Final pdf for web 16th sep13

Wretched new IITs

What it means to be a rationalist in India

On the nude beaches of Europe

RS 35 16 September 2013

INSIDE What happens at SRK’s party l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

i n d i a n eco n o m y

Is there a plan?

Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor Manu Joseph managing Editor Rajesh Jha Deputy Editor Aresh Shirali Political Editor Hartosh Singh Bal Features and Sports Editor Akshay

Sawai

Senior Editors Kishore Seram, Haima Deshpande (Mumbai) Mumbai bureau chief Madhavankutty Pillai deputy political Editor Jatin Gandhi Books and Arts Editor Elizabeth Kuruvilla associate editors Dhirendra Kumar Jha, Rahul Pandita assistant editors

Anil Budur Lulla (Bangalore), Shahina KK, Aastha Atray Banan, Mihir Srivastava, Chinki Sinha Special Correspondents Aanchal Bansal, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), Gunjeet Sra Assistant Art Director Tarun Sehgal SENIOR DESIGNER Anup Banerjee photo editor Ruhani Kaur assistant Photo editor Ritesh Uttamchandani (Mumbai) Staff Photographers Ashish Sharma, Raul Irani Editorial Researcher Shailendra Tyagi asst Editor (web) Arindam Mukherjee Associate publisher Deepa Gopinath Associate general managers (advertisement) Rajeev Marwaha (North

and East), Karl Mistry (West), Krishnanand Nair (South)

Manager—Marketing Raghav

anjan

Journalists can be or were the ‘other voices’ (‘Digitisation and Dumbing Down’, 9 September 2013). I mean, they used to be the fourth estate, and clearly, corporate behemoths and their stooges in the Government have less and less interest in someone throwing some light on their wrongdoings. As corporates grow powerful and bigger Cartels and ‘corporatethan even some counoligarchies’ are already try’s economies, there is emerging in every ever greater interest in sector. It is the price of controlling the media. globalisation and the So it will go on. We are media is no exception seeing the beginning of a decline in the power of the fourth estate. Anyway, cartels and ‘corporate-oligarchies’ are already emerging in every sector. It is the price of globalisation and the media is no exception.  letter of the week

over one or two incidents.

Two to Tango

Chandrasekhar

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Ajay Gupta regional heads—circulation D Charles

(South), Melvin George (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Head—production Maneesh Tyagi pre-press manager Sharad Tailang cfo Anil Bisht hEAD—it Hamendra Singh publisher

R Rajmohan

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Volume 5 Issue 36 For the week 10—16 September 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover photo John Lund/Corbis

The BJP’s Faultline

both the Congress and BJP have their core vote banks (‘Back to Rama for Rajya’, 9 September 2013). The BJP vote bank is more emotional whereas that of the Congress is aspirational and illiterate. The BJP’s attempt to recreate the emotional circumstances of 1996 and 1998 over Ayodhya’s Ram temple will come a cropper as the current generation of young voters is more materialistic than that in the 1990s. It would be beneficial for the party to adopt the path of VP Singh (anti-corruption platform) to bring down the UPA. People are worried about corruption today as was the case during the 1989 election. Rajiv Gandhi’s tally was reduced from 400 plus of 1985 to below 200 in 1989.  Chandra Sekhar Dulla

Coming to Terms

for kashmiri Pandits it is better to forget the painful past (‘The Ghosts of Exile’, 2 September 2013). The agony of exodus is understandable. But wisdom is in forgetting the miseries of 16 september 2013

the past and bouncing back.

There is no way out. We have to pull through the crisis on our own strength and use our intelligence to move forward.

We have wept all these years.

There is no point becoming psychological wrecks. The history of any civilisation has bad patches. Kashmir is a troubled place now, but let us care for future generations.

They should not be fed on tales of the painful past. They should be competent enough to prosper elsewhere and live lives of dignity.  Sudhir Kumar

No Mercy for Rapists



Mehman

this is a timely article (‘The Cherry-Picking Has to Stop’, 9 September 2013). It is true that cases of rape of upper-class, urban and upwardly mobile women get more attention and coverage. This selective approach should not be there.

Rape is a deplorable act no matter where it is committed and against whom. Every rapist must be punished. And it is India’s rape culture that needs to be constantly attacked, apart from protests

if a man were to write a book about his and other men’s experiences of the arranged marriage route with all the awkward conversations with nervous women these entail, it would be deemed sexist and feminist groups in this country would probably want the book banned (‘Let’s Share the Cock’, 2 September 2013). Is it so difficult to understand that it is only expected that there will be some awkwardness during these ‘meetings’? And the awkwardness may be on both sides. But, of course, all of the women in this book have painted a rosy picture of themselves while choosing to dismiss the men involved.

I imagine that a lot of Indian men have equally deplorable experiences during these so-called ‘meetings’. Also, it is unfair to judge men on their looks, qualifications, etcetera, while simultaneously holding on to the notion that it would be shallow of men to judge women by their appearance.

If we women want to be treated with respect and as equals, we need to behave with respect as well.  Rupali

it is a funny article. However, it is a tad disappointing to see that such articles also induce a girl who is yet to go for her ‘first meeting’ to believe that such a meeting is going to fail.

This simply magnifies an already troublesome issue.  Punit Gupta

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openmagazine to 56070

one man, two roles

IGP, Internal Security Division Bhaskar Rao; IGP, Training Bhaskar Rao

The Cop Who Writes to Himself bureaucracy

An IGP in Bangalore holds dual posts and sometimes even has to send himself stinkers

In Bangalore, a senior police official has been writing letters to himself for over two months. On 1 July, Bhaskar Rao, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) of Karnataka Police’s Internal Security Division (ISD) was given the additional charge of the Training Department. Ever since, whenever interaction between the two departments is required, Rao writes an official letter to himself in the other department.

His two offices are located in different parts of the city, the ISD office on Richmond Road

mumbai

16 september 2013

and the Training Department on Palace Road. After Rao writes a letter to himself as IGP, ISD, he visits his Palace Road office to respond to it. Two days after this news appeared in a city newspaper, he is unable to understand why his actions have been found odd. “This is not a corporate office where, as the head of two departments, I can just take a decision. Here, a procedure needs to be followed,” he says. Rao adds that when he is relieved of the Training Department, such correspondence will keep his successor abreast of pending work.

There is a shortage of highlevel officers in the Karnataka Police. Apart from Rao, a number of other officers also have dual posts. For instance, Rao points out, the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Law and Order, MN Reddy, also has the additional charge of ADGP, Railways.

So far, Rao says, he has written about 15 letters to himself. One of his recent letters as IGP, ISD, was about how the Karnataka State Industrial Security Force needed to be allotted dates for training.

Occasionally, despite the letters

to himself, delays occur. Rao says this is because of the lower machinery in his departments.

He explains, “Sometimes, although as the Training head I sanction a date for a force’s training, I later learn from my ISD men that no preparations have been made for it.” Then, he has to use strong language for himself in the Training Department. Rao writes a letter “expressing displeasure” with the IGP, Training. “I then go to the Training office to receive the letter and pull up the officers responsible,” he says. n Lhendup g Bhutia

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photo hindu archives; imaging by open

small world

6

14

contents

angle

An idea for Moily

cover story

Economy: Is there a plan?

20

travelogue

iit

10

28

Secular nonsense on 1984

rationalists

Undaunted

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of ■ singh

Excursion Dress Code

■

b a n d a i d In discussions over women’s safety in Indian cities, it is not just foreign female tourists who are asked to adhere to arbitrary guidelines when out and about in India.

Delhi University has issued a list of instructions to 900 of its students who are travelling on a weeklong excursion to Punjab, including rules on what they should—or should not—wear. ‘Students are to strictly adhere to the dress code, ie girls are not to wear skirts, shorts or spaghetti [strap tops] and boys are also not to wear shorts and sleeveless t-shirts,’ the circular reads. The students left for their trip to Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Kurukshetra earlier this week. This is the third leg of what the university describes as an ‘educational and recreational excursion’. The first leg took place in July, with around 1,000 female students travelling to places such as Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Goa and Bangalore. There wasn’t a dress code then, but students were told they weren’t allowed to bathe on beaches. n

In a bad relationship and too chicken to call it quits?

This one is for you. Breakup Text, an app now available on iOS, is for the truly heartless. No more painful phone calls and humiliating emails. All you have to do is download the application, activate it by clicking on the

th Rajna

F o r offering his reading of

Narendra Modi’s face as evidence of the Gujarat CM’s remorse over 2002

Hi-Tech Heartlessness icruel

My nude vacation

Eight Embarrassments

news reEL

4 open

36

ominous ‘Begin the End’ blinker and it will do the needful—after you answer a few questions such as whether you’re breaking with a serious or casual partner. The app also allows you to specify a reason from among a few options. And then it sends a text, breaking up on your behalf. n

Poor prescient Rajnath Singh.

His greatest gift must also be his greatest burden. This is likely why he felt compelled to confess at a recent BJP party meeting that he had “read his facial expressions whenever I have interacted with Narendra Modi [about the riots] and he looks so sad.” Imagine having to look at people and see all their secret pain. It is a pity we do not possess Singh’s talent, else we too could become privy to the pain behind the plaintive, possibly-prime ministerial face of which he remains the sole reader. But, as Spiderman once said, with great face-reading power comes great responsibility—a responsibility not to mistranslate the turmoil behind the taut tissue of Narendra Modi’s unflappable face. Perhaps Singh should double check what Modi’s face is saying.

16 September 2013

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42

b books

celebrity

Filmi parties

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Factorymade hope

p c NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

cinema

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Will Patna’s new disco survive?

How Kids Parent Themselves f l ip Parents who believe they are in charge of shaping their children might be in for a surprise. A new review of dozens of studies shows that children’s genetics significantly affect how they are parented.

Across 32 studies of twins, Avinun and Ariel Knafo of Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that the genetically-influenced characteristics of children affect the behaviour of their parents. As published in Personality and Social Psychology Review, they estimated that 23 per cent of differences in parenting are due to a child’s genetics.

These genetic differences are the way children evoke different responses from their environment. For example, a child who is antisocial is more likely to elicit harsh discipline from parents than a more social child. They found that children’s shared environment— socio-economics, cultural exposure, etcetera—accounts for 43 per cent of parenting differences, and that non-shared environment—different schools, friends, etcetera—accounts for 34 per cent.

Importantly, the study’s findings support the idea that parenting does not necessarily affect children in the same family similarly. n

Generosity Explaining why people are generous rather than selfish is a challenge for evolutionary theory. With new insights into the classical game theory match-up known as the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, University of Pennsylvania biologists offer a mathematics based explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. They examined the outcome of the Prisoner’s Dilemma as played repeatedly by a large evolving population of players. While other researchers have previously suggested that cooperative strategies can be successful in such a scenario, postdoctoral research-

p a y - o ff

16 September 2013

63

Sathyu against capital punishment

Shahid shoots straight

British PM David Cameron’s inclusion of India on the list of countries who blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the recent chemical attack clarified as an ‘innocent mistake’ back-up

“[I]n no way does the opposition motion... point the finger of blame at Assad. That is at odds with what has been said... by the governments of Australia, Canada, Turkey and India...”

“These things happen at a clerical level. While we have been in touch with the Ministry of External Affairs on the Syria issue, they never said anything about who was behind the attack”

—David Cameron, to the British House of Commons

—British High Command, to The Indian Express

29 August 2013

turn

true life

3 September 2013

around

Works er Alexander J Stewart and associate professor Joshua B Plotkin offer mathematical proof that the only strategies that succeed in the long term are generous ones.

Their work builds upon the seminal findings of economist John Nash, who advanced the field of game theory in the 1950s, as well as those of computational biologist William Press and physicist-mathematician Freeman Dyson, who last year identified a new class of strategies for succeeding in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

On the Contrary

If Not Between 8 and 8 Another radical suggestion for Veerappa Moily to reduce fuel consumption M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

N

them to take a bus or train on their way to transport and it will improve. You can ow that Union Petroleum catch the efficacy of this solution by Minister Veerappa Moily, suitably work and then lean back to watch a considering a tactic that many drivers in miracle happen. chastened for not being able to Mumbai use. If they happen to see a The system works in India whenever filter stupidity from austerity, has wriggled out by saying that the suggestion there are private interests involved. Make minister’s car with a light on top, they to close petrol pumps between 8 pm and 8 it their private interest to improve public immediately attach themselves to the entourage and traffic lights go green one am was only one of the many floated after another. They zip through like a around his head by other people, let us Make all senior bureaucrats bumblebee for whom the petals of a consider the mind that entertains such and ministers shift to distant flower are opening up. ideas. What does it say about someone If you shift Maharashtra Chief who thinks people who don’t fill fuel in suburbs, force them to take a Minister Prithviraj Chavan’s residence to their cars at night will not fill it the next bus or train on their way to work Virar on the outskirts of Mumbai and he is morning and thus save India fuel? and then lean back to watch a made to do a two-hour daily journey on a Was he wildly optimistic or plain fast train to Churchgate hanging on the dumb? Is he cunningly doling out class miracle happen door sill with his finger and just justice by making the car owner, sipra das/india today group/getty images one big toe on the floor, within who sees the petrol pump closed months they will find a way to at night, return the next morning increase the number of trains so to suffer horrifyingly serpentine that Chavan can sit and go. They queues and thus making rich and will even make all the trains poor equal under the white sky? air-conditioned and put leather Even if you give Moily that seats as long as they don’t know generous benefit of doubt of being which train Chavan will take. Or ingeniously Communist, there is imagine, in Delhi, if Sonia Gandhi still the question of the fuel that were made to shift to a flat in needs to be saved. For that, the car Dwarka and had to commute by owner has to take a bus or train, bus to her office daily like any and public transport has to be as other woman facing the same comfortable as his car. It can tribulations, there would not be a happen. You can see the slightest single dirty old man on that route. hint of it in Delhi, where many If she had to daily take an auto at who have vehicles and can afford random, no auto driver would drivers use the Metro. For public dare refuse a fare. Spread out all transport to become a viable the ministers across every nook option, all states and every route and corner of the suburbs and the in Delhi must meet similar public transport on every route in standards. But how do you every city will become fantastic. radically improve public Everyone would use it and all cars transport in a country with a would be parked at home and all thousand departments, a that fuel saved. thousand bureaucrats heading This will obviously not happen. them and a thousand politicians The first reaction of any governto whom they report—most of ment to a crisis is a hasty reaction them indifferent, corrupt and designed to be useless but incompetent? guaranteed to make people There is a simple solution. Right miserable. The 8 pm to 8 am idea now, senior bureaucrats and has been shelved, but Moily is ministers live near their offices already speaking of a comprehenoccupying prime real estate. They sive policy. You can bet your life it are the only ones who can will be dos and don’ts only for the improve public transport and they public at large. Austerity is always never take it. Make all of them for other people. n shift to distant suburbs, force austerity or stupidity Veerappa Moily’s 12-hour petrol pump plan

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16 september 2013

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to the Frost-Nixon Interviews

The British journalist David Frost who passed away recently was most famous for his series of interviews with former US President Richard Nixon. The on-camera interviews, 12 in all, were conducted about three years after Nixon’s resignation over Watergate and Frost got the former President to apologise for the first time to his countrymen.

time & life pictures/getty images

It began on 23 March 1977 and concluded four weeks later. Known to hate the media, Nixon had not granted an in-depth interview since his resignation. It is believed that he spoke to Frost because he was in need of money. A fee of $600,000 and a 20 per cent share of any profits were negotiated by Nixon’s team. Frost had recently had a New York-based talk show cancelled and he believed he Before the could pull off a strong sucinterviews, cess with the Nixon interNixon’s team views. Contrary to Frost’s believed that beliefs, American news Frost could be networks were initialoutwitted ly hesitant to fund the interviews, and Frost had to fund the project himself till he found investors.

Before the interviews, Frost wasn’t regarded as a tough enough journalist to deal with Nixon. Nixon’s team believed that Frost could be easily outwitted and Nixon would get a terrific opportunity to fix his reputation.

As expected, in the initial interviews, Frost struggled to needle the former President.

In the latter days, howeva memorable political er, he secured interview Frost (left) with Nixon an upper hand. During their sparring, Nixon delivered what is considered one of his most infamous quotes: “Well, when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” The most memorable part occurred when Frost got Nixon to apologise. Nixon said, “I’m sorry. I let down my friends. I let down the country.”

The interviews were broadcast in four parts across the US and a few other countries and shattered US television records. They were later adapted into a play and film. n

It Happens

The Beginning of CopyLeft A Malayalee poet hopes to set off a trend by making one of his major collections copyright free S h a h i n a K K hindu archives

real

open world Satchidanandan says art should be the common property of all human beings

I

n what is probably a first

among established writers in India, K Satchidanandan, a renowned poet from Kerala, has made one of his major collections, Theranjedutha Kavithakal (Selected Poems, 1965-1998), copyright free.

The electronic version of Satchidanandan’s book is published

by Sayahna Foundation and was recently made free under the Creative Commons Licence.

Anybody is now free to use and distribute its modified versions. The same free access has to be preserved in the modified versions as well. In the foreword to the ebook, Satchidanandan imagines a world without copyrights or patents.

‘I have been following the Free Software and Commons movement and subscribe to the view that knowledge, art and culture are the common property of all human beings. I wanted to set an example, however modest, by making at least one of my most cherished collections of poetry accessible to all readers without any price,’ he says.

He hopes to make all his works copyright free but there are legal hurdles. “I cannot do this just now as many of my books are in print and I have a contract with their publishers. My making them copyright free will be illegal and a breach of

contract and trust,” he says.

Satchidanandan might be pioneering this in India but abroad, there are many examples. Slavoj Zizek, a renowned philosopher and cultural critic, has made many of his works available for free online. One of the reasons for this practice was the apprehension of books going out of print and only being available online, making them inaccessible to those not familiar with “I wanted to the internet. set an example Whether by making one making of my most books copyright cherished free can collections change that is accessible to all still a without a price” question mark. “If a publisher is ready to print my books free of cost, or even on a no-loss no-profit basis, that would have been a solution. But where am I to find someone who would invest in a losing business?” he asks. He hopes more writers will follow his example. “This is not a great sacrifice if their livelihood does not depend on their works. And also when we consider that copyright ceases after 50 years of the author’s demise anyway,” he says. n open www.openthemagazine.com 7

business

Six Degrees of Self Awareness paul yeung/reuters

company where the entrepreneur i n f ot e ch At what stage does eventually acts [only] as an investor it make sense for an entrepreneurfor the good of the company”. ial venture to go for professional leadership? Last fortnight, the Hexaware felt it needed a Rs 1,948-crore Hexaware professional push and revised Technologies, a mid-sized Indian risk-return approach to generate infotech company, agreed to let value in a dynamic market for private equity firm Baring Asia software services. Analysts feel that take control of it. The latter Baring would like Hexaware to acquires a 41.7 per cent stake grow above the industry trend, at directly from the firm’s promoters an annual clip of about 15-25 per and General Atlantic (another cent. If this happens, the firm’s private equity player) for about market value Rs 1,687 crore, after which it will could double in It is rare for an make its mandatory open offer to entrepreneurial five years, the public shareholders for another typical span for firm in India to 26 per cent. The global acquirer has acknowledge its a PE investor to expressed an intent to do exactly limitations sans offload its stake what is needed to “support the next and book professionals phase of growth of the business” profits. in the words of Baring Asia’s In a broader sense, the deal has CEO Jean Salata. been taken as a vote of confidence in the global competitiveness of This marks the first time such a India’s $108-billion infotech and sellout has occurred in this BPM industry, which gets over 70 high-profile sector. The deal could per cent of its revenues from set a precedent for other mid-sized overseas. While a weak rupee firms trying to break into the big serves it well, the industry has been league, a leap that requires both dismayed of late by proposed US expertise and capital of another rules on the issuance of work visas. order of magnitude. To its credit, While that could imply a rise in Hexaware was aware of its M&A man Baring Asia’s CEO Jean Salata sees potential in Hexaware visa and even manpower costs, limitations. This is a rare attribute Hexaware’s current Chief in India. “Companies driven by Executive Officer PR Chandrasekar has a former top executive of Infosys. This entrepreneurs quite often become deal, he says, could play trendsetter in the said that “most of the onerous elements of defensive after reaching a certain stage, the US Immigration bill specifically transformation of an Indian firm “from tend to stop being innovative, and [thus] being entrepreneur founded and managed related to outsourcing” are unlikely to go lose out,” observes Mohandas Pai, through. n SHAILENDRA TYAGI chairman, Manipal Global Education, and to a truly professionally managed

India’s Infotech and Outsourcing Sector is Looking Up With estimated aggregate revenues of $108 billion in 2012-13, mostly from overseas clients, this export-oriented sector could get a boost from a weaker rupee 2007-08

($ million)

2008-09

2009-10

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13 (E)

Exports

Domestic

Exports

Domestic

Exports

Domestic

Exports

Domestic

Exports

Domestic

Exports

Domestic

IT Services

22,203

7,882

25,800

8,226

27,290

9,070

33,478

11,004

39,890

12,170

43,853

12,443

BPM*

9,915

1,576

11,699

1,932

12,401

2,304

14,172

2,791

15,915

3,068

17,848

3,087

Software Products and ER&D

8,300

2,234

9,600

2,690

9,999

2,960

11,385

3,495

12,979

3,721

14,132

3,788

500

10,293

395

9,006

395

9,746

395

11,732

415

12,710

415

12,882

40,918

21,985

47,494

21,854

50,086

24,080

59,429

29,022

69,198

31,669

76,248

32,200

Hardware Total

*BPM: Business Process Management

8 open

Source: NASSCOM

compiled by shailendra tyagi

16 September 2013

COMMENT distortion

Secular Nonsense on 1984 Some commentators have no qualms absolving the Congress on behalf of an entire community hartosh singh bal

W h e n r i g h t - w i n g commentators invoke the 1984 killings of Sikhs to absolve Narendra Modi, their unsound logic is easily refuted. A man charged with culpability for murder can never take the plea that there have been other murders that have gone unpunished.

