OPEN Magazine 17 March 2014 by Open Media Network

17 m a r c h 2 0 14

inside CONVERSATIONS IN THE NUDE l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

Stirrings of a Right Revolution

iss

io n

ec t

ia l

th in ri dia ll n er

Power of the First Timer And Moreâ&#x20AC;Ś

History Strikes Back in the Heartland

Putin: Return of The Great Terror

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Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor PR Ramesh Deputy Editors Aresh Shirali, Ullekh NP Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

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Volume 6 Issue 10 For the week 11—17 March 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

17 March 2014

MY SHARIFF

It is most unfortunate for Tamils in Sri Lanka and Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar to be treated as refugees or third-class citizens in these two Buddhistdominated countries, with restricted rights in their own birth-place, homeland or motherland (‘Buddha’s Orphans’, 10 March 2014). There is hardly any country where there is no minority community in co-existence with the majority community. And more often than not, the majority of one country is a minoriIt is imperative for the ty in another country. majority community Likewise, a minority of to treat its minorities one country might be a with love and justice, majority in another as its interests in other country. Hence it countries where it is becomes obligatory and a minority might be imperative on the part of jeopardised the majority community in a country to treat its minorities well—with love and justice, as the community’s interests in other countries where it is a minority might be jeopardised.  letter of the week Wrong Rightwing Idea

bokil’s idea of the economy is like the 1950s childish Hydraulic machine theory (‘The Mindboggling Tax Cut’, 17 February 2014). Smarter people have showed that the economy is an emergent order in which human beings can plan, but there is no overall ‘design’. He also thinks that the tiny businessman does not get credit because banks refuse him. Well, the country is broke. There needs to be savings first for credit to be extended to the less creditworthy. Arthakranti does not speak about reducing the scope of government. It just wants one form of taxation to be replaced with another. It does not speak about inflationism and lack of sound money. It wants import taxes—a 1750s mercantilist idea. The only thing import taxes protect is the local inefficient businessman from overseas suppliers who offer better value. It takes the benefit from the voiceless

consumer and gives it to a voluble minority. Reduction of taxes should go hand in hand with reduction of the scope of bureaucracy. We are 132/140 on ‘ease of doing business’ for crying out loud. Let us aim to be in the top 50 in the next 20 years.  Pravin varma

The ‘Others’ Also Matter

northeasterners are not wrong if they feel closer to China and Myanmar, ethnically and culturally (‘A brief History of the Other’, 24 February 2014). To discriminate against them because they look different is wrong. In Bangalore they were mistaken to be connected with the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar and were threatened and many had to leave the city. After the state government came down heavily on the mischief mongers, they have returned and resumed their normal lives. Our Delhicentric news media rarely

report events in the Northeast. In recent opinion poll surveys presented by English news channels, there was complete amnesia on the Northeast, though 25 Lok Sabha seats are from this region. Their opinion or the impact they may have on forming the next government has been overlooked.  HN Ramakrishna

Blind Faith

this refers to ‘Guru Delusion’ (3 March 2014). Such stories keep reminding us to keep ourselves sane while we do have space for belief in our lives. Belief in God or godmen/ women need not necessarily blind us to [rationality in the real world]. Turning these godmen into ‘God’ actually questions our basic human intellect.  saurav joshi

Tamils Ain’t Racist

the article ‘Jayalalithaa’s Mercy is Politically Savvy’ (3 March 2014) tries to project Tamils as racial chauvinists, which is fundamentally wrong. The article fails to touch an important point: the general feeling among people in Tamil land is that of a sustained alienation from the idea of Indianness because of the Centre’s insensitivity towards the killings of Tamil fishermen and repeated attacks on them by the Sri Lankan army. It was only after 2009, after an estimated 150,000 Tamils were killed, that there emerged a groundswell of support for the LTTE, not before that.  Ra j Ra j

open www.openthemagazine.com 1

Casteist Remarks Lead to a Cataract Crisis fallout

After a record-holding ophthalmologist is barred from his hospital for 10 days, surgeries pile up

ophthalmologist, Padmashree awardee and JJ Hospital Dean Dr Tatyarao Lahane holds the world record for the most cataract surgeries performed—over a staggering 100,000. At the government run hospital in Byculla, Mumbai, Lahane and his team would treat around 150 eye patients a day. After passing a casteist remark, he was temporarily barred from entering the hospital premises. His ten-day absence resulted in the cancellation of over 500 cataract operations. Hundreds of patients were encouraged to

noted

17 March 2014

come back once the matter had been resolved. “The internal conflict between staff and workers of the hospital will only result in the negligence of its patients. Not much good can come of it,” says 42-year-old patient Sujay Thakur, one of many affected by the doctor’s absence. Lahane’s present troubles stem from his being a stickler for hygiene and sanitation on hospital premises. In the early hours of 13 February, he had been doing his daily inspection rounds of the hospital when he noticed Narayan

