re-elected from Sivaganga; (below) MDMK chief Vaiko making his 2009 speech in Parliament asking the Government to condemn attacks on Sri Lankan Tamils. Several Tamil parties feel India’s Government failed to push for international intervention in Sri Lanka

Saurabh Das/AP

Shekhar Yadav/India Today Group/Getty Images

proposed independent state that Sri Lankan Tamils and the Tamil diaspora aspire to create in the north-east of the island nation—but we have been portrayed as separatists and terrorists by our own government,” says Pazha Nedumaran, a former Congressman, who is one of the most prominent voices of Tamil nationalism, and a close associate of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Kamaraj. P Maniyarasan, general secretary of the Thamizh Thesa Poduvudamai Katchi, a party that stands for a liberated country for Sri Lankan Tamils, is certain that the ongoing human rights violations against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and the release of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case will be the hottest issues in this general election. “The Government of India is not pushing for any international intervention in Sri Lanka. That is precisely why we stand against the Congress.” Small parties are the most ardent votaries of Tamil subnationalism. The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), an ally of the DMK, which has a sizeable vote share among Dalits in the northern districts of Tamil Nadu, has found itself a mix of Dalit emancipation and Tamil nationalism. Its leader Thirumal Valavan was elected to the Lok Sabha from Chidambaram’s constituency last time, defeating the Pattali Makkal Katchi candidate. The PMK has a vote base among the Vanniyar community. The Puthiya Thamizhakom headed by K Krishnaswamy, the sitting MP of Thenkasi, also has a stake in wooing the state’s 10 march 2014

Dalits, who comprise about 20 per cent of the total voting population in Tamil Nadu. Small political parties like the Nam Thamizhar led by film director and actor Seeman, and fringe groups like that of the 17 May movement, act more as pressure groups on mainstream political parties. All these small parties and groups are grounded on the idea of Dravidian pride. None of these pro-Tamil parties, big or small, take the BJP seriously as this ‘national’ party has not yet been able to prove itself as a major player in the state. Moreover, Hindutva does not sit well with Dravidian identity politics. The AIADMK burnt its fingers with the alliance it struck with the NDA; it has since realised that this would not pay off either in the state or at the national level. Jayalalithaa, who has prime ministerial aspirations, has chosen her current partners keeping their secular credentials in mind. Nevertheless, she has not spoken a single word against the BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi so far. The post Lankan civil war scenario is difficult terrain for mainstream political parties. The Tamil tragedy in the civil war of 2009 is still part of public memory here. Public meetings, online discussions and film screenings on the civil war are organised regularly. A recent screening of the Channel 4 documentary titled No Fire Zone: In the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka was reflective of the mindset of young Tamils.On the evening of 22 February, the large banquet hall of a Chennai hotel was packed with students who had a Skype interaction with Callum Macrae, the film’s director, after the screening. “The Congress and BJP are going to be washed out in this election,” says Veera Prabhakaran, state coordinator of the Tamil Youth and Students Federation, a student’s organisation working for the liberation of Eelam. open www.openthemagazine.com 21

The DMK has, in fact, been put in a spot of bother by the AIADMK call to free the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case. “Talking about the release of the prisoners would be sub judice at this point of time,” says T Siva, an MP and the propaganda secretary of DMK, responding carefully to the question of how the DMK is going to counter the advantage that Jayalalithaa has seized. “A secular government should come to power. We are focussing on corruption and the threat to secularism. People are smart enough to read the true colours of the AIADMK. It was only a month back that Jayalalithaa refused parole to Nalini, one of the seven convicts in the case. How did she change all of a sudden?” It is reasonable to assume that the sympathy wave in favour of the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case is to some extent the result of thousands of civilians being killed in the final days of the civil war. The footage released by the UK’s Channel 4 last year fanned Tamil fury and anguish over the tragedy. It is true that Indian Tamils had rejected the

It is reasonable to assume that the sympathy wave in favour of the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case is to some extent the result of thousands of civilians being killed in the final days of the civil war in Sri Lanka. The footage released by the UK’s Channel 4 last year fanned the fury and anguish over the tragedy violence and extremism of the LTTE after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991. The then ruling DMK won just two seats in the Tamil Nadu Assembly election, despite Karunanidhi’s public apology for the former prime minister’s assassination. The Congress, and its ally AIADMK, won all the 39 Lok Sabha seats in the state. However, this rejection of the LTTE’s guerilla warfare did not last long. “The convicts of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case have lived almost a lifetime [on death row]. The campaign against their death sentence has also strengthened the anti-death penalty movement in general. Moreover, discrepancies in the investigation and trial process are still emerging. All these facts, along with the deadly images of war crimes on Tamils in Sri Lanka, helped generate empathy for them,” says writer and activist SP Rajadurai. Sri Lanka’s military solution to the 25-year-long civil war has given rise to more and more organisations determined 22 open

to continue the LTTE’s mission. The ethnic conflict that resulted in major violence in 1983 accelerated the mass exodus of Sri Lankan Tamils to Tamil Nadu. “Repeated requests to the Centre for an immediate intervention fell on deaf ears. In 1985, the then Chief Minister MG Ramachandran took an all-party delegation to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi requesting him to demand an immediate ceasefire in the region, but no action was initiated by the Centre,” says P Nedumaran. The decision to send troops to Sri Lanka only deepened the scar, leading to the violent retaliation that claimed Rajiv Gandhi’s life. No political party in Tamil Nadu can survive without displaying some solidarity with Tamils in Sri Lanka. Even the Congress tries to tap this sentiment. “India supported the US resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHCR because of pressure from us. Initially, the Centre was in no mood to support the resolution,” says Gnanavedikan. In this vein, Tamil fishermen being fired at or tortured by the Sri Lankan navy is a major issue for Tamil sub-nationalist movements. According to fishermen organisations, there are hundreds of fishermen languishing in Sri Lankan jails. In a letter to India’s Prime Minister last month, Jayalalithaa blamed the Centre for its ‘meek and weak’ response to repeated instances of attacks on fishermen in their traditional waters. “In maritime disputes, India protects the rights of Gujaratis and Bengalis, but not Tamils,” alleges Pazha Nedumaran. According to him, more than 700 Tamil fishermen have lost their lives over the last two decades.

ot everyone, though, is thrilled with the resur-

gence of Tamil sub-nationalism. “The Tamil nationalism you see now has no content. It is only a tool being used by political parties and interest groups,” says SP Rajadurai, who is highly critical of the fringe groups and parties playing up Tamil sentiment. “It is very easy to talk about Sri Lanka, a foreign country,” says Rajadurai, “None of these movements have the ideological content that Periyar had when he launched the Dravidian movement. Tamil Nadu is one of the most corrupt states in the country. These people are not worried about it. They raise the issue of water scarcity only when it comes to cases of water disputes either with Karnataka or with Kerala. They do not say a word against the dreadful sand mining that kills the rivers in Tamil Nadu. The kind of Tamil nationalism being preached now is in the category of the fanaticism expressed by groups like the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.” Rajadurai clarifies that he is against the attack on Tamils in Sri Lanka, and does not want the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case hanged. Nevertheless, he is worried about Tamil sub-nationalism deflecting public attention from corruption. His biggest fear is the possibility of a non-performing government with no long-term policies, running on freebies, coming back to power by playing on Dravidian pride. n 10 march 2014

THIS LETHAL LOTTERY

Forget the howling majority, death penalty is a denial of individual rights Suhrith Parthasarathy in chennai

n 18 February, the Supreme Court of India or-

dered the commutation to life imprisonment of the death sentences previously awarded to three individuals for conspiring and murdering the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. These commutations, in V Sriharan vs the Union of India, were ordered on the singular ground that the President of India had dismissed petitions for mercy filed by the three convicts after apparently ruminating on their pleas for more than 11 years. The President, who is required to act on the advice of his council of ministers, has been given express constitutional power to pardon any person sentenced to death. But when petitioned to exercise this power, the President, according to the Supreme Court, must act in a fair and just manner. This entails a duty to dispose petitions for mercy filed by convicts on the death row within a reasonable time. In this case, the President’s failure to do so, the court held, was tantamount to a violation of the prisoners’ fundamental rights, according them a concomitant right to have their death sentences commuted to life imprisonments. The decision in Sriharan appeals to our deepest sentiments of mercy and compassion. Some values are so important that mere majoritarian impulses cannot be an excuse to let them wither. But on closer examination, the Supreme Court’s judgment coupled with the rest of its most recent decisions on the death penalty, which seek to purportedly humanise capital punishment, while welcome, also reflect the court’s fractured approach in evolving the country’s rights-jurisprudence. If anything, these decisions show us unequivocally why the court, as a counter-majoritarian institution, ought to reconsider the constitutional and moral validity of the death penalty. India had a de facto unofficial moratorium in place on capital punishment for nearly a decade commencing 2004. The Supreme Court’s mandate in Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab (1980) that the penalty ought to be awarded only in the ‘rarest of rare’ cases was interpreted with renewed vigour amid a general penological confusion over the penalty’s efficacy; the State, it seemed, would be consigned to re-thinking its philosophy on punishments. In this period, the Supreme Court had held that its own failure in determining precisely when the death penalty ought to be awarded, combined with a lack of legislative mandate, created a wave of uncertainty in decisions rendered by the lower judiciary. What’s more, the court had admitted during the period that the award of the death penalty is subjective and ‘depends a good deal on the personal predilection of the judges constituting the bench’.

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This opinion, rendered in Swamy Shraddananda vs State of Karnataka, was an express acknowledgement of the vagaries of India’s criminal justice system. It should have represented the basis for the State to review the rationality of capital punishment. Instead, prompted by a change in President and a public baying for blood, the unofficial moratorium on executions was lifted in November 2012. Ajmal Kasab, convicted of carrying out the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008, was hanged to death in virtually complete secrecy days after President Pranab Mukherjee had rejected a petition for clemency filed by Kasab. In a similarly clandestine proceeding labelled ‘Operation Three Star’ on 9 February 2013, Afzal Guru, convicted of offences under both the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Terrorism Act for carrying out the December 2001 attack on Indian Parliament, was executed with no prior notice to his family. What’s more, he was hanged within a week of the President’s decision to deny his petition for mercy, which the Home Ministry had grazed on for more than six years. The rejection of the petition was kept secret with the obvious intention of evading further judicial scrutiny. After all, a delay of such magnitude without reason, as the Supreme Court had photos afp

In confirming the death sentences of Sriharan, Suthendraraja and Perarivalan, the Supreme Court made little effort to discuss their capabilities for reformation, paying only verbal obeisance to past decisions and guidelines on when capital punishment is called for open www.openthemagazine.com 23

nation vs state Congress supporters hoist an effigy of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in protest of the state’s move to set free seven men serving life sentences for the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi Saurabh Das/AP

previously held, was the equivalent of punishing a person with both death and imprisonment for the same offence.

he strongest argument against capital punishment is its irrevocability; it flickers all over the morbid execution of Afzal Guru. In January this year, similar cases of delay by the President in disposing mercy petitions led to commutations by the Supreme Court in Shatrughan Chauhan vs Union of India. Had Afzal Guru been given time to challenge the rejection of his mercy petition, it is quite conceivable that he would have been accorded the same standards of due process applied to the petitioners in Chauhan. Here, the court held, in consonance with general international standards, that to keep a convict on death row, for years on end, chewing over the decision of his or her plea for clemency, was an act of torture. This not only violated the convict’s most essential rights, but it also demanded the commutation of his or her sentence to one of life imprisonment. It is this decision in Chauhan that ultimately served as a binding precedent when the Supreme Court decided on the petitions filed by those convicted of murdering Rajiv Gandhi this month. There were two primary legal issues called into question in Chauhan, which decided a batch of 12 writ petitions filed by, or on behalf of, prisoners whose clemency petitions were rejected after they had spent several years on death row. One was whether the Supreme Court could judicially review decisions of the President and the Governors of various states made under constitutionally sanctioned powers of pardon. And the second was whether the delay in execution, wrought by a concomitant delay in disposing mercy petitions, constituted a valid ground for commutation of death sentences. The Supreme Court answered both questions in the affirmative. Articles 72 and 161 of the Indian Constitution respectively give the President and the Governors of states a power to pardon prisoners. This includes the authority to commute to sentences of life imprisonment those previously consigned to death row. In Kehar Singh vs Union of India 24 open

(1989), the Supreme Court held that the power vested in the President under Article 72 was ‘a constitutional responsibility of great significance, to be exercised when occasion arises in accordance with the discretion contemplated by the context’. In effecting this responsibility, the court held, the President could examine the record of evidence of the criminal case and determine for him or herself whether the case deserves a grant of relief under the power vested in him by Article 72. The court, here, did not decide on the merits of the President’s decision in the case to reject a mercy petition filed by Kehar Singh, who was convicted for conspiring to kill the former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. But it asked the President to reconsider his decision in view of his belief that this power, under Article 72, of reviewing a case decided by the courts, was limited. Ultimately, the President rejected the mercy petition and Kehar Singh was hanged to death in Tihar Jail in Delhi. But the case laid the foundation for a judicial examination of the President’s responsibility under Article 72. Relying upon this decision, the Supreme Court held, in Chauhan, that the power of gubernatorial pardon is ‘not merely a matter of grace or mercy, but is a constitutional duty of great significance’, which has to be exercised with ‘great care and circumspection and keeping in view the larger public interest’. Having held that it could review a decision taken by the President or a governor that violates fundamental rights, the Supreme Court considered whether a delay in disposing mercy petitions constituted a valid ground for review. The court had previously held in Vatheeshwaran vs State of Tamil Nadu (1983) and Triveniben vs State of Gujarat (1988) that an unexplained delay in executing a convict whose verdict had been confirmed by the highest court amounts to a violation of the prisoner’s fundamental rights, and constitutes a sound basis for a commutation of his or her sentence. In Chauhan, the Justices extended the logic applied in these cases to hold that a delay in execution, even when due to an exercise of a constitutional duty by the President or a governor, accords the prisoner a right to have his or 10 march 2014

her sentence commuted. What’s more, the court also overruled its own decision in Devender Singh Bhullar vs State of NCT Delhi, delivered in May of 2013, where a two-judge bench had ruled that a delay in determining the merits of a mercy petition was, by itself, insufficient ground for commuting the sentence of those convicted to death under anti-terrorism statutes. In so deciding, Chauhan upheld the best traditions of India’s Constitution: the right to due process carved under Article 21, the court reminded us, applied equally to those among us who had been condemned to death by operation of the law.