I would think little more needs be said, yet several ‘secular’ commentators have joined issue with these right-wingers to make the claim that the Congress, despite 1984, is less of a danger than Narendra Modi.

The ‘despite’ is a problem. It takes a degree of armchair callousness to make light of the widows of Trilokpuri, as Mihir Sharma did with the easy claim that ‘1984’s victims aren’t living penniless in garbage dumps today as, around them, a state’s development is praised.’

Perhaps editorial judgment has been suspended at Business Standard. But Sharma was followed in quick succession by men whose opinion I usually value, such as Mukul Kesavan and Aakar Patel.

Patel wrote in The Hindustan Times: ‘The fact is that the Congress has made its peace with Sikhs. To see this we need to only go through the names of Punjab’s legislators. Of the 46 Congress MLAs, 33 are Sikh (on the other hand 10 of the BJP’s 12 MLAs are Hindu).’ The fact, though, is nothing of the sort. Let me cite a fact from Gujarat. Earlier this year, in the Salaya municipality in Jamnagar district of Saurashtra, where 90 per cent of the population is Muslim, the BJP put up 24 Muslims for the 27 seats at stake, and all of them were successful.

Going by Patel’s logic, it would seem that the Muslims of Salaya love the BJP. But I have reported from Gujarat often enough to know this is not the case. There is a Hindi phrase that sums up their plight: ‘Majboori ka naam Mahatma Gandhi’. If Patel had bothered to understand Punjab half as well as he understands Gujarat, he would know that in a state with a Sikh majority, the 10 open

Congress and Akali Dal are the two alternative routes to power. If one is closed, the other is the only option. This has nothing to do with making one’s peace with a party, unless by making peace Patel implies exactly what the Hindi phrase suggests.

Kesavan is far more explicit in his admission of the extent and nature of the Congress’ culpability for 1984, but he ends his column in The Telegraph with a claim that goes beyond 2002 and 1984: ‘So the reason the dynastic Congress isn’t as dangerous as Modi’s BJP is dispiriting but straightforward: while the Congress is capable of communalism, it isn’t constituted by bigotry.’ This conclusion

Sikh victims of rape, already silenced once by their own community in 1984, have been silenced again by Martha Nussbaum, one of the world’s leading feminist philosophers, only to make a point about the killings in Gujarat isn’t specific to Modi, it extends to almost any BJP administration. The problem is that Kesavan makes this claim while addressing the question of the 1984 killings. Murder or rape organised by a ‘secular’ party is no less serious than murder or rape at the behest of a communal ideology. You cannot privilege one party over another on this basis.

Neither 2002 nor 1984 can ever be acceptable and either is enough to disqualify a party from a reasonable claim to power in this country.

The question, ‘What about 1984?’, is a trap. The case against Modi is not weakened by this counter, but the attempt to engage with it does highlight a secular failure on 1984 that persists. If

you consider the difference between the pursuit of justice post-2002 and post1984, Kesavan’s explicit claim is what accounts for the active involvement of civil rights activists in Gujarat and their apathy in practice over the 1984 killings.

Many of the activists who have done outstanding work in Gujarat, such as Teesta Setalvad, see no problem in maintaining close links with the Congress. They see the BJP and Modi as ever present dangers that need to be combated, but they treat 1984 as an aberration that lies in the past.

Kesavan’s claim has been responsible for the underplaying of the massacre of 1984 and its ongoing consequences by most secular academics, journalists and activists. In a 2007 book The Clash Within published by Harvard University Press in the US and glowingly blurbed by none other than Amartya Sen, Martha C Nussbaum confronts the comparison thus: ‘The closest precedent to Gujarat… was the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi…’ She then goes on to make the claim that there were differences and that in the Delhi riots ‘rape and killing-by-incineration were not central elements of the violence’.

The central image of the 1984 killings is of Sikh men being burnt alive.

Eyewitnesses tell of tyres tied around their necks and set on fire, others tell of a white powder that easily burst into flames. As for rape, Jyoti Grewal in her book Betrayed by the State, writes, ‘…I must respect their wishes which were explicit that I not repeat events, names and references.

What I heard were the details of rapes, how family members were forced to rape their wives and daughters before the mob raped the women again; it was more than I could bear.

When I asked from where they had learnt this information, they told me the names of various neighbours who had actually gone through these trying events. I have corroborated these stories but have chosen not to divulge them.’

16 september 2013

sam panthaky/afp

open wound The anger over the country’s failure to deliver justice for the 1984 killings in Delhi is real, but is addressed to a polity that refuses to address it

Later in the book, she writes, ‘The issue of rape was buried… the community pressured them so much that the women just did not want to talk about rape.’

Women silenced once had been silenced again by one of the world’s leading feminists only to make a point about Gujarat. Consider the secular outrage we would have witnessed if a leading US conservative had written something so offensive about the Gujarat killings.

This selective amnesia is no aberration.

Madhu Kishwar, always a maverick, is treated these days with well-deserved disdain by secularists for her recent claims that Modi acted promptly and effectively to quell the 2002 violence in Gujarat. Yet, the same people see no problem in claiming Mani Shankar Aiyar, another maverick, as their own even though he has spent close to three decades making similar claims about Rajiv Gandhi’s response to the 1984 violence in Delhi.

When both Kesavan and Patel claim it is unlikely that the BJP will ever put up a 16 september 2013

Muslim as Prime Minister, and claim this as a virtue of the Congress, they forget that Manmohan Singh’s very presence has been the guise under which the Congress has wished away the 1984 killings. They forget that in 1999 when Manmohan Singh contested a Lok Sabha election in South Delhi, he exonerated his party by stating, “Just as the Congress party did not plan the riots, but certain individuals belonging to the party have been accused of them, I have come to know that certain people belonging to the RSS were also named in some FIRs.” This was a very convenient partial truth, a cover-up. And in a larger sense, Manmohan Singh remains the cover-up for the Congress to keep rewarding ministers such as Kamal Nath. The silence that surrounds Kamal Nath in the secular media is illustrative. The claim goes there is no case against him for the 1984 killings. A truth suppressed by circumventing the judicial process partly because the media did not do its job then becomes the basis for the media to avoid

telling the truth about a man.

What is true of Kamal Nath is also true of a number of Sikh faces the Congress projects in Delhi. In the run-up to the Delhi Assembly polls, government advertisements almost always show Shiela Dixit accompanied by Arvinder Singh ‘Lovely’, the state minister for education as well as gurdwara elections and gurdwara administration. This is a man who owes his entry and rise in the party to his father Balwinder Singh, who in 1986 submitted an affidavit to the Misra Commission in favour of HKL Bhagat, one of 1984’s main accused. In 1989, Balwinder Singh organised a function where Bhagat was accorded a saropa, a Sikh ceremonial honour.

Despite such facts, there seems to be no shortage of commentators, largely non-Sikhs, who are willing to speak on behalf of the community and absolve the Congress of its role in 1984. It is no wonder the epigraph to Jyoti Grewal’s book reads, ‘I write so I am not written out; I write so I am not written about.’ n open www.openthemagazine.com 11

news

reel

neglect

Nation Building Leaves Out Tribals jayanta shaw/reuters

An interview with National Advisory Council member Virginus Xaxa, recently appointed head of a committee on the state of India’s tribes sandeep Bhushan

on the margins “Nearly 40 per cent of Tribals have been displaced between 1950 and 1990”

for sections within the Government and mining conglomerates who await dilution of access to Tribal land in Central India (Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha).

National Advisory Council member Virginius Xaxa, recently appointed to head a ‘high powered committee’ on the status of tribes, identifies land alienation and displacement post-liberalisation as the key reasons for the growth of Maoism in these resource-rich states. Professor Xaxa spoke to Sandeep Bhushan in what is perhaps his first interview, shortly after taking charge. This is the third such committee since independence, comprising seven members. Professor Xaxa is a

There is bad news

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leading Tribal intellectual originally from Chhattisgarh and is currently also serving as Deputy Director at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Guwahati.

What are the terms of reference or mandate of the committee?

Our mandate is basically to look at the health, education and social status of Tribals, who comprise roughly 8.6 per cent of the population. Of these, 84 per cent are in Central India (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra).

The Northeast has another 12 per cent.

This is being seen as a political move in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections...

I don’t think so. It is not going to make any difference. The report will be ready only around April-May 2014, when elections are due. I don’t think this will influence the outcome in any way.

What, according to you, are the main problems confronting Tribals in India?

There are a number of them. In the main, the developmental model followed in the last six decades or so has been flawed. The problem at the policy level has been that all kinds of diverse groups have been clubbed together as ‘tribes’ by the Government. Tribes across India differ on the basis of language, size, habitat, occupation, etcetera. Anthropologists, on 16 september 2013

the other hand, have emphasised diversity, which has emerged from their fieldwork. Like all fieldwork, they have ended up stressing upon the unique.

Our approach will look at combining both these.

You have argued that different Tribal developmental models were followed in Central India and the Northeast.

Yes. In the Northeast, the State is militaristic in nature. It is violent and coercive. In the mainland, the State is developmental in orientation. Yet the irony is that the developmental indices are much better in the Northeast. This is mainly because of the vision enshrined in the Fifth and Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

The fifth Schedule mandates intervention by the Governor in matters relating to Tribes, in tandem with the recommendations of his Advisory Council. The Sixth Schedule, on the other hand, lays down the Autonomous District Council, which is a sort of mini-state that can enact laws. It also has a developmental role.

As is clear, the Governor’s Advisory Council never meets and there is no Tribal participation whatsoever.

Is there a lesson therein?

I would like the Northeast pattern to be replicated in mainland India.

What explains the rapid growth of Maoism in Central or mainland India?

Maoism is largely a product of the alienation of mainland Tribals for the past six decades. They have not been beneficiaries of nation building. Land alienation is one of the biggest problems in states like Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. This has fuelled resentment and rebellion. In the Northeast, this has not happened. Displacement on account of various private and government projects is another factor. Nearly 46 per cent of Tribals have been displaced between 1950 and 1990. The process has especially

accelerated since liberalisation began.

How has liberalisation impacted Tribals in Central India?

As I mentioned earlier, land has changed hands from Tribals to non-Tribals in utter violation of all laws. The Government has also relentlessly acquired land for mining and other purposes. Major new projects have been initiated since 1991. And add to this the violence of the State bureaucracy.

Forest and police officials have served as the most oppressive arm of the State.

Contractors have flourished.

The worst part is that Tribals have been unable to unite in the face of daily oppression. In the Northeast, Christianity gave space to Tribals to expand their identity. An Angami Naga could combine with other Naga tribes since both were Christians. This is how the Naga Students Union was formed in Nagaland. But in Central India, all powers rests with the Chief Minister, who often depends on the non-functioning Governor’s Advisory Council for policy inputs. This has prevented the forging of a broader identity among them.

Tribes in the Northeast have not lost control over their land and resources, which is why they are much more integrated. That is not the case in Central India, where land alienation is acute.

What has been the role of the State?

The State has not taken any steps to curb land alienation. You have to realise that Tribals are scared and distrustful of courts.

They cannot fight land alienation. The State should step in and fight on their behalf. But this has not happened. Look at the small towns that have mushroomed in and around Tribal areas. Not one resident or shop owner is a Tribal. Tribals have never been beneficiaries of nation-building. Tribals have given their resources without benefiting in return. In the building of modern India, they have given their balidan (sacrifice) but have got nothing in return.

There have been reports that the implementation of the Forest Dwellers Act of 2006, which gives land rights to Tribals, has been tardy. What is your understanding?

I haven’t followed this very closely. But my sense is that the Act has been successful wherever Tribals are aware and have pushed the local administration. But in states like Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, forest officials are actively stymieing the implementation of the Act.

Both mainstream political parties have hurt the Tribal cause. While the Congress sees them as vote banks, the BJP sees them as a population to be converted. Do you agree?

Actually the ‘vote bank’ adjective is applicable more to BJP politics. It has been pushing to proselytise Tribals into the Hindu fold. This has also led to problems between Christians and non-Christians.

Congress, on the other hand, has lost the support of Dalits and Adivasis. If you look at Tribal constituencies in the last elections, most went to the BJP. Tribals are dissatisfied with the Congress for reasons already mentioned—land alienation, displacement, etcetera. They feel Congress has been unable to protect them.

In fact, had there been regional parties, Tribals would have shifted their allegiance to them. But this has not happened.

Staying with regional parties, do Tribals fit into the ‘Dalit’ category, as the BSP is trying to fit them?

Generally speaking, if ‘Dalit’ is a term used to represent the oppressed like Schedule Castes, Tribals and women, then it is fine. But otherwise it does not work, since Tribals themselves don’t see themselves that way. In fact, in terms of literacy, health, mortality under five years [of age] and poverty levels, they fare worse than SCs.

Will the committee be able to finish its task in nine months?

The task is difficult. But we will try our best. n

muddle

Is There a Plan?

India’s economy is in crisis and there exist ways to address it. But it looks as if little will happen until a new government takes office Devangshu Datta

S

ometime in 2014, President Pranab Mukherjee will

administer the oath of office to India’s next Prime Minister and his or her colleagues. That assortment of politicians, whoever they may be, will have a tough task on their hands.

First, the new government will have to stem an ongoing crisis of confidence and find ways to revive economic activity. In the long run, it will need to put national finances back in order and generate employment for tens of millions. In order to do this, it will also need to persuade investors to pump more than a trillion US dollars into the economy over the next five years.

This will require a lot of policy restructuring and the political will to get things done quickly in order to minimise the inevitable pain. Not only is the task daunting in its magnitude, it is unclear how any political party actually intends to set about it. The two national parties have so far avoided revealing their economic intentions. This is especially worrisome because by the time the next government assumes charge in 2014, it will have a full-blown recession to deal with. » What has Gone Wrong?

To understand what the next government needs to do, we need to know what has gone wrong. The short answer is everything. India is doing badly on almost every economic indicator. The country’s GDP growth fell to a four-year low of 4.4 per cent in the April-June 2014 quarter and shows signs of further decline. Every financial institution, be it in India or abroad, has downgraded expectations of GDP growth. The most optimistic estimates are 14 open

that full-year growth will be just above 5 per cent, while the pessimistic are in the range of 3.7 per cent. Consensus expectations are in the range of 4.25-4.75 per cent.

This is actually not growth but recession by global statistical standards. GDP data is always adjusted for inflation to figure out real growth. For example, if nominal growth is 10 per cent and inflation is 5 per cent, real growth after inflation is a little under 5 per cent.

Most countries use consumer price inflation as a benchmark for inflation adjustment. India uses wholesale prices. In the April-June 2013 quarter, wholesale price inflation ran at roughly 5 per cent. However, Consumer Inflation ran at over 9.5 per cent. If India were to use CPI like the rest of the world, the country’s GDP would have shrunk in real terms. What is more, in CPI terms, the 16 September 2013

weaker by the day Commuters walk past a foreign currency exchange shop in Bangalore.

The rupee has plumbed new lows against the dollar on a near daily basis

aijaz rahi/ap

economy has been shrinking for the last nine months.

The difference in method is not just a statistical detail.

Consumer inflation affects the aam aadmi. As far as individual Indians are concerned, the economy is in recession and has been so for quite a while. This has affected sentiment. People have cut down on consumption and this, in turn, is causing a vicious cycle of falling demand. Car sales, for example, have dropped for the past nine months.

Now, the auto industry has a long value chain. At one end, it uses commodities like metals, glasses, plastics, etcetera.

It also uses sophisticated electronic instruments and mechanical components sourced from different suppliers.

The finished product is put in showrooms, marketed and sold, usually with consumer financing involved. Thus, the auto-industry supports multiple industries from min16 September 2013

ing to financial services. If it’s in recession, as it clearly is, the economy is in recession.

Meanwhile, India’s imports exceed exports by a large amount. There is pressure on the rupee, which has already been pushed down to historic lows. Inflation is persistent and high and likely to rise further due to the weaker rupee. The Current Account Deficit is near record levels.

India cannot cut imports beyond a certain point. It needs to import close to 80 per cent of its crude oil and 30 per cent of its gas. The pressure on foreign exchange reserves is already heavy and it could get more intense. India has roughly $250 billion in forex reserves that could be used instantly. The rest consists of gold, about 560 tonnes, which could be used under extreme circumstances.

This $250 billion represents about five to six months’ open www.openthemagazine.com 15

worth of imports. But India also has about $170 billion worth of external debt obligations to repay this fiscal year.

Take that away, and the country’s reserves would drop to a shaky two months. And, there is a Sword of Damocles hanging over the RBI because of the nature of capital inflows. While the Government has been keen to lure Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), what India has been attracting in significant sums from abroad are investments in tradeable assets like stocks and bonds; and on current estimates, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) hold about $140-150 billion worth of rupee assets. This is mostly equity and some government debt. That money could, in theory, leave within a few days. In just the past three months, FIIs have sold assets of about $3.5 billion. This has been enough to pull stockmarkets down by 15 per cent and push the rupee down by over 20 per cent. Think of what will happen if FIIs keep selling.

Some 40-odd Indian corporations, which raised money abroad using hybrid instruments called Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds—which gives holders an option of converting their loans into equity—are now struggling to repay what they owe in foreign currency; the high

A full-blown currency crisis could force the Government to eliminate more subsidies, not just on fuel but also on fertilisers. This would be good for the economy in the long run dollar and low share prices (and prospects) have led to their creditors preferring not to convert their bonds into shares, as some of these firms had hoped they would.

Some firms have already defaulted on the FCCBs they had issued. There will be more. Of that, you can be sure.

The Government is desperately trying to conserve foreign exchange by raising customs duty on gold, hoping to restrict imports of the metal. It is also looking for other ways to boost reserves. It has started to ease senseless and complex regulations that restrict inflows of FDI. It has also started to ‘fast-track’ clearances for projects.

However, this situation has triggered risk-aversion. The day the Centre announced FDI reforms in the telecom, defence, retail sectors, Korean steel major Posco pulled out of its Rs 30,000 crore Karnataka steel project. The next day, Arcelor Mittal pulled out of Odisha, cancelling its plans to build a Rs 40,000 crore steel plant.

At this instant, even Indians would prefer to invest abroad. Apollo Tyres, Airtel, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Adani, Shree Renuka Sugars, Hindalco—this is just a random sample of Indian companies that have kicked off major overseas projects instead of investing at home. If India does suffer a sovereign rating downgrade or two by glob16 open

al credit rating agencies, and this is highly probable, investors could stampede for the exit.

India’s Fiscal Deficit is already huge and likely to get larger, given populist schemes like the Centre’s Food Security Bill and its unwillingness to cut subsidies in the face of an impending General Election. National savings have also fallen to a low of about 30 per cent of GDP from a high of 36 per cent in 2007-08, when the economy was in boom. Since it is domestic savings rather than FDI that must fund most projects, this decline makes it harder to kickstart the economy through investment.

Internal accruals are in bad shape. Corporate earning projections have been downgraded for 2013-14 after the year’s first-quarter results came in. Rupee interest rates are rising and banks are saddled with loans that are not being repaid.

Projects worth over Rs 500,000 crore in investment terms are stalled for one reason or another, such as land acquisition difficulties, environmental issues or other statutory clearances. The recently constituted Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) has cleared many of those projects after they were in limbo for years, but they are yet to be implemented.

In addition, large-scale corruption has been responsible for huge losses and led to litigation that has, for example, jammed the country’s coal and iron mining industries while causing complications in telecom.