Waghela, an on-contract sweeper, along with a group of other Class IV employees, not doing their jobs in protest against the management’s failure give them permanent jobs. Lahane lost his temper and allegedly made derogatory remarks to Waghela about the latter’s profession. Waghela lodged a police complaint and a first information report (FIR) was filed against Lahane at the JJ Marg police station under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention Of Atrocities) Act. The doctor

was temporarily barred from entering the hospital premises by a sessions court. Posters besmirching him as casteist sprung up around the hospital. Ironically, Lahane himself is of a Scheduled Caste. The Court granted Lahane anticipatory bail on 27 February and he resumed work last Friday, 28 February. When contacted, he said that the case was in the High Court currently and could not be discussed. Lahane and his team are now trying to cater to more patients daily to clear the backlog. n Gaurav Sarkar

open www.openthemagazine.com 3

times content

small world

contents

real india

30 youth

Ballot virgins

cover story

36 stakes

Inside the satta bazaar

Kerala vs Mary Jane

20 locomotif

Putin: return of the great terror

father of the Week n d Tiwari

war zone

History strikes back

The Paternal Politician At last! After years of denial, veteran Congress leader ND Tiwari has publicly acknowledged Rohit Shekhar as his biological son

arayan Dutt Tiwari, known for his amiable disposition, has often been the butt of unkind jokes. One of the most derisive was a slogan used by his political rivals in the mid-70s: “Main Narayan Dutt Tiwari hoon, na nar hoon na naari hoon, main Indira ka pujari hoon, main Sanjay ki savaari hoon.” (I am Narayan Dutt Tiwari, nor man nor woman, a devotee of Indira, and Sanjay’s vehicle.) A subservient, dynasty-obsessed Congress neta, Tiwari was never unnerved by ridicule. He went on to become Chief Minister four times—three times in Uttar Pradesh and once in Uttarakhand—plus Union minister with various portfolios, and is credited with spearheading a massive industrialisation drive in UP in the 70s and 80s. He has often said he holds no grudge against those who malign him. He was dispirited only when he faced allegations of fathering a child out of wedlock. The 89-year-old politician, who had to step down as Governor of Andhra Pradesh in 2009 following an expose of his alleged sexual escapades, this week ended a six-year legal battle by admitting that the man who had taken him to court, Rohit Shekhar, is indeed his biological son. “I want you to give respect to my mother… All I want is honesty from you,” Shekhar told Tiwari in a televised press conference, and the senior leader promptly agreed. In March last year, Tiwari had denied having any kind of relations with Shekhar’s mother and had described the paternity suit as a “political conspiracy” by his opponents. But a ‘reformed’ Tiwari told reporters this week: “I accept Rohit as my son. It was 4 open

arun sharma/ht/getty images

already proved two years ago when my DNA matched his. Whatever it has been, I want to put the matter at rest and publicly accept him as my biological son.” The day before, Tiwari had invited Shekhar to a guest house in Delhi and told him he was tired of fighting the case. Shekhar had taken Tiwari to court in 2008 claiming that he was born of an affair between his mother, Ujjwala Sharma, and Tiwari in the 1970s, while Tiwari was Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. As part of the trial, the Delhi High Court made the leader undergo a DNA paternity test. Tiwari tried to avoid this, even moving the Supreme

Court so that he did not have to provide blood samples. But despite requests from Tiwari’s lawyers that the results be kept secret, the tests established he was Shekhar’s biological father. “I am happy that ND Tiwari has finally accepted the fact that I am his son,” Shekhar said at the press conference. “We would have anyway won the case on 21 April,” the date of the final hearing. However, this ‘confession’, say legal experts, does not necessarily mean Rohit has a claim over Tiwari’s ancestral property estimated to be worth several hundred crores of rupees. n 17 March 2014

tibetans

books

Burden of freedom

Experiments in meritocracy

c books

The romantic philosopher

■

f o r regularising slums at the

last minute to get votes In a desperate attempt to consolidate its vote bank among slum dwellers, the state’s Congress-NCP government approved a proposal to regularise all slums that came up before 2000. The previous cut-off date for regularising slums was 1995. That this proposal—which is expected to

benefit about 350,000 slum dwellers in Mumbai alone by offering them redevelopment facilities—was brought in just two days before the Election Code of Conduct was imposed shows this was a stunt, pulled only to gather votes. While both the NCP and Congress had made similar promises before the 2004 and 2009 polls, this is the first time the government has brought in a bill. It lays out no concrete plans on how these slum units will be accommodated within the current civic set up. Meanwhile, the government has failed to improve the infrastructure and shoddy civic amenities in cities like Mumbai. Instead of mindlessly regularising slums, the government should first look at making such improvements. n

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

Shah Rukh

After his controversial remarks about Kashmiris as culprits of power theft, Union Minister Farooq Abdullah said he had been misquoted by the media reconsider

“Kashmiris are not only thieves, but mahachors”

— Farooq Abdullah at a function in Delhi 2 March 2014

turn

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of ment

ern P gov ess-NC shtra ■ r g n o C ara in Mah

cinema

A chat in the buff

“I never said that Kashmiris are thieves. I am sad that I was misquoted in the media...I had spoken about power”