n its judgment in Sriharan, rendered on 18 February,

the court applied Chauhan to the three convicts—V Sriharan, T Suthendraraja and AG Perarivalan—who had been sentenced to death for having conspired and killed Rajiv Gandhi. After the Supreme Court had confirmed their sentences on 11 May 1999, the trio had approached the Governor of Tamil Nadu seeking his mercy on 17 October the same year. Once the Governor rejected their pleas, the three of them petitioned the President on 26 April 2000 for his consideration under Article 72 of the Constitution. Thereafter, it took the President until 12 August 2011 to arrive at a decision. As a result, the convicts had spent 23 years in prison, 12 of those with the brooding horror of hanging haunting them in their condemned cells, to borrow Justice Krishna Iyer’s nowfamous aphorism. Such a delay, according to the apex Court, rendered ‘the process of execution of death sentence arbitrary, whimsical and capricious and, therefore, inexecutable’. What’s more, to consign a prisoner on death row to an inordinate incarceration is both disproportionate and extra-legal. Therefore, the court held, the powers under Articles 72 and 161 were to be exercised ‘within the bounds of constitutional discipline’, and mercy petitions filed by prisoners ought to be determined expeditiously. In so holding, the court excelled in its role as a counter-majoritarian institution. As Justice Jackson of the US Supreme Court had once observed, the purpose of constitutional rights is to ‘withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.’ Chauhan, and accordingly Sriharan, some critics say, may now prompt the Executive to dismiss mercy petitions filed by death row convicts with flippancy, in the interest of being expedient. If that were indeed a likely consequence of the Supreme Court’s decisions, it only fosters arguments favouring an abolition of the death penalty. In May 2009, in Santosh Bariyar vs State of Maharashtra, the apex court emphasised the gravest vagaries of capital punishment. Importantly, it pointed out that the judicial principles applied in imposing the death penalty were far from uniform, and, at least six of the court’s previous decisions had been rendered in ignorance of settled law. These decisions had relied on Ravji vs State of Rajasthan (1996), where the Court had ruled that only the nature of the crime

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was germane to the sentencing in a criminal trial. In other words, the circumstances of the criminal were irrelevant to the award of a sentence. Such a holding, according to Santosh Bariyar, ran contrary to principles previously established by the Supreme Court. In fact, even in the decision confirming the death sentences awarded to Sriharan, Suthendraraja and Perarivalan, the court had made little effort to discuss their respective capacities for reformation. Perarivalan, who was 19 years old at the time of the incident, according to recent revelations by a former CBI official, may not have known that batteries bought by him were to be used in a bomb meant to kill Rajiv Gandhi. The Supreme Court, in confirming the death penalty awarded against him and three others (one of them, Nalini, was later reprieved by the President), only paid verbal obeisance to its past decisions, which set loose guidelines on when capital punishment ought to be awarded. A perusal of the three separate opinions, rendered respectively by Justices KT Thomas, DP Wadhwa and SSM Quadri in 1999, would show that it was the nature of the crime—and that alone—which convinced them to confirm the award of the death penalty. Had the President, in considering the mercy pleas of Perarivalan and the others, analysed the decision in light of more recent jurisprudential developments shaped by the Supreme Court, it is likely that she might have arrived at a contrary decision. But just as the courts are often inconsistent in strictly applying principles of sentencing evolved by precedent, each new president advances his or her own personal approach in deciding mercy petitions. Pratibha Patil, who denied clemency to Sriharan, Suthendraraja and Perarivalan, showed greater compassion in as many as 34 other cases, where she commuted sentences of death to life imprisonments. Her successor Pranab Mukherjee, on the other hand, has been more severe, rejecting a number of mercy petitions, including those filed by Kasab and Afzal Guru, while granting clemency in only two cases. The Supreme Court has now, through its judgments in Chauhan and Sriharan, reversed some of these decisions. But the erratic approach adopted by different presidents shows us exactly what is wrong with the administration of the death penalty in India. The process is, all things considered, callous and regressive; it is, as Amnesty International and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties had observed, a lethal lottery. Attempts by the Supreme Court to civilise an inherently uncivil punishment are welcome. But ultimately, India needs a sounder penological theory—one that will give effect to the primary objectives of the criminal justice system, and one that will uphold the Constitution’s paramount values. In a democracy, such laws must, ideally, be moulded by Parliament. But given that the death penalty, to the howling public, offers a unique abreaction, it is to the Supreme Court that we might have to turn again to place, as Justice Sinha wrote in Santosh Bariyar, ‘individual rights at a higher pedestal than majoritarian aspirations’. n Suhrith Parthasarathy is a Chennai-based lawyer and writer open www.openthemagazine.com 25

open essay BY Sumantra Bose

THE FAMILY WOES OF RAHUL GANDHI Express archive

Why the prospects of the Congressâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; fifth-generation dynastic gamble hang by a slender thread

lessons learnt at the knee Rahul Gandhi with his grandmother, Indira

olitics breeds dynasties, or so it seems. Consider the case of George W Bush, two-term president of the United States from January 2001 to January 2009. He is the son of George Herbert Walker Bush, who was America’s president from January 1989 to January 1993. The scion of a wealthy family with deep roots and connections in America’s political establishment, George W Bush’s presidential tenure is regarded among liberal-minded Americans as a disaster, and even among many right-wing Americans as a disappointment or failure. The backlash against inherited privilege represented by George W Bush—who never really outgrew his buffoonish image over his eight years in the White House—was a key factor in Barack Obama’s election to the American presidency in 2008. A rank outsider to the political establishment, Obama had entered national politics only in November 2004, when he was elected to the US Senate from Illinois, his home state (unlike the indirectly-elected Rajya Sabha, members of the US Senate are directly elected from the states). Prior to becoming the equivalent of a first-time MP, Obama had been an Illinois state senator (equivalent to an MLA) for some years. It was, however, Obama’s personal background that truly made him the outsider. The son of a failed marriage between a Kenyan father and a White American mother, he is technically of mixed-race origin but in his youth decided to embrace the identity of a Black man and an African-American. In the US, a young nation born in the late eighteenth century whose history has been defined by race and troubles over race more than any other single factor, the ascent of this man to the presidency was nothing short of revolutionary. Just 15 years ago, when I left the US to work in London after finishing a doctorate at Columbia University in New York, it was inconceivable that a Black man could be elected America’s president. Obama’s victory was an unlikely triumph of a talented, intelligent and ambitious individual with absolutely no birth-given advantages of lineage and pedigree (the same description applies to Bill Clinton, with the crucial difference that Clinton is White). And of course, being in the right place at the right time helped too. Dynasty is far from dead in American politics. Obama’s potential successor in 2016 is Hillary Clinton, the aforementioned Bill’s long-suffering spouse. Of course, nobody can argue that she is an idiot or a greenhorn. By all accounts highly cerebral, she has been elected to the US Senate from New York and has served a competent term as Obama’s secretary of state. Yet, she is also a pillar of the American political establishment. Obama’s rise—and Bill Clinton’s before him—showed that there is space even in the money and network-riddled world of American politics for an aam aadmi to not just aspire to but reach the highest office in the land. Obama’s success in 2008 in wresting the Democratic presidential nomination from Hillary Clinton—she was the clear favourite and frontrunner—was the victory of an outsider and of grassroots mobilisation over the Clintons’ money power, high-level insider connections and political machine.

ll sorts of political systems breed dynasties and

dynasts. The Middle East has many monarchies, such as

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those in the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco. In these polities, hereditary succession is a right. But the Middle East has also produced dynastic regimes under the alternative republican form of government. A notable current example is Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. Bashar is a son of Hafez al-Assad, a one-time air force officer who was the country’s dictatorial supremo for three decades until his death in 2000. Bashar was originally not his father’s intended successor. A soft-spoken man, he kept away from politics while his older brother Bassel, a brash and outgoing type, was groomed and openly projected as Hafez’s eventual successor. That changed suddenly in 1994, when Bassel was killed in a self-inflicted car crash in Damascus and the shy, reticent Bashar was picked by their father as heir-apparent, eerily resembling how Rajiv Gandhi came to replace Sanjay Gandhi as their mother’s successor. On his succession to the ‘throne’ after his father’s death, Bashar was viewed for a few years in Syria and internationally as a potential reformer who would democratise his strongman father’s notoriously-repressive regime. Nothing came of these hopes. Three years ago, anti-regime demonstrations erupted in several Syrian cities, and the regime reacted with ferocious crackdowns. Since then, Syria has descended into full-fledged civil war pitting the regime’s forces against a host of insurgent militias. Amidst the carnage and destruction, Bashar al-Assad has stood like an immovable rock, flatly refusing to even consider the suggestion of stepping down. Bashar al-Assad continues as of now to preside over the ruins of Syria, but other Middle Eastern dynasts—spawned, ironically, by regimes that once claimed ‘popular’ and even ‘revolutionary’ credentials and rejected the hereditary right to inherit power from their traditional monarchies—have not been as lucky. One such would-be dynast who has had his ambitions cruelly aborted is Saif al-Gaddafi, a son of the grotesquely colourful Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya. For a decade until the fall of his father’s regime in 2011, Saif Gaddafi went about cultivating international connections and credentials in the West. The brand-building exercise suggested that he was positioning himself as his father’s successor. He even acquired a PhD of dubious authenticity from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where I am a longstanding member of the faculty. His flock of influential admirers in Western countries parroted his claim of being a nice liberal who would bring democratic change to Gaddafi Senior’s stifling, semi-totalitarian Libya. At the start of the Libyan uprising three years ago, Saif went on national television and delivered a bloodcurdling diatribe in which he threatened his countrymen and women with brutal retribution for rising up against his father’s 42-year regime. Some months later, Muammar Gaddafi was captured and executed by rebels, and shortly after that, Saif was caught as well; he remains in the custody of his Libyan captors. What explains the determination of the likes of Bashar Assad and Saif Gaddafi to fight to the finish? When confronted with popular uprisings, these two scions responded with strikingly similar, near-apocalyptic language: that they would stay, fight and if necessary die in their own countries, rather than flee and seek refuge abroad. This response is not simply, or even primarily, a reflection of cultural and open www.openthemagazine.com 27

masculine bravado. It is rooted in something else: a genuine parampara is prized in Indian culture). conviction that the state is one’s patrimony and that leaderThere are two problems with this argument. The first is that ship is an inherited right. The Assads’ Syria and the Gaddafis’ the present-day Congress is descended, in however debased a Libya represent cases of the privatisation of the State—an form, from one of the great mass movements of the first half inherently public entity—where a family and a circle of of the twentieth century. At that time, the Congress was cronies acquired monopolistic control over the State and its something like a public trust belonging to the Indian people. resources. To keep the State as a family-controlled fief is well Rahul Gandhi’s projection as its only future leader—to the worth a fight to the bitter end. exclusion of all others who may have a reasonable claim— While Bashar Assad is the face of the embattled Syrian reveals the extent of privatisation of a once truly public regime, its most powerful official is probably his younger national institution. This is quite different from the scion of a brother Maher, who has been leading the regime’s scorchedbusiness family inheriting the family business, a doctor’s earth war of survival since 2011. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, child inheriting the parent’s medical practice, or the actor’s president for three decades, had been grooming one of his offspring tapping the parent’s professional experience and sons for the succession for several years when he was toppled reputation; these are all privately built and held assets that in 2011. No wonder the Mubaraks wouldn’t go quietly; they have nothing to do with the public sphere. had long-term plans of controlling the privatised Egyptian The second problem is that credentials can be inherited state. Had Saddam Hussein survived in Iraq, one of his two only up to a point, and beyond that they have to be earned. A sons would surely have inherited the State and its leadership business scion lacking in business acumen, a doctor’s from him. And all these family-led regimes that privatised progeny deficient in skill, or an actor’s offspring who just bert hardy/hulton-deutsch collection states have had some popular support can’t emote are unlikely to go far. In the even in decline and eclipse. Muammar late 1960s-early 1970s, Indira Gandhi Gaddafi’s regime had the support of emerged as a—indeed the—nationprobably a fifth of Libyans when it was wide mass leader through her own toppled, while Bashar Assad’s regime skills and acumen. From that point she has the support of up to one-third of was no longer primarily Nehru’s Syrians, mostly the Assads’ own daughter, but a leader in her own right. Alawite sect and other minorities such Fifteen years ago, Naveen Patnaik’s as Syria’s Christians. only identity in Odisha’s politics was as the legendary Bijubabu’s son; since then he has built his own identity n India’s democracy, the total priand reputation. vatisation of the political sphere that That brings us to the ultimate can occur in autocracies isn’t possible. argument in defence of dynasticism in But a degree of such privatisation has democratic politics. This argument is happened through family control of almost impossible to counter. If people parties. Dynastic heirs are either at the vote for dynastic continuity and helm of, or in top leadership positions succession, doesn’t that make it in numerous parties including the legitimate even in a democracy? Yes, it Samajwadi Party, Dravida Munnetra does. One can quibble by arguing that lineage Rajiv Gandhi with his grandfather, Nehru Kazhagam, Shiromani Akali Dal, Shiv when the people of India gave Mrs Sena, Nationalist Congress Party, Biju Gandhi a big mandate in March 1971, Janata Dal, National Conference and even the recently formed they didn’t know she would start promoting dynastic rule YSR Congress. India’s politics is crawling with dynasts. within a few years, or that the Congress might have won a There is one dynast who stands out in the crowd, however. sweeping victory in December 1984 even if PV Narasimha The aforementioned dynasts all belong to regional parties, Rao rather than Rajiv Gandhi had been its prime ministerial and are focused on their respective states. Ever since he candidate. But the answer to the above question is still ‘Yes’. entered politics a decade ago, Rahul Gandhi has been portThat being so, the prospects of the Congress’ fifth-generarayed by his party as India’s national leader in the making, tion dynastic gamble hang by a slender thread. If the thread and as prime minister in waiting, just as his father was three snaps, perhaps brutally, and the one dynasty with nationwide decades ago. It’s a matter of time before he takes over and leads pretensions is irretrievably damaged, it may even have a us into a golden future, or so the narrative has been. This is a dampening side-effect on the phenomenon of regional serious matter; the future of 1.25 billion people is at stake. political dynasties. n The argument for dynasty in politics, and especially the Sumantra Bose is Professor of International and Comparative dynasty in India’s politics, goes something like this. If a Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His businessman’s progeny can become a businessman, a doctor’s latest book Transforming India: Challenges to the World’s progeny a doctor, or an actor’s progeny an actor, what’s wrong Largest Democracyhas been published globally by Harvard with politicians’ offspring becoming politicians? He or she is University Press ,and in India by Picador India merely following the family tradition (and we know how

28 open

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alliance

d Prasa Lalu JD) (R

Inside the Flea Market of Coalition Politics Deal makers, king makers and wannabe kings are at play

rat sh Ka Praka PM) (C

Ullekh NP & Dhirendra K Jha

B a ekhar ndras K Cha ao (TRS) R

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ihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was away in Delhi to attend a meeting of the Left partiesled ‘Third Front’ when Lalu Prasad, his former comrade-in-arms and now political rival, walked past his 1 Anne Marg official residence to the Raj Bhavan, beaming, to inform the governor that all was well in his party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). This came a day after the Bihar Assembly speaker declared 13 ‘rebel MLAs’ of the RJD a breakaway group. Before meeting the governor, Prasad— who had with him nine of the 13 saying they’d changed their minds and returned to the RJD fold—had hopped on to a cycle-rickshaw in Patna and walked through its streets with his legislators in tow. Prasad was at his feisty best, hitting out at Nitish Kumar for offering inducements like ministerial berths, Lok Sabha seats and money to his party MLAs in return for defecting to the ruling Janata Dal-United government, which was reduced to a minority when its 17-year-old alliance with the BJP ended last June. The unkempt hair, loose jaunty walk,

and sneer on his face—Prasad was his triumphal self again, a throwback to his prime days when he was CM himself. Without doubt, his survival of a rebellion within his party ranks offers a snapshot of the political wheeling and dealing that’s in full swing in many parts of the country with Lok Sabha polls just a few weeks away. Who Started It?