India has a terrible reputation as a place to do business.

The International Finance Corporation, in its Doing Business 2013 Report, ranked India 132th out of 185 countries on ‘ease of doing business’. Its rank was 184 in enforcing contracts, 182 in dealing with construction permits, 173 in starting a business, 152 in paying taxes and 127 in crossborder trading. It takes 27 days to start a business in India, versus 19 in South Asia as a whole and 12 in OECD countries.

Being in election mode, the Government’s will to tackle this situation is suspect. In addition to the Food Security Bill, we can expect even more populist measures such as bank loans to farmers being forgiven and power and fuel charges kept down even as their costs soar. To add to those problems, a war in the Middle East could force crude oil prices up. Also, the US central bank is likely to start tapering its money supply. Since September 2012, the US Federal Reserve has carried out its ‘Quantitative Expansion 3 Program’ (QE3), pumping the world with about $85 billion a month in excess liquidity to aid an economic recovery. In the past 11 months, an estimated $12 billion of that money reached India. Now, as the US economy recovers, The Fed is on the verge of cutting back QE3.

Some of that money will inevitably flow right back.

So, India does not just have a slowdown that’s better described as a recession, it has currency woes, high inflation, poor infrastructure, endemic corruption and an elderly hidebound political leadership that appears unwilling to do what needs to be done.

16 September 2013

raveendran/afp

that shrinking feeling India does not just have a recession, it has currency woes, high inflation, poor infrastructure, endemic corruption and a hidebound political leadership that appears unwilling to do what needs to be done

ahmad masood/reuters

bikas das/ap

subir basak/getty images

Âť What does India have going for it?

The prospect of being hanged in the morning is said to concentrate the mind wonderfully. The crisis has already forced some action. For example, stalled projects have been cleared. Also, a new Land Acquisition Act has been passed as well as a new Companies Act. The currency weakness in itself may bring long-run benefits. It forces down imports and could boost exports, which did jump 12 per cent in July. The weak rupee has also led to a review of fuel subsidies, including monthly 16 September 2013

hikes in diesel prices and a cap on the supply of subsidised cooking gas.

A full-blown currency crisis could force the Government to eliminate more subsidies, not just on fuel but also on fertilisers, which are made from petrochemicals. This would be good for the economy in the long run.

India will always be a major energy importer and it cannot afford to subsidise imports. High energy prices could also lead to reforms in the inefficient State-controlled power sector and in the coal-mining industry. » Do more people care about the economy?

Despite being obscured by the gloom and doom of the past two years, there have been many positive returns from 20 years of reform. Compared to 1991, there’s a much larger middle-class and poverty has certainly reduced, without quibbling over exact numbers. This means that both gains and pains are spread around and the average voter is much more interested in economic development.

One key difference is that in 1991, India did not have a consumer-oriented trading economy. Total trade (imports + exports ) equalled just 14 per cent of GDP. The only direct impact on most people’s lives of a change in currency value was inflation caused by higher fuel prices. Now foreign trade is about 42 per cent of GDP. Everybody, regardless of income level, is affected directly by the falling rupee. Apart from energy prices, cheap mobiles, clothes from Bangladesh, toys, education of children abroad, etcetera, all get more expensive if the rupee weakens. This should make it easier for every political party to develop an economic agenda and focus on reforms. However, no party appears to have woken up to this reality yet. » What must the next government do?

The next government needs to, first, streamline the processes and clearances that hold up any project that needs its approval. India has a combination of the most regressive and complex laws and policies in the world and an extremely corrupt babu-neta nexus. Policies need to be simplified to rid them of discretionary authority and corrupt public servants need to be punished.

Broadly, this agenda could be called ‘good governance’.

There are a few state governments that have shown it is possible to deliver this even in India: Bihar, Odisha and Gujarat, for example. It is, in fact, the only concrete economic commitment one can glean from Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s public speeches.

Second, India needs a national Goods and Services Tax (GST). Right now, the differing rates at which various states tax various goods results in insane delays in internal trade. It takes more time, trouble and paperwork to move goods from Karnataka to Maharashtra than it does from Poland to the UK. GST could change that.

This new tax has been hanging fire for years now because many states are uncomfortable at the prospect of a switchover. However, similar Centre-state negotiations 16 September 2013

were involved before Sales Tax could be replaced by ValueAdded Tax in 2005. The result, as the VAT opponents of 2005 would admit, has been beneficial to everyone. GST requires similar negotiations, but the next government has to push it through.

Third, labour reform. India’s labour laws are regressive and complicated. There are over 50 national laws and many more state-level laws. For example, any institution with over 100 workers has to seek government approval before it can fire employees or close down. Permanent workers cannot be dismissed except for misconduct.

Since firing people is so difficult, nobody wants to hire.

Organised labour forms just about 15 per cent of the workforce. No entrepreneur wants to get beyond the threshold limits in hiring permanent staff. This results in Indian manufacturing lacking scale and competitive advantage.

There has to be ground-up reforms of labour laws to ensure that manufacturing expands. This is the only way to create the millions of jobs required.

The next government will also have to attract investors.

Building India’s infrastructure in itself will take over a trillion USD over the next five years. Global investors will return to India only if they are convinced that the Government is serious about speeding things up and projects are not going to get stuck. For that, multiple policies need to be reviewed and—if necessary—junked and rebooted. » Who can do what needs to be done?

What does any political party aspiring to lead (or be part of) the next government at the Centre intend to do about the crisis? No party or alliance has declared a concrete policy agenda that adequately addresses the situation.

The Congress has waffled about granting rights to citizens such as the Right to Food and Right to Education.

However, it has patently failed to create the economic wherewithal to deliver those rights without wrecking national finances. Even in the midst of the current storm, it has just tried to shift the blame rather than take concrete steps to address outstanding issues.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has promised the electorate ‘good governance’. However, Narendra Modi continues to oppose GST and claims that he would actually expand the scale of Food Security giveaways. Both actions would be counter-productive—and, in fact, ruinous.

Among the potential leaders of a Third Front coalition at the Centre, Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik are two with decent governance records. But there is a difference between running a state well and developing the policy skills needed to govern an entire country as complex as this.

Such lack of clarity leaves voters in a quandary. It is also an opportunity for any political party to fill the vacuum with a well-articulated and common-sense economic agenda. Otherwise, I’m likely to chuck names into a hat and pull one out at random when I cast my vote. n open www.openthemagazine.com 19

s co r ec a r d

Wretched New IITs Who is responsible for the sorry state of these institutions?

Siddhartha Gupta

A

t an All-India rank of No 888 in the ‘reserved’ category of the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for admission to an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Rahul Verma found it impossible to get Electrical Engineering— one of the most sought after disciplines—at any of the older IITs. So he joined one of the new institutes, IIT Indore. This was three years ago. He did not want to consider other engineering colleges of national stature. The ‘IIT’ tag was everything.

IIT Indore is one of eight new Indian Institutes of Technology that came up in 2008 and 2009. Even five years after they were conceived, these institutes are hobbling along to live up to the reputations that foreshadow the name IIT, but that is no secret. The important questions are what led to this mess, how deep this mess is, and what lies next.

Rahul lives in a four-bedroom cottage with eight of his batchmates at Silver Springs, a residential township on the Indore bypass road. This is because IIT Indore has no hostels. They are yet to be built. So every morning, he gets up before 7 am to reach class at 9 am held 30 km away at a location rented by IIT from Industrial Training Institute (ITI) for its School of Engineering. The IIT does not have its own campus yet and uses three disjointed locations instead. To ferry students around town, IIT Indore has hired buses. Rahul’s bus takes half an hour, and since he must go to yet another building in the township that serves as a dining hall for breakfast, it’s always a rush. If he misses his bus, he might as well call it a holiday and go back. There is no way he can reach class without leaving his wallet lighter than he’d like.

“We tried getting a place within the city itself,” says Dr Amod Umarikar, who 20 open

heads IIT Indore’s School of Engineering.

“People were only interested in extracting the maximum amount of cash from us.

Nobody cared that it was an IIT they were talking about.” The institute pays ITI an annual rent of Rs 2 crore for the use of its Mhow campus that lies even beyond the outskirts of Indore. “The time wasted in travelling from one location to another is one of the biggest headaches that students and faculty have,” says Dr Umarikar.

Rahul is taught mostly by assistant professors, many of whom are in their first jobs and appear equally excited by the idea of having an ‘IIT’ on their CVs. Thankfully, he has no core science lab work, or else he’d have an additional half-

Manmohan Singh, it turned out, was clueless about the eight IITs. He called the Ministry of HRD to find out but no satisfactory reply ever came, says Dr CNR Rao hour ride to another campus rented by IIT Indore for its School of Science.

Once he is back home, he has little access to the usual facilities that residential students expect of such an institute.

Cricket, he says, can be played anywhere and Silver Springs has a badminton court, but for any other sport, students must use facilities elsewhere in town (for which the IIT administration pays).

However, with placement season upon them, lack of amenities is one of the last things on Rahul’s mind. His is only the second batch of IIT Indore students trying to land jobs via campus placement, and he must convince recruiters that he

amit dave

is worthy of the IIT tag as a candidate.

Whose idea was it anyway?

One day in 2007, Dr CNR Rao rushed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a worried man. As the head of the PM’s scientific advisory council and chairman of a standing committee responsible for decisions on IITs under the then HRD Minister Arjun Singh, Dr Rao was shocked by what he had just heard. He had heard that eight new IITs were to

come up all at once, and nobody had bothered to tell him, let alone consult him.

Hadn’t they been planning three new IITs all along? Wasn’t it clear that there weren’t enough resources to build any more? And whose call was it, if not his?

Manmohan Singh, it turned out, was clueless about the eight IITs. “The PM didn’t know about it, and he immediately called the Ministry of HRD to find out who was responsible,” says Dr Rao. “No satisfactory reply ever came from the

Ministry. What is amazing is that when I talked to Arjun Singh, the poor man was not aware of many things. Somewhere the decision was taken by one or two over-enthusiastic people who had met with the Planning Commission on this issue and gone ahead to make the announcement without telling anyone else. RP Agrawal [then the secretary of Science and Higher education] was present in the meeting, and he even talked to some director of one of the IITs about

long way to go The upcoming campus of IIT Gandhinagar

paroma mukherjee

ad hoc arrangements Makeshift cupboards at the interim campus of IIT Indore; (below) the administrative block of IIT Gandhinagar

this. I never heard anything, even though all the directors were involved in planning the three new IITs.” All that planning was rendered pointless once the Centre set up eight institutes behind the committee’s back.

“Even today, I don’t know who the people responsible for this mess are,” says Dr Rao, “The education committee of the scientific advisory council called in Mr Agrawal for questioning and we asked how he could do what he did. After that, he just got very upset with us and that was the end of it.”

Back in 2003, the HRD Ministry under the NDA Government had set up a committee headed by physicist Dr Shri Krishna Joshi to shortlist technical institutions that could be upgraded to IIT status. Entirely new IITs would have been too costly. In 2005, after the UPA took over at the Centre, the Joshi Committee’s report was dumped and another plan surfaced to start new IITs. “Upgrading institutions to IITs is a stupid idea, whoever recommends it,” says Dr Rao, who was also chairman of IIT Kanpur at the time, “You cannot turn Mysore University into Harvard by upgrading it.”

The committee headed by Dr Rao recommended that three entirely new IITs be set up: one each in Andhra Pradesh or Karnataka in the South, Rajasthan or Gujarat in the West, and Orissa or Bihar 22 open

amit dave

in the east. The three new IITs, according to Dr Sanjay Dhande, a former director of IIT Kanpur who authored such a proposal submitted to the Planning Commission, were to be set up in response to increased demand for an IIT education, as well as for engineers, especially from India’s infotech sector. If it worked, the idea was to be scaled up.

However, instead of three, six new IITs burst onto the scene in 2008, and two more in 2009 just before the General Election. State governments, asked to set aside around 500 acres of contiguous

land for an IIT campus in case one was approved there, rushed to meet the criterion. A committee hurriedly approved IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh. “But you can’t create a good IIT by the stroke of a pen and a newspaper announcement,” says Dr Rao. Five years since, none of those IITs has a proper campus, and despite sufficient funds and big-ticket purchases of lab equipment, they operate in haphazard ways with makeshift laboratories. And it’s not just a space crunch that cripples 16 September 2013

paroma mukherjee

inadequate facilities Residential cottage at Silver Spring township rented by IIT Indore for its students; IIT Gandhinagar’s library at its interim campus

amit dave

them, there is enough to show that for all the talk of digital-era needs, they have been unable to break sufficiently free of outdated notions of an education in engineering.

Laws of the land

The 205 inhabitants of Kamand, a settlement 15 km from Mandi in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, are a hopeful bunch these days because the south campus of an IIT is coming up in town (the other is 3 km apart). The place is abuzz with activity. Labs and classrooms are being built, with a few hostels already in place.

The site of the other campus up ahead is bare. Currently, IIT Mandi runs its operations partly from temporary premises in Kamand and partly from a rented campus shared with Vallabh Government College.

The state government has allotted about 530 acres to this project, but the ter16 September 2013

rain renders almost 350 acres of it unbuildable. The master plan was drawn to cater to 6,000 students, but housing just 3,500-4,000 students may prove difficult.

The settlement’s general infractructure seems grossly inadequate. “There was no other land available,” says Dr SP Gupta of IIT Roorkee, who has been closely associated with IIT Mandi as Dean of Planning.

“Mr Ashok Thakur, who himself is a Himachali, and Dr SC Saxena [former director of IIT Roorkee] were on the committee that visited and approved the site.” Ironically, in spite of the odd location and being the youngest of the lot, IIT Mandi is the only one to have partly begun operations on its own campus. The others have only just begun construction or are stuck in red tape.

For its permanent campus, IIT Indore was promised 500 acres of land near Simrol, a village about 25 km away from Indore city, in 2009. About 200 acres of

that land was under the state forest department, which is yet to clear its use for the purpose; besides, a village at the site is resisting the project in fear of losing direct access to a main road. The local clout of villagers has stalled the construction of even a boundary wall. About 30 acres of land is under dispute.

Dr Pradeep Mathur, director of IIT Indore, looks a tired man when I see him at the end of his day, but his eyes flare at the mention of the Madhya Pradesh government’s role. “One of the worst states in terms of governance, education and treatment of women,” he seethes. “They are not ready for an IIT yet.”

Land acquisition is proving difficult even for IIT Ropar in Punjab. According to a senior staff member, the site at Birla Farms 8 km away from Ropar town is squashed in a couple of lawsuits, with local villagers refusing to vacate the land earmarked for the institute.

Even in Gujarat, construction at IIT Gandhinagar was delayed by four years because the tract of land that the Modi government originally zeroed in on was too far away from the city and director Sudhir Jain refused to accept it. The land he got after that was closer home, but a large portion of it was under the Union Ministry of Agriculture, which took two years to vacate it.

IIT Patna was delayed because villagers at the site refused to vacate the land unless given more money. The state government asked the IIT to take the 200 acres that were available, saying that the rest would come later. IIT Patna refused, asking for the entire lot together. “Maybe the Government did not envisage all these problems in land acquisition,” says Dr Gautam Barua, former director of IIT Guwahati, mentor of IIT Patna.

All of it smacks of a tearing hurry. A state government ought to be aware of the status of land being earmarked for an IIT campus and not expect an IIT administration to fight for land procurement.

Teacher Troubles

“The IITs have a second-rate faculty and first rate students. It has always been the case,” asserts Dr CNR Rao, who was among the first batch of professors at IIT Kanpur. “There are a few good faculty members, but they are not producing enough research, not doing enough open www.openthemagazine.com 23

space crunch Temporary faculty cabins at a multipurpose hall of IIT Mandi; a canteen at the interim campus of IIT Indore

development work,” he says.

All IITs have had a faculty crunch all along, but the new ones are under criticism for lack of academic experience in all spheres of work; about 80 per cent of their faculty members are young. “The faculty at IIT Indore needs to be looked into,” says Dr Anand Khanna, a professor at IIT Bombay who was deputy director at IIT Indore for six months last year.

“They have just been given lot of money [for their work],” he says, “but they don’t have sufficient credentials and are not up to the mark as teachers.”

Seasoned professors of old IITs are reluctant to join the new ones. Not only do they stand to lose some benefits of their old contracts, they may also find their research work disrupted as they leave their well established labs and students behind. Some do not fancy administrative roles, which they may be saddled with.

Moreover, as a professor at IIT Ropar says, the administrations of new IITs prefer younger professors who are that much less likely to challenge their authority.

India’s system of academic appointments is also rather too rigid. Institutions in China and the US, for example, allow faculty members to take up foreign assignments while retaining their academic positions at home. Indian institutes do not allow it. And the IIT Act does not let non-citizens hold permanent faculty positions. Also, IIT professors are paid salaries that are too low to attract talent from across the world.

“The faculty problem is also a testimony to the failed post-graduate education system of the IITs. There is a direct correlation between the two,” says Dr Dhande.

“The public and media are obsessed with the BTech programme, which has been a failure of IITs as much as a success. The newer IITs must therefore focus more on strengthening post-graduate education.”

Dr Rao is pessimistic about this. “No, I don’t think we will have a solution to the faculty problem in the near future. Very few people work hard in India, the IITs included. Somehow there is no motivation. It’s the Indian story.”

Has Brand IIT Been Tarnished?

Professors and students of the new IITs don’t share Dr Rao’s pessimism. “Brand IIT does not get diluted easily,” says Dr Surendra Prasad, former director of 24 open

paroma mukherjee

IIT Delhi. The students and faculty at the new IITs share a sense of pride in what they see as a collective effort to earn their institutes a reputation.

“It is not fair to judge brand IIT so soon and compare it with the Stanfords or Harvards of the world that have been around for hundreds of years,” says Dr Dhande, “But yes, the new IITs should be aiming to break away and experiment with different strategies and not just copy the older IITs and do the same things, as they are presently doing.”

Some innovation can indeed be seen in these institutes. The IITs at Gandhinagar, Mandi and Indore, for instance, are laying emphasis on interdisciplinary research and teaching. Their school system, which aims to blur boundaries between departments and give students greater freedom to plan their education, has some advantages over the rigidities of the older IITs. Those at Gandhinagar

and Mandi are keen on academic diversity and the humanities, with courses on journalism, music, arts, theatre and the like.

Even the placement statistics at most of these institutes are not too disappointing, given how new they are. On average, graduates looking for jobs secure pay packets of Rs 8-9 lakh per annum.

Drawing recruiters to campus is not as easy as it is for older IITs, but once their graduates prove their worth as professionals, this problem could vanish. In any case, the new IITs hardly have 120 odd students to place every year, as opposed to 1,000 or so in older IITs. “This is a unique opportunity to shake things up because the older IITs have become too big and hierarchical over time,” says Dr Dhande. “What has been happening in the new IITs over the past four-five years is unfortunate, but still, all is not lost.” n 16 September 2013

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PA S S I N G T HROU G H

The Illusionist

ashish sharma

An evening with an alleged ‘mind-reader’ Manu Joseph

L

ior Suchard is a jovial young man

from Israel who appears to repress a great desire to burst out laughing.

He says he can bend spoons and move objects with his mind—he can probably think too, but he draws attention only to his seemingly paranormal acts. Over the years he has acquired reasonable fame around the world. Two years ago, at a performance organised by Barbara Streisand, he ignored a direct request by the American secret service not to engage with Bill Clinton in the audience. Suchard asked Clinton to think of a two-digit number and guessed it correctly. (It was ‘61’).

Journalists in several countries, including India, have described 31-year-old Suchard as a ‘mind-reader’ and a master of ‘telekinesis’, which is one of those words that people think has meaning be26 open

cause it ends with ‘sis’. He was in Gurgaon in August, and as is the practice these days with such men, he got to hold a corporate workshop on how to improve the mind. There were about 50 charmed business executives in the room, whose companies had paid Rs 16,000 per mind. Most of the executives were from Nokia. It was one of those things Apple would never have done.

Suchard gave a lecture about the mind, then walked among his audience and picked a young woman and a middleaged man. He took them to the stage. He asked for the woman’s watch and gave it to the man. Then he asked her to think of “the time, any time; it need not be just 1 o’ clock, it can be 1.10, 1.20.” He asked her to write down the time on a piece of paper.

He then asked the man to shut his eyes

and keep turning the crown of the watch, winding the needles. Suchard asked the woman to tear the paper on which she had written the time and throw the pieces away, and asked the man, whose eyes were still shut, to stop winding the watch. Then Suchard wrote something on a white sheet, and walked down the hall so the woman could not see what he had written. He showed the sheet to the audience. It said ‘3.45’. He asked the woman what time she had thought of. She said, “3.45”. And the man, whose eyes were now open, looked at the watch he had been winding. The time on the watch was 3.45. “And what is the time now?”