— Farooq Abdullah addressing the press in Jammu 3 March 2014

around

A Government in Power but not in Charge s e r v ic e i n t e r r u p t e d Senior ministers, overcome by hubris, have been maintaining that it will be business as usual till the polls. Addressing a news conference on Wednesday, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram said Cabinet meetings would take place right up to the end of the present administration’s term and proposals cleared “based on decisions announced earlier”. Chidambaram was not wrong in saying that the Government has the freedom to 17 March 2014

follow up on proposals that have already been announced. But this may not turn out to be easy, as officials and experts are on overdrive to de-couple from the present regime at the Centre. The troubles experienced by the Government over the Lokpal search committee are a case in point. Fali S Nariman and Justice KT Thomas have refused to serve on the search panel as they suspect that the process is not transparent and not intended to select the best man for

the post of national ombudsman. Predictably, the Government’s opponents have cited the development as a clear sign of the UPA’s isolation. The Government’s efforts to constitute a judicial commission to probe Snoopgate charges against the Gujarat government’s leadership have also come unstuck as no judge is willing to head such a panel. All of this goes to show that though the Government is in power, it may no longer be in charge. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

A Hurried Man’s Guide

On the Contrary

to the Gulaab Gang controversy The upcoming Madhuri Dixit starrer Gulaab Gang, whose release was stalled recently by the Delhi High Court, has been at the centre of a dispute between the film’s makers and activist Sampat Pal Devi, who formed the real-life women’s vigilante group referred to as the Gulabi Gang. According to Devi, the film is based on her life and, apart from portraying her negatively, the film’s makers did not seek her consent for the project. The director of the film, Soumik Sen, denies the film is based on her. Pal founded the Gulabi Gang in Uttar Pradesh as a response to violence against women. It is currently estimated to have around 200,000 members. The women in this group dress in pink saris and carry lathis. Apart from protesting socials ills Gulaab Gang like dowry and female ildirector Soumik literacy, they are known to Sen denies that threaten and beat those his film is based abusive towards women. on the real life The film Gulaab Gang stars Gulabi Gang Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla, and tells the story of a gang of Indian women quite like Pal’s Gulabi Gang—women who dress in pink saris and fight social injustice.

afp

The real-life Gulabi Gang has already been the subject of two authorised documentaries, the 2010 film Pink Saris by Kim Longinotto and the 2012 film Gulabi Gang by Nishtha Jain.

A few days before the release of Gulaab Gang, Pal filed a case seeking a stay on the film in the Delhi High Court. A Times of India report quoted Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva as saying that the release of the film would cause irreparable damage to Pal’s reputation. Speaking about the new film, documentary filmmaker Nishitha Jain, who made the 2012 Gulabi Gang, recently told The New York Times: “What is extremely shocking is the impunity with which they have taken the name ‘Gulaab Gang’, which is very similar to ‘Gulabi Gang’... The makers also said that Gulabi Gang is not the only women’s group in India. Then how come they use the name, that too without permission from Sampat and not bothering to meet her?” n

On Humiliation and Its Spectacle Good doesn’t necessarily follow from blackening someone’s face, even if it appears to be deserved M a d h a v a n k u t t y P i l l a i

here is a secret pleasure in

seeing wealthy, powerful men brought to their knees. And especially if such a man heads an organisation that has serious legal questions around it, any humiliation is an affirmation of all the middle-class values ingrained in us since childhood: be honest, do good, act fair, character matters more than ambition, principle always weighs more than gold—or there will be consequences. But usually there are no consequences; most lives end up unremarkable anyway, no matter how carefully people tread the line of goodness. So consider the warm feeling many felt on seeing Sahara chairman Subrata Roy’s face blackened with ink outside Supreme Court. It is an image that will not be forgotten in a hurry and will be perceived as elementary justice. But it is not. There is a difference between the humiliation the Supreme Court doled out to Roy by making him spend time in jail and the ink that came flying through the air carrying all the outrage of an angry slice of India. To gloss over this distinction is to equate due process with vandalism. It is difficult to appreciate what an act of public humiliation entails unless the personality is removed from the analysis. To illustrate this, let’s take another case: that of former DGP SPS Rathore who molested a teenage girl, Ruchika Girhotra, two decades ago and then drove her to suicide by getting the police to file false cases against her brother. Here was a man who reportedly threw a party to celebrate the day she killed herself. And so, when in February 2010 he was outside court and one Utsav Sharma suddenly stabbed him repeatedly in the face with a pocket knife, it should have been unequivocal just desserts. But the next year, Sharma was