“Nitish is the main culprit,” says Prasad on the phone, but refuses to answer questions on disaffection among his MLAs. In a state that has seen plenty of jockeying by politicians to optimise their caste-religion matrix to pull in votes, the JD-U’s efforts to lure rival MLAs comes as no surprise. But what underscores the intensity of street savvy and canny aggression is the role of Abdul Bari Siddiqui, the RJD state chief who has emerged as Prasad’s prime troubleshooter to quell the crisis. A Patna-based political analyst calls Siddiqui the ‘originator’ of the current rebellion against Prasad: he has been constantly in touch with JD-U leader Rajiv Ranjan ‘Lalan’ Singh, a friend of Kumar open www.openthemagazine.com 29

who had briefly parted ways with him, only to return. Singh, a Bhumihar politician, had held several rounds of negotiation with Siddiqui and his RJD colleague and key collaborator Samrat Chaudhury over “terms and conditions” to defect from their party and join the JD-U, according to a person close to the developments who has asked not to be named. But finally when Siddiqui felt that Chaudhury, the MLA from Parbatta, had gone one-up on him in his parleys with the JD-U, he turned “Lalu’s saviour by persuading members of his community who had formed a separate group by walking out of the RJD to return”, reveals an RJD leader on condition of anonymity. “And it seems he was successful,” adds the leader, “Of course, Siddiqui had his worries about his future in politics—and these were genuine.” A popular leader among Muslims, Siddiqui had always eyed the Madhubani Lok Sabha seat, which he feared would go to Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed if the RJD struck a prepoll alliance with its coalition partner at the Centre. An RJD leader and a Siddiqui loyalist tells Open that “[Siddiqui] is deeply committed to the cause of secularism and a tie-up with the Congress, to fight the Modi wave”. Perhaps his commitment to personal success as a politician was far deeper. “The RJD, it is understood, has agreed to address his concerns,” says this loyalist. This simply means the party had to woo him back from the exit with greater inducements, contends the Patna-based political analyst. Kumar’s Survival Struggle

Chaudhury, an influential leader among ‘Other Backward Class’ Koeris, who has refused to return to the RJD saying that Prasad has converted the party into a ‘B’ team of the Congress, is a prize catch for the JD-U as it tries to woo non-Yadav OBCs. Son of former senior RJD leader and former MP Shakuni Chaudhury, he wields far greater clout than Koeri leader Upendra Kushwaha, who has joined hands with the BJP to fight the Lok Sabha polls. Kushwaha, a former JD-U lawmaker, had parted ways with Kumar to float the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party last year. A Bihar government official who has 30 open

information on the talks between Chaudhury and JD-U leaders says ‘RJD rebels’ are being assured ministries in Bihar as well as Lok Sabha tickets. Chaudhury was irritated that the RJD leadership was not considering him for the Khagaria Lok Sabha seat. True, Kumar has a lot to offer and lots more to gain. After a split with the BJP over Narendra Modi’s leading his party to the polls, the JD-U has just 115 seats in the 243-member Bihar Assembly but enough vacancies in the council of ministers: 16. Currently, Kumar’s survival is ensured by four Congress MLAs and as many independents. While Kumar was eyeing RJD MLAs to stay afloat in the face of a power shift at the Centre, his rival and former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi, too, was trying to make the most of an opportunity. The BJP leader was instrumental is roping in Kushwaha, and he was looking for even more OBC switchovers. The electoral choices of all parties are dictated by caste dynamics, and so this is no surprise. Then Ram Vilas Paswan happened. It was no secret that the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader was upset with the Congress and RJD over seat-sharing for the Lok Sabha polls. The LJP was offered five of the state’s 40 seats, leading to a breakdown of talks with the RJD and Congress.

n aswa ilas P Ram V (LJP)

dy n Red Moha ess) n a g r Ja ong (YSR C

Courting a Dalit Icon

Paswan was ready to sacrifice a few seats to be on the winning side, says an LJP leader. “He also wants to establish the political career of his son [Chirag],” says this leader. As part of an agreement that Paswan has reached with the BJP, the LJP will contest seven Lok Sabha seats. It was the BJP’s former Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain who first got in touch with the 67-year-old Dalit leader. This was in mid-February. A few days ago, Chirag, Paswan’s heir apparent, met BJP President Rajnath Singh. A BJP leader who was part of the talks says his party had set down a few conditions for a pre-poll alliance, the most important being that Paswan keep his tainted leaders such as Surajbhan Singh and Rama Singh out of the poll arena. “The LJP demanded 12-13 seats in the beginning and the BJP has agreed to offer 7 seats,” says the BJP leader.

bab ndra N Cha u (TDP) Naid

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crisis averted Lalu Prasad and his party parade nine rebel RJD MLAs to demonstrate their fidelity

The BJP sees much symbolism in Paswan’s return to the NDA, which he quit in 2002. The veteran parliamentarian quit as a minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee Government in April 2002, alleging that Narendra Modi’s government had failed to smother the post-Godhra anti-Muslim conflagration in Gujarat. He had even demanded that Modi be sacked as CM and President’s rule be imposed in Gujarat. Sure, it is a political coup of sorts to secure a tie-up with Paswan, whose votes are considered transferrable. Hussain and BJP general secretary Dharmendra Pradhan were handling these negotiations. Ram Vilas Paswan is the most popular leader of the Paswan community, which accounts for 4-5 per cent of Bihar’s population and remains fiercely loyal to him. In next-door Uttar Pradesh, the BJP hopes several such sub-strategies will help it secure a huge chunk of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. With ‘upper’ castes in both these states veering towards the BJP under Modi’s spell anyway, the party is looking at strategies to lure Dalits and OBCs in these states.

Ravi S. Sahani

As part of a poll pact Ramvilas Paswan has reached with the BJP, his party will contest 7 Lok Sabha seats

Third Front’s Woes

While the BJP and Congress are trying to forge alliances and strategies to outdo each other, the third alternative, or the ‘Third Front’ comprising Left and regional parties, have formed a nonCongress, non-BJP bloc of nine parties. However, two of its constituents, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), were not present at a meeting they held in Delhi, sparking rumours that the grouping isn’t cohesive enough to take on the two main coalitions. BJD leader Naveen Patnaik has publicly stated that a third front is still in a nascent stage. The meeting was attended by the CPM, CPI, AIADMK, JD-U, JD-S, SP, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Forward Bloc and Jharkhand Vikas Morcha. However, not all is hunky-dory among these parties. The Left has suffered a humiliation at the hands of the AIADMK, which, by declaring candidates for all 40 seats from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, has made a mockery of coalition etiquette. Its chief J Jayalalithaa has announced that she will withdraw candidates from a few seats after pre-poll alliances take shape in the state. In effect, 10 March 2014

the Left parties have been relegated to her waiting list, says Chennai-based political analyst TN Gopalan. He attributes Jayalalithaa’s arrogance to “her picking up all the wrong lessons from her mentor, the late Chief Minister MG Ramachandran.” Though she has mellowed down over the years, she is still temperamental, he notes. MGR, according to him, could get away with doing outrageous things like slapping a photographer for taking his snaps without his sunglasses and fur cap, but he was far more courteous. “He was a lot more accommodative,” avers Gopalan, “He had a benevolent patriarch image he revelled in… [but] she has none of it.” Telangana’s Future

Like in Bihar, the political scene in Andhra Pradesh is stark. The situation seems to favour the Congress in the soonto-be-carved-out state of Telangana. But some political analysts believe that a merger of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti

(TRS) with the Congress may not be easy and that the former will seek its “pound of political flesh” now that it has won its statehood game. Pundits expect the TRS, with the unpredictable K Chandrasekhara Rao at its helm, and the Congress to go for an alliance rather than a merger. While Rao did visit Congress President Sonia Gandhi along with his family, the relationship is still full of uncertainty, they say. The TRS chief is worried that he may go the way of Chiranjeevi, who lost his political relevance after he merged his Praja Rajyam Party with the Congress. To retain its regional clout, the TRS is expected to ask for eight of Telangana’s 17 Lok Sabha seats to contest and demand that the Hyderabad seat be given to the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen. Sonia Gandhi, who has come under sharp attack from Seemandhra Congress leaders for allegedly splitting a state to corner a few extra seats for her son Rahul, may play ball. As assorted parties stare at polls, the scurrying around for deals in this political flea market may well intensify. There may yet be a few surprises in store as backroom bargains are aired in the weeks ahead. Voters, of course, are watching who is lining up with whom. “In this game, perceptions play a big role,” says Gopalan, “Which is why AAP is trying to court ‘honest’ leaders such as Marxist leader VS Achuthanandan in Kerala. Symbolism, of being seen with someone who matters, is all the more important in the time of polls.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 31

d ow n fa l l

The great Maratha warriorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s descendant, Chhatrapati Udayaranje Bhosale, faces a credibility crisis HAIMA DESHPANDE

The Last Shivaji

Prashant Nadkar/express archive

Pomp and circumstance The symbolic coronation of Udayanraje Bhosale as Chhatrapati of Maharasthra

e is reportedly an alcoholic and

loves life in the fast lane. An opportunist, his politics is sans ideology. His drunkenness and public spats are recounted as amusing anecdotes across Satara, the constituency he represents as an MP of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Udayanraje Bhosale is not an ordinary man. He is the 13th direct descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the legendary Maratha ruler of an empire in what’s now Maharashtra. As Chhatrapati, Bhosale has numerous responsibilities, but none are honoured due to his increasing alcoholism. He has been inaccessible to his constituents for a larger part of his five-year tenure on ac-

10 March 2014

count of his reported drunken bouts, but has a network of urban friends who stand in for him when needed. Those who have managed to meet him at his palace in Satara in western Maharashtra have amusing tales to narrate. His wealth isn’t great, sources say, and whatever there is may soon vanish given the manner in which it is being spent. Recently, some photographs of Bhosale pointing a revolver in an inebriated state went viral. Acquitted of murder charges some years ago, many feel his title should be stripped away. Though there are murmurs that he must mend his ways, as he is directly affecting his ancestor’s image, no one has dared to voice this aloud. The fear of violence by the Shiv Sena or the Sambhaji Brigade, which are intolerant of any perceived disrespect to Chhatrapati Shivaji, has muted such concern. Bhosale’s close friend Bhayyu Maharaj, a ‘spiritual’ guru to politicians in Maharashtra, has confessed that both of them live life in the fast lane. But not a single political party has raised the issue. On the other hand, these parties have burnt books, vandalised property, and caused grievous harm to academics, writers and others who have dared to hold a contrary view on the Maratha king. They have warned bookstores against stocking the controversial book Shivaji: A Hindu King in Islamic India by James Laine, even though the Supreme Court lifted the ban on the book more than three years ago. Interestingly, a passing reference to Bhosale’s love for the bottle was made by Shiv Sena MLA Ramdas Kadam just last week. As Minister for Home in the Shiv Sena-BJP-led state government between 1995 and 1999, Kadam had launched a crackdown on illegal liquor stores in Maharashtra. Last week at a public meeting, he said of Bhosale: “He should make the bottle his symbol.” After this, Kadam has avoided any reference to the issue. “Someone has to raise it,” is all he is willing to say. As a result of his alcoholism, Bhosale has got himself into skirmishes and accidents, beaten people up, and needed spells of hospitalisation. “No one knows what his interests are. He has to be sober to hold a conversation,” says one of his ‘supporters’.