Suchard asked everyone. It was 3.45.

The assembly was stunned. In another time, in another place, Suchard could have become god.

16 September 2013

mind games Lior Suchard has been called a master of telekinesis. He says he does not heal diseases

When the workshop ended people milled about the young woman and she appeared to agree that what they had just witnessed was “incredible”. But she did not linger too long in any huddle and waited on the sidelines of the small hall with two female acquaintances. Her watch appeared to be a regular analog watch. I asked her if she too was from Nokia.

“No,” she said, which explained why she did not appear to know many people in the workshop.

“Where do you work?”

“I am not with any company,” she said amiably. “I came on my own.”

“You spent 16,000 rupees yourself to attend the workshop?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What do you do?”

“I am in exports,” she said.

That, in Delhi, means, “Get lost” or “I don’t do much” or “I don’t want to tell you anything about myself.” Or, indeed, “I am in exports.”

Suchard, who lives in Tel Aviv, looked tired and bored when he sat down for the interview. He showed me a page of a sketchbook on which he had just drawn a big circle. “You see this circle?” he said and withdrew the sketchbook to his chest, guarding it from my sight. “Can you tell me a two-digit number?” he said.

“Thirteen,” I said.

He showed me the page; it had ‘13’ written inside the circle. It did appear that he had written the number before I said it.

And it seemed that he had shown me the page an instant after I had said “thirteen”.

But in the recording of the interview the moment was actually much longer.

When I had said “thirteen”, he had said, “Thirteen? You see I did this just for fun…

I wrote here.” He had shown me the page not in an instant, but three seconds after I had revealed the number to him.

Suchard said he had manipulated my mind and influenced me to say thirteen.

What is the most common two-digit number people think of?

“22,” Suchard said without a moment’s doubt.

Are you a magician, Lior?

“I am not a magician. Magicians use tricks. And gimmicks. I use the power of 16 September 2013

the mind.”

He asked a passerby for his spectacles.

He then placed them on the floor and made them roll without touching them.

“I used my mind to move it,” he said.

Many years ago, the magician James Randi, who investigated several claims of psychics, exposed this trick in a television duel with James Hydrick, who claimed he could move objects with his mind. After Hydrick moved a pencil without touching it, Randi did the same to the pencil. Randi said the movement was caused by manipulating “the currents of airconditioning in this studio.”

Should all magicians speak the truth?

Without lies how can they create powerful illusions? If a young man lies about his paranormal powers purely to entertain and earn an income in a world filled with people who are ready to believe him, is he a fraud? “I don’t heal diseases,” Suchard said, as if that was where he drew the line. But he does sell a pendulum that he claims will make people use their own minds to feel better.

Do you like people?

“I love people.”

What is the most important thing you know about people?

“They want to believe.”

What is your favourite trick?

He did not fall for that one. “I don’t do tricks. I call them experiments.”

What is your favourite experiment?

“Choosing a random person in the audience and guessing her first love.”

Suchard’s stage manager is his wife, Tal Schachter, who, like all wives, is not in awe of her husband. He was performing later in the evening and she appeared to be busy—barking orders into a mobile phone, supervising the packing of objects and walking hastily up and down the hallway. But when I stopped her for a chat on one of her hurried sorties she turned pleasant and her movements slowed down. She told me ‘Tal’ in Hebrew means, ‘morning rain’. She is a ‘fashion PR’ professional back in Tel Aviv, but travels with Suchard for his shows. She met him when she was working as a waitress in Tel Aviv, in a café called Toot, “which means strawberry” (it can also mean any berry). Suchard was a frequent customer. “He guessed my phone number, and started calling me.”

Life with Suchard, she said, “is not a

natural life, obviously. I have met Barbara Streisand, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton...” In England, she met Uri Geller, the first among spoon-benders and a man who is revered by those who believe in the paranormal powers of the mind even though he was famously exposed on several occasions, including on The Tonight Show when James Randi and others confronted him with cutlery brought by them. Geller could not move or bend the objects. But his reputation is not diminished among those who are sceptical of rationality.

“It was wonderful to see great minds together,” Tal Schachter said about the meeting of Suchard and Geller.

“Sometimes they didn’t even have to talk.”

It is in the natural order of things that married couples are accomplices. And Suchard, more than other men, regular men, has excellent reasons never to antagonise his wife. She knows too much.

That evening, at the Kingdom of Dreams in Gurgaon, which holds an auditorium that can seat more than 800 people, Suchard performed to an almost full house. Official ticket prices ranged from Rs 900 to Rs 5,000. He called a girl from the audience to the stage and appeared to guess her mind correctly. He did many variations of this trick, and in every case the person called to the stage had to write down the number on a piece of paper for Suchard to ‘mind-read’. He called a couple to the stage, asked the woman to shut her eyes, and every time he touched the man—on the face or hand—the woman thought Suchard was touching her. He made the woman hold a pendulum that he said he had designed himself and convinced her and the audience that it was obeying the commands of her mind.

When the show ended, people shuffled out, most of them whispering their amazement. At the exit there was a stall that sold Suchard’s book on ‘mind-reading’ and the pendulum, for Rs 1,000 each.

A crowd grew around the stall. People flipped through the pages, held the pendulum with their eyes shut. Then they began to buy.

Tal Schachter stood in the shadows and watched with a smile on her face.

In this world, she and Lior Suchard deserve everything they get, especially the money. n open www.openthemagazine.com 27

assisting reason Magician Binder Dhanaula, who works with rationalists in Barnala to expose commonly used tricks

photos ashish sharma

momentum

Evangelists of Logic The killing of Dr Narendra Dabholkar does not deter Indians fighting for the supremacy of reason. Here is why Lhendup G Bhutia

I

n September 2009, the famous ratio-

nalist Basava Premananda of Kerala fell severely ill. He had stomach cancer and many of his major organs were close to collapse. He was admitted to a hospital in Coimbatore where he would eventually die a few weeks later. During this period, a rumour began to circulate that the fearless atheist Premananda, who had survived innumerable assassination attempts, exposed and challenged many godmen and even taken Satya Sai Baba to court, had turned to God in his last days. When Premananda’s long-time confidant and protégé Narendra Nayak visited him, the 80-year-old was drowsy and unresponsive. But when Nayak informed him of the rumour, he opened his eyes to ask, “Who says that?”

On Nayak’s suggestion, Premananda issued a declaration that he was still a rationalist and believed that his death would leave nothing other than his 16 September 2013

body—which was to be donated to a medical college—with no soul or spirit to trouble anyone. Recalling the rumour campaign now, Nayak says, “This is just one of the many ways [in which religious fanatics] have been trying to break our spirit. All of them unsuccessful.”

On 20 August this year, that spirit was thought to have suffered a blow when Dr Narendra Dabholkar, a well-known rationalist and friend of Nayak, was gunned down while out on a walk in Pune, Maharashtra. A tireless campaigner against superstition, Dabholkar was an overarching figure in India’s rationalist movement. He had transformed the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS)—a group founded by him in 1989 to fight superstition—from a handful of individuals to a mass movement that boasts over 2,000 volunteers across 200 branches in Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.

The assassination was a shock. But it has taken just a few days for the gloom to be replaced by a redoubled dedication to Dabholkar’s cause. One of the late leader’s closest associates, Deepak Girme, a rationalist based in Pune, is busy readying a couple of science vans for a roadshow. “We’ll soon affix two inflatable domes for the projection of visuals,” he says, “Imagine… won’t children love it?”

Girme and Dabholkar had set these Vidya Bodh Vahinis rolling in 2003, each van stacked with books, posters and DVDs on science and environmental issues, aimed at reaching school children in rural Maharashtra. The mobile project was so popular that the vans’ itinerary would be chalked out a year in advance.

Three years ago, sadly, both vehicles broke down. The two rationalists had planned to have them up and running— refurbished with projectors and domes—later this year.

“It would have been easy to feel helpless after his murder,” says Girme, “However, [Dabholkar] wouldn’t have wanted us to get dissuaded by what happened. He would have wanted us to carry on.”

N

o matter what appearances suggest, the rationalist movement in India is actually expanding, with groups emerging not just in Kerala

16 September 2013

and Maharashtra, which have long had such campaigns, but also in various other states. The Tarksheel Society, a group with its origin in Punjab, now has branches in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary in Canada, which the group claims came up to challenge the superstitious practices of many Sikhs in those cities.

At the core of the rationalist ideal is the primacy of science and logic. The argument is that in order to lead a content life, one needs no religious or spiritual guidance derived from the unproven assertions of fellow humans, fallible as they are, much less the diktats of godmen and gurus. The power of reason and a scientific temperament are enough.

Rationalists are thus atheists, but they do not push people to abandon religion altogether, focusing their efforts on attacking superstitions instead. According to them, Indians have for far too long

Rationalism in India is not entirely an idea adopted from the West, as is often believed. India has always had strands of rationalist thought been held under the sway of mystics claiming divine powers. “We need to disenchant people,” Girme says, “We need to show that everything in the world can be explained by logic and science without any reference to supernatural entities. This is our mission.”

Rationalism in India is not entirely an idea adopted from the West, as is often believed. India has always had strands of rationalist thought. The ancient Lokayata school of philosophy, with Charvaka as its exponent, was based on principles of atheism (or agnosticism in some interpretations). Many latterday reformers like Kabir, Tukaram and Raja Rammohun Roy questioned religious superstition.

According to the book Disenchanting India: Organised Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India, written by Canadian researcher Johannes Quack, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Mahatma Phule and Periyar EV Ramasamy were among

India’s torchbearers of rationalist thought in the latter half of the 19th century. However, according to the book, rationalism in its strictest sense appeared during the colonial period once Indians educated in English were acquainted with the ideas of Western philosophers like Bertrand Russell, Robert G Ingersoll and Charles Bradlaugh.

In 1930, Bombay saw the formation of the Rationalists Association of India, the country’s first such group. It’s members were a few of the educated elite, and its activities were mostly restricted to writings and public debates. It was Keralaborn Abraham Thomas Kovoor, and later Premananda, who embarked on a mass movement.

A

t a conference in Bangalore three years ago, a former professor of biochemistry performed a set of unusual feats. Televised by News 24, he dipped his hand in boiling oil, pierced his tongue with a metallic trishul, and consumed a burning ball of fire. Many in the audience flinched, but the bespectacled professor, Narendra Nayak, smiled as he subjected himself to such ghastly acts of self-mortification. He later revealed the tricks behind them all: his hand was pre-soaked in oil as insulation against being scathed, the trishul was bent to conjure an illusion of its piercing the tongue, and his tongue was too wet for burning camphor to harm it. After the applause, he explained that these were all common tricks used by godmen to dupe people.

It was from his mentor Premananda that Nayak learnt how best to expose fraudulent claims of superhuman power. This routine, of showing the tricks up for what they are, was first conceived by Kovoor. Back then, a magician named Swaminathan would perform the tricks and Kovoor would hold the discussion.

However, after threats by religious fanatics kept Swaminathan away, Kovoor learnt and started performing them himself. Premananda followed the same routine. Today, it is standard operating procedure for almost all rationalist associations in India. Kovoor also came up with an open challenge, promising Rs 1 lakh to anyone who could perform a supernatural act for him. Rationalist groups continue to put out such offers. open www.openthemagazine.com 29

Kovoor and Premananda were both especially inclined to expose Satya Sai Baba’s claims. Like Sai Baba, Kovoor too could seemingly materialise vibuthi (holy ash) from thin air. He would frequently write to Sai Baba challenging him to a contest. After Kovoor’s death, it was Premananda who would trouble Sai Baba, once filing a snarky lawsuit against him for violating India’s Gold Control Act by creating gold ‘from air’. Later, he published a book—Murders in Sai Baba’s Bedroom—about the killing of six inmates of Sai Baba’s ashram in 1993.

In Kolkata, another rationalist, Prabir Ghosh, sought to explain Mother Teresa’s supposed miracle of curing a woman named Monica Besra of an ovarian tumour. On hearing of this ‘miracle’, Ghosh, who heads the Science and Rationalists’ Association of India, tracked down the woman and her husband, and learnt from them that Besra had also undergone medical treatment for her tumour. “Mother Teresa perhaps deserves sainthood for her work,” he says, “But what is objectionable is the concept of miracles. In this case, it is certain that she was cured by medicine, not miracle.”

Those were high-profile cases. Ridding India of superstition, however, requires rationalists to reach far into the hinterland where there is no media scrutiny of occult observances. Perhaps the most active in rural India is MANS, which has volunteers touring not just towns and cities but also villages to investigate and expose obscurantist beliefs and babas who claim special status.

Three months ago, MANS volunteers in Vidarbha learnt of a 10-year-old girl who was sacrificed by ten villagers, including her grandmother and the village sarpanch. “Seven months ago, the grandmother had dreamt of a devi demanding blood. So they plotted to kidnap and kill the child to offer this devi,” Girme says.

Two electricians tripped the power supply of the village for a period long enough for the child to be kidnapped. She was taken to a forest for a macabre ritual in which the child’s throat was slit and all ten participants drank her blood. The parents, unaware of the horror, filed a missing person’s complaint.

Three months ago, the child’s body was discovered in the forest. It was while in30 open

terrogating the electricians that the police stumbled upon the motive. “When something like this happens you realise how important it is to educate people,” says Girme, “You realise how incomplete your work is.”

T

hat Indian rationalists live in

danger is not in doubt. Dr Dabholkar’s death was so dramatic that it hit headlines across India, but others have been under pressure too. Ghosh says that two gunmen once tried to confront him on a train but fled after they saw he had policemen accompanying him.

Sanal Edamaruku, a Delhi-based rationalist, was recently forced to flee the country in fear of arrest and seek refuge in Finland. He had shown that water dripping off a statue of Christ in Mumbai was not the result of a miracle but bad plumbing, and a case under Section 295A

MANS volunteers learnt of a 10-year-old girl who was sacrificed by 10 villagers, including her grandmother, who had dreamt of a devi demanding blood (India’s so-called ‘blasphemy law’) was filed against him by various Catholic groups. Cases under the same law were also filed against three rationalists in Barnala, Punjab, for publishing Kovoor’s book Begone Godmen. The three were put behind bars for two weeks before being granted bail.

Nayak, who has been assaulted on several occasions, says that his scooter’s brakes cable was found to have been cut on two occasions. In 1995, after reports of Ganesh idols ‘drinking’ milk surfaced across India, Nayak was explaining the science of the phenomenon to a gathering outside his home in Mangalore when a group of men began pelting him with stones. Now he does not address a crowd without the safety of his own supporters around.

The attacks and threats, however, have failed to cow India’s rationalists. The movement has been gaining adherents in various parts of India. In Punjab, the

Tarksheel Society came up in 1984 after Kovoor’s Begone Godmen was translated into Punjabi.

According to Hemraj Steno, a Tarksheel member from Barnala, the movement gained instant popularity because of the socio-political strife in the state in the 1980s: “Everyone was under great stress then. The Khalistan movement was in full swing, and so was State repression to quash it. Tarksheel members would go from house to house and listen to people’s woes. They were like amateur shrinks. Their message of not believing in the supernatural but going by scientific reasoning became very popular.”

In fostering a scientific temperament, the group focuses on the irrationality of gender discrimination. It holds an annual fair, Tarksheel Mela, to propagate its reformist views through skits, plays and other cultural media, and also leads a Tarksheel Kafla (caravan) of two-wheelers, jeeps and tractor-trolleys with mikes and loudspeakers to ferry the message around rural Punjab. Apart from that, the group publishes books and magazines on rationalist thought. In 2010 and then last year, it put together a multiple-episode TV show on the busting of myths that was telecast by several Punjabi channels.

Harinder Lally, a 48-year old advocate and Tarksheel member based in Sunam, speaks of various supernatural cases the group has solved. Once, a report emerged from a village close to Manimajra that every few days cattle would be found dead; the villagers believed that they had offended some god.

“But what we learnt, after following up on the case, was that a woman—along with a leather-worker—was poisoning the cattle so that they could make money off the hides,” says Lally.

A few years ago, Lally was part of a team that investigated claims of a rebirth in a village close to Chandigarh.

According to the news, a 12-year-old boy had started recalling episodes of his ‘previous life’. He was apparently able to identify the house and family he had last been born to. The team asked the child a number of questions and when it verified his answers with the family of his supposed earlier incarnation, he was found to be lying. The child later admitted that his parents had coaxed him into putting up a show.

16 September 2013

vivek muthuramalingam

ghostbusters A workshop on rational thinking by the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations in Mangalore; rationalist Hemraj Steno (right) in Barnala

M

ugdha Karnik, a rationalist who heads the University of Mumbai’s Extra-Mural Studies Department, says that it remains an elitist movement to an extent, and that’s a drawback. Only a few rationalists become activists. “That’s why Dabholkar was different. He believed in reaching out to others,” she says.

“In comparison, various religious fundamentalist groups and godmen are gaining influence. Only a rationalist movement can keep them in check.”

Nayar is keen that the movement sheds its personality-centric character and fans out beyond the limitations of that. “Before me, it was Premananda. And before him, Kovoor. We need more leaders in the movement if we are to carry on and not just rely on one individual,” he says. “We use magic tricks to attract people to our talks. But sometimes, there is a nagging doubt: do people see us simply

16 September 2013

as a bunch of street performers who expose miracles and nothing else?”

According to Nayar, non-believers are taken much too lightly by India’s system of governance. He points out that in Karnataka courts, witnesses have to take an oath saying, “I swear in the name of God that what I say is the truth and nothing but the truth.” This, he says, is the Judiciary’s idea of a secular oath. On his

website, he relates how he got married to his wife in 1980 under the country’s Special Marriages Act. At the marriage registrar’s office, he was asked to swear that he was taking the woman as his wife in the name of God. ‘I refused to take the oath of marriage in the name of a nonexistent god,’ he writes. The registrar looked upset. “Okay,” he said irritably, “omit the god.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 31

a lt e r n at i v e

My Vote for Pluralism There are multiple ways of being human, being religious among them, that rationalists fail to appreciate Garga Chatterjee

O

Amit Bhargava/Corbis

n one issue, there is no doubt.

If there was a murder most foul, it was Narendra Dabholkar’s.

The slain leader of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti was, by any measure, a well-wisher of the people. He was a strong supporter of inter-

caste and inter-religious marriages. For decades, he had been fighting an unwavering war against ‘black magic’ practitioners and had ruined the business for quite a few. Threats to his life were ever-present. It is thought that the recent airing of his views endorsing inter-caste marriages finally did him in.

A doctor by training, Narendra Dabholkar cut his teeth in rural social service with another doctor-turned-activist Baba Adhav during the Ek Gaav, Ek Panavtha (One village, one pond) movement. What set Dabholkar apart from many atheist-rationalists is how deeply he involved society—not preaching from above, but militantly conversing with people at large. He earned his legitimacy by living an exemplary life. The widespread shock and anger on his murder points to that. Urban rationalist talking heads might learn a thing or two from his life before complaining for the

That some rationalists boycott all social occasions that observe religious rites, such as marriages and funerals, does not aid their social immersion

writing on the wall Non-textual faith elements (some of which may qualify in rationalist-speak as ‘superstition’) also contribute to the multiple ways of being human

umpteenth time about how ignorant most people are. During his lifetime, he was painted with partial success as someone who was anti-religion. That view also has serious currency. It is important to examine why.

Dabholkar led a movement against the deleterious environmental effects of divine idols. Water pollution was the holy cow that was used to elicit a court order banning certain kinds of idol-making substances in Maharashtra. Is that being anti-religion or anti a particular religion?

Who knows? But placed in the context of a world where people see the large-scale polluting and choking of rivers, lakes and other waterbodies by industrial effluents going unpunished, this particular focus on water pollution caused by idols does carry a charge that attracts attention. What conclusion should idolworshippers draw who see plaster-ofparis idols banned and other kinds of water pollution left unchecked?

Believers are not stupid.

It is not a coincidence that nearly all self-styled rationalists or ‘magic’ busters of the Subcontinent are also staunch atheists. A stupendous majority of its people are not. However, in preaching rationalism, preachers usually either downplay their atheism or conceal it.

They say they are not against religion but superstition. Believers can identify such patronising doublespeak. They are naturally left unimpressed by those who claim to be sympathetic do-gooders but actually give two hoots for people’s beliefs and viewpoints.

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he grand failure of such atheist/ rationalist projects, in spite of having the full weight of India’s Constitution behind them, also has to do with the patently alien idioms of communication and propaganda they use. That rationalist propagandists themselves are often alienated from the currents of their own society does not help matters.