waiting with a meat cleaver outside a court for Rajesh Talwar and this is where the lines get fuzzy, because half the country believes Talwar killed his daughter Aarushi, and the other half doesn’t. To the latter, the image of a bleeding Talwar is heart wrenching; the icing of suffering on a cake that contains every possible grief that a man can endure. It may have been good that Utsav Sharma gave a lesson in pain to Rathore, but it was an unforgivable act with Talwar for those who believed in his innocence. Appearing on television some days after the incident, Talwar cried and said he had no faith left in humanity. It is interesting that he used that Humanity was word. We could always argue not couriered whether such a by God on the thing as eighth day; ‘humanity’ it comes into exists; whether existence by it is all a veneer, reaffirmation some semblance of order under which there are no rules in operation and therefore all actions are legitimate—if Roy can make thousands of crores by allegedly abusing the trust of poor villagers, then it is proper that he is also wronged in some small measure. But humanity is also something which comes into existence by its reaffirmation. It is not something that God couriered on the eighth day but accumulates by our belief in its necessity. When wanton acts are legitimised, they shave away a little bit of the civilisation that has so painstakingly evolved. If we are human, then even evil must be dealt with according to good norms. If ink can be thrown at Subrata Roy’s face today, then it may be thrown at you tomorrow, and who is to stand by your side and say you did not deserve it? n 17 March 2014

real

india

It Happens

Kerala Police versus Bob Marley A drive against youngsters smoking marijuana takes a bizarre turn

shahina kk

action foolish. “This is ridiculous,” says KP Sashi, a filmmaker and activist. “If the has risen from his grave in Jamaica to become a headache for police want to fight marijuana dealers, they should do it more smartly. Chasing the Kerala police. In cities across Bob Marley lovers in disguise in a the state, the police are on a drive against drive against drugs is nothing short of the use of marijuana among youngsters cultural policing. These cops don’t and Marley suddenly finds himself the prime suspect for sending these wayward know anything about Bob Marley; youngsters tripping on grass. The police are dutifully confiscating T-shirts, key chains, bracelets and stickers with The police are confiscating Marley’s pictures. Some of these policeT-shirts, key chains, bracelets men actually believe that Marley was a gang leader of an international drug mafia with Marley’s pictures. Some headquartered in Jamaica. policemen actually believe “We have caught around 200 students that Marley was a gang leader for using ganja. Most of them had Bob of an international drug mafia Marley songs on their cellphones, and stickers of marijuana leaves on their headquartered in Jamaica bikes. These children are attracted to drugs by Bob Marley songs,” says a straight-faced NG Suhruth Kumar, a civil police officer who is heading the mission in Thrissur to ‘free’ teenagers of drugs. In Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram, the police have raided shops that sell Bob Marley T-shirts, bracelets and key chains. Cases have been registered against the shopkeepers under Section 3 (1) Young Persons (Harmful Publication) Act 1956 for promoting material that is ‘harmful’ to youngsters. “I don’t know who this guy is, but the T-shirts imprinted with his face have huge demand among teenagers,” says a street vendor in Thrissur. “I have been selling T-shirts for more than 15 years, I never knew that this man is trouble, and that selling such T-shirts is a crime.” He has closed his shop for the time-being, afraid of being booked by the police. Music lovers and cultural rasta fare Bob Marley bags on sale at Thrissur in Kerala activists find the police ob Marley, the king of reggae,

17 March 2014

they think that he was only a guy who promoted drugs.” Despite bitter criticism from all corners, the police have no intention of dropping their Marley-Marijuana theory. “Bob Marley might be a good musician, but it is indeed true that the drug mafia is using him as an idol to sell their products,” says Suhruth Kumar. “When we interrogated them we understood that many of these youngsters addicted to drugs are Bob Marley fans. His song Ganja Gun has been found on the mobile phones of several of these young people.” But how is Bob Marley to blame if people are using him as a mascot to sell drugs, ask a group of students at Fort Kochi. They are about to launch a ‘Save Bob Marley’ movement. “We have been listening to his songs for years. Here in Fort Kochi, Bob Marley music shows are organised every year. None of us is addicted to drugs. We see his music in connection with the call for freedom of the oppressed, and not with the promotion of drugs,” says Anuraj K, an engineering student who is planning to wear Bob Marley T-shirts every day in protest against the police action. The State Youth Commission, however, is one step ahead of Kerala police in the Bob Marley hunt. It has called for a complete ban on Bob Marley T-shirts, keychains, bracelets and other accessories. “Such symbols that promote lethal drugs should be banned,” says RV Rajesh, chairman of Kerala Youth Commission. State Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala has meanwhile called for a meeting of the heads of the concerned departments to discuss the matter on the basis of a report submitted by the Commission. n open www.openthemagazine.com 11