Bhosale has had an easy political life. He is neither a loyalist of any ideology nor a cardholding member of any political party. “He wants to stay relevant in the political scenario. [But] if the alcoholism continues, he will end up finding no takers for his candidature,” says a political analyst who does not wish to be identified. More than his personal competence, it is his lineage that has helped him find relevance in the state’s politics. Every election, he has been with a different party. As a BJP minister in the earlier saffron-combine state government, Bhosale had found it difficult to stay awake during proceedings of the Maharashtra Legislature. His lacklustre performance as a minister saw him dropped from the state cabinet, which prompted him to send feelers to the Congress. Though he sought numerous appointments with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, she refused to meet him on the advice of the state Congress president. This angered Bhosale, and he sealed a deal with the NCP. As an MP of the NCP, his political contribution to the party has been near zero, a senior NCP leader says. “He is a disgruntled party member. Within a few months of becoming an MP, he started looking [at] other parties. There has to be some contribution to the party. His alcoholism is a definite problem and it has caused much inconvenience,” says the leader. Those in the know say that Bhosale and his relatives have always used their lineage to seek political mileage, but have constantly maintained a distance from any controversy surrounding their ancestor. Even at the height of the James Laine book controversy, he had nothing whatsoever to say. And though there was much anger against his silence, it was not openly expressed by the Shiv Sena and other protesting parties. No one is allowed to have an audience with Bhosale without prior intimation. His growing inaccessibility to the common man in his constituency has evoked strong reactions and many do not want him re-nominated. If the NCP drops him as its Lok Sabha candidate, it may signal the end of his political career. No other party is willing to take him on. Lineage, it seems, is not always enough. n open www.openthemagazine.com 33

Ganesh Lad/Fotocorp

television

Conscience Keepers Behind India’s most-talked-about talk show Aastha Atray Banan

n 25 February, Star TV CEO Uday

Shankar, far away from his plush corporate office in Mumbai, was in a remote village in interior Bihar called Gehlaur. Along with him was actor Aamir Khan and they were there to launch the second season of Satyamev Jayate. The village, located in Bodh Gaya, was selected because it was the residence of Dasrath Manjhi, a poor labourer, who single-handedly constructed a road over 22 years to give Gehlaur access to the rest of the world. Manjhi’s tale is the first topic of discussion on the show that starts 2 March. On their way back from the event, Shankar and Khan sat in stunned silence for a bit. And then they told each other

how no profit and loss numbers can justify this kind of experience. “I had been a TV journalist and have seen massive election rallies. But I have never been stunned by an experience like I was yesterday. It took us five hours to drive there from Patna and the number of people lined up all along was amazing. People said they had never seen a gathering of this kind ever, and it wasn’t as if Aamir was going to dance there. Everyone there—right from the officials, policemen and the people attending were talking about the show, even if they hadn’t seen it. It was overwhelming. This is the kind of popular connect that makes it worth it,” says Shankar. 10 March 2014

worthy effort Host Aamir Khan (left) and Star TV CEO Uday Shankar

When the show was launched in May 2012, Satyamev Jayate took over a slot families had reserved for mythological serials like Mahabharat and Ramayana at one time. In a way, the show is as much about good-versus-evil as these mythologicals. Except that it is about real people doing extraordinary things; of changing societies that seek to crush them. Aired on Sunday mornings, the issues Satyamev Jayate tackles range from female foeticide, dowry and honour killings to health care malpractices. Superstar Aamir Khan is sutradhar (narrator)-cum-listener-cum-moderator as he speaks to victims, survivors, experts and advisors on the subject. This time, he is even singing for the show. The very first episode on female foeticide was watched by nearly 60 million Indians and, according to World Information Tracking, was the most talked about new television show in the world that month. On 6 May 2012, ‘Satyamev Jayate’ was also the most searched phrase on Google. The show had 487,144 messages on its website, 445,389 on its Facebook page, 3,176,620 page views on the website and 59,230,605.97 FB impressions. During the course of 13 episodes, it also collected Rs 22 crore as donations made through Axis Bank. So it’s no wonder that Season 2 is already touted to break new records. But how does a show of this nature walk the fine balance between social good and making big bucks. The channel refuses to quote figures but has heavyweight sponsors like Airtel and Axis. Shankar says that as a company, and as an individual, he is very clear about the fact that the show must be done well. “If you want to create a show that will touch hundreds of people, you have to do it the best possible way. We knew this was going to be an expensive show, but we wanted to get the best stories, the best narratives and someone like Aamir Khan. It’s an expensive recipe. Our goals were so ambitious because we wanted it to be the most-talked-about and discussed show ever. And it would be immature and childish to think all this can happen without resources. Star as a channel has a viable business model—we make good money elsewhere, so we can commit money to something like this show,” he says. 10 March 2014

This time, however, there is a difference in the show’s format; all the episodes won’t be aired at one go. Satyamev Jayate will be aired in blocks of episodes through the year. The makers feel that every episode requires such intense engagement from viewers that they need some time to process it. Nevertheless, the chunks of episodes will be relevant to the points of time when they are slotted for airing. One way the show succeeds in making it an intense experience for viewers is by shocking them with horrible truths.

The first episode of the show on female foeticide in May 2012 was watched by nearly 60 million Indians, and, according to World Information Tracking, was the most talked about new television show in the world that month Audiences spent many Sundays in 2012 shedding tears and then resolving to do something about the issue shown. This writer’s mother, who does not know how to operate a mouse, insisted that she go on the show’s website after nearly every episode, leave a comment and make a donation. After the episode on female foeticide was aired, almost 1.02 million viewers voted in support of State intervention,

getting the then Rajasthan Chief Minister to set up six special fast track courts to deal with such cases. There was even an improvement in the implementation of the provisions of the PreConception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, which deals with female foeticide. In Maharashtra, the government requested the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court to fast track trials under this Act—49 people were convicted, 33 imprisoned, 35 registrations cancelled, 291 sonography machines seized and 341 abortion centres shut down. In another instance, after an episode on child abuse, 1.15 million viewers voted in support of and got the Lok Sabha to pass the Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences Bill that had been languishing for years. Harish Iyer, who appeared on the episode and talked about how he was sexually abused as a child, says that he is still recognised on the streets as the boy from Satyamev Jayate. “I got 50,000 emails, calls and messages post the show. I kept count for a while and then lost track,” he says, “But it really made a difference. Once I was on a train, and a boy came up to me and said he had seen me on TV and then dragged me to his mother, who sat in a burkha. She then proceeded to tell me how her other son had gone through the same thing. And that after hearing my story, she knew what pain he must be going through, and how she proceeded to take action.” The tag line this time is ‘Jinhe Desh Ki Fikar Hai’ (for those who are concerned about the nation). With elections imminent, does the show want to influence outcomes? Shankar says, “It’s not our job to affect voting. The problems that the show discusses are deep seated and can’t be wiped out with a particular government or one election. But we aim to create national consensus on these issues. It may help people make up their minds better and in turn help them vote better.” The CEO is hesitant to give away details of topics that will be covered this season, but says that as a content person, the kind of reaction the show got still amazes him. “People were passing on messages everywhere that they were going to watch the show. That just makes all the effort worth it,” he says. n open www.openthemagazine.com 35

e d u c at i o n

LET’S TALK SEX f

ifteen-year-old Keshav Sinha

is waiting outside his school in Munirka in South Delhi. His low slung trousers and half tucked shirt are carefully calculated measures of irreverence. Puffing on a cigarette, he plays a game on his phone, looking up every five minutes to stare at the school gate as if willing it to open. He can’t enter; he has been suspended for harassing a girl. He sniggers while narrating the story of how he followed her around and left notes for her in class. “I pursued her for three months. She was my classmate. When she didn’t respond, I got frustrated and cornered her in school. She made a big deal out of it and complained to the principal,” he grunts, his eyes fixed on

raul irani

Introducing gender sensitivity in classrooms GUNJEET SRA

the floor. He grinds the cigarette stub with his foot, saying he can’t wait to get back to school in two weeks. Has he learned his lesson? “Yes. Never go for the prudes,” he guffaws, and returns to his game. Some time later, a group of six boys come rushing out. They high-five Sinha and linger to smoke and ogle girls before making their way home. Each time a subject of interest crosses, they make lewd remarks and gesture at her anatomy behind her back. When they see teachers coming out, they leave. Anamika Kumari, a Class 12 student in the same school, says it is not new for boys to harass classmates they are interested in: “Every year there is a fresh case. The boys are suspended for a week or two and

then taken back after a written apology.” A studious student with ambitions of becoming a lawyer, she says she deliberately keeps a low profile. “No one is going to take my side if something happens.” She explains that though teachers do take action when a complaint is registered, the girl making the complaint usually has to endure various levels of cross questioning, generally involving almost all the school’s teachers and also the parents of both parties. “Plus, the cheap interest people have in your life after that is disgusting,” she says, visibly disgruntled. There is no gender cell in Anamika’s school. However, there is a counselor who meets each student every 15 days to discuss their life. The counselor is a rigid woman who lectures fast and thick on the virtues of a good student and how children “need to be controlled” for them to get the “correct sense of what is right and what is wrong.” It is no surprise that her office, which remains largely empty throughout the week, doesn’t see an en-

thusiastic crowd even during its mandatory fortnightly sessions. There are no behavioural classes; gender sensitisation is a far cry. Teachers are only interested in clocking their hours and going home. The school is deserted in the afternoon, save for a few boys playing cricket in the playground, and Anamika is getting anxious to leave, having moved gradually to the edge of her chair, “There is no help I get from my school, except very basic education,” she whispers before leaving.

2013, the United Nations Development Programme ranked India No 132 of 146 countries on its gender inequality index. It was the worst performing Asian country, barring Afghanistan. Last week, the first-ever gender audit of NCERT textbooks was revealed. It stated that though the books were largely gender inclusive and attempted to highlight gender concerns, some stereotypical elements did exist. The books often depict n

“men mainly in a variety of professions and women as homemakers, teachers, nurses and doctors”. Over a year ago, when India’s capital was still reeling in the aftermath of the 16 December gangrape, the Prime Minister’s Office had asked the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) to emphasise moral science in schools and include chapters on value education in textbooks so that gender sensitivity and respect for women could be inculcated in students from a young age. The Justice Verma Committee had recommended that gender issues be integrated into the curricula at all levels for the promotion of equality and equity. The HRD ministry had also called on school monitoring systems to incorporate a checklist of parameters to ensure gender sensitivity inside and outside the classroom. It was proposed that physical education for upper primary classes include training in self-defence for girls. ‘Gender sensitivity training modules for lopsided In 2013, the United Nations Development Programme ranked India No 132 of 146 countries on its Gender Inequality Index

teachers/trainers will be in the form of advocacy programmes for sensitization and creating awareness,’ the Ministry had said in a statement. ‘Efforts have also been made to introduce value education and gender studies in the school syllabus. The syllabus will include introduction of value-based questions in the summative assessmentII in classes 9-10 and year-end examination of classes 11-12 from 2012-13,’ the Ministry release further stated. Its statement also said a task force had been constituted by the University Grants Commission in January 2013 to review the measures in place for ensuring the safety of women on campuses and programmes for gender sensitisation. The audit seems to be the only positive step taken in that direction. Yet it seems that, despite the Ministry’s recommendation that state governments re-examine textbooks and curricula and that schools introduce gender modules in their training of teachers, attitudes don’t seem to have changed much. ‘Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; Wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; Don’t walk bare head in the hot sun... This is how to sew on a button; This is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; This is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming...’ —Jamaica Kincaid, Girl

t is 15 minutes to lunch break in a gov-

ernment school in Delhi and the children in a fourth standard classroom are far from getting restless. They sit enraptured as their calm, middle-aged teacher reads from a Hindi textbook. She is nearing the end of a story about a group of boys who attempt cooking. The class is hanging on to each word, and when she reaches the climax of the story—the boys fail and a group of girls saves the day because boys ‘obviously’ can’t cook—the entire class erupts in laughter. A few boys comment and laugh at the thought of cooking, the girls smile and some jokes are made on the subject. Then 38 open

the bell rings. The boys and girls self-segregate neatly into separate groups, with the boys making their way to the playground and the girls huddling together in corners of the classroom. A consciousness of gender stereotypes is clear in the way they interact with each other, even though they are only nine years old. Post lunch, the lethargy in the air is contagious. Students lie almost sprawled on their desks as they wait for the last lesson of the day—on moral science—to commence. The teacher, who is supposed to have arrived half an hour ago, is late. Ten minutes on, it is time to go home. “Moral science is our favourite lesson because not only is it easy, Ma’am also doesn’t come often,” says Reshma. Reshma is the daughter of a migrant labourer from Bihar who moved to Delhi four years ago seeking better prospects

“Most of the things I like, I am not supposed to do, like whistling and playing cricket,” says Reshma. “Our teacher is always telling us to behave like girls, to be polite, quiet and attentive” for his children. She has a 13-year-old brother, but they don’t really get along and don’t go to the same school. “He is mean to me and is always making fun of me because I am a girl. And also he gets to do things that I never do.” She explains that after school is over, she is supposed to walk home and serve food to her brother, who returns from school an hour later. Then she must do her homework and perform other household chores while her brother goes out to socialise and meet friends, sometimes coming home long after dark. “If I ever did that, my father would break my legs.” School is a respite for her, but still restrictive she says, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She is pensive, measuring her next words as she looks

down at her feet. “Most of the things that I like, I am not supposed to do,” she whispers, “like whistling and playing cricket. Ma’am is always telling us to behave like girls, to be polite, quiet and attentive. My mother says the same thing, but I don’t want to be like that all the time.” According to a 2013 Sarva Shiksha Abihyan survey on Gender Disparity and Dropout rates in India, the son in a typical Indian family almost always gets special attention and care. The survey also highlights the fact that parents prefer to send their sons to prestigious private schools, whereas government schools are thought good enough for girls.

n a classroom in northwest Delhi, 36-year-old Vijaya Sharma is trying desperately hard to hold onto the remaining shreds of her dignity. As a sex education teacher, her classes double as moral lessons for boys and girls across schools in the capital. She is having a particularly hard day today because the Class 9 children in front of her are not interested in the subject; some are sleeping and those paying attention are doing so only to make lewd jokes; 20 minutes into the class, she walks out. The class erupts in applause at getting a relatively free period. Government school children are harder to sensitise, says Sharma. “It is harder to get through to [them] because they come from an environment where their roles are defined for them from the start and there is little scope to challenge them,” says Sharma. Most teachers seem to have become apathetic, perhaps because they realise the onus of sensitisation cannot rest entirely on the school. “We can teach them all about equal opportunity, but what happens once they get out of school and go home and see those inequalities? Even if they stand up to them, they face ridicule in their family and community. They realise it is not that simple,” says Sharma, visibly angry. In the distance you can see some boys head to the playground. There are girls too, but while the boys are immersed in the game, the girls huddle together on the bleachers and look on—obliviously passive, picture perfect caricatures of the stereotypes assigned to them. n 10 March 2014

ethnic cleansing

Buddhaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

photos raul irani

Orphans

Driven out of Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims have become the nowhere people of Asia Sohini Chattopadhyay

hounded out Residents (left, and top of facing page) of the Rohingya camp in Kalindi Kunj in New Delhi. About 275 refugees stay at this camp

n a boggy, fermented scrap of land by the dregs of the diseased Yamuna, a group of men stand in a circle and play. The ball looks like it is made of bamboo, a lamp-shade like thing with shapely cracks. They are playing a version of Sepak Takraw, a sport popular back home in Myanmar, a kind of volleyball but played only with the legs and head. The men are a ragamuffin band— some dressed in cheap tracksuits, some in lungis, some in baggy, hip-hop shorts. But they play sharp and quick, with lightness and laughter and loose-limbed grace. They bring a handsomeness to their rank surroundings, this scab-like pocket of the city where they live in frail, flappy hutments. They make it, almost, a place of beauty. They are the Rohingya of Myanmar. It has not been easy finding them here. Rohingya refugees? The peanut toffee sellers on the rutted stretch of road leading to their camp look puzzled, the people at a kabaadi (recycling) compound shrug, before a chaiwalla finally points the way. They have been here 19 months, yet no one seems to know who they are. Or perhaps, they do not care to know. It could be a metaphor for the Rohingya narrative. Myanmar, a Buddhist majority state, does not recognise the Rohingya—who number around 800,000, says the United Nations High Commission for Refugees—as its citizens and refers to them as ‘Bengalis’. Bangladesh does not accept them as its own. The Indian Government’s policy on them is unclear. The Ministry of Home Affairs says that it is aware of the Rohingya trickling into India, but it

does not recognise them as refugees or asylum seekers. Since June 2012, more than 145,000 people, most of them Rohingya, have been displaced within Myanmar as a result of the horrific violence that has unfolded chiefly in Rakhine state in Myanmar. Human Rights Watch has labelled this a state-aided campaign of ethnic cleansing directed against the Rohingya. Matthew Smith, executive director of the human rights organisation Fortify Rights, who has been touring Myanmar through February for research, says more than 100,000 Rohingya may have fled Myanmar, chiefly for Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia. About 8,900 Rohingya, by the UNHCR India office’s count in February, have also made their way to India over the past months. Social worker Ubais Sainulabdeen, who is working with the Rohingya here, puts this number at 15,000. Hostilities have flared again of late—the BBC reported 40 people killed in Rakhine state last month. The CPM was planning to raise a question about the Rohingya in the last session of Parliament before the General Election. “I visited the Rohingya refugees in Delhi in December, when it was freezing. This is a pressing matter, but unfortunately because of the Telangana upheaval, it will have to wait for the next Parliament,” says A Sampath, the CPM’s Attingal MP.