When a minuscule minority aims to scare, browbeat and threaten people of faith by trying to get legislation passed that criminalises a set of practices they voluntarily submit to, what we have is the naked use of privileged access.

This privilege follows the usual path of undemocratic access in India: urban backgrounds, English education, Delhi connections, friends in the media and so on. Every time such legislation is passed, it undercuts democracy—for, in spirit, those who enact it seek to act as a council of wise elders running roughshod over the beliefs and opinions of people at large.

It may befit sociopaths to assume that the masses are either imbeciles or juveniles, or easily manipulated in their darkness. It is hardly the ideal characteristic of a democratic society where every individual is a moral agent with as much intelligence and responsibility as the next.

In the absence of empathy and respect for differences—the basis of a harmonious society—we have an elitocracy.

When urban rationalists shamelessly clap for ‘anti-superstition’ bills that few people would okay in a referendum, they often let slip their mask of false empathy and democratic pretense. They can afford to do this as throwing stones at glass open www.openthemagazine.com 33

houses faraway has always been a nonrisky affair. Some excel at this. It is in the context of this snooty way of looking down at and talking down to the unwashed masses that Ashis Nandy, the shaman of our times, had said, “There are superstitions and there are superstitions about superstitions.” Others choose to work among the people and live—and some, like Dabholkar, unfortunately die—with the consequences of their actions. It is this latter group of rationalists who have won some popular legitimacy.

In some ways, the work of rationalists should have become easier with the rise of textual religion in many parts of the world, including the Subcontinent. The level of canon literacy that exists now among believers is truly unprecedented.

But adherence to text also pins down belief, making it vulnerable to the kind of tactics that rationalists use to expose ‘magical’ practices.

Ostensibly, contradictions between a certain belief and empirical reality can be shown up more easily now that scriptures and canons have assumed an immutable form. For example, followers of scriptures that claim a flat earth, or that the sun revolves around the earth, are ripe for engagement as part of a rationalist campaign against ‘blind-faith’.

Rationalists have failed to do even that.

However, rationalists do not win friends by reminding believers that the development of a ‘scientific temper’ is one of the ‘fundamental duties’ of a citizen according to the Constitution. Nor does this attitude help develop meaningful ways of engaging society for their cause.

This failing is compounded by popular notions that such ‘juktibadi’ (rationalist) types even look and act in a certain way.

That they are no different from other posturing social types like the faux-Westernised, body-art loving ‘rebellious’ yuppies of the post-liberalisation era, or the bearded jhola-chappal-jeans attired Communists of the same era. That some rationalists boycott all social occasions that observe religious rites—such as marriages and funerals—does not aid their social immersion.

Lived religion, like any other aspect of human life, is not insulated from a changing world. Religion is not what it used to be, and that is how it has always been. Religion has also taken up charac34 open

teristics and props of this age of mass production of material goods, easy transport, mass media and increasing literacy in a few dominant languages.

The peculiarities of this age put their stamp on religion to create bizarre products that are as much characteristics of the age as they are of the religion that consents to such corruption. In a way, that is how religion has always ‘survived’ in any meaningful sense of the word.

However, to use the specific peculiarities of an age to paint religiosity or practices in general as a timeless evil is neither honest nor tactically smart.

Constitutions and new ‘values’ that disappear almost as soon as they develop cannot and should not speak down to faith. This point becomes especially poignant if one quotes Karl Marx out of context: ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed

The peculiarities of an age put their stamp on religion to create bizarre products that are as much characteristics of the age as they are of the religion creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.’

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et me make a final point. What it is to

be human is a question that is hard to answer, but a significant portion of the world population (including this author) believes that there are multiple ways of being human. Faith elements that are non-textual, that are handed down in communities, that mark their presence in myriad practices (some of which may qualify in rationalist-speak as ‘superstition’) also contribute to the multiple ways of being human. These ways come with just as many worldviews, theories and practices: to what extent are they separable from one’s special sense of self and identity?

Religions, gods, goddesses and other beings, insofar as they are responsive to the changing world and living communities with which they are in constant interaction, also change. Being a certain kind of Bengali, I grew up in the thick of

brotos (practices to receive divine blessings) and many other traditions from which my particular kind of ‘Bengaliness’ is indistinguishable. The gods and goddesses of my Bengaliness, Ma Durga, Ma Monosha (often vulgarised offhand as a ‘snake goddess’), Dhormo Thakur, and other divinities who inhabit its fringes like Ma Shitola and Bono Durga, and the practices and ‘superstitions’ associated with my accident-ofbirth particulars constitute me as a person in no small way. This Bengaliness is not a static thing—static not even in a lifetime.

Faiths and gods continue to communicate with and adapt to the changing world their adherents inhabit. When some gods cannot adapt, they die too. An earlier time would have produced a different notion of selfhood in me.

Without this scaffolding, what kind of human would I be? Some may have no need of such things, but what about the rest of us? What does the absence of a particular scaffolding look like anyway?

Why do those who ask us to leave such things appear so much more similar to one another? What about those who have a stake in the intrinsic plurality of the human condition and think it is worthy of preservation—where would they stand if such homogeneity were the cost of an atheist-rationalist worldview?

In post-colonial societies, the anti-traditionalist worldview can be received wisdom as much as any other tradition.

Such a formulation might hurt the bloated egos of those who think that university departments and wistfully imported and badly digested bits of European postenlightenment thought elevates them vis-à-vis their fellow people, seen as haplessly ignorant. Make no mistake; the hapless also have a theory about those who hold them in contempt.

Till ‘rationalism’ finds a way of preserving and strengthening the plural ways of being human that societies believe they have produced in cahoots with their gods among other things, it does not have my vote. An imported version of the universal brotherhood of man—something that some curious residents of the tropics always take to with more zeal than the West itself ever did—is a cheap replacement for the loss of a million gods and a billion ‘superstitions’. n 16 September 2013

b a r e fac t s

My Nude Vacation From beaches to saunas, it was a revelation of Europe’s culture of nudism text and sketches by Mihir Srivastava

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his was my first excursion outside the Indian Subcontinent. It was a month-long trip to visit friends in Europe who had been my flatmates in Delhi. I also happened to be writing my book Conversations in the Nude, about my nude-sketching sessions. This trip was a private one, but not devoid of business.

It would herald another project, which, for want of a better name, I shall call ‘The Travelogue of a Nude Artist’.

My companions in this tryst with nudity were two level-headed men: Jan Peters for three weeks in Germany and France, 36 open

and Paavo Yliluoma for a week in Finland.

Some people are more comfortable with their nudity than others. My experience of sketching nudes tells me that a person’s ability to strip in public has little to do with the state of his or her body—colour, shape or age—but more with the individual’s state of mind and considerations of body image.

But when you enter a public space that sanctions nudity or where nudity is a norm—a ‘dress code’ if you will—then personal whims are overwhelmed by the prevailing social construct. Nudity in

such a set-up is sacrosanct. There was no way I could have been in such a place other than in the nude. For instance, in Finnish saunas, it is rude to wrap a towel or any other cloth around your waist.

And to me, nudity is more acceptable than rudeness. I didn’t want to be a potato in a basket of apples.

J

an did not tell me that we were head-

ed for a nude beach. He spilled the beans a little early, though, by saying “There is a surprise for you.” We were 16 September 2013

on the Western shore of the Darß peninsula on the northern tip of Germany, overlooking the Baltic Sea, and we reached the beach after a long walk through a forest.

The sun was harsh, almost tropical, and the beach was clean, with warm smooth sand. At first, we saw only a few naked people.

Scattered here and there, they were exceptions. As we walked further, the exception became the norm. There were people walking without clothes. Some passed us, some we followed. There were others lying flat with their buttocks shining in the bright sun.

Their bodies seemed relaxed, as if the sun’s rays were therapeutic.

We looked for a place where we could camp for the next few hours. The beach was like a nudist colony. Some had put up tents, others were helping kids build castles of sand, and a few just stared at the sea with their partners engrossed in books. We spotted a little natural enclave to make ourselves at home. It was a fallen tree with a hedge of dried thorny bushes around—a good place to shed our clothes. I struggled to get out of my last piece. My friend was already lying on the sand, stark bare. It gave me the necessary courage to shed my clothes. Once I was done, it suddenly didn’t seem to matter anymore.

I stretched my limbs, as if just awakened from a long slumber, lay down and wriggled on the sand like buffalo rubs its neck on a tree trunk. It felt good. I was glad. It felt like a kind of self-assertion made to a notional world.

The cool humid breeze from the sea in the warm sun of the afternoon was soothing. The soft sand took my shape. It was so comfortable that my eyelids grew heavy, tempting my eyes to close. In this daze, I thought of inventing a sandmattress—like a water or air mattress.

Jan had turned immobile quite a while earlier.

To witness nudity in the nude, I went for a walk. There were nude people strolling pensively along. Women lay like seals on the beach to get uniform tans. I was conscious of my state, though not 16 September 2013

overly so. I was perhaps the only nonWhite person on the entire beach. People would lift their heads and give me a puzzled look before burying themselves in the sand again. After the walk, I stood facing the sea, hands on hips, elated, as wind gushed through my legs.

I had spent considerable time staring at others around me, even as they visibly tried to ignore my exotic presence.

I saw a trend. The older they were— men and women—the less conscious they seemed of their nudity and that much more relaxed. Without much to flaunt, and with a diminished sexual interest in others, the older lot seemed indifferent to the nudity of those around them. Those with overt sex appeal, I felt, appeared guarded. So, to put it simply,

the elderly people were almost all naked. Among the middle-aged, there were several exceptions.

And among the younger lot, there were many in beachwear.

Entire families were nude. In some cases, there were three generations, with parents and their parents helping children build sand castles. Mostly, it was the children who had coverings for what we Indians often call ‘private parts.’

“What is so private about private parts?” joked an elderly woman who stopped to ask—in Turkish—if I was Turkish. I replied in English that I didn’t know German. She said that privacy is not about keeping body parts out of view, but about space.

Jan went swimming twice after his extended sunbath. I followed him. Swimming naked felt novel, fish-like and liberating, with water passing freely through all the nooks and crannies of the body.

I was told people come and camp the entire day here, but staying overnight is not allowed. They take a dip in the sea, eat, sleep, go for another swim, and so on. They tend to stay with their own set of friends. There was hardly anyone who had come alone. There were no gawkers, though everybody was one in some measure. And when we left the beach with our clothes on, it felt burdensome.

“We should have walked back naked,” I suggested.

Jan didn’t bother to reply.

I

had followed the golden rule: when

in Germany, do as Germans do. In my nudism, I had adopted a practice that originated in Germany at the end of the 19th century. “So what’s the big deal?” asked Jan in response to my suggestion that nudity is a family affair here. He had been visiting this beach since he was six years old. “I have seen my mother naked so many times,” he said. She would go swimming everyday in the summers at a small lake, Woldsee, adjoining the city of Oldenburg where Jan grew up.

We went there as well. open www.openthemagazine.com 37

There were grassy patches along the lakeshore, where the naked lay soaking the sun. Compared to the beach we’d visited, it was crowded.

Some were sitting up and looking around, me among them. Older couples walked along the shore, while younger folk ran to the lake to dive in with a big splash. Others, mostly over-fifties, sat huddled in a circle, chatting. Ageing women cared little for their appearance, quite at peace with their wrinkles and sagging skin. “I like to feel atmosphere on my surface,” one lady told me in English.

Nude beaches and waterfronts in Germany usually have signs that say ‘FKK’, which stands for Freikoerperkultur or ‘free body culture’. Visitors are expected to be considerate and respect the privacy of others. People must not stare or take photographs without permission. Sexual activity is a strict no-no. In fact, it is illegal. And nudists are advised not to forget to dress before leaving such an area. There are nude enclaves within public parks like the famous Englische Garten in Munich, where sunbathers are seen on a large lawn called Schoenfeldwiese. In Berlin, the Tiergarten serves the same purpose.

In the days after that, we took a road trip to France. As we travelled south, we saw less and less nudity. In some places, it was almost taboo. On the Island of Noirmoutier off the Atlantic coast of France, there is a long beach where hundreds turn up to enjoy the sun, surf and winds. The waves are rough and thrilling for sea surfers. Nudity here was out of the question. It was like an unwritten code.

Finn, a friend who came to visit me in Berlin from Hamburg, is a naturalist in the sense that he loves being with nature in the nude. “I wouldn’t wear anything when I go to swim in [natural water]. It is convenient. That way one doesn’t have to carry a change,” he joked. But in certain places, such as France, he said, “You know almost immediately that this is not a place to do it.”

So there seems to be a north-south divide over public nudity. With its cooler climes, the north is ironically far more open to nudity. Sunrays are precious there and summers celebrated. But that 38 open

doesn’t explain the divide, does it? I asked Jan. The cultural split is true of Germany, he replied, but wasn’t sure if that’s so of Europe overall. After all, Spain in southern Europe has dozens of nude beaches; in July this year, 729 people even tried to set a Guinness record for collective nude bathing on a beach near Vera.

Jan thought it over. “Nudity was the only significant way of self expression available to people during the GDR time,” he said, referring to East Germany before the country’s unification. It was a way to assert freedom and still is.

But while nudity may have become a norm, he acknowledged, it hadn’t lost its ability to arouse sexual tension. It depends on who one is with. The last time he went to the same beach we did, he went with a girl he was interested in.

They didn’t strip.

y first Finnish sauna experience was at Paavo’s house. It was evening when we arrived at his place in Raudaskyla, in western Finland. The sauna was the last item on the day’s agenda, after dinner. It was just another part the family’s way of life, quite clearly. While Paavo’s mother did not come with us, once in the house, it was she who issued

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the invitation to the sauna.

We went to a room segregated from the rest of the house by a blinder. It had an attached bathroom, at the far end of which was a door that led to the sauna chamber. Inside was a wooden bench that could seat three comfortably, without squashing against one another.

Paavo pulled the blinder and started shedding his clothes as he entered the bathroom. His father flung his towel off and followed Paavo to the bathroom. I was supposed to do likewise. I was confused about where to strip, in the room or the bathroom. I entered the bathroom to see Paavo taking shower while his father had entered the sauna chamber. I took my clothes off and tentatively entered the bathroom for a shower. A chilled can of beer was offered as I took the vacant spot on the bench. The beverage helped me tide over my awkwardness. I was soon at ease, a picture of composure as we briefly stepped out into a garden wrapped in towels to cool down.

Within a few minutes, we were back in the sauna with fresh cans of beer. We did this thrice, took a shower again and then got dressed.

In Oulu a couple of days later, we cycled around the city for a good part of the day and much of the night. We returned drunk at 2 am, after which Paavo and a friend of his accompanied me to the sauna. We drank more beer. This time, it seemed routine to me.

That night, I talked about the emotional aspects of intense desire. It was a long monologue with no pause.

“Did I make sense?” I asked at the end.

“You did,” said Paavo.

The next day, we went to a small wooden summer home nestled in a forest near a lake near Raudaskyla. It had a sauna that took an hour to warm up. We were six men on a bench no longer than five feet. The chamber grew so hot that I felt I had high fever.

By sauna custom, if the heat gets unbearable, one rushes out and runs to the lake close by for a plunge of relief. The water in the lake was cold, but I didn’t feel it—the sauna had warmed me to my 16 September 2013

bones. Once it started feeling chilly, we would return to the sauna, and then get back to the lake. We did several cycles of this.

We had fun. Saunas tend to make tightlipped Finns talk. Thank nudity, according to Paavo. They get witty too. Paavo asked me to sing that anthem of friendship from Sholay picturised on Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra: Yeh Dosti.

To Finns, it is a classic video ( h t t p : / /w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m /w a t c h ? v=8UvMUArtaEA) of men in love, and when sung aloud with a local accent, its lyrics sound amazingly like Finnish: Jee, nussittiin Ainakin olen gay/ Olen gay, tämä käy Tero saatana, sä olet gay (literally: ‘Yeeeee, we’re fucking, at least I am gay, I am gay, that’s the way... you’re gay’).

Inappropriate though the occasion was, I sang the song on Paavo’s insistence in the company of five men sitting naked with me on a wooden bench. They burst out laughing.

We dressed up and barbecued thick beef sausages as the sun went down on the horizon. That is when I was brought up to date with some sauna gossip. It would be funny, I was told, to see one of 16 September 2013

our friends naked. Why, I would get to see for myself: he had a small penis. There were anecdotes told of nudity and its hazards. And everyone had a good laugh.

My last sauna experience was in Tampere. A public sauna more than a hundred years old, it was heated by wood charcoal. It was an old building with separate chambers for men and women. It had a long changing room that opened into a room with a big tub of water to wet one’s body with mugs, and then a flight of stairs to a chamber with benches along three of the walls. It could easily accommodate ten men.

So there I was, naked, the only Brown man among White men of assorted sizes and descriptions. They looked like hairless pre-teens; I had more hair on my body than all of them put together.

It was so hot that I nearly scalded my skin. At one point, I felt as if my chest hair would catch fire. Despite the heat, I sat in there three times, always trying to sit few seconds longer than Paavo and his cousin who’d accompanied us. Paavo would pour a bucket of water on the stone slab heated by the furnace. It would draw a burst of steam. I had to get out each time

I felt my blood begin to boil.

Later, while cooling ourselves in the nippy air outside, I imagined how good a sauna would feel in the subzero temperatures of Finland’s dark winters.

But segregation was a problem. None of my sauna experiences involved any women. That is why I don’t agree with Paavo that it’s an asexual space.

He said he’d been to sauna with women only twice after his return from India some four months ago: once at a graduation party of a friend where the guests ended up in a sauna, and then when he went to one with a friend and his wife.

He could count only a few public saunas that do not insist on segregation. I did not get to visit any of them.

y tryst with nudity in Europe was very different from my experience of sketching nudes within the confines of my living room. In my sketching sessions, nudity was my focus of attention.

But here I was naked in a place where nudity evoked only diffused interest. It was the norm. It was a trip that pushed me out of so many shells. n

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vijayanand gupta/hindustan times/getty images

When a Film Star Hosts a Party glitz

Love blooms or disintegrates, chief ministers sit ignored, drunken stars get sentimental and call each other ‘bro’ SHRADHA SUKUMARAN

H

e walked into the party with the

girl, walked out with his heart broken. In Dev Anand’s 2007 autobiography Romancing With Life, the star remembers a private bash in the late 70s he attended with his svelte discovery, Zeenat Aman. The heartthrob had plans for dinner after the two popped in and out of the celebration; he would whisk Zeenat to Mumbai’s Taj Rendezvous and make his grand confession that he was in love with her. It didn’t pan out that way.

‘A drunken Raj Kapoor… threw his arms around her exuberantly. This suddenly struck me as a little too familiar,’ writes Anand in his memoir. ‘And the way she reciprocated his embrace seemed much more than just polite and courteous.’ The Guide actor slunk out of the glittering film party, his heart ‘bleeding’.

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ome things never change. Decades

later, a film party is still the stage where all the drama—all the behindthe-scenes Bollywood action—unfolds.

Just a couple of months ago, erstwhile actor Sanjay Kapoor threw a private party that ended with a new star couple being anointed—his nephew Arjun Kapoor and hot new kid on the block Alia Bhatt.

“The two were inseparable,” says a friend of the hosts, “Stuck together in one corner and cooing nonstop. Even as guests left Sanjay’s home, the news had spread like wildfire. And there was not one journalist present.”

Even wilder rumours are making the rounds now about an A-list actress who had a bash to mark the resounding box office smash of her film. “Her publicists went into overdrive the next day, but the real story is that she was all over her ex, hoping to turn back time even though he’s moved on,” reveals one hotshot director. At times, shenanigans at private film bashes make national news. There’s playing host Shah Rukh Khan greets the media at Mannat on the occasion of Eid-al-Fitr 2013

16 September 2013

the now infamous war of words between Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan at Katrina Kaif’s birthday party, which led to a five-year cold war, or the nasty run-in between Shah Rukh and director Shirish Kunder at Agneepath’s 2012 success celebration.

Stars know they can let their hair and guard down at a true blue movie bash. It’s where you’ll see Farhan Akhtar and Hrithik Roshan having a dance-off, watch Ranbir Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor playfully rib Ranveer Singh, or have a conversation with Aamir and Imran Khan about the lawns of their family bungalow.

The closed-doors, exclusive filmi party is still an enigma to the outside world. It changes colour with its host, makes news

Art connoisseur Kekoo Gandhy once walked into Mannat only to be picked up by the mischievous Shah Rukh Khan and dunked into a tank of coloured water with its guest list (look who came—and who didn’t) and is more often than not held within the sprawling homes of the rich and famous.