lo co m ot i f

RETURN OF THE GREAT TERROR

S PRASANNARAJAN

ostalgia is the most powerful weapon in the armoury of an autocrat. No autocrat as sanguineous as Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is at work today, and it’s nostalgia that drives his extraterritorial ambition. They may not have given a name to the uprising in Ukraine yet—it was Orange Revolution earlier—but we may still be able to name the power that stifles freedom. The Great Terror of Stalinist vintage is back, and leading it from the front is a former KGB official, who, it seems, carries within him the spirit of Felix Dzerzhinsky, father of the Soviet secret service, originally called Cheka. When the Soviet Imperium fell, among the smashed icons in the wreckage were the granite remains of Iron Felix. Putin, a child of the KGB, is the so-called strong leader powered by the memories of yesterday. In his worldview, today’s turmoil—what others may call a freedom struggle—is the manifestation of the lost glory, of a moral dark hole. The Independence Square in Kiev is its newest address. The idyll of the Empire, still alive in the mind of the strong leader, has been shattered once again. So Putin’s reaction is predictably commissar-like. The uprising in Ukraine for him is not a democratic movement. It can’t be, because ‘democratic’ rhymes with ‘Western’; it is a repudiation of the all-powerful Centre. These excerpts from his first press conference after the conflict opens a window to his mind: “This was an anti-constitutional takeover, an armed seizure of power… One should not support illegal change.” For Putin, the deposed president, Viktor Yanukovich, an obedient servant of Moscow, is still the legitimate ruler of Ukraine. And Putin’s soldiers are reportedly at the gates of Crimea, where Russia’s strategic stakes are high. This is a warning that Moscow will go to any extent to maintain ‘legality’ in its near abroad, and Ukraine, a country whose soul is European, is a wayward state of freedom. Putin hates waywardness. All ‘strong’ leaders do. Putin’s back story is the evolution of an autocrat, a leader of manufactured order. His rise is a para12 open

doxical saga: a president born out of the ruins of the Soviet Empire, he used the post-communist freedom to build his own cult of the new Tsar. If Mikhail Gorbachev was, as a cartoonist then famously immortalised, the Mikhailangelo of Soviet Communism who fell along with the empire he humanised; if Boris Yeltsin, the first ruler of freedom, was incapable of managing the freedom; then Putin was the stabiliser. His first days in power were all about recreating himself as the Leader above other elected regional leaders, and larger than the institutions of a still nascent civil society. At the heart of his mission was a sense of loss and humiliation. The reality of a downsized power was not something that he—the one who came from the dark recesses of the empire—could live with. Russia was no longer the other side of global power; and freedom was turning immoral. Putin became the course corrector, a job that required extra-constitutional powers. This fantasy of greatness—of Russian exceptionalism—has a worthier pedigree. In his manifesto for post-Soviet Russia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a self-confessed half-Ukrainian by birth, just before his historic homecoming, wrote: ‘European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests. We embark on democracy at a time when it is not at its healthiest.’ Solzhenitsyn, let down by the sham glasnost and mounting immorality, yearned for a Greater Russia with a Slavic soul. Democracy was certainly not the route to the ‘spiritual and physical salvation’ of the people. The president of Russia would love that passage. Putin in action is a blend of Biblical moralism and Stalinist terror, and it is quite natural that he is the benefactor of such rogue regimes as Syria. On the ruins of the Soviet Union, Putin is building his own imperium, and in Russian history, empire-building is a bloody affair. The bad news from Maidan in Kiev only aggravates the bloodlust of the autocrat. n 17 march 2014

open essay BY Swapan Dasgupta

Stirrings of a Right Revolution Is it the end of Hindu victimhood?

ometime in the mid-1990s, when Prime Minister

PV Narasimha Rao and his able Finance Minister Manmohan Singh were busy rewriting the script for the Indian economy, I attended a small meeting of ‘like-minded’ journalists at the Pandara Park residence of the BJP leader LK Advani. Apart from Advani, the BJP was represented by KR Malkani who, apart from his long association with the ‘movement’, was also regarded as a party ideologue. The agenda was modest: to achieve a measure of clarity over a proposal to allow foreign equity participation in the media. As someone firmly committed to the dismantling of protectionist barriers, I argued that the media could hardly claim special status. In any case, I ventured to suggest, the BJP should not be averse to the proposed move: it was a party committed to deregulation and nationalism. This assertion agitated Malkani no end. “Yes,” he snapped at me, “but not in that order.” Malkani’s may have been a slightly irascible aside directed at someone he probably regarded as an ideological interloper but it encapsulated a dilemma that has confronted the BJP ever since India formally turned its back on the economics of socialism in 1991. Should the BJP be a classical Centre-Right party in the mould of the Conservatives in Britain and the Christian Democrats in Germany? Alternatively, should it place its commitment to ‘cultural nationalism’ above all else?

he choices confronting the BJP aren’t unique. Almost all Centre-Right political formations have at some time or another been forced to determine the relative weightage to be accorded to market economics and national culture. This wasn’t much of a problem in the West in the days when there was a cosy Right-Left consensus over an ever-expanding state. Till the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan reshaped the political agenda, Right-wing parties were either staid ‘conservative’ parties emphasising the virtues of the Establishment, tradition, humane capitalism and benign (but robust) nationalism or groups that were inspired in different ways by militarism, street fights and flag waving. The Thatcher and Reagan revolutions not only re-established the moral and political superiority of market economics but also made it possible for the practitioners of statecraft to consider rolling back the frontiers of the State. At the same time, the Right was confronted with a new problem. The growing primacy of market economics contributed to the steady breakdown of national barriers in the path of international trade and investment. From a ‘customs union’, the Treaty of Maastricht transformed the European Union into a super-state and the World Trade Organization eroded national sovereignty quite insidiously, but with the associated promise of material prosperity. With the ignominious Soviet defeat in the Cold War, globalisation did not quite end the emotional attachments of the nationstate. However, in the dominant discourse of the age, it made nationalism less ‘respectable’. It is significant that even the multiple voices opposed to globalisation are couched in either Leftist or ‘post-ideological’ idiom. The conventional nationalist espousal of national sovereignty has, by and large,