or some reason, 55-year-old Abul Hashim cannot stop thinking about his fishing equipment. What a strange open www.openthemagazine.com 41

life in limbo A game of Sepak Takraw, a sport popular in Myanmar, at the camp; Abdullah (below) saw women being dragged out from huts back home

thing, to leave behind the things accumulated over a lifetime—the home, the rooms-full of conversation, his friends, and to think only of the fishing equipment. A one-time resident of Maungdaw district in Myanmar, he arrived in Delhi three weeks ago. For 25 days, there had been fighting and arson in his village. Half his friends and relatives were dead, or gone, or missing. Everyday people were planning to leave by boat, in the dead of the night. So Hashim decided to leave too. It was 2 am when Hashim, his wife and their four children crept out of home to catch their boat to Bangladesh. The cops are less alert at night; all day, they patrol the villages, “taking what they want, our plump chickens, our potatoes, bags of rice,” says his volunteer interpreter. The boat Hashim took was crammed with refugees, perhaps many of them his neighbours and relatives. But he didn’t have the heart to look at their faces; instead, he remembers how dark the water was. He was in Bangladesh for about a week, where he arranged for his wife and four children to live in a Rohingya settlement; his aunt is also there. He came to India by car with the help of a ‘dalaal’ (broker). His brother, Mohammad Hashim, has been in India for several years and lives in a slum next to the Kalindi Kunj camp in a two-room hovel. He runs a small business, selling prayer caps. “ [Abul Hashim] is the eldest of my brothers, the roof above our heads, [as it were]. After several years apart, we are finally together,” says the younger Hashim, who came away four years ago. And yet, Abul Hashim’s wife and children are still in Bangladesh; this is reunion by instalments. He has acquired a cellphone, and been calling his wife and children every day. As we speak, his phone rings. He takes it out, a new phone with its stiff plastic screen sticker intact, and speaks eagerly, then looks puzzled. He hands the phone to one of the camp dwellers, who listens for a second before laughing and telling the others. It is a call from the service provider. “At least someone is interested in us,” a kind interpreter explains amid some mirth. 42 open

photos ruhani kaur

ohammad Issaq, 27, ran away from

home in Myanmar’s Buthidaung district the same day he came away from the hospital. He had been there for eight days, and the bill had come to ‘1 lakh’ in Burmese currency; he insisted he had to leave before the bill became any bigger. He had been beaten up brutally by the security forces for not reporting to work. Six months since, he shows swollen knob-like clots on his hand, and marks on his knees and shins. He made up his mind to leave after leaving hospital. An agent said he could organise passage to Bangladesh that night. Issaq didn’t tell his parents he was leaving. “They would have cried, and I would have cried, and then I wouldn’t have been able to leave. I wanted to go while I was able-bodied,” Issaq says through the interpreter. He has been in Delhi three months; he spent three months working in Bangladesh. His Hindi is not fluent, but he follows it well and doesn’t wait for

questions to be translated. There is little room in the camp, so Issaq sleeps at night with another refugee who runs a store on the premises. He works as a labourer at construction sites nearby. He has seldom been paid on time, or his actual dues. “They know we are not from here, so they keep us hanging,” he says. “But I have to save up money for Saudiya,” says Issaq. He is a quiet, serious young man, who keeps mostly to himself. He smiles at noisy games, and nods at conversations from the sidelines. “First, we have to get you a wife,” says Mohammad Haroun, one of the refugees who has been in India for several years. Issaq grins and murmurs this can wait till he gets to ‘Saudiya’. “You need to get a passport for that, you don’t need a passport or permit to get married here [unlike in Myanmar, where the Rohingya need an official sanction to marry]. So many have got married at this camp,” says Haroun bhai. “A wife can make a home of 10 March 2014

a store-room, dil basa degi (give your restless heart a place to roost). A couple of girls, in fact, have been asking after you,” he grins at Issaq. It makes him chuckle, this quiet, solemn young man who is shy of speaking in his own interview.

ohammad Abdullah, 21, has been

dreaming of a football match back home: after the match, which his side wins of course, they walk back home in Maungdaw district, and come across a large fish in a stream. At this point, his wife wakes him up, and he weeps nostalgic for an hour. Once he recovers, Abdullah is his cheerful self again, one who can’t help break into a grin every minute or so. “I have done an India darshan after I arrived,” he says, “I have been to Jammu, Punjab, Bengal, Bihar and Kerala. I have never travelled so much before. In Myanmar, we had to take a permit to travel outside our village.” Abdullah came away 11 months ago. He was working for a politician in his district, Zakir Ahmed of the Union Solidarity and Development Party who was elected to the lower house in 2010. “Our MP was working very hard for us, me and some boys used to travel with him,” says Abdullah. When the violence began in June 2012, Abdullah’s village was among the first to be affected. Gangs of men would drag women away. Houses would be burnt. Certain men were singled out for attack. “We stopped sleeping at night, so we could be alert to sounds of danger. My family worried for me because of my political associations. I didn’t want to go, but Zakir Ahmed advised me to leave. I asked my brother to give me a gift for sending me away. He gave me the money with which I travelled in India,” he chuckles. He runs a small business selling fish here. Two months ago, he married a girl he met in Jammu. One day, she drew flowers on his left arm with mehendi. He laughs when you ask him about it: “I must have been dreaming about football, and my friends, and the fish we caught in the village. When I dream like that, I never want to wake up.”

The monk who sold his fervour Ashin Wirathu has been identified as ‘the face of Buddhist terror’ 10 March 2014

Buddhist Majoritarianism

The Rohingya crisis is the second instance of a Buddhist-majority state targeting a minority in south Asia in recent years. The first is Sri Lanka, where the ethnic Tamil population (18 per cent of the population) was targeted in the war to wipe out the terror outfit, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. A report by a UN panel of experts suggests 40,000 civilians were killed in the final phases of the conflict in the Vanni region of Sri Lanka between August 2008 and May 2009. Another UN report published in 2012 suggests 70,000 civilians have not been accounted for, implying that civilian casualties could be far higher. In Myanmar, a Human Rights Watch report by Smith calls the violence against the Rohingya a ‘campaign of ethnic cleansing’ and writes of a ‘a Burmese government policy of deportations... that appear aimed at permanently removing Rohingya and other Muslims’. It is not only the State that is culpable. There is also the rise of Buddhist nationalism and a militant monk-led movement in Myanmar. (According to the CIA’s Factbook, 89 per cent of Myanmar’s population is Buddhist.) A prominent monk with extreme views is Ashin Wirathu, whose severe visage was identified as ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’ on the cover of Time magazine last June. “You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Wirathu is quoted as saying in a New York Times story dated 20 June 2013. “A frightening number of people I met agree with Wirathu... it’s crazy,” says M Kim, a founding member of the Burma Centre in Delhi and a Chin Christian ref-

ugee from Myanmar since 1998. He goes back to his country once a year; in the past two trips, he has seen and heard support for Wirathu among taxi drivers, people on the street, even some of his childhood friends. “Buddhists are a peace-loving people. I had and still have so many Buddhist friends in Burma. It is the government that followed a policy of Burmanisation and restricted minority access to government positions, but there was no culture of religious leaders promoting prejudice.” Kim himself is not a supporter of the Rohingya, and declines comment on their situation (“It’s a sensitive issue”), but he doesn’t agree with the spiteful anti-Muslim sentiment propagated by Wirathu. “In 2007, the monks were marching peacefully, and so bravely, against the junta. It was a political agitation; there was no religious subtext. Their protest turned the spotlight back on Myanmar, which forced the junta to move towards democracy again. The new militant monks have the government’s support. In fact, considering elections are in 2015, perhaps this is a very strategic move by the government.” “I was in Sittwe [in 2012] when local monks wrote their first pamphlet urging the Buddhist population to completely isolate the Muslim community,” says Smith over a Skype call. “The author explained to me his existential fears of a Muslim takeover—fears that have been fuelled by state security forces and staterun media. Since then, [Fortify Rights] has documented numerous other pamphlets circulating throughout Arakan state, calling for the isolation and expulsion of Muslims. Local communities Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket/ Getty Images

raul irani

explain plainly why they want all Muslims removed from what they regard as their homeland. They feel as though they are fighting a battle to save their culture and religion, and human rights are no part of the equation.” In Sri Lanka too, the hardening of attitudes among monks is visible. The BBC, among others, has reported the rise of the Bodu Bala Sena, a hardline order of Buddhist monks who are unashamed of their bald dislike for the country’s Muslims. The report notes that the Sena has asked citizens not to rent out property to Muslims. “This is the classic majority-with-a-minority complex; [BBS monks] speak only of how to protect Buddhism in Sri Lanka,” says Samanth Subramanian, a journalist and writer who is working on a book on Sri Lanka. “They genuinely seem to fear that other religions will swamp Buddhism, and that Sri Lanka is Buddhism’s ultimate haven. So any measures at all are permissible in the safeguarding of the faith, even violence.” There are others apart from the BBS—the Jathika Hela Urumaya, which is the parent party of the BBS formed in the 2000s, and the Sinhala Rawaya, adds Subramanian. Compare this with the image most Indians have of Buddhism: the Dalai Lama and the brave people of Tibet, Herman Hesse’s always bestselling Siddhartha, the story of the brutal king Asoka and the peace he found in the Buddha’s teachings, the calming hum of Buddhist chants, the religion that gave Ambedkar’s Dalits dignity. People also recall the Buddha statues of Bamiyan in Afghanistan that were blasted to bits by Islamist extremists in 2001.

The Silence of Daw Suu Kyi

In 1991, when Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she received the honour in absentia. The presentation speech read out on the occasion commended her vision: “She unites deep commitment and tenacity with a vision in which the end and the means form a single unit. Its most important elements are: democracy, respect for human rights, reconciliation between groups, non-violence, and personal and collective discipline.” In all, the speech had ten 44 open

The UNHCR in India has registered 6,000 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers... Cards apart, the sum of UNHCR’s assistance amounts to 50 blankets in Delhi’s vengeful winter, bars of soap, and women’s kits with underwear and sanitary pads mentions of human rights. So far, Suu Kyi has said nothing about the Rohingya, nothing about the violations of their human rights. In a muchcriticised interview to the BBC in October 2013, she denied the Rohingya are being subjected to ethnic cleansing. “I think the problem is due to the fear felt by both sides,” she said. In 2012, on a visit to India days after a particularly brutal October in Rakhine, she was asked about the violence by NDTV in an interview. She condemned it, but made no mention of the Rohingya. “Don’t forget that violence has been committed by both sides,” she said, “This is why I prefer not to take sides.”

An Old Anger

The Rohingya have been subjected to systematic persecution for several years in Myanmar. It began at the beginning in 1948 when Burma assumed its modern statehood; the Rohingya were not recognised as one of the country’s national groups. In 1978, the ruling junta drove out 250,000 Rohingya through a campaign of arson and rape and murder (similar violence in 1991 had similar results). In 1982, a new citizenship law denied them citizenship. This means they do not have passports or other regular documents. They are issued special ID cards that restrict their right to free movement within Myanmar; they must furnish these to seek permission to trav-

el from one village to another. “We can’t travel outside our villages for more than three days,” says Mohammad Haroun. Many of them speak of the airy, cool homes they left behind, the large, open fields. Here, they live in humiliating conditions; the camp does not have even a makeshift toilet. But they can marry without asking, play long, raucous games without censure, travel at will, have all the children they want. This, too, is becoming something like home. The UNHCR office in India has registered 4,000 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers; 2,900 applications are under assessment. Cards apart, the sum of the UNHCR’s assistance to these refugees amounts to a few bars of soap, 50 blankets that were handed out in Delhi’s vengeful winter, and women’s kits comprising underwear, sanitary napkins and toiletries. “You know the way UN people talk? Whenever I speak to them, I get the feeling that they will build me a fivestorey house right away. But they don’t even give us the monthly allowance of Rs 3,000 that Afghan and Somali refugees are getting,” says Haroun bhai. “The cards are useful, the police don’t trouble us.” How do you like the word ‘refugee’, I ask one evening, addressing a group of four or five watching a game of ball. There is a few seconds’ silence. “I like it,” says Abdullah. “We don’t have passports. We don’t have a country. It gives me an identity, a place in the world.” n 10 March 2014

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t might be true that almost every

actor in Bollywood has got cosmetic surgery done but Koena Mitra knows that she is the poster child for it. All she had wanted was a slightly better nose. The cartilage made one side of it look bigger than the other. Having it fixed was not her own idea. “Many directors and technicians told me to get this done,” she says, “I have a sharp body and sharp features, and I was being pressured a bit. If you don’t look perfect, you are criticised. If you look perfect, you are plastic.” The procedure didn’t go according to plan. There was an adverse reaction in the bones and her face swelled up. “It used to collect water,” she says, “I had to go get an injection every 15 days to drain the liquid. And since there was very little fat on my face, it wasn’t healing as quickly as it could.” Mitra decided to wait it out and stayed cooped up at home. But after a phase of depression, she decided the only way to deal with her fear was to face it—she started making public appearances despite her disfigured face. She also went to America to do a course and let the gossip back home die down. All in all, it took six months for her to look her normal self again. It was a harrowing time. When actress Anushka Sharma appeared on an episode of Koffee With Karan recently, her lips appeared noticeably unusual, setting off speculation about her having gone under the knife—with disastrous results. Among the many derisory tweets aimed at her, one said, ‘Anushka Sharma is already eligible to write a book—10 ways to screw a good face.’ Others compared her lips to that of The Joker’s from The Dark Knight and V from V for Vendetta. Anushka found herself forced to release a statement that she had not had cosmetic surgery: ‘For a short while now I have been using a temporary lip enhancing tool and that along with make-up techniques (I have learnt over the years) is the reason why there might be a change in the appearance of my lips.’ Many people still don’t believe her because most people in Bollywood—or the rest of India for that matter—hush up any surgery undertaken to look better. Mentions of anyone having resorted to it tend to have an accusatory tone. Sharma is not alone under such suspicion. Kangana Ranaut and Katrina Kaif are also reported to have had lip jobs done, 46 open

b e au t y

Face

OFF

scalpel score The most common procedures include body contouring, breast enhancement and rhinoplasty (or nose jobs)

one’s face or body is not necessary for success. In fact, sometimes ‘imperfections’ can work to one’s advantage, and he cites the case of Mumtaz, who had a pug nose but became a top actress. “It made her different. She actually beat a beauty like Waheeda Rahman for some roles at the time,” says Ahmed, “Or take a case like Sadhana, who had a big forehead. She got her hair cut in a fringe, popularly called the Sadhana cut, and that became a rage.”