On 10 August, Shah Rukh threw an extravagant Eid bash at his ocean-front mansion Mannat to celebrate the juggernaut success of his film Chennai Express and the birth of his third child AbRam in May. “It took us 15 minutes to just drive past the crowd of onlookers and paparazzi at his gate,” says one guest. Shah Rukh and Gauri stood at the marble archway of Mannat’s old bungalow entrance, warmly hugging (he) or air-kissing (she) invitees.

The turnout was both impressive and varied, from Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, to Mukesh Ambani, Sachin Tendulkar and Parmeshwar Godrej; from

close friends Karan Johar, Farah Khan and Kajal Anand, to ex-colleagues like Abbas-Mustan and Ashutosh Gowariker; plus members of the brat pack, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Aditya Roy Kapur. Absentees stood out like sore thumbs, notably Aamir Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and Salman Khan.

From Mannat’s opulent living room, guests spilled into the entertainment area in the massive basement.

Bookended by two living rooms—furnished in rich colours, with sink-in-deep sofas, large paintings and funky knickknacks like an overlong red telephone and juke box—was a heavy dining table and, above it, a chandelier with a twist, lit by rows of faux wax candles instead of sparkling glass. The chatter of hundreds of invitees overpowered the house music playing in the background. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres flowed incessantly. There was no ‘incident’ to speak of, yet in the tradition of a good filmi party, things wound down very late and the last guests left Mannat at dawn.

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ovie premiere nights, private screenings and music launches are often mistaken for film parties, but those are PR events, where hundreds of cameras go berserk. A real filmi bash is one where everyone is personally invited over the phone by the star or his wife, and where Bollywood heavyweights are sequestered from the prying eyes of journalists. Other big shots make it in too and stick out amid filmfolk, at the risk of being ignored. At a landmark birthday party held at a luxury hotel a few years ago, a business tycoon aimlessly hung around alone, while a chief minister twiddled his thumbs in a corner. During an more recent overblown birthday bash, the country’s biggest star burnt up the dance floor with a TV news celebrity.

A film reporter with a national daily says, “A producer’s wife at a Bollywood party held at a nightclub told me that so open www.openthemagazine.com 43

many actresses were sidling up to this young political scion, acting embarrassingly coy. Obviously, they [each] wanted to be the one this hot bachelor took home, but he only politely smiled.”

Sometimes, maybe three handpicked magazine editors or movie critics will be allowed into film parties. They are well aware of the privilege extended to them, of the unwritten Bollywood bash code: if they sneak out their cellphone cameras at the do, or put pen to paper the next day, they’ll be struck off the guest list forever.

Yet, just five minutes after a punch-up, a cat fight, a heated exchange of words, a patch-up, a hook-up, an awkward face-toface with an ex, a walkout, a cop bust, or a drunk-as-a-skunk star making a fool of himself, cellphones do start buzzing.

“I was at Karan Johar’s Four Seasons hotel birthday bash in 2011, and saw Katrina Kaif and Deepika Padukone talking even while Ranbir Kapoor casually stood around,” says the editor of a daily entertainment newspaper supplement.

“I knew the story would be in the tabloids the next day, but I couldn’t be the one breaking it.” It’s often Bollywood insiders themselves who let slip the news.

BlackBerry status pictures and Facebook photos are leaked onto Twitter and make it to the morning papers and evening news entertainment shows.

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he filmi party was traditionally hosted by the first family of Hindi cinema, the Kapoors. “The original showman Raj Kapoor threw the biggest parties,” remembers former Filmfare editor Rauf Ahmed. “He once nicely requested if he could bring his own brand of Scotch to a party I hosted because he was partial to it. All the guests, and mostly actresses, would gravitate to his corner. Actors who had big hits, who had ‘arrived’, always wore transparent shirts and white shoes.”

While BR Chopra and his brother Yash were known for their fun-filled outdoor schedules, with parties every night for the unit and even presswalas, Dilip Kumar had elegant Eid soirees with tables groaning under a lavish spread of kebabs, biryanis and kofta curries.

But nothing matched RK’s Holi bash: guests were dunked into tanks or doused with buckets of coloured water and 44 open

served a steady supply of bhang. The entire industry flocked to RK Studios in Chembur for Holi, and was treated to long music sessions with the showman, even as kathak dancer Sitara Devi did her thumkas. “The stars made the best of hugging each other during the Holi revelry and did naughty things on the side,” chuckles Ahmed.

Even back then, film parties had a reputation—stars would let their fists fly once they were many drinks down. The usual suspects were Raj Kumar, Dharmendra, and brothers Feroz and Sanjay Khan. Says one old-timer: “There was a famous Juhu party where Raj Kumar and Feroz Khan got into a fist fight and I heard that Sanjay pulled off Raj’s toupee. Once Yash Chopra had a party after Kabhi Kabhie at the Taj where this dashing young male star wore a red waistcoat like the waiters and everyone kept ordering him to bring their drinks.

He took off the coat, but the story stuck to him the next day.”

The showman mantle was taken over

by Subhash Ghai, who hosted parties on his wedding anniversary, to launch a new film, or to celebrate a 100-day jubilee, often at his Madh Island farmhouse, which later earned a notorious reputation. RK’s Holi bashes too had their successors, from Amitabh Bachchan to Shah Rukh Khan.

Bachchan’s Holi parties were held at the huge lawn of his Juhu bungalow Pratiksha—unlike his Diwali bash, where guests are entertained in rooms with ornate carved doorways, silverware and photographs adorning entire walls.

“One Holi party at Pratiksha ten years ago was the most fun,” recalls one actress, “There were vodka golas, chaat and a brass band playing a hit song associated with each guest as they entered. At some point, I lost my shoes. I just danced nonstop under this giant tree, my feet in the mud.”

16 September 2013

photos express archives

Shiny happy people Filmi parties are famous forums for cameraderie. Shashi Kapoor (left), Rajendra Kumar (right) and Raj Kapoor (second from right) at a Holi party at RK Studios; (facing page) Amitabh Bachchan with Samajwadi Party politician Amar Singh at one of his own famous Holi parties

Shah Rukh’s Mannat Holi parties are also legendary. Art connoisseur Kekoo Gandhy, who lived in Kekee Manzil at Bandra Bandstand, once revealed that he walked into Mannat only to be picked up by the mischievous host himself and dunked into a makeshift tank of coloured water.

E

ven though these parties have

sumptuous buffet spreads—Salman’s Eid lunch, hosted by his parents Salim and Salma, tops this list—actors mostly pick at their food. Yet hunger does strike, usually by 4 am.

At Deepika Padukone’s party at her elegantly furnished duplex apartment in Prabhadevi, a compelling conversation between Aamir, Ayan Mukerji, Ranbir and Ranveer was punctuated by a round of mini quiches and chocolate bombs from one of Bombay’s top restaurants.

When Salman threw an IIFA awards after-party in a banquet room at his hotel in Amsterdam a few years ago, his bodyguard Shera scoured the streets for chicken rolls for his guests at 3 am. An actress who was part of the group says, “At 5.30 am, the hotel staff wanted us to leave so

16 September 2013

they could clear up, but Salman kept very politely telling them, ‘No, please, please let us stay; I’ll clean up.’ It was a bizarre night.”

The brawny superstar is a generous host, often throwing parties over days at his Panvel farmhouse, where three bungalows are spread over acres of land.

Legend has it that he once gifted

When Salman Khan threw an IIFA afterparty at his hotel in Amsterdam, his bodyguard Shera scoured the streets for chicken rolls for his guests at 3 am Hollywood actor Will Smith an obscenely expensive watch when he invited him over to his simple, marble-floored seafacing apartment in Bandra.

A producer’s wife reveals, “You can gauge how drunk stars are by the number of times they call each other ‘bro’. I’ve heard of Sanjay Dutt and Salman exchanging ridiculously pricey watches— they get really sweet and sentimental.”

Farah Khan’s home parties are chilled out, the entire industry will turn up when Karan Johar is the host, and TV czarina Ekta Kapoor’s Diwali bashes are known to be fun. One regular guest says, “Her parties are dimly-lit and super relaxed. You’ll see directors, producers, stars walk in with briefcases [full of] cash for the card parties. Ekta drags guests to the bar and forces deadly cocktails down their throats. It’s the kind of party where you can see a Karan Johar shake a leg with a Sunny Leone or a top actress get all giggly after a wine binge.”

While booze flows like water at film bashes, you only hear of party drugs being passed around at the most private house parties or hotel rooms. At a recent party thrown by a top director at a nightclub, local cops played spoilsport, shutting down the music. “The A-listers at the party panicked that they could get tested by some over enthusiastic cop,” says a tabloid editor, “so they whipped out their phones and called their contacts. In five minutes, everything was back to normal.”

It may be the era of Twitter and Facebook, but some things that happen at a private film party still manage to stay within the party. n open www.openthemagazine.com 45

between the sheets

Who is Sonali K?

On the occasion of this column’s completion of 52 weeks, answers to some FAQs sonali khan

I

’ve turned one! ‘Between The Sheets’ started off as

a column about what being a sex columnist means— the stereotypes, the lunatics, personal eccentricities and the love-hate relationship we have with sex. Over the year, it got more personal. I’ve heard stuff about myself.

Conjecture about my character, marital status and religious inclinations. Speculation over whether I’m a man, woman or an androgynous collective. The more determined whackos have made multiple attempts to hack into my email, Twitter and Facebook accounts. A couple have succeeded; some have come scarily close. No one told me that conjuring and remembering passwords that are alpha-numerical digital fortresses is a highly valuable skill for a sex columnist. Then there’s been a truckload of advice. Right from failed authors to wannabe filmmakers, CEOs of start-ups to bored infotech professionals, virgins to oversexed men and women—everyone knows how to do my job/live my life better than I do. Perhaps it’s true. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But since it’s my birthday at Open, I’ve decided that formal introductions are in order.

Who am I? I am a woman. No testes, no chest hair

and no whipping out the equipment and peeing in public—like every other self-respecting woman in this country, I scamper around like a headless chicken, perform complex clenching exercises or risk kidney stones. Which brings me to…

I am good. Pretty damn great, actually. On a bad day, sex

is good. On a good day, it’s awesome and on a great day, it’s spectacular. That’s because I love sex and I know exactly what I like and want in bed. I’ll try almost everything once before deciding if it’s not for me. But the best part is, I’m not the only one. I’m not a lucky co-incidence. There are enough and more women out there who are equally good and better. So stop assuming BS about women’s sexuality or the lack of it. There’s plenty of it going around if you have adequate equipment. And by equipment, I mean your brain.

I am one person. Maybe two or

Often, a man assures me that my sexual history is irrelevant before asking: Kitne Aadmi thhe?

I am self-respecting. Every once in a while along comes a man who assures me that my sexual history doesn’t matter to him. Usually, this assurance is delivered before the real question—what’s my magic number? Kitne aadmi thhe? I like staring into space vacantly, rapidly muttering some numbers and finally shaking my head inconclusively. I’d tell you if it were anyone’s business but my own. I believe that to respect yourself, you have to respect the people in your life. Whether they’re acquaintances, friends, one-night stands, lovers or relationships, respect is a must. People are people, not notches on some narcissistic bedpost. If you must brag about a number, let it be about the number of books you’ve taken to bed. Any woman will tell you it’s a bigger turn-on than the number of inches you 46 open

claim to have in your pants. As for the number, of course I know. The number is much smaller than some readers believe and much bigger than some friends think. Go figure.

three at most on crazier days. I’m not society; I’m not its mirror. When I write about sex and relationships, it’s my perception entirely. The glasses are often tinted with my flaws, prejudices, middle-class mentality and a personal sense of right and wrong.

Sometimes I write about random thoughts. Sometimes they’re patterns amongst my friends. Sometimes I’m just mad at the male species. I could pretend I understand sex the way a 36-year-old experiences it, but I don’t. I won’t know for another 10 years. I may not know it even then. There, I said it, now you can stop asking me to come back in 10 years’ time.

I am not Dr Mahinder Watsa. I’m not half as witty

as he is. I don’t know any other man with such a vast repertoire of positively hilarious answers for the question that has plagued virgins since the beginning of time: can kissing cause an unplanned pregnancy? I have experiences, not scientific knowledge. So don’t ask me dumb questions like, ‘You know everything about sex, na?’ I might thwack you on the head. And please, for the love of all things sacred, don’t over-share graphic details. Unless you want to bankroll my therapist. n

Sonali Khan was holding on to her virtue, and then she fell in love...with several men.

She drinks whisky, not Cosmopolitan 16 September 2013

true Life

mindspace

Will it survive? Patna’s first nightclub 48

The Lethal Non-Lethal Weapon

63

O p e n s pa c e

Sushant Singh Rajput Shahid Kapoor Imran Khan

62

n p lu

Satyagraha We’re the Millers

61 Cinema reviews

Sony Xperia Z-Ultra LG Song Star Creative WP-250

60

Tech & style

Tall Tales Frogs that Hear With Their Mouth Poverty Reduces Brainpower

54

Science

MS Sathyu’s A Right to Live Refuting Cliches on Tibet

52

cinema

The Hope Factory

books

Patna’s First Nightclub

48 64

ravi sahani

true life photos ravi sahani

the one and only Will Patna’s first nightclub be able to survive? So wonders Chinki Sinha on a visit to Disc Man

I

could dance here, but I choose to

stay on the side of the floor, where the neon rays criss-cross the surface, performing a dance of their own. Once Patna was a city of day discotheques.

I can remember at least three that opened in the past decade or so, and shut down as quickly.

There is nobody else at this discotheque. It is past 7 pm. Disc Man is a proper disco, the first in the city to remain open at night. No bulbs with colourful cellophane paper wrapped around them, no ugly sound boxes and cheap mixers. There is a huge bar, but

alcohol is not selling yet. In fact, the disco hasn’t even opened officially, but people know of it and come to experience this new space.

Earlier, I had walked down the crowded street, past the the windows of the pizza joint where young college students sat, in search of the nightclub. It had been raining that evening. I jumped over the little puddles of water, circled the building, crouched under its scaffolding, and wondered if this was the right place. Workers sat huddled under the parapet. Water dripped and leaked from many places.

16 september 2013

disco deewane A birthday party at Disc Man, which opened less than a year ago

This looked like an unlikely place for a nightclub. The walls had been spat on many times over. These were juxtaposed with advertisements of coaching centres that tell you how to crack examinations. ‘Put on your dancing shows’—this was the message in an elevator. It was awkward being in that enclosure, going to a discotheque in Patna in the evening.

When I was in college, I had once carried a change of clothes with me; so did some of my other friends. Later, we met at a friend’s place and changed into jeans and tops to go to this place with blinking lights where a DJ I knew, Ali, would be mixing music, headphones clasped onto his ears. It was on top of Candy’s store, a pastry shop that was considered a ‘cool’ location, where young men hung out in the evenings, sipping soft drinks and looking out for their girls as they came out of various coaching centres nearby. In any case, that afternoon, I smiled as the DJ gave me and my friends our first disco experience.

That was perhaps the first day discotheque in the city. More would open later, and eventually shut down. Not that a discotheque in a city grappling with so many other issues mattered, but to the young, it was like a rite of passage. And Ali had taken it upon himself to address this deprivation of sorts. To him, it was absurd that girls and boys couldn’t dance at a club in their own hometown.

His disco wasn’t fancy, just a large hall with disco lights and a DJ console.

It was dimly lit, but the revolving lights would catch you unawares, and it was fun to be there. An affair had started there and the couple eventually got married. But they had danced there that afternoon, and their faces glowed with love in that shifting, revolving light.

But it didn’t last. Ali could not go on.

He sensed trouble, so he packed up and left, and spoke of all the things that he had wanted to fix but couldn’t because 16 september 2013

the city would not let him.

Not that we didn’t try. In 2001, Pandora’s Box opened in Patna, and boasted of colourful lights, and had an entry fee. Women could enter alone, but men needed partners. And the owner, Ayush Sahay, prohibited alcoholic drinks. All this was done to ensure women’s safety. But it didn’t survive either. It was way too chaotic then to run a day discotheque that would re-

That was perhaps the f irst day

discotheque in the city. More would open later, and eventually

shut down.

Not that a discotheque in a city grappling with so many other

issues mattered, but to the young, it was like

a rite of passage.

And Ali had taken it upon himself to address this

deprivation of sorts main open until 6 pm and draw college students. The world was experimenting, getting ahead, and here we were struggling to have a disco up and running in this city. It became our reference point for freedom, for the limits of our liberties.

But that was when the law-and-order situation was plunging in Bihar.

Yet another day disco had opened, but I am told that the rogue politician Sadhu

Yadav, who was accused of the infamous rape and murder of Shilpi Jain and was a terror in the city then, had caused trouble and it had to be shut down. Those were curfewed times. A disco was out of bounds, and repeated failures at opening one suggested how clamped our freedoms were.

N

ow, standing here in front

of the new nightclub, I wondered if it would last. It has been around for a little more than eight months. On 16 December 2012, when Disc Man opened in Patna, a Russian DJ Kathy played trance music. That was perhaps strange in retrospect, but the manager Ashish Singh tells me how the opening night was a grand success.

There is a Rs 500 entry fee for a couple, and the coupons can be redeemed against soft drinks. Disc Man will be getting a liquor licence soon, says the manager. That’s when the crowds will come, in this attempt to free the city of its reputation.

‘Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another,’ says the line on the cover photo of Disc Man’s Facebook page, the image of a girl with eyes shut and headphones on her ears. There are other quotes too: ‘Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain’ by Martha Graham, for one.

In most, there is a strange resonance I find with the city.

Safety is still a concern in Patna. But this building called Shahi Building on Exhibition Road is owned by the state’s education minister and thus is endowed with some sense of security. Ashish, a young man who previously worked at Kapil Dev’s Eleven restaurant in Patna, is in charge of the place.

He says they have hired five bouncers and there’s enough security to handle any unacceptable behaviour.

They have also got DJ Sam from Bombay. He mostly plays Bollywood music because that’s what people want. That evening—it was a Monday—I didn’t see the DJ. But music played. There was a register of entries and accounts and I flipped through them to see who had visited this place. open www.openthemagazine.com 49

a new haunt The disco hasn’t opened officially yet but that hasn’t stopped the flow of customers

On some days, the disco’s sales went up to Rs 7,000, and on a few days the manager had scribbled ‘Nil’ because nobody came. This disco operates in a strange twilight zone. It is open till 11 pm. In Patna, liquor sales are only allowed until 10 pm. The place opens around noon, and most college students show up in the early evening. After NIFT, IIT, and other colleges opened in Patna, there is a revivalist spirit of sorts. The disco is the ultimate expression of it.

Over the next few months, the management will work on the entrance of the disco and ensure that the place is advertised. “You can see girls boozing and smoking. It is not the Patna you grew up in. Times are changing,” Ashish says, and smiles. They are.

They should.

He says the police are kind. A few days ago, some bureaucrats had turned up and wanted to see the disco but he had insisted on no stag entries. They left without much noise.

Disc Man is owned by Kamal Khanuja and his brother. He is one 50 open

of Patna’s oldest hoteliers and owns property around the city. They had been waiting for the right time for this. There’s another nightclub that’s being built in the Pataliputra locality by MLA Anant Singh, who has a dubious reputation of operating a fiefdom in Mokama in interior Bihar.

“But he won’t go there. People will get scared,” Ashish says. “There was this other disco, The Fox’s, and Sadhu Yadav allegedly came and because of something he did, it had to shut down.

In fact, Sadhu Yadav himself had inaugurated it,” he adds.

He says this is officially the first proper disco in the city. He shows me conference rooms and other parts of the discotheque. It is all glitter and shine. In fact, it is almost beautiful.

I

noted down three numbers from

the register. I thought I would ask them how they had felt when they danced in this disco. But two numbers were wrong, and the third was of a student in Delhi. His father said he didn’t

know his son’s number, and couldn’t help. He had no idea what this disco was, or if his son had been there. But one evening, his son had danced to DJ Sam’s music.

T

here’s something strange

about being inside a discotheque with music and no people. It is dark in here. A different kind of dark, not the uncomfortable sort. A chandelier hangs in this round room. The walls change colour, alternating between red and blue and green in accordance with flashing lights. It is a real disco. Like the ones in other cities.

It is here for now, and I hope it stays.

For now, it hosts birthday parties on some nights. To break even that isn’t a bad idea. When it gets its licence, come and see, Ashish says. Will everyone be dancing late into the night? I ask.

“That’s the hope,” he answers.