17 March 2014

been squeezed into the so-called ‘far-Right’ domain. In the popular imagination, the defence of the national in an increasingly shrinking world is a grandstanding associated with Anders Breivik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in a bout of frenzy in 2011. The marginalisation of yet another pillar of conservative political belief has been equally dramatic. Till about the first seven decades of the 20th century, the established Christian churches were known to side quite unequivocally against the forces of the Left. In post-War Italy, the Catholic church was the most formidable and dependable bulwark against the Communists; in Britain, the dominant Church of England was also described as the ‘Conservative Party in prayer’; and in the United States, the equation of church and conservatism (extending along formal party lines) was almost complete. The social upsurge that began in protest against the Vietnam war and soon came to embrace issues such as race and gender led to a steady secularisation of European (and to a lesser extent, American) society. The moral authority of the established Christian churches was considerably eroded and modern common sense internalised the belief that religion should be kept out of public spaces, including statecraft. No doubt the collapse of the Soviet Union and the revival of Christianity in eastern Europe checked the quantum of secularisation—to which was added the growing popularity of Christian evangelism in the US. But overall, the intellectual mood became increasingly anti-faith. Quite paradoxically, the weakening of Communism as a political movement was also accompanied by the rising appeal of certain tenets of Left-wing faith. To add to the muddle, there was the spectacular rise in the appeal of political Islam, particularly after the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the victory of the mujahideen forces in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of that country. The notion of the Islamic ummah, which had hitherto been a subsidiary and largely ignored aspect of the larger Muslim faith, now acquired traction. Osama bin Laden and his dramatic displays of death and destruction conferred upon Islamism a global notoriety but it also reshaped the larger political assumptions of Muslims throughout the world. In the non-Muslim world, Islamism generated contradictory responses. To the metropolitan upholders of globalisation, it confirmed the efficacy of the secularisation process. Unflinching religious faith, it was concluded, was a regressive phenomenon and had to be firmly relegated to the fringes of modernity. At the same time, the opponents of George W Bush’s ‘war on terror’ believed that the rough edges of Islamism could be blunted through moral relativism and accommodation. According to the emerging Liberal dogma, ‘fundamentalism’ couldn’t be destroyed; it had to be tamed through multicultural initiatives. The threatened clash of civilisations, it was felt, could best be averted through the creation of multiple identities and a forthright repudiation of the very idea of national cultures.

ndian politics has only too often been studied in nation-

al isolation, and without attaching undue importance to open www.openthemagazine.com 15

intellectual origins lay in the pre-Gandhian nationalist movement and Partition. Secondly, there was the Swatantra Party which was a strange amalgam of Princely India and embryonic capitalism. Neither formation could make any significant headway in the face of a Congress, which, apart from inheriting the political legacy of the national movement, also encapsulated the quasi-socialist urges of struggling Third World economies. Two events catapulted the Indian Right to centre-stage. The first was the short-lived Janata Party experiment. Apart from institutionalising democracy, the Janata experience proved invaluable in establishing an alternative tradition based on coalition politics. The second event in the form of the Ram temple movement was more consequential. For a start, the mobilisation spread over nearly five years enabled the Hindu Right to connect with peoples and communities spread across India that had hitherto not been exposed to alternative traditions. The direct

The Thatcher and Reagan revolutions re-established the moral and political superiority of market economics and made it possible to consider rolling back the frontiers of the State

In 1996, cultural nationalism was not that prominent but the memories of the Ayodhya demolition ensured Atal Behari Vajpayeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s failure to secure a parliamentary majority after 13 days

bandeep singh/india today group/getty images

howard l. sachs/cnd/corbis

the larger global backdrop. This approach may not have been out of place till the end of the 1980s when Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exposure to global influences was at best patchy and limited to a very thin layer of the elite and the Communist movement. The economic course correction undertaken after 1991 was a point of rupture. In the past 25 years or so, the quantum of economic growth has equalled that witnessed over the course of the preceding 150 years. The very slow, gradual social transformation that India witnessed throughout much of British rule and the Jawaharlal Nehru-Indira Gandhi years has been encapsulated in a remarkably short period. Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s living standards, awareness brought about by education and global exposure, and their collective aspirations have changed quite significantly in the course of a generation. These changes are now starting to be reflected in politics. For the Indian Right, the effects have been dramatic. In the Nehru-Indira years, there were two strands in the political Right. There was, first, the Jan Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) which was committed to a Hindu nationalism whose