BRITTANY D e wester/getty images

When cosmetic surgery goes wrong Aastha Atray Banan and Aanchal Bansal

Minissha Lamba and Priyanka Chopra are said to have got their noses corrected; Aamir Khan and Saif Ali Khan, some allege, get regular botox shots. With no confirmation of any of that, such news stays in the realm of gossip. What whips up tsk-tsks, however, is the odd surgery gone wrong. “Most top actresses have done these surgeries but they didn’t get botched up,” says film journalist Rauf Ahmed, “Anushka was accepted the way she was. She shouldn’t have done this.” No matter how fierce the competition in cinema, he says, re-doing

he ideal form is an imagined aesthetic and it is debatable if it even exists. On the other hand, human beings seem conditioned by society to see themselves as flawed. How else does one explain the irony of cosmetic surgery being so heavily patronised by those in modelling and cinema where men and women are already so good looking? To cater to this demand for a perfection that no one can pinpoint, there is an entire range of services that doctors now offer. Dr Mohan Thomas of the Mumbaibased Cosmetic Surgery Institute says that the most common procedures these days include body contouring, breast augmentation (or reduction, often opted for by men) and rhinoplasty, a fancy name for a nose job. Less sought after but also available are procedures like dimple creation and genital rejuvenation— which refers to vaginal tightening, penis enlargement and so on. Celebrities under pressure to look young are said to be increasingly reliant on straightforward anti-ageing OPD procedures that involve the use of botox and dermal fillers. “These treatments can give instant results and are temporary,” says Dr Sunil Choudhary, director at the Institute of Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery, Max Hospital, in Delhi. Botox stretches out wrinkles by temporarily blocking signals from nerves to muscles, thereby reducing muscle movement, while dermal fillers plump the flesh and stimulate collagen growth. According to Dr Choudhary, cosmetic treatment is on the rise even among housewives and young girls looking at marriage, apart from professionals like air-hostesses. “It’s all connected with self confidence and feeling good about oneself,” says Dr Navin Taneja, director at The National Skin Centre in Delhi’s open www.openthemagazine.com 47

MANAV MANGLANI/REUTERS

if noses are bled Koena Mitra’s face swelled up after she got a nose job

South Extension. Many girls come to him with a picture of Angelina Jolie; others want dimples like Preity Zinta’s. While all sorts of people are opting for cosmetic treatment, it is glamour industries that doctors appear to have within their sights as their primary clientele. Mitra says she has seen first-hand how plastic surgeons entice one to go in for these treatments: “It’s like going to a store where a salesperson encourages you to buy something. My own doctor showed me the kind of clients he got. Along with actors, there were businessmen and even college students. Everyone is seeking perfection. Even 60-year-old actors today have no wrinkles.”

ossip of celebrities winning bat-

tles against age, under-sexy lips or an awkward nose serves cosmetic doctors well. Far less advertised are the perils of going in for such medical intervention. Yet, when cases do get botched up, they usually show up in a way that few can miss—disfigured lips, unsightly scars, blackened skin and droopy eyelids (caused by botox over-use). “Many a time, people go in for treatment without realising the consequences,” says Dr Geetika Mittal-Gupta, who runs a cosmetic treat-

48 open

Actress Koena Mitra has seen how surgeons entice one to go in for treatments: “It’s like going to a store where a salesperson encourages you to buy something” ment centre near Mehrauli in Delhi. “In the case of [Anushka Sharma], she clearly has small eyes. With unnaturally fuller lips, her face looks odd as this is not its natural composition.” The doctor often gets patients who do not mind the cost of a treatment but fail to look at its aesthetic impact. “I had to turn away a woman who had already done a series of cheek upliftment surgeries, making her look like a duck,” she recounts, “Such patients often need counselling, and only a qualified doctor can recognise that.” Thomas also agrees that if Anushka Sharma did go in for surgery, then she may not have thought it through (or was not advised well). “Most people don’t realise that the lip is sitting on a platter—your face—and

has to fit that,” he says, “Not everything that looks good on a mannequin looks good on a person, right?” Most film stars go abroad to get work done, and he thinks that’s their biggest mistake. “A doctor there has only worked with Caucasians and doesn’t know anything about Indian features,” he says, “An Angelina Jolie can pull off those lips, but an Indian face cannot. Indian girls may want a turnedup nose—called the ski slope—but it only suits Caucasian faces, not Indian.” Thomas also says that surgeons must understand what really bothers their clients about their appearance before they treat them. “I have a psychiatrist on board. If people answer ‘yes’ to questions like ‘Does your nose give you bad dreams?’ then a red flag should go up.” Professionals in industries where success depends at least partly on one’s appearance seem quite willing to live with the risk of a surgery gone wrong. Actors and models come instantly to mind, but it is not limited to them. Television news readers in Delhi, for example, make up most of Dr Choudhary’s clientele. Casting director for movies like Love Sex Aur Dhokha Atul Mongia says that for directors and producers, looks are an important criterion to select actors. ‘Lowon-content’ films, especially, require pretty faces. He adds, “Though celebrities are made scapegoats, it’s part of a bigger trend, where one’s worth is dictated by one’s weight and skin colour. Objectification of [the body] is... where society and media are headed.” The silver lining is that, given enough time, even botched-up surgeries can be fixed. A botox treatment gone wrong will need eight to ten months for its ill effects to vanish. “If the expected results are not achieved,” says Dr Choudhary, “dermal fillers can be dissolved using hyaluronidase, an enzyme. Rhinoplaty and breast augmentation surgeries are treated like any other medical surgery, and—of course—are administered with caution.” Cosmetic surgery disasters, according to this doctor, are likely to be far fewer if these procedures are relieved of their stigma and put to open discussion. “If these procedures are treated like make-up that is used to alter one’s look,” he says, “I am sure people will be more open about getting them done—and incompetent practitioners will be identified easily.” n 10 March 2014

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Ladies Special

50 64

karen dias

under reservation Travelling in the ladies compartment of Mumbai local trains 50

true life

Ladiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Special Inside the ladiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; compartment of the Mumbai local is a world that is both strange and familiar, compassionate and vicious; where lives are saved by generous hands. Yet a girl who has fallen down could be trampled for blocking the entrance, finds Drashti Thakkar karen dias

microcosm Inside a womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compartment exists an alternative universe. It has its own rules, its own systems

he electronic indicator reads

‘00’ minutes till the arrival of the next train. She pulls the pallu of her sari and tightens the grip over her purse. There is a slight commotion on the platform, bottled up restlessness struggling for release. She stands close to the edge of the platform, shiftily juggling the weight of her body from one leg to another. Her hands run over her bun, her wallet and her mobile phone, checking to see if they are securely deposited the way they should be. As the train arrives around the bend, she glances around to see the women surrounding her, readying themselves with solemn faces. Their stance suggests they are gearing for battle; eyes fixed and hands morphed into fists. The train screeches to a stop, and, in an abrupt mad rush, bodies push bodies as those who have to alight and those who have to board charge at each other. Those trying to get off scream ‘jaane doh jaane doh’ (make way, make way) and those trying to get in scream ‘poori khali hai’ (the train is empty). The frenzy is all-consuming. A stray elbow jabs into her ribs. She looks furiously at the owner of the elbow expecting an apology, but there is only indifference. There is more pushing and nudging. The wave of the crowd carries her into the compartment and deposits her in the middle of the corridor. Suddenly, the mood changes. The solemn, uninterested faces—and hers was one of them— are now smiling in recognition. The woman who jabbed her, pats her on her back and starts to talk about her mother-in-law. The train starts to move and a thin strangled cry reaches them. A young girl is running towards the compartment. Four women standing at the gate extend their arms, their faces scared but determined, and they curse her even as they lift her inside. A dozen or so women have gathered around the young lady. Her saviours reprimand her. She looks ashamed as each of them recalls a scary episode of neardeath, meant to serve as an example for her. The women around nod, and add to the swiftly-expanding pool of

10 march 2014

anecdotes with tragic endings. The momentary excitement over, all the women settle themselves. Some fish out their earphones, some their books. Others take out bags of vegetables and start to prepare for dinner.

he women’s compartment of the Mumbai local train is a strange amalgamation; bringing together unlikely situations that range from intense to poignant. Anuradha Shankar, blogger and a seasoned commuter, recollects a journey two decades ago. She was then studying in Ruia College. One day, she reached college early, spent time in the library, and came out in time for her lecture to find just a handful of people standing outside the class. “Only then did I learn that riots had broken out in Bombay,” she says, referring to the 1992-93 violence. Just then, the principal announced on the loudspeaker that college would be shut down. Anuradha immediately left for the station to get back home. She waited an hour; when there was no sign of a train coming, panic set in. Suddenly, there was an announcement that a fast train would stop as an emergency measure. However, it came on the other platform and she had to cross the tracks and by the time Anuradha reached, it was leaving. She ran and tried to jump in. “I might have fallen, and even died, had it not been for the women hanging from the doors who pulled me in, then berated me for doing something so stupid. ‘There will always be another train, no matter what!’ was something I heard over and over, and it is something I have never forgotten,” she says. But there was more to the adventure. The train travelled smoothly up to Kurla where it stopped. They waited patiently for half an hour, but then people started getting restless. A few sensible women closed all the shutters and doors. A few thought about getting down and taking a bus, but the others told them that the train was a better option. Buses could be broken and set on fire. Besides, Kurla had a huge Muslim population and in that com-

munal atmosphere they thought it wasn’t safe to get down. They kept sitting, tense with dread. Suddenly, a couple of young girls returning from school started crying. They were the only Muslims in the coach and scared about how they would get home. A bunch of women calmed the girls down and told them they would make sure they remained safe. An hour later, the train started again. When it reached Thane, five to six women got down with the Muslim girls and escorted them home. “It was that day I truly started to rely on local trains. Not because of the administration or management, but because of the people in them,” says Anuradha.

he picture is not always this rosy

though. Desperate times often inspire humanity in people, but on a normal day, the commuters on a local train are simply looking out for themselves. These are generous women but they are also looking to survive; sometimes, that turns them ruthless. Genevieve Lucien recounts one display of such callousness. A student of Sophia college, Genevieve takes the 8:19 VasaiChurchgate Local every day. She was used to climbing into the train before it would halt at a station. This is a popular, if dangerous, tactic for securing a seat. “But that day my leg slipped as I jumped in. I fell flat on my face with my upper body in the compartment and my lower half on the station platform.” That a girl was lying down and could die didn’t seem to pose a problem for the other women. They started getting in as usual. “They were almost using me as a bridge between the platform and the compartment and stepping all over me,” she says. Genevieve would have been shoved in the gap between the train and the station platform had it not been for the few women who had already entered. “They started yelling at the crowd. Three held the crowd back and two helped me up,” she says. And in the nick of time—because no sooner had she got up, the train started moving again. “If help had arrived even a

open www.openthemagazine.com 51

second later than it did, I would have probably been dragged by the train across the length of the platform and probably lost a leg,” she says. Inside a women’s compartment exists an alternative universe. It has its own rules, its own systems. Familiar faces become nameless friends who pour out their hearts to each other. Others become bodies with which to fight for a seat. A group of eunuchs can get into a compartment and demand money from its occupants with ease. It is also an accepted tradition to have them curse you and even touch you inappropriately if you refuse them the money. It is, however, not normal to see a eunuch using the compartment just to commute. When that happens, the commuters of an overcrowded train somehow manage to give the eunuch two seats all to herself. Anything to avoid the seat next to her. Many years ago, a girl fainted on the footboard while travelling in a local. A eunuch was standing nearby and caught her before she could fall out of the train. With great effort, she kept her up, dangling halfway outside the train for about ten or more minutes till the next platform arrived. No one else offered to help. “They were most probably too terrified to, I know I was,” says Diksha Nainan who recalls the incident as she saw it about six years ago. “We did appreciate what the eunuch did but there was this silent understanding, a no-touch zone of a foot’s radius around her.” A Google search for ‘eunuch and local trains’ comes up with an assorted set of links that only discuss the menace they cause on trains. Nothing about the stigma they face. This exists even in the greatest equaliser of all, a place where someone’s class, money, intelligence, looks, everything is neutralised by the fact that they are travelling together, looking for the very same thing: space. Every system has its own bullies, just as it has its own chain of command. Regulars form groups and forcibly reserve seats while keeping out others even if they have a greater right to that seat. It happened to Barkha 52 open

Menghani a 23-year-old executive who was harassed for close to a month on the 8:10 Ambernath-CST train that she uses regularly. A group of seven women would taunt her, sit on her lap and take pictures. This stopped when she lodged a complaint and made sure it was followed up by reaching out to the Railway Protection Force. The women were eventually fined for harassing the young professional. One would expect such vicious-

Many years ago,

a girl fainted on the footboard while travelling in a local. A eunuch was standing nearby and caught her before she could

fall out of the train. With great effort, she kept her up, dangling halfway outside the train for about ten or more minutes till the next platform arrived.