I tell him I will be back. Around New Year’s, with old friends. Maybe then I will dance. With joy. For old times’ sake. n 16 september 2013

Books Manufacturing Hope Lavanya Sankaran’s aptly named first novel The Hope Factory is the latest in formulaic fiction from the Subcontinent devika bakshi

randy olson/national geographic society/corbis

The Hope factory

By Lavanya Sankaran tinder press | 350 pages | Rs 550

T

he point at which a novel set in India resorts to the descriptive crutch of spices is usually the point at which I begin sliding into a familiar despair. In Lavanya Sankaran’s The Hope Factory, that point arrives— amid a flurry of other clichés—rather early, in the outrageously unoriginal sentence: ‘The air was redolent with spices.’ As a result, the majority of my relationship with the novel has been one of resistance—my resistance to reading it. I couldn’t get through it.

I disclose this because I generally mistrust reviews that seem insufficiently compassionate. But the optimism with which I usually approach a book— somewhat inflated in this case by the glowing reviews on the book jacket and elsewhere of the author’s earlier collection of stories—was swiftly eroded by grumpiness at how stale it seemed.

To be fair, this is not the sole fault of this book; it is not so exceptionally bad as to merit such curmudgeonliness. It was more a trigger for the exasperation that has been building in the mind of one reader for the better part of a decade. Reading this novel feels like re-reading almost any other well-intentioned hope-and-grit spectacular to come out of India in the last decade. Harsh circumstances and humble characters struggling in an amoral world. A strained, pouting sympathy for Poor People and Their Problems.

This is the sort of novel in which one of two main characters—Kamala, a poor single mother who works as 52 open

a housemaid in the home of the other protagonist: educated, middle-class factory owner Anand—is introduced pondering ‘the art to the purchase of an onion’. Shortly thereafter, her son suffers a simile which ends with ‘like a starving puppy’. This is the sort of novel in which a character’s success is described as his managing to ‘pull himself out of the primordial slime’, and the Indian Government as ‘a strange, cavernous beast that lay hidden in grottoes and leapt out, tentacles flailing, suckers greedy for bribes’. I could go on, but I can’t bear to.

You’ve read this book before. I have too. You might like to read it again, if it’s your cup of tea. I, for one, am tired.

I don’t want to read it anymore. And, to be clear, I don’t just mean Sankaran’s novel, which at times betrays some of the pleasant quirk and wonderful eye for silliness visible in her gener-

ally superior collection of short stories, The Red Carpet. It is unfair to vilify Sankaran for performing the perfunctory—and presumably lucrative—song-and-dance of contemporary South Asian literature. Aravind Adiga’s Booker and Danny Boyle’s Oscars have guaranteed a market for endless iterations of a certain kind of Third World Fable, so it seems we must all be White Tigers and Slumdogs now.

Mohsin Hamid’s recent How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia might be read as a kind of self-conscious, parodist template for this kind of novel. It too draws from the same well of cliché, but is narrowly rescued from formulaicness by its explicit construction as a formula. Which is a relief, because criticising this kind of novel for its hollowness feels almost as passé as the novel itself, so the only thing left to hope for is that it achieve some measure of self16 september 2013

consciousness—a self-consciousness The Hope Factory lacks, wearing its unfortunate title without a hint of irony.

A recent essay published by New York-based journal n+1 titled ‘World Lite’ indicts a certain kind of ‘global literature’ for, well, a lot of things, but its central lament, as clarified in a follow up—‘“The Rest Is Indeed Horseshit”, Pt. 6’—is ‘the difficulty of writing honestly for a sociologically narrow “global” audience’. If one were to be generous to Sankaran and her ilk, one might attribute the essential hollowness of their writing to this ‘difficulty’.

But it is hard to shake the sense that the Third World Fable is calculated to suit a certain global audience for literature, an audience that n+1 argues has undergone ‘a geographical broadening, combined with a social thinningout’ as part of ‘a change in historical situation’ that has served to encourage writers ‘to leave intact, rather than confront, the ideas of the other so-called global citizens who mainly read them’.

This global audience is composed of a collection of ‘thin-sliced national audiences, stacked together’. These ‘thin slices’ are plainly of a certain class, and it seems they hanker to read about The Other Half. How else to explain the recent surfeit of Third World Fables?

How else to explain the insistence— expertly phrased by Poorva Rajaram and Michael Griffith in a rebuttal to n+1 published in Tehelka—‘on ventriloquising the poor’?

In a 2009 essay for Foreign Policy, Chandrahas Choudhury wrote: ‘It is in the details presented and the others left out, that any novel reveals the quality of its engagement with life and the presumptions it makes about its audience.

All too often these days, the slice of Indian literature available to Western readers is at once too specific—excelling in stating the obvious—and not specific enough. The “global novel” has had to make many compromises to ensure its dominion.’

One such compromise, Choudhury indicates, is of observed detail in favour of banal generalities. Sankaran is irritatingly prone to these. In a column titled ‘Can India’s new laws stop rape?’ for The Guardian—the sort a new novelist inev16 september 2013

itably seems to write for an international newspaper around the time of her book’s release—she makes several attempts. ‘India is rather keen on framing laws.’ ‘This is the ultimate Indian irony: an obsession with pronouncing upon human behaviour and codifying it in official edicts.’ ‘Driving on an Indian road is the best example of this: road rules are there to be disdained.’ ‘Real change in India begins and ends with social pressure.’ And cutest of all: ‘In India, we have a regrettable tendency to treat laws as mere suggestions, like worthy advice from a grandmother.’

All of Sankaran’s writing has this air of musings from a fresh-off-the-flight phoren-return Indian, nose in a perpetual wrinkle at the usual line-up of awful roads, smells, crowds, bureaucrats, politicians, thugs, leches and so on. I am

All of Sankaran’s writing has this air of musings from a fresh-off-the-flight phoren-return Indian, nose in a perpetual wrinkle at the usual line-up of awful roads, smells, crowds and so on not arguing for a gloss-over; I am merely tired of this worn litany of wide-eyed laments at Poor Chaotic India, tired of seemingly meme-generated phrases, tired of novels assembled like Subway sandwiches from a fixed number of familiar ingredients.

The determined middle-class man provides the foil for the corrupt chaotic country; the poor woman demonstrates that the author has conscience enough not to write about her own life (because that is not Real India, you know); the child at risk of being waylaid to a fate of ‘no school, no English, no office’ is the future of the country and the emotional stakes of the narrative; the city forms the backdrop, forever illustrating the collision of tradition with technological modernity; and there you are, all set up for a tourde-force of #thirdworldproblems.

The novel hinges on our hand-wringing suspense over whether and how

the characters will be saved from peril in perilous India. It feels manipulative. It does not come across as an earnest attempt—and here I must resort to blurb-speak—to seek redemption amid the merciless chaos of a contemporary Indian city, but a point-proving exercise grounded in placid cynicism: this is India. How awful it is. How unfortunate its people.

The world is everything that is the case, sure. But this is a bizarre kind of voyeurism. This is looking smugly through the peephole of education and privilege into ‘the world’ and patting oneself on the back for accurately characterising it, for being able to sum it up in so many words, to lay it bare and walk away, as though the mere act of documentation constitutes a resolution for whatever conflict is observed.

In several interviews, Sankaran has cited as inspiration the unnamed maid she once fired for “repeated absenteeism” and her son (the maid’s) who shot Sankaran a look of resentment as he walked his mother away. Sankaran seems to have written her first novel at least partly as a sort of imagined redemption for this event.

This, to me, is the real story: the acrimonious (or upsetting, or simply uncomfortable) encounter between wealthy writer and poor subject, and the writer’s attempt to resolve it through fiction. For such an attempt to be meaningful, the writer’s own appearance in the narrative is imperative.

This novel ought to have been a mirror. It is instead a window. Sankaran’s failure is that she describes (and deconstructs) only the view, not the viewer.

In an interview with BusinessWorld in July, Sankaran described part of her daily writing routine thus: “After breakfast, I go to the neighbourhood coffee shop; it’s right next to a medical college and always bustling. For some reason, that colour and noise helps me write. I plug in my iPod, keep the volume on low, sip my coffee and plunge into my writing.” This vantage is palpable in her novel: a writer removed, riskless, writing in a bubble, sealed off from the ‘colour and noise’ that are both her subject and inspiration, but not her experience. n open www.openthemagazine.com 53

CINEMA Do Rapists Have the Right to Live?

Even as the din over capital punishment for rapists rises, filmmaker MS Sathyu speaks up against the State’s right to take a citizen’s life Anil Budur Lulla

A

s the nation’s attention turns

to increasing reports of young women being brutally raped and murdered, many are demanding capital punishment for the perpetrators. However, in a little known film, A Right to Live, acclaimed filmmaker MS Sathyu questions the right of the State to take a citizen’s life. The 56-minute documentary on the death penalty includes a video-taped interview with a death-row inmate, Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was convicted of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Kolkata. Later, in 2004, Dhananjoy was hanged after his mercy petition was rejected by India’s then President APJ Abdul Kalam.

Sathyu believes that capital punishment should not exist in a democratic and civilised society. While researching the subject to highlight what he calls the “State’s unwarranted right to take the life of a citizen”, he decided to focus on Dhananjoy’s case. “I thought it would be easy to interview him as I had friends in the government there [in West Bengal]. But that was not the case,’’ Sathyu says. For over six months, the West Bengal government denied him access to Dhananjoy on some pretext or the other.

Finally, Sathyu approached the Supreme Court, which in a landmark judgment in 1994 held that if the accused agreed, the filmmaker should be allowed to interview him on camera.

‘The media has the right to every criminal. Likewise, every criminal has the

54 open

right to every media,’ the court stated.

“The only rider was that the film should not be broadcast before the mercy petition was disposed of by the President, to which I agreed,’’ recalls Sathyu, sitting at his Bangalore office.

When Sathyu and his team interviewed Chatterjee, he had already spent four years on death row. It would be another 10 years before his mercy petition was finally rejected. “For this reason, the completed interview stayed with me for 10 years,” says Sathyu.

A Right to Live has since been sold to the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT), a New Delhi-based non-governmental not-for-profit trust, but Sathyu says he has no idea why it was never broadcast. PSBT finally screened it once in 2012, at its annual festival.

The filmmaker, who started his career in the 1950s as an assistant director in Mumbai, has directed nine feature films in Hindi, Urdu and Kannada and made 20 documentaries and tele-serials in different languages. His classic, Garam Hava, a poignant film on Partition, has recently being digitised and will be re-released in theatres shortly.

Sathyu recalls a film that he shot in the early 1970s with Sanjeev Kumar in the lead, where the protagonist is hanged and for which he had to visit the Central Jail in Bangalore. “[There] I saw the gallows—a raised platform and a noose hanging from a wooden pole.

Though it was not in use, it was dis-

rudra rakshit saran

gusting to see it kept as an exhibit or reminder of the British Raj,” he says.

“The pulley and other mechanisms were still in working order and I believe were asked to be kept so by the government. We filmed the entire sequence for the movie where the hangman measures the convict’s height and weight, practises the execution by using a sand bag [of the same weight] as the convict, and the moment when he actually pulls the lever which [opens up] the floor below and leaves the man hanging in air, suspended by a noose around the neck. How can anyone go through such motions in real life?’’ he asks.

The filmmaker’s interest in making a documentary on capital punishment took shape in the early 1990s when an 16 september 2013

life on death row Sathyu asked the Supreme Court for his right to interview Dhananjoy

only conjecture presented by the prosecution. “No matter what anybody’s crime is, the State has no right or power to kill the person. A welfare state like ours should reform people, not kill them. I am against capital punishment.

It is unconstitutional,’’ he says.

I

Italian delegation asked the United Nations to abolish it. Around that time, there were around 40 convicts awaiting the hangman’s noose in India.

Days after the Supreme Court ruled in his favour, Sathyu went to Alipore Central Jail with a copy of the order. “My team shot the interview for a whole day with a high-band video camera. Later, I used actors to re-enact the crime scene in the same building where the rape and murder occurred,” says Sathyu.

The film crew also tracked down Dhananjoy’s family members, who had left their village after the incident to escape media attention, and features the opinions of social scientists, advocates and senior judges. Recently, Sathyu tried to widen the scope of the 16 september 2013

A Right to Live has since been sold to the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, a New Delhi-based nongovernmental trust, but Sathyu says he has no idea why it was never broadcast debate on abolishing the death penalty by including in his film the opinions of some lawyers on Ajmal Kasab, who was recently hanged. “Kasab’s case is different. He waged war against India. But the issue is still the same,” says Sathyu.

Studying assorted cases in which the death sentence was awarded, he says that he realised that often there was not enough evidence, no witnesses and

n the interview with Dhananjoy,

says Sathyu, the convict defended himself admirably and claimed that the prosecution had a fake case.

Dhananjoy had worked as a security guard in the apartment building where Hetal Parekh was raped and murdered on 5 March 1990. Her parents had earlier complained of his misbehaving with their daughter and got him posted out of the building. In the film, a wiry Dhananjoy sitting on the floor of his small cell claims he is innocent.

Speaking in Bengali, he insists that he was neither on duty nor in that building on the day of the incident as he had already been posted to another location. “The prosecution has built a case on clothes and a watch left behind inside the apartment. Yes, the shirt, lungi and watch are mine, but they were the ones I was asked to pack from my house in the village when [the police] came to arrest me. They later showed them [in court] as if I had left them at the scene of crime. This evidence is not true,” he states.

He also claims that the police had forced him to confess by placing him inside a truck tyre and rolling him around till he agreed to own up to the crime.

“I found him very articulate and he may have been telling the truth. He said one person who was known to the family and used to come often in a red Maruti car was never identified or called by the police for interrogation,’’ recalls Sathyu.

Talking about his life till it took a sudden turn for the worse, Dhananjoy says that he was always fascinated with the uniformed forces. He claims he even got a letter to join the state open www.openthemagazine.com 55

police for training, but his father, a priest, forbade him. He tried to sign up for the CRPF but did not make the cut. Finally, he ended up becoming a security guard.

He got married on 27 February 1989 to a woman named Poornima. It was an arranged marriage and he had just begun to settle into his new life when the incident happened. Hounded by the police and media, his wife left him and joined a missionary. She could not be traced by the film’s researchers.

A judge who appears on screen says Dhananjoy suffered a double punishment, having served 14 years in solitary confinement and then being executed.

“Not fair at all. He has had a continuous fear of death, of the State ending his life,” he states.

Sathyu also tracked down Dhananjoy’s family, which had left their native village near Bankura and moved to Kuludihi to avoid media attention. Initially, his father, Bangsidar Chatterjee, did not want to speak to the team. “They were not willing to listen at all. The father felt it was all a police conspiracy to frame the family. They relented only after they saw a full-page picture of Dhananjoy looking out from behind bars in a Bengali tabloid and understood that we were only trying to help. They then agreed to an on-camera interview,” recalls Sathyu.

But that was not the case with the parents of the victim, who had moved out of Kolkata and settled in Mumbai. “I spoke to them on phone, but they refused to come on air,” says Sathyu.

Bangsidar, a Kali temple priest, says on camera, “We are not historysheeters, we are Brahmins. [The complainants] are big people, they can influence the case. When the hanging was ordered by the judge, the lawyers asked for money. I have none. Due to their fear, I have not gone to Calcutta at all even to see my son.” He says that the family had already sold eight to 10 bighas of land to fund lawyers.

Even as Dhananjoy’s father is being interviewed, in the background, one of his sisters suffers an epileptic fit.

Sathyu says it seemed to be a frequent occurrence as the family appeared 56 open

quite used to the phenomenon. “If you look around the house, or the hut that passes off as one, we can see abject poverty. Dhananjoy was the only breadearning member sending money from his meagre earning while his father used to get Rs 20-30 every time he got called to perform the duties of a priest at functions. His other son, Bikash, is unemployed. Nobody has come forward to marry his two sisters after the case hit headlines.”

When Sathyu asks what kind of punishment a person should get for rape and murder of a minor, he only says: “How can I say? I am an ordinary man.

I believe in satyameva jayate. I believe my son will be pardoned.”

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he fact that judges who were interviewed for the film were divided on the issue of capital punishment

In the interview with Dhananjoy, says Sathyu, the convict claimed the prosecution had a fake case.

“I found him articulate and he may have been telling the truth” speaks volumes. Justice (retd) Rajinder Sachar says the Supreme Court had already held that death should be handed out only in ‘rarest of rare cases’. But another judge is of the opinion that “if you remove hanging, crimes will only increase. [Are] abduction, rape and killing fit [cases] to show mercy?’’ he asks.

Senior Supreme Court advocate PP Rao believes the death penalty acts as a deterrent. He cites a case of killings by Naxalites—who were awarded the death penalty. “Such cold-blooded pre-meditated acts should be awarded death. Even educated people are doing heinous crimes nowadays. Human life has no value. Death penalty has a deterrent value in the interest of society,” says Rao. Justice Khare says that in India’s 1898 Code, death and life sentences

were exceptions. “But in 1955, when [independent India] amended the CrPC, life sentence became the rule and death sentence the exception. The judge awarding it had to give special reasons. Later, the SC laid down the rules of ‘rarest of rare’—where the offence was diabolic in nature and cruel in execution. There had to be proportionality between the nature of crime and the sentence.’’

In the 1960s, when abolition of capital punishment came up as an issue in Parliament, its members opined that it was not yet time for such a shift.

When such a question arose before the Supreme Court later, a five-judge bench upheld it by a slim margin in a 3:2 verdict, recalls Nitya Ramakrishnan, a lawyer who works in Mumbai.

Another practising lawyer of New Delhi, whose daughter too was raped and killed, was against the death sentence. “My wife was of the opinion that it was th just punishment for her daughter’s rapist, but I disagree, as every criminal has to be given a chance,’’ he says.

In the two decades since he made the film, Sathyu says the issue of abolishing the death penalty has not moved further, though it remains a subject of world-wide debate. The United Nations has held that it is for each country to decide on awarding capital punishment, as Islamic countries, dictatorships and Communist countries have been insistent on retaining the measure.

“The issue is not just for rapists.

Every conceivable crime has capital punishment. It acquires a danger in dictatorships and in Communist countries too. Look at the fate of Bo Xilai in China, a party functionary who has been accused of embezzlement in a complex case where his wife has been accused of ordering the killing of a British national. In India, it is a question of whether we should bring about a constitutional change,’’ says the filmmaker.

In the 16 December 2012 Delhi rape case too, many protestors who assembled for days to get justice for the victim demanded capital punishment. It does not help that the term ‘rarest of rare’ remains undefinable. n 16 september 2013

pablo bartholomew

CINEMA guerrilamas A still from Shadow Circus, Sonam and Sarin’s documentary about a CIA-funded resistance movement against Chinese rule in Tibet

Refuting Shangri-La As partners in life and filmmaking, Tenzing Sonam and Ritu Sarin have been trying to overthrow clichés on Tibet Lhendup G Bhutia

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o the West, Tibet has for long been Shangri-La. A mystical place whose people are otherworldly and pious, and whose wise lamas have answers to all questions. It’s an image that has been hammered in, apart from books, in countless films. Tibet and Tibetans have bit parts in films like Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Johnny English Reborn, Batman Begins and Bullet Proof Monk, at most times to portray a protagonist’s spiritual side. But even

16 september 2013

seemingly serious films on Tibet fall into this slipstream of overworked Tibet clichés.

In Frank Capra’s 1937 classic Lost Horizon, a group of Englishmen whose plane crashes in the Himalayas reaches a magical place called Shangri-la.

Although unnamed, there is no doubt this place is intended to be Tibet.

More recently, there was the Brad Pittstarring Seven Years in Tibet and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, both of which per-

petuate the myth of an untainted Shangri-La. In Seven Years in Tibet, not only do Tibetans spend their days offering nuggets of enlightened wisdom— a Tibetan woman tells Brad Pitt, playing Heinrich Harrer the mountaineer, “You Westerners prize achievement; we in Tibet value harmony”—they believe ice skate blades are meant to chop meat.

On one occasion, a group of Tibetans building a cinema hall refuse to work because of the earthworms being killed in the process. They tell Harrer: “Those earthworms could have been your mother. Please, no more hurting!’’ In an interview with The New York Times, well-known Tibetan writer Jamyang Norbu said of that scene: “It was like Saturday Night Live… Every Tibetan I know shudders over that scene.”

While this Western fascination may have helped bring Tibet to people’s open www.openthemagazine.com 57

living rooms, it has also had a negative corollary effect. Many Tibetans have come to believe this bullshit.

Inconvenient aspects of Tibetan history and culture—banditry, violence, the wars within factions and with neighbours—are often brushed aside to be replaced by stories of the mythical Shangri-La. Over the years, however, the Tibetan community has thrown up a few filmmakers who are fighting this very depiction of their story. Foremost among them is Tenzing Sonam, who has for over two decades, along with his wife Ritu Sarin, made an array of films on Tibet, looking at and discussing various hitherto neglected topics. Their films have ranged from documentaries on how the CIA secretly funded a resistance movement against Chinese rule in Tibet (The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet), to how there is a growing dissent among Tibetansin-exile against the Dalai Lama’s decision to give up the call for Tibet’s independence for limited sovereignty (The Sun Behind The Clouds). They have also made a feature film, Dreaming Lhasa, about a Tibetan woman from New York making a documentary on political prisoners in Tibet. But apart from US releases and broadcasts on TV channels there, the reach of their films have mostly been limited to film festivals and Tibetans themselves.