16 open

17 March 2014

amit dave

impact of this was on the political fortunes of the BJP. By 1991, the BJP had successfully positioned itself as the ‘alternative pole’ of politics. At the same time, the passions aroused by the Ram temple movement led to a ganging-up of forces against the BJP. Because its spectacular surge had been due to its forceful articulation of ‘cultural nationalism’, the BJP became a single-issue force and was imperfectly positioned to respond to other issues and other forces. After 1991, for example, there was genuine confusion inside the BJP over its responses to economic liberalisation. Instinctively, the party stood for deregulation, decentralisation and small government. However, since these impulses were simultaneously linked to the opening up of the Indian economy to global competition, it was unsure of whether to welcome the change or retreat into a swadeshi inheritance. Even today, the issue hasn’t been conclusively resolved and often reappears in battles over insurance, retail and rupee convertibility. Yet, the confusion isn’t as marked as it was in

The awesome incremental support that Modi has secured all over India has almost everything to do with the fact that people see him as capable of delivering an economic miracle 17 March 2014

the mid-1990s. I recall at that time asking a very senior BJP leader whose interest in economic issues was perfunctory, how the party would resolve the problem. His answer was simple but memorable: “We will never fight an election on economic issues.” The candour was revealing and, in hindsight, testified to the fact that the Indian political class was unaware of the extent to which politics and economics would merge to squeeze out the culture wars. The BJP fought the 1991 election on the Ram temple issue. In 1996, cultural nationalism was not that prominent but it was the memories of the Ayodhya demolition that ensured Atal Behari Vajpayee’s failure to secure a parliamentary majority after 13 days. What is significant is that since then, the BJP has fought its electoral battles over leadership, the promise of good governance and, in 2004, on an out-and-out economic platform. In 2014, with Narendra Modi at the helm, the BJP platform is an epitome of conventional Right-wing politics: decisive leadership, rapid economic growth, a rollback of an inefficient state, uncompromising national security and an all-inclusive patriotism. Not once in his many speeches across the country has Modi mentioned the many little culture wars that agitate the minds of Hindu activists but leave the rest of India both irritated and exasperated. Does this imply that Modi has succeeded in doing what Vajpayee set out to do after 1998: to merge the parallel strands of cultural nationalism and capitalism with an Indian face? It is still too early to proffer a conclusive answer but certain trends are noteworthy. Modi rose to national prominence and acquired notoriety in liberal circles after his transformation into Chhote Sardar in the wake of the 2002 riots. There is no doubt that Modi successfully turned victimhood on its head and rode the crest of a Gujarati backlash in the election that followed the riots. However, since then Modi has successfully reinvented himself as the administrative and economic reformer extraordinaire—a man who is in a tearing hurry to destroy sloth, mediocrity and jugaad. Maybe, it was the image of a Gujarati Shivaji that endeared Modi to his party but the awesome incremental support he has secured all over India subsequently owes only nominally to his Hindutva credentials. It has almost everything to do with the fact that in a period of utter despondency, people see him as a leader capable of delivering an economic miracle. For the Indian Right, the transformation promises to be revolutionary. The shift in relative weightage from culture to economics wasn’t the result of deep introspection. In fact, Indian politics still remains remarkably discussion-free. It was pressure from below that dictated the choice of its leader and his agenda. The cadres and political class merely responded to the stirrings on the ground. Success in the polls promises an enduring change in the character of the Right; failure guarantees regression and the rediscovery of Hindu victimhood. India has changed dramatically and is in the process of reordering its priorities. The Indian Right is only beginning to learn that its old certitudes count for very little now. n Swapan Dasgupta , a Delhi-based political commentator, is a self-confessed conservative and part of India’s beleaguered Right open www.openthemagazine.com 17

s prasannarajan

here comes a moment in the life of a nation when the sound of change is no longer the oldest clichĂŠ inpolitics. A moment when usurpers and outsiders come from nowhere and steal the argument. India 2014, currently the stage for one of democracyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest passion plays, is having such a moment. It is not a sight