No one else offered to help ness in a permanent space, like a college or a workplace—this is just a onehour journey. But one hour is still a long time when you are forced to share a cloistered space with 500 others. Territories are marked, and fought for.

group of eight women are sitting together. Four of them are pro-

fessors. They boarded the train at CST. At Byculla two young girls, both dance instructors, join them. At Parel, another woman joins in. She is returning from a session with her prayer group and works for the community with a team of Sai Baba followers. At Dadar, they are joined by a business analyst who jumps into the train a little before it halts. She has a seat waiting for her and must grab it fast. The eight of them are ‘train friends’, treading together in that narrow passage of time between home and work. The Dadar seat is the biggest challenge for them. On most days they have to struggle to ensure it stays vacant for the business analyst. That day, one of the dance instructors is teary-eyed. She has lost her phone, she reveals, and is promptly swallowed by a sea of questions. “Phone kuthe padla?”(Where did you lose your phone?) “Tu tuza phone haravlas ki chorilagela?”(Did your phone fall or was it stolen?) “Heghe pani pi”(Drink some water) The dance instructor accepts a bottle of water and replies, “Byculla madhe gela.”(I lost it in Byculla.) The whole compartment seems interested. Everyone relates to the girl. The women are cursing all the men who steal phones. Some are cursing men in general. The train reaches Dadar and the business analyst enters and is filled in on the latest happenings. She offers to give up a part of her bonus to the girl. The conversation then turns into a detailed comparison between different phones. “Phone ‘switched off’ aa raha hai?” asks one of the professors. (Is the phone switched off?) The girl suddenly realises that she never tried calling the phone. She is offered a plethora of phones. Three phones are set to task to start dialling the number. Near the entrance, someone shouts—there is a phone lying there. The dance instructor rushes to the door. “Yehi hai,” she declares. (This is the one) The women sitting near the entrance nod happily. Everyone pats her on her back. n 10 march 2014

Books Punk Resistance in Putin’s Russia In her new book, Russian-American writer Masha Gessen puts the spotlight on the spirit of defiance that marks Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot Ullekh NP

Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot

By Masha Gessen riverhead books | 310 pages | $16

ow do you write books about people you cannot interview? Some of your subjects may be too autocratic to be accessible, some dead, some reclusive, and some jailed and denied communication beyond family. Masha Gessen should know. The 46-year-old Russian-American writer-journalist and gay rights activist admits that, over time, writing such books has become a specialty of hers. And she offers a simple yet compelling tip: cast a wider reporting net. Gessen met Vladimir Putin only once and very briefly after a long wait— business as usual for anyone who wants to meet him—but produced one of the most definitive biographies of the Russian leader and his rise to power from a low-level KGB officer: The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She has never met Grigori Perelman, who solved the complex Poincare Conjecture, but has written perhaps the most rivetting account of the reclusive Russian mathematician who turned down honours like the Fields Medal (the Nobel Prize of math), the $1 million Clay Prize and university postings at Princeton, Berkeley and Columbia, among others. The book—Perfect Rigour: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century—drew much from secondary sources and an interview of the mathematician by Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind. It was a bestseller. Based largely on conversations with other members of her family, she has written 54 open

a book on how both her grandmothers survived Hitler’s war and Stalin’s peace. In Gessen’s latest book, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, she digs deeper into the lives of prominent members of the Russian feminist punk group, right from their childhoods to their current iconic status as a protest art group with a global fan following, which includes the likes of pop diva Madonna and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Pussy Riot is a band with a variable membership. It comprises three known names; the rest are anonymous. The book went to press weeks before the December-end release of two lead members of the band, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria

Members of punk collective Pussy Riot, known for their political performanceprotests, have been charged with hooliganism and spreading religious hatred Alyokhina, after a prison term of nearly two years. Their crime: protesting Putin’s misrule at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior in early 2012. Yekaterina Stanislavovna Samutsevich, the third known member of the group, was released on a suspended sentence by a judge in October 2012 after her lawyer argued that cathedral guards had stopped her before she could get her guitar out of its case. Of the three lead members of Pussy Riot, formed in August 2011, Gessen has never met one and has spent only a few hours with another, but she was able to do a series of recorded interviews with Samutsevich, the third

among the famous trio punished on charges of hooliganism and for spreading religious hatred. One anonymous Pussy Riot member, who was not arrested, asked for money to be interviewed, but Gessen decided to forgo the option. ‘In the many months of intensive reporting for this book,’ says Gessen, ‘this was the only interaction that contradicted the spirit of openness, accessibility, and free flow of information that marked Pussy Riot. The rest of the time, I was not only careful but often awed by the ability of Pussy Riot and their family and friends to maintain this spirit under the most trying circumstances.’ At a personal level as well, circumstances were trying for Gessen. As she worked through the book, Russian authorities were in the process of bringing in a law that could see same-sex couples lose custody of their children. She and her girlfriend then decided to move to New York along with their children. “I didn’t want to lose my children,” she says emphasising that she didn’t move to the US from fear of retribution by Putin’s government for ripping Putin apart in her biography, a hard-hitting book that unravels the making of a dictator. Well-wishers had advised her to leave Russia after the biography came out, but she had refused. One of her key sources, who offered valuable inputs for her Putin book, was St Petersburg-based politician Marina Salya, who had to flee to a village following death threats. An investigation led by Salye almost unearthed Putin’s alleged corruption deals before he was thrust to the prime minister’s post by Boris Yeltsin’s inner circle in 1999, says Gessen, who has also written extensively for publications such as Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Slate.com 10 March 2014

natalia kolesnikova/afp

cultural icons Members of Pussy Riot (from left) Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, sitting in a glass-walled cage in a Moscow court on 10 October 2012

and others. One of her big stories focused on the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the death of journalist-turned-FSB officer Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko. The story of the band that rocked Russia is of great significance in Russian politics, argues Gessen. The crackdown on Pussy Riot over their symbolic protests against Putin— performing a ‘punk prayer’ asking the ‘mother of God’ to ‘get rid of Putin’— marked the beginning of the most oppressive era of post-USSR Russia, she says. Besides the Moscow church, which was demolished in the 1930s and rebuilt decades later, Pussy Riot has performed in places where it is illegal to organise such events, like on the roof of a bus or on the Metro. Its members have also crashed a fashion show. Their first performance was on 7 November 2011, on the 94th anniversary of the October Revolution. The video of that performance, titled ‘Free the Cobblestones’ and featuring music by British punk band Angelic Upstarts, went viral online. The second was an attack on the Putin era’s obsession with luxury, performed on a street lined with fashion boutiques. Gessen’s book tracks weeks of rehearsal and work behind each of the clips, and how the band went on to dominate headlines, first in Russia, then elsewhere. She also 10 March 2014

traces the internecine wranglings within Pussy Riot, as well as its parent body Voina, which was founded in 2007. For the book, the author managed to communicate with the jailed band members through letters that were, of course, monitored by prison censors. She used the pseudonym Martha Rosler, the name of a contemporary feminist artist, as suggested by Nadezhda, or Nadya, who had smuggled out terms of correspondence to Gessen: never mention writing a book or any intention of publishing our correspondence, bear in mind that the letters will be read by censors, etcetera. She kept in touch with Nadya and Maria, and often drove long distances with their families, who were allowed infrequent visits to the jail. She even risked being detained for taking pictures in a penal colony in ZubovoPolyanski district. The writer makes some interesting observations about the childhoods of the band members and how their situations and reading shaped their capacity to protest and defy authority. Gessen is no stranger to writing on the police and agencies of the Stalin-era, and often finds great resemblances to that era in Putin’s Russia—one of them being the way secret agents followed Pussy Riot. The young men who followed Pussy Riot, Gessen says, included some who

identified themselves as ‘art critics in civilian clothing’, an expression for KGB agents of yore whose job it was to inform on dissidents in the Soviet Union. By the time Gessen’s work hit book stands, Nadya and Maria had been released from prison following an amnesty by the state Duma, and were back in action again. The exaggerated makeup, neon-coloured balaclavas and multi-coloured stockings were back. Pussy Riot called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Sochi over Putin’s alleged human rights violations. When they performed there, the police attacked them with horsewhips and pepper spray. The incident sparked worldwide protests and forced the International Olympic Committee to admit that images of the attack were ‘very unsettling’. The performance art collective’s latest video, called Putin Will Teach You How To Love The Motherland, features footage of the attack in Sochi. Gessen is glad that protestors in Ukraine have managed to throw out a regime backed by Putin, whom she says suffers from pleonexia, an exotic term for the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others. She doesn’t find the term kleptomania— which refers to a pathological desire to possess things for which one has little use—apt enough. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

CINEMA

s ’ n a M t n e g i l l e t An In s r a c s O e h t o t e Guid this e t a in m o d s ic and biop m s li a n io t a n n America ards w A y m e d a c A year’s M a d h ava n k

or perspective on who might make it to the final envelope at the 86th Academy Awards on 2 March, you might consider the opinion of pundits. But an even better option is to turn your ears toward those who put their money where their mouths are—betting websites. And the odds seem to be leaning towards 12 Years a Slave walking away with Best Picture, 56 open

u t t y P il l a

the most watched-out-for award. Not that it is a given. The history of the Academy Awards is littered with upsets. There are years of clear favourites and years when it is a multiple choice; 2014 is expected to be the latter. 12 Years a Slave has nine nominations altogether. The Wrap, a website that covers Hollywood, looked at different betting sites and zoned in on

two—Sportsbook and Youwin. Both expected 12 Years a Slave to win. The report noted that the movie was rated ‘-350 at SportsBook, with American Hustle and Gravity next at +400 and +500, respectively. That means if you bet $20 that American Hustle will win, you stand to win $80.’ 12 Years a Slave is the kind of movie that is made for an Oscar nomi10 March 2014

nation. It is the story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man in 1841 USA, where slavery is still legal in the southern states, who is kidnapped from Washington DC and sold as a slave, ending up in a plantation in Louisiana. The movie has an all-American nationalist heart, as did the 2013 Best Picture winner Argo, based on the escape of US embassy personnel from Iran in 1979 during its Islamic revolution. Both are historical fare. 2012’s Best Picture winner The Artist was not based on a true story

but was also historical, revolving around a silent movie star’s struggle to adapt as Hollywood transitioned to talkies. If it wins, 12 Years a Slave will be part of a continuum where history is at a premium. It is a movie that screams self-importance, but is also slightly boring. Consider the plot: man gets kidnapped into slavery, lives as a slave, endures the degradation, finally finds someone who will send a letter for him to his friends back home, gets freed. Whither the drama? Just a litany of suffering. American Hustle, its closest compet10 March 2014

itor for the award, with ten nominations, at least recognises the nuts and bolts necessary to keep an audience surprised and laughing. Based on the true story of a conman who is used by an FBI agent to go after the underworld, it has great moments, but stops short of being brilliant. Gravity, the third favourite, is the antithesis of 12 Years a Slave. It is a grand sci-fi special-effects spectacle, a disaster movie set in outer space about an

astronaut marooned with only her resilience to get her back to earth. Sandra Bullock is almost alone through the movie and you don’t even realise it—that is how gripping it is. If votes are cast for the movie that most awes the jury, then Gravity should win. Other candidates for Best Picture are Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, and The Wolf of Wall Street. The movie that should not win is The Wolf Of Wall Street, a disappointing, hyper pitched biopic from Martin Scorsese who makes his favourite actor Leonardo Di Caprio overact and underwhelm. It is a movie so consumed with making a statement about

the excesses of Wall Street, it ends up being tiresome instead of shocking. And if a movie should win by the sheer brilliance of its imagination, then Her is it. In a near future, Joaquin Phoenix plays a letter writer who falls in love with an operating system. A plot that seems completely ludicrous ends up as a magnificent statement on love and loneliness. If there should be an upset this year, then

showreel (Left to right) Stills from 12 Years a Slave, Gravity and American Hustle, said to be the three top contenders for the Best Picture Academy Award

Her’s victory would be an especially gladdening one.

ne of the biggest upsets for the Best Actor award happened in 2003. The nominees that year included two of the greatest actors ever born—Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Then there was Nicholas Cage—and this was before he decided to become the Akshay Kumar of Hollywood—and Michael Caine. All of them had won before. But that year, the award went to the relaopen www.openthemagazine.com 57

Six of the nine films nominated for Best Picture are based on true stories. Biopics are in. Any aspiring filmmaker who wants an Oscar knows what sort of movie he should be making tively unknown Adrien Brody for his role in The Painist. Does anyone expect such an upset this time? Possibly, but not really on the same scale. The favourite is Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Northup in 12 Years a Slave. Christian Bale, as the conman in American Hustle, and Di Caprio as The Wolf of Wall Street, were said to be the other significant contenders. But then Matthew McConaughey won a Golden Globe for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, in which he plays an HIV+ man who starts smuggling unapproved drugs into the US to sell them to other patients. It is a small budget movie made in $5 million and ended up making six times as much. Never known to be the most gifted of actors, McConaughey now seems like the dark horse who might just win. His co-star Jared Leto, who plays a transgender, is said to have an even better shot for the Best 58 open

Supporting Actor award. Two years ago when Meryl Streep collected the Best Actress award for her role as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, she said that she could hear half of America going, ‘Oh no, her again’. This year, she is nominated again for the movie August: Osage County. This is the 18th time she will be nominated for the award. She has won it three times. She may not hear ‘Oh no, her again’ this time, because the clear frontrunner with both bookies and critics is Cate Blanchett for her portrayal of Jasmine in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. A Time magazine article noted: ‘File this away as a minority report, for Blanchett has been the front-runner since the movie opened last July. In the critics groups’ voting, she earned six times as many wins as her nearest rival (Bullock). She took the Golden Globe (dramatic actress) and the Screen Actors Guild prizes…Blanchett’s main challenge through awards season has been to give a half-dozen variations on her acceptance speech.’