However, their latest work, When Hari Got Married, has just been released in India by PVR Cinemas. On appearance, it is very different from their earlier works. Its chief character is Hari, a smooth-talking Pahari taxi-driver in Dharamshala who is preparing for his wedding. But on closer inspection, it bears many similarities with their previous work—a personal story of a man on a journey, fleshed out with a deep insider understanding of the subject.

Says Sonam, “We were tired after Sun Behind The Clouds and were looking to perhaps take up a smaller film. That’s when Hari came over to invite us for his wedding.” The filmmaker-couple have known Hari since he was a teen.

When they moved to Dharamshala, Hari’s brothers helped them build their house. Hari’s wedding was slated 58 open

to take place two years later but apart from a momentary glance, he had never seen her. Over the next few days, he continued to inform Sarin and Sonam of developments in the wedding preparations. When the village of his to-bebride got a cellphone tower, Hari managed to get her phone number. “He had started to call her so he could understand her better. At that point, we thought—‘Perhaps we should film this’. It could make for a film,” says Sonam. Hari gladly accepted Sarin and Sonam’s request.

The film might appear simple, but has a warm and intimate quality. It’s like watching a romantic comedy, except that it isn’t scripted or enacted but real. As the film progresses— with touching moments like Hari and Suman’s developing love (over cellphone contact), Hari’s fears of her be-

When they reached Sonam’s father’s native land, they were shocked. No one spoke Tibetan, except for one cousin who picked it up in India. Otherwise, they all spoke Xining Chinese ing short, (because he realises her brother is only about four feet tall), the expression on the faces of Hari’s family when they see the jeweller’s bill, and his boasts of having performed his ‘honeymoon’ on the night of his wedding—you get to witness through Hari’s wedding a section of society whose lives we rarely glimpse. And the filmmakers don’t just observe, they also participate. Sarin is often seen chatting with people. And on one occasion, the day of the wedding, when Hari learns that no one around knows how to knot a tie, Sonam is beckoned to complete the task for him.

I

t is believed that the first film by a Tibetan was made in the mid 1970s.

An individual named Gungthang Tsultrim in Dharamshala had hired

technicians and equipment from Mumbai to make a feature film. Very little is known of what the film was about, as all its prints and negatives now appear to have been lost. Since then, Sonam has appeared on the scene along with Sarin.

The two first made a documentary—The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City—in 1985 while studying filmmaking in San Francisco. In the following years, they churned out a number of impressive films, mostly on Tibet. The duo later started their own production house, White Crane Films, and shifted their base to Dharamshala. They needed to be close to their subject matter.

“When we got into films, every film on Tibet was made by someone from the West. Although they are mostly sympathetic, it was often one-dimensional, and, as a consequence, patronising. We sort of wanted to change that— to create a more realistic Tibet and refute any magical elements,” Sarin says. Apart from being well-regarded in Dharamshala, the duo have also been hosting a film festival there, titled Dharamshala International Film Festival.

Sonam’s late father, Lhamo Tsering, was a key member of the little-known CIA-funded resistance movement against Chinese rule in Tibet. Along with his close friend Gyalo Thondup, brother of the Dalai Lama, he had been able to get the CIA to fund and train Tibetans in guerilla warfare, intelligence gathering and arms use after the Chinese invaded the country.

Tsering was one of the first Tibetans to be trained by the CIA, and served as a liaison officer of the operation for almost 20 years. “It was all cloak and dagger,” says Sonam, recalling his father’s involvement with the CIA. “His office was in Darjeeling. And every once in a while, he would travel to Calcutta, and stand at a certain spot on Park Street with a newspaper rolled under his arm. A big car would then pull up. In the back would be an American who would hand over a big bundle of rupees. Information would be passed, arms drops would be discussed, and he would return to home,” says Sonam.

The entire operation, called ST 16 september 2013

white crane films

a sense of direction Filmmaker Tenzing Sonam behind the scenes of feature film Dreaming Lhasa

Circus by the CIA, was an extremely secretive affair. It eventually fizzled out when the US agency pulled out as ties between the US and China started improving. Sonam learnt of the operation and his father’s involvement when he was around 15 years old. A newspaper on his school’s bulletin board bore a headline to the effect of ‘Leader Of Tibetan Bandits Arrested’. Upon reading it, he realised that the person arrested was his father. Tsering was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Nepal court, although he was set free about seven years later.

In 1998, Sarin and Sonam made a documentary on this subject, titled The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet. It had taken them almost nine years to complete the film, although they had worked on other films during this period. Researching the subject, getting access to classified data, locating the CIA operators involved, and securing funding for the film hadn’t been easy. “My father had archived letters and information about the operation. But all the CIA handlers had only used pseudonyms. So it was immensely tough just locating them,” Sonam says. When they were able to trace one CIA handler, he was still working with the agency and was thus barred from speaking about it. They were lat16 september 2013

er able to trace a retired CIA hand to a casino in Las Vegas, where he was the chief of security. One name led to another, and eventually they were able to meet a number of individuals involved with the dealings. What they achieved is a remarkable documentary on a clandestine operation that very few people knew of. The film is sometimes hilarious, especially when those involved recount memories, but given how the

“He would stand at a certain spot on Park Street with a newspaper rolled under his arm. A big car would pull up. In the back would be an American who would hand over a big bundle of rupees” operation eventually turned out, it is also often remarkably sad. One Tibetan fighter tells the interviewer, “We were so happy that America was training us.

We thought they will be giving us an atom bomb.”

A few years before Shadow Circus released, Sarin and Sonam had made another well-received documentary. The Trials of Telo Rinpoche told the story of

Erdne Ombadykow, a Philadelphiaborn boy of Kalmyk origin. Kalmykia is a region in eastern Russia, where people mostly follow Tibetan Buddhism.

For years, Kalmyks had made perilously long journeys to Lhasa in Tibet to be tutored by its lamas. However, when Stalin started accusing Kalmyks of conspiring with the Nazis and deporting them to Siberia, many fled to other parts of Europe and the US. Ombadykow was born and raised in one such immigrant Kalmyk family in Philadelphia. He was sent to India when he was still a child to become a monk, and was later ordained by the Dalai Lama as Telo Rinpoche, the spiritual head of the Kalmyks.

The Dalai Lama then asked him to move to Kalmykia and revive Buddhism there. “We met him one day at a bus stop in Dharamshala.

He kept saying, ‘It was all so crazy’,” Sonam recalls. Unable to cope with his life as a spiritual leader in Kalmykia, the 22-year-old renounced his vows, got married and moved to the US. The film ends at this crucial juncture. A few years later, however, Ombadykow returned to Kalmykia to complete his mission. Since then, it is said, Ombadykow has helped construct and administer a number of temples and led a successful revival of Buddhism in the region.

The film closest to Sarin and Sonam, however, is their 1997 film A Stranger In My Native Land. It is a documentary based on their first visit to Tibet, during which the duo had made their way to Kumbum Monastery, located in the far reaches of Tibet’s Amdo region.

Sonam’s father was originally from this area. When they reached Sonam’s father’s native land and met his relatives, they were shocked. No one knew how to speak Tibetan, except for one cousin who had moved to India a few years earlier and picked it up. Otherwise, they all spoke Xining Chinese. “There were three Tibetan families to about 100 Chinese ones,” Sonam says. “I was depressed and wanted to leave. This far corner of Tibet that I had always dreamt of and where my father once resided—its Sinoisation was near complete.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 59

gardiner’s frogs Scientists believe that the auditory system of these small frogs of the Seychelles Islands must be survivors of life forms on the ancient supercontinent Gondwana

Tall Tales Men are 11 centimetres taller than they were 100 years ago

Frogs That Hear With Their Mouth

Henrik Sorensen/getty images

science

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ver the years, the diet, health

and ecosystem of humans have undergone rapid changes. But have these alterations had a corresponding effect on human physical characteristics like height? According to a new study, they have. A group of researchers have found that in just over a century, the average height of men has gone up by 11 centimetres.

The study, published recently in Oxford Economic Papers, analysed data on average men’s height at around the age of 21 in 15 European countries.

Researchers looked up data from the 1870s up to around 1980. They however restricted themselves to men because extensive historical data on women’s heights is hard to come by.

The statistics were drawn from a variety of sources. For recent decades, the data on men’s heights was mainly taken from height-by-age surveys, while for earlier years it was based on records of heights of military conscripts and recruits.

The researchers found that the

60 open

average height of a male rose from 167 cm in 1870 to 178 cm in 1980.

According to them, improvement in healthcare is the single most important factor driving the increase in height. Timothy Hatton, the lead author of the study and a professor of economics at University of Essex, wrote in the journal: ‘In little more than a century average height increased by 11 cm—representing a dramatic improvement in health...The evidence suggests that the most important proximate source of increasing height was the improving disease environment as reflected by the fall in infant mortality.’ The researchers claim that the growth of an individual is significantly affected by what happens in the first two years of life.

Since the rate of illnesses such as diarrhoea and respiratory diseases before a child turns two—often leading to infant mortality—is not as high as it once was, it has had a corresponding effect on a man’s adult height. Other factors, like an increasing move to smaller families, meaning fewer people to feed, higher income, more sanitary living conditions and better education on health and nutrition, also need to be taken into account.

Strangely, however, the researchers found that the average height of men accelerated in the period spanning the two World Wars and the Great Depression. This was strange because not only was this a period of strife and economic downturn, major breakthroughs in modern medicine and national health services were still to take place. In an interview with The Telegraph, Hatton explains this finding, saying, “One possible reason, alongside the crucial decline in infant mortality, for the rapid growth of average male height in this period was that there was a strong downward trend in fertility at the time, and smaller family sizes have already been linked with increasing height.” n

Gardiner’s frogs use their mouth cavity and tissue to transmit sound to their inner ears, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These frogs from the Seychelles islands do not possess a middle ear with an eardrum, yet can croak and hear other frogs. Using Synchrotron X-ray imaging, scientists found that the transmission of the sound from the oral cavity to the inner ear has been optimised by two evolutionary adaptations: a reduced thickness of the tissue between the mouth and the inner ear and fewer tissue layers between the mouth and the inner ear. A combination of a mouth cavity and bone conduction allows these frogs to sense sound without any need of a tympanic middle ear. n

Poverty Reduces Brainpower

According to a study published in Science, poverty and all its related concerns require so much mental energy that the poor have less brainpower left to devote to other aspects of life. As a result, they are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions that may be amplified by—and perpetuate—their financial woes. The impact of financial concerns on the cognitive function of low-income individuals was similar to a 13-point dip in IQ. To gauge the influence of poverty in natural contexts, researchers tested 464 sugarcane farmers in India who rely on an annual harvest for at least 60 per cent of their income. Each farmer performed better on common fluid-intelligence and cognition tests post-harvest compared to pre-harvest. n 16 september 2013

near field communication (nfc)

tech&style

NFC is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology that enables the exchange of data between devices across a 10 cm distance. Thanks to its shorter range, NFC offers a higher degree of security than Bluetooth

Sony Xperia Z Ultra One of the largest smartphones in India, it has an amazing display gagandeep Singh Sapra

LG w Song Star

Rs 46,990

Rs 20,000

Music can get anyone going, and if it is your kind of music, you will be humming along.

With the LG Song Star, available in wired and wireless versions, you get 4,000 plus songs in nine different languages all stored in the system. Be it classic, rock, hip hop, jazz or contemporary, just choose your genre and you are all set to go.

An echo key and a tempo setting let you stay in control of the song and how you synchronise your voice with it. You can record your singing with its microphone too. Have a get-together, line up 45 songs that play in succession, sing along and have a blast. n

Creative WP-250

Rs 4,999

W

hen I first heard of the Xperia Z Ultra’s specifications, I felt that a 6.4-inch screen would be too big to carry, but everything else was interesting: its water resistant capabilities, a Snapdragon 800 Quad Core processor running at 2.2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB storage, support for LTE/4G networks, a full high definition screen at 1080x1920 pixels with a Bravia engine, NFC capability, just 212 gm in weight, and latest Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system.

After about two weeks of using the Xperia Z Ultra, I found that this phone is not for the average shirt or trousers pocket, but it was great fun watching a movie from YouTube on its sharp, bright and amazing display, good fun going through photos, and pretty nice and sharp reading both web browser texts and emails.

With about 10,000 contacts in my address book, about a 1,000 odd emails I go through daily and about

16 september 2013

10 to 15 photos and videos that I shoot each day and share on various social networks, not many Android phones are able to survive me, but the Ultra kept up with my pace... till Android issues of memory cleanup and optimisation came up, which one has to tackle with a reboot of the phone every now and then.

The Xperia Ultra’s 8 Megapixel camera managed to shoot pretty fast and sharp. The videos I shot with the phone were good quality and the audio recorded was crystal clear. The problem is, holding the big screen gets a bit tiresome after a while.

The Ultra worked wonderfully well in a pool as well as when it took a splash of water from a colleague who intentionally spilt water all over it. The phone is available in three colours—black, white and purple. n

Creative’s WP-250 in-ear headphones connect to your phone or MP3 player over Bluetooth, and come with an invisible microphone. Designed for people with active lifestyles, the WP-250 is light and stays secure even during vigorous physical activities. It comes with three sizes of silicone in-ear tips.

The neckband uses its flexi-memory to fit your neck the way you like it. Its battery lasts for about 8 hours and can be recharged with any USB adapter. You can also connect the WP-250 to your PC for Skype calls. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

difficulties of make-up One of the gags in We’re The Millers involving an unfortunate spider-bite required actor Will Poulter to wear ‘prosthetic genitals’, which, according to the actor, took some three hours to put on. Poulter has said that though he felt bad for the make-up artist at first, soon it became “strangely normal”, though it did make it hard for him to walk freely: “It’s a lot of glue and not much opportunity to keep much hair”

Satyagraha Prakash Jha’s latest is loud, uncouth and rather an awful film ajit duara

current

o n scr een

We’re the Millers Director Rawson Marshall Thurber cast Jennifer Aniston, Emma Roberts,

Jason Sudeikis Score ★★★★★

vgn, chchan, ajay de Cast amitabh ba or po kareena ka h jha Director prakas

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his is a movie in very poor taste.

Fortunately, most people in India have a more evolved understanding of satyagraha than does director Prakash Jha. He just throws a spanner into the works—corruption in contemporary India—and comes up with a cartoon ‘Gandhi’, a school teacher called Dwarka Anand (Amitabh Bachchan) who starts civil disobedience by giving a government officer a tight slap.

This is apparently an ‘updated’ interpretation of Bapuji’s message to the nation, modern Gandhi avatars having voiced their approval of the occasional wake-up slap to government representatives. In this film, Dwarka Anand is called ‘Daduji’ and he goes on fasts unto death and leans on two young girls for support. But unlike the Gandhi of Lage Raho Munna Bhai, who always turned the other cheek in his effort to reform public officials, this one is a bit of a Left-leaning rabble-rouser.

Jha lost his ideological mooring long ago, but at least the politics in 62 open

his films could once be debated. With Satyagraha, even that is not possible.

It is a loud and uncouth film, straight out of a discussion aired on any Indian news channel.

There is Manav (Ajay Devgn), a successful corporate tycoon from ‘shining’ India who once exploited his shareholders, but has since reformed and been swayed by Daduji’s movement. His girlfriend is Yasmin (Kareena Kapoor), a TV reporter who highlights the agenda and, more relevantly, Manav’s role in it. Together they fight the sleazeballs of the country, championed by a murderous politician (Manoj Bajpai).

The film is visually designed like primetime TV news, mostly on sets, with little location shooting and with tweets from ‘Public Opinion’ displayed prominently on screen. When ‘Daduji’ looks weak from his fast, sympathy ‘tweets’ are highlighted, and had the film’s decibel level not been so high, you might actually laugh. In short, this is a pretty awful movie. n

This is a regulation studio comedy, but with some unusually risque humour.

There is an entire scene in which two couples discuss their sex lives and one suburban housewife talks about how she has developed a ‘shallow vagina’ and how she just can’t keep her husband in these days.

She goes on and on, like in a discussion on the faulty plumbing in the kitchen sink, with periodic affirmative nods from her husband and, at some point, it just tips over and turns hilarious.

Most scenes in the film are designed like this, but not all are funny. There is a plot too, if you are so inclined, and it’s about a local pusher called David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) who is unexpectedly thrust into big time marijuana business and has to smuggle an RV full of the best from across the border. He gets hold of a stripper (Jennifer Aniston), a homeless teenage girl (Emma Roberts) and a naive 18-year-old neighbour (Will Poulter) to pose as ‘The Millers’, your clean-cut allAmerican family out on vacation, south of the border, down Mexico way.

These guys are art directed to look regular and wholesome, but act and talk filthy, and that’s the comedy, period. You could pass time watching it, but won’t remember it afterwards. n ad

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Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Not as Brave as His Film

Sushant Singh Rajput, who stars in Shuddh Desi Romance, was reportedly miffed at mediapersons earlier this week when they quizzed him about his relationship with girlfriend (and television actress) Ankita Lokhande. While promoting the movie, in which his character Raghu is in a live-in relationship with Parineeti Chopra’s Gayatri, journos asked Sushant about the parallels between reel and real life, given that Ankita and he have been living together for some years now. The actor muttered an unconvincing response, then quickly asked a publicist to intervene and ensure that similar questions didn’t come up again in subsequent interviews.

Leading up to the film’s release and as part of a promotional strategy to push the movie, Sushant and Parineeti have been talking about changing attitudes towards pre-marital sex and relationships in India, but Sushant in particular seemed uncomfortable when the queries became more personal. In fact, in some interviews, he clarified that Ankita and he were planning to wed in the year ahead. Chicken!

Second Choices

Shahid Kapoor is not happy about being dragged into a controversy involving Milan Talkies. The actor was recently offered the lead in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s next, after producer Ekta Kapoor decided to drop her Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbaai Dobara star, Imran Khan, from the project.

Shahid complains that although he hasn’t yet signed on the film or even heard a complete script narration, he’s being made to look like the reason Imran was ousted. “Whatever happened between them is unfortunate. But it has nothing to do with me,” he explained when I met him earlier this week.

“Casting decisions aren’t taken by me.”

He doesn’t deny that he was offered the role Imran eventually played in Once Upon Ay Time... “but those discussions didn’t go very far”. Could that have anything to do with the fact that Shahid has religiously avoided working with Akshay Kumar after their 2005 dud Deewane Hue Pagal? According to 16 september 2013

well-placed sources in the film trade, Shahid hasn’t forgiven Akshay for using his clout to get his role slashed substantially in that loose remake of There’s Something About Mary. It’s a rumour Shahid won’t address, although he does give you the sort of cheeky smile that suggests you’re not off the mark entirely.

Honourable in Debt

An actress who produced a starring vehicle for herself recently is left with substantial debts to clear, according to the Bollywood grapevine. The film bombed miserably at the boxoffice, failing to revive any interest in the once popular star.

While a comeback looks unlikely, what the leading lady does appear to have in abundance is the goodwill of her unit.

Even below-the-line staff and technicians have revealed that their fees were paid in full and that the actress never scrounged on their dues like many producers in the industry often do. During overseas shooting schedules, the unit was housed in more than decent hotels and their daily allowances fairly paid.

If anything, insiders say the actress spent lavishly on the film’s making, even unwisely so. Among other indulgences, the core team reportedly travelled three or four times to an expensive European city where the film was shot—for a recce initially, then for blocking locations, subsequently for what turned out to be a badly planned shooting schedule, and finally for another schedule once the filming was finally completed.

Admirably, the actress has maintained a dignified silence on the complete failure of her production team, which clearly couldn’t keep the budget in check and because of whom she now owes a sizeable sum of money to creditors. Bitchy colleagues insist she shouldn’t have jumped into film production if she didn’t know enough about the job in the first place. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

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The Lethal Non-Lethal Weapon

by as h i s h s h a r m a

Mushtaq Ahmed shows pellet injuries that he got when he stepped out of his home to buy vegetables in July this year. The 50-year-old happened to be crossing a road in downtown Srinagar where a protest was taking place when he was hit by pellets in his eye, chest and arm. He underwent an operation on 12 July, but has lost the use of one his eyes completely. The use of pellet guns by the police to disperse protestors is a cause of serious concern in Kashmir Valley, with many others too having lost their eyesight and/ or sustained other serious injuries

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16 september 2013