ore often than not, a handful of movies walk away with most of the awards. The line up is evident this time. Besides the ten and nine nominations for American Hustle and 12 Years A Slave, Gravity has ten, Captain Phillips six, Dallas Buyers Club six, Nebraska six, Philomena four, The Wolf of Wall Street five. Captain Phillips is a Tom Hanks-

starrer about the first US ship to become a target for Somalian pirates and how the Captain outwits them. It scratches the American nationalist gene enough to be a contender and is based on a true story to boot. Philomena’s got Judi Dench as a woman searching for her child who went missing 50 years ago, and is also based on a true story. 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club— all based on true stories. Can you spot the pattern? Biopics, as a genre, are the in thing. Any aspiring filmmaker who wants an Oscar knows the kind of movie he should be making. To appreciate this stranglehold of reality, turn to a category like Best Visual Effects, which pits The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug against Gravity. Also note that The Hobbit has three nominations altogether but only in technical categories (it is also nominated for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing). Contrast this with The Lord of the Rings trilogy by the same director getting 30 nominations in the early 2000s and winning 17 awards. A decade later, The Hobbit’s first two editions have got just six nominations. What has not surprised anyone is the absence of Indian movies in the Best Foreign Film category. India’s entry sent for consideration was The Good Road, a Gujarati film. It was instantly derided by a clique of avant garde Bollywood directors. With countrymen like these, who needs enemies? Only three Indian movies have ever been nominated in this category: Lagaan, Salaam Bombay and Mother India. None has won. The only way a movie about India can win is if a Danny Boyle makes a Slumdog Millionaire; packaging the masala we take for granted for a foreign audience to make it appear wildly original. Slumdog swept the Oscars in 2009, winning eight awards. One wonders if it would even have been nominated if the same movie had been made by an Indian filmmaker. n 10 March 2014

science

fatal stroke Nearly six million people worldwide die of stroke. The most common type, ischaemic stroke, occurs because blood supply to the brain is interrupted by small clots

His Master’s Voice A new study finds that dogs process emotions and voices just as human beings do

Iron Deficiency Ups Risk of Stroke

ow did dogs become man’s

best friend? According to a new study, this is perhaps because the human and canine brain reacts similarly to voice. This study, published in Current Biology, shows that canines respond to emotions in one’s voice the same way that humans do. The study found that dogs have dedicated voice areas in their brains just like humans. For the study, Hungarian researchers made 11 dogs—six golden retrievers and five border collies— and a group of 22 men and women listen to almost 200 dog and human sounds during which their brains were scanned. These sounds varied from crying and laughing to playful barking. The researchers found that not only do canine brains have voicesensitive regions, these areas are similar to those in humans. When emotionally-charged human sounds like crying and laughter played, in both humans and dogs, the area near the primary auditory cortex lit up. The same reaction was found in both groups of participants when emotionally-charged dog sounds like angry barking were played.

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Speaking about the manner in which many dog owners try to talk to their dogs, and how canines appear to respond, Attila Andics, the lead researcher, told the Daily Mail, “Our findings suggest that they also use similar brain mechanisms to process social information. This may support the successfulness of vocal communication between the two species.” But the study also highlights another interesting point. It is believed that humans and dogs last shared a common ancestor 100 million years ago. It is possible that canines developed the dedicated voice areas in their brains independently of humans. But, as the researchers say, these regions were probably present in that common ancestor 100 million years ago. The researchers write in the journal, ‘We demonstrate that voice areas exist in dogs and that they show a similar pattern to anterior temporal voice areas in humans. Although parallel evolution cannot be excluded, our findings suggest that voice areas may have a more ancient evolutionary origin than previously known.’ n

Several studies have indicated that iron deficiency, which affects around two billion people worldwide, may be a risk factor for ischaemic stroke in adults and even children. The most common type of stroke, ischaemic stroke, occurs when blood supply to the brain is interrupted by small clots. Scientists at Imperial College London have recently discovered that iron deficiency may increase stroke risk by making the blood stickier. Dr Claire Shovlin of Imperial College London, says, “Since platelets in the blood stick together more if you are short of iron, we think this may explain why being short of iron can lead to strokes, though much more research will be needed to prove this link.” n

Manu Sets Biodiversity Record

According to a new survey published in Biota Neotropica, Peru’s Manu National Park is the world’s top biodiversity hotspot for reptiles and amphibians. The park encompasses a lowland Amazonian rain forest, high-altitude cloud forest and an Andean grassland east of Cuzco, and is well known for its huge variety of bird life. The presence of more than 1,000 species of birds, about 10 per cent of the world’s bird species; more than 1,200 species of butterflies; and now 287 reptiles and amphibians has been recorded in the park. The previous record for the most diverse protected area for reptiles and amphibians was held by Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, which hosts 150 amphibian and 121 reptile species, according to a 2010 study. n

10 March 2014

hearing range Humans can generally hear sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. But this range varies with age and gender. The majority of people can no longer hear 20 kHz by the time they are teenagers, and progressively lose the ability to hear higher frequencies as they get older

tech&style

Sony Vaio Flip An impressively versatile machine if you’re looking for a Windows 8 tablet and computer gagandeep Singh Sapra

Victorinox Dive w Master 500

Price on request

As a mark of its 25th anniversary in the watch business, Victorinox Swiss Army launches a special Dive Master in a limited titanium edition of 500, powered by a mechanical chronograph movement with automatic winding. Its 43 mm case in grade 2 titanium makes the limited edition Dive Master 500 exceptionally tough. Dive Master 500 is water resistant to 500 m and is a genuine diving instrument. n

Rs 99,990.00

JBL Flip 2

t first go, what you see is a laptop which is thin and built with clean lines. Though it has its webcam at the bottom of the machine, and the volume control button at the back (for a reason), this Sony Vaio laptop feels solid and looks great. You boot the machine and its vivid screen is filled with Windows 8 icons. Switch the ‘Release’ button and now the ‘Flip’ comes into action. You can fold the screen in half and make this a tablet, or you can turn back the whole screen for the person in front of you to see what’s on the screen while you handle the keyboard. The Flip is good to use as a tablet, though it feels heavier. In its tablet mode, you can pick up the machine and use the rear camera to take pictures. There is an HDMI output connector, an SD card slot, a couple of USB ports and a USB port in the power adapter, just in case you wish to charge a phone or another device. A couple of downsides include the 10 March 2014

rear camera that, being at the bottom, is of no use in laptop mode. The volume control is another problem area; in laptop mode, the volume button is at the back of the screen, and pressing the button left reduces the volume and pressing it right increases volume. However, when you turn the machine into a tablet, the orientation of the machine changes, but the button is hardwired and you often end up increasing the volume when you want to decrease it. The Flip handles most of what you throw at it, thanks to its core i5 processor and 4 gigabytes of RAM. Though Sony claims a 7.5-hour battery life, I could only get 3 to 5 hours. Sony has not compromised on the keyboard spacing or on the material used. Overall, a great machine if you are looking at a Windows 8 tablet and computer. For others who are looking for just a laptop, this machine may seem a little too pricey. n

Rs 7,990

A Bluetooth speaker that is easy to carry along and yet offers impressive sound output. The speaker—which has two drivers, inbuilt microphone and bass port—connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth, and also acts as a speakerphone. As a speakerphone it is good for indoor use, but not in noisy conditions even though it has noise cancellation. The speaker has a rechargeable battery that lasts just under 5 hours. The speaker looks and feels the same as its previous avatar, but unlike the earlier edition it uses a micro USB for charging, so no need of an additional charger. The speaker is good if you like loud music, but not so great for audio fidelity. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

Jack of all trades Writer and director Imtiaz Ali also has an acting credit in his filmography. In 2004 he appeared as Yakub Memon, brother of the Mumbai blasts’ prime accused Tiger Memon, in Anurag Kashyap’s film Black Friday

Highway An evocative ‘back-tonature’ film that would have Indians ponder questions of identity ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Darr @ the Mall Director Pawan Kripalani cast Jimmy Shergill Score ★★★★★

a randeep hood

att, Cast Alia Bh tiaz ali im or Direct

his movie takes a sharp U-turn from the middle-class, consumerist aspirations of its regular audience and takes us on a journey to another country. Some of us might just get off the highway and trek back to where it all began, to before the never-ending wedding ceremony of Veera Tripathi; back to our comfort zone. But if we play along, step aside, and give director Imtiaz Ali a longer rope in Highway, a new film emerges; a fresh idiom of narrative expression. In this new language, the experience of living in India is re-discovered. By exposing us for more than two hours to stunning geography, diverse cultures and musical traditions, Ali rescues an idea of this nation that is much older; an idea of India that includes the spiritual and the philosophical. True, the dramatic tenor of the story sometimes strikes false chords. Veera (Alia Bhatt), the daughter of a rich businessman, is kidnapped one night—in error, it turns out. Had the 62 open

kidnapper known who she was, he would never have taken such a risk. The rough hewed, monosyllabic Mahabir Bhati (Randeep Hooda), a petty criminal, is stuck with a millstone round his neck, a fresh faced urbanite who he has no clue how to handle, but who, for her part, handles the situation with some ease. It doesn’t quite ring true here, but at this stage another much larger narrative papers over the cracks, the story of trying to find who we are—our identity and our soul—in this awesomely beautiful Subcontinent. It is a wide screen vision composed for Ali by cinematographer Anil Mehta, and you have to rove your eye from left to right to take it all in. Basically, Highway is an evocative ‘back to nature’ film, a suggestion that the country we live in is actually in the wilderness, not in the incestuous confines of our infirmities. This idea is Veera’s solace, and perhaps the audience’s comfort as well. n

This is a well shot and cleverly edited horror movie that is quite entertaining until it runs out of ideas to scare you with. The premise rings true, in a manner of speaking. Land that was once forest, or the site of academic or heritage structures, has been re-developed for unending consumerist expansion. Such a mall is ‘Amity’, touted as Asia’s largest, built on the ashes of a convent school deliberately set on fire by land grabbers who now own it. The mall is haunted by ghostly apparitions of the convent’s Mother Superior and her charges, and though some of the haunting is corny, the space-time coordinates are interestingly handled, sometimes with a sense of humour. On one occasion, after the grisly killing of a ‘mall-wallah’ in one of the discount stores, we see this surreal scene: a bloody head sticking out of a cupboard on which a price tag gently sways—‘30% discount’. The semi-circular design of a typical Mall, with escalators and loos at strategic locations, is used well, and it is our familiarity with malls in general that initially works for the film. But once we get the picture, the film stops innovating and we get bored by the same old ghosts. Even the Security Chief at the Mall (Jimmy Shergill) looks like he’s had enough. n AD

10 March 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Deepika in Demand

It’s funny how practically every major new film currently going into production will star or has been offered to Deepika Padukone. Even if filmmakers have not locked in a leading man yet, negotiating as they are among a handful of options, there appears to be little doubt in their minds about their choice of leading lady. Soon after wrapping Happy New Year with Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika will begin filming Imtiaz Ali’s Window Seat with Ranbir Kapoor. She has also signed Karan Johar’s Shuddhi, which doesn’t have a hero after Hrithik Roshan’s exit (Ranveer Singh is most likely to be roped in), but is nevertheless being rushed to the floors in order to make a December 2015 release. Deepika will also flex her acting chops with Amitabh Bachchan in Vicky Donor director Shoojit Sircar’s next, a no-frills father-daughter drama that will also star Irrfan Khan in a pivotal part. And although Aamir Khan has reportedly walked out of firsttimer Nithya Anand’s time-travel movie to be produced by Farhan Akhtar’s Excel Productions, Deepika remains attached to the project, which the makers have now offered to Hrithik Roshan. There’s a good chance Hrithik could also be the Bajirao to her Mastani in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s passion project of many years. What eludes her still is a movie with Salman Khan. If the grapevine is to be trusted, Deepika herself politely turned down Sooraj Barjatya’s offer to appear opposite the star because she wasn’t convinced of the script, making way for Sonam Kapoor to land the project instead. Last weekend at Filmistan Studio, where she was filming Happy New Year, I met Deepika and enquired if there was a director she’d sacrifice an arm to work with. After much consideration, she replied: “At this point, I’d probably say Rajkumar Hirani.” She was also sporting enough to admit that she wishes she’d been offered Zoya Akhtar’s next (now titled Dil Dhadakne Do), which she describes as a “crazy, terrific script”. The dark comedy about a dysfunctional Punjabi family that takes a luxury cruise together will star Deepika’s boyfriend Ranveer Singh and Priyanka Chopra as brother and sister, and Anushka Sharma and Farhan Akhtar as their romantic interests. “I haven’t even discussed this with Zoya yet, but if I can get a 10 March 2014

few months off around that time, I’d go and work as an assistant director on that set,” Deepika reveals.

Shahid’s Getaway

Shahid Kapoor spent his 33rd birthday earlier this week in Goa for some sun, sand and R&R, away from the snowy climes of Kashmir where he’s been shooting for weeks now with the unit of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haidar. The actor, who tends to take all his girlfriends, and even his casual dates, to the beach capital for quick weekend breaks—Priyanka Chopra, Bipasha Basu and Nargis Fakhri have all been spotted with him in Goa previously— invited a small group of friends to join him there this time. Pulling his leg about his reputation when it comes to his Goa getaways, Shahid’s Rowdy Rathore co-star Sonakshi Sinha tweeted to him: ‘Happy Birthday @shahidkapoor!! Goa mein gandi baat aur party all night okkk :p Have funnnns!!’

A Hot and Heavy History

A prominent director of new age Indian cinema recently filmed an item song for his new movie on an oomphy hasbeen actress, best known for her seductive dance numbers in the 1990s. The filmmaker and the showgirl couldn’t be more different than chalk and cheese, but few will remember that they share a secret. Back in the day when she was ‘slumming it’, working in an art-house film during a rough patch in her career, she’d hooked up with the said director, who was at the time an up-and-coming angst-ridden scriptwriter working on the same project. They’d had a passionate fling, away from prying eyes, and the director has confided to close friends that “she taught me things I didn’t in my wildest imagination think possible”. When they met again recently to film the song, eyewitnesses on the set say they quickly got over any awkwardness they may have had, and in fact shared a friendly vibe. The director is reportedly thrilled with what he’s shot with her, and announced that she’s still just as smoking hot as audiences remember her. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Uneasy Slumber

by ro n n y s e n

A little girl sleeps on her sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lap in a village in Jharia, Jharkhand. Their parents are coal pickers. An underground fire has been burning in Jharia for the last hundred years or so. The heat makes it almost unbearable to live in the region. Efforts to stop the fire have been in vain. That fire has now spread overground. The CPM recently told the 14th Finance Commission that the fire in the Jharia coalfields of Dhanbad should be considered a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;national disasterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. n

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10 March 2014