that you will find so easily anywhere else in the world: the size, the sweep, and the voices are uniquely Indian. Here, every idea in the book of salvation is at play. Every variation of the redeemer is on display. So take your pick. The leader in starched—and lately soiled—cotton, his steps tentative, could be the onewho embodies the squandered legacy of freedom. The princeling, angry and meditative in equal measure, could be the one who brings a qualitative shift in the oldest political tradition of the country. Out there, the man selling the future to a frenzied crowd could be the Indian Right’s last hope. The little man with the big idea of you-are-the-government could be the revolutionary India can do without. There are more, more than you can count: the sub-rural socialist, the Marxist who lives outside history and who has nothing at stake except the Book, the provincialist whose idea of the world is smaller than his shrinking constituency, sub-nationalists and other sundry practitioners of kitsch. When India prepares to make up its mind, choices are exhaustive as well as exhausting. Still, India 2014 is different from India 2009 and India 2004. Five years ago, it was not a vote for change; it was a vote divided between defeatism and dutifulness, and the latter prevailed. The BJP, even after five years in wilderness, was incapable, both biologically and ideologically, of coming to the real world of twenty-first century India. Its prime ministerial candidate was out of date—and out of place. The winner, the dutiful Prime Minister, was then learning to be a leader. The Chosen One of 2004 became the Elected One of 2009 because, towards the end of his first term, he reached belated political adulthood after outwitting the Marxists. In India 2004, it was the end of an experiment; it took only five years for the Indian Right to undo a historic shift in politics. A decade is a long time in politics; it could have seen a nation transformed, a ruler reborn—or an opportunity wasted. For India, in retrospect, the abiding theme of that lost ten years was the Great Hurt. India 2014 is all aboutreclamation. The absence of leadership has never been as visible as it is in the dying days of Dr Manmohan Singh’s government. He could have been the moderniser India was waiting for; he could have been the bestselling moderate in an India of political extremities; and he could have been the ideal apostle of a free market. His second term could be summed up best by that famous line about the former British prime minister John Major: he is in office but not in power. While in office, Dr Singh declared independence from his own government, as if he was not part of the Cabinet that starred in some of the biggest scandals of our time. Few men worked as hard as Dr Singh to unmake their own legacy. The erstwhile market liberator is walking towards that realm of irrelevance reserved for leaders who missed history, and the India he leaves behind is a country that is desperate for a leader whose ideas are in tune with the attitudes of India. A leader who can sell a dream to an India that is growing demographically younger. India is focused on three men who want to be that leader, and the first among them— and the most kinetic of them all—is the most captivating politician of our time. He divides the mind and unites the base; he is feted as well as feared. Narendra Modi began hiscampaign for India more than ten years ago, in the flaming backdrop of Gujarat 2002. India’s most popular prime ministerial candidate (according to various opinion polls) is a study in the power of ambition—and of ideas but not ideology in spite of the House of Saffron he comes from. The frontrunner’s candidacy is an outsider’s triumph in a country where the culture of entitlement runs across the political spectrum. With his winning economic argument, Modi could regain the lost space of the Indian Right. On the other side of the aisle is the philosopher prince whose campaign is not a struggle for power but a meditation on power. Rahul is a different kind of Gandhi, and even as he tries to comprehend this “beehive” nation, his own party struggles to translate his soliloquies on power. Let India wait, Rahul has to keep the Dynasty alive. And the third man, the street fighter, is one without doubts; he is the righteous one, and his certainties are as frightening as his idea of India—a People’s Republic ruled by a few lofty men. India of the moment may not be the ideal state for a revolutionary; it certainly is the place for a leader who can converse with the future. Every future is fabulous, wrote the novelist Julio Cortázar. In the summer thriller of 2014, history sets the stage for India to choose between the fatal and the fabulous. n

Jagan Mohan Reddy The YSR Congress leader will have an asking price for his support after the election

Jayalalithaa Post-election, the PM-designate will be waiting for a letter from Poes Garden

Mulayam Singh The wrestler’s last chance to stay relevant

Nitish Kumar The socialist gambler may have no further chance to gamble

Ahmed Patel The most powerful owl in the Congress

Arun Jaitley In the Sangh Parivar, he was the devil’s advocate and it paid off

Amit Shah Sancho Panza to Modi’s Don Quixote

Prakash Karat The apparatchik-in-chief has revived the Third Front fantasy

Mayawati Can she remain the sole harvester of Dalit votes in the heartland? Mamata Banerjee The roar of the Bengal tigress will be heard in Delhi

Rahul Gandhi The reluctant prince is still meditating on the crown

illustration by anirban ghosh

Sonia Gandhi Mother Superior’s worst fear is the fading mystique of the dynasty

Narendra Modi The roller-coaster has electrified the saffron base

The War Zone

HISTORY STRIKES BACK Is it payback time in the Hindi heartland? PR Ramesh AND

Ullekh NP

he late Mahendra Singh Tikait, a legendary peasant leader from western Uttar Pradesh’s Jat belt, used to count on Muslim faces as an integral part of his agitations—and he led many, including a ten-day siege of Delhi in 1988 where Jats wearing turbans marched in rhythmic cadence alongside Muslims in their own traditional headgear. Muley Jats, whose forefathers of the Jat caste had converted to Islam, enjoyed enormous cultural affinity with the region’s land-owning Hindus. Many of these ‘Muslim brothers’ were partners in farming and members of Jat-only wrestling teams. While Jats famously had affection for Muslims in the region, they looked down upon and even persecuted Dalits. None other than Tikait himself invited punishment for making derogatory remarks against former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Dalit leader Mayawati by referring to her caste. That’s history now. And this social churn and the concomitant shift in political choices make Uttar Pradesh one of the three key states to watch out for in these polls. The other two, Bihar and Karnataka have also witnessed a major political churn over the past few years: and pundits forecast major swings in voting patterns in these three states.

Once amiable Jat-Muslim relations in western UP have been upset by recent outbreaks of violence, especially the Muzaffarnagar riots sparked off by reports of Muslim youths harassing a Dalit girl. Soon, Jats joined hands with Dalits, resulting in a conflagration that claimed at least 43 lives last September. While the veracity of such reports has been questioned, it is evident that the famed camaraderie between Jat Hindus and Muslims has come apart. Ironically, there have been no clashes in areas where rich Jat Hindus and Muslims lived side by side; most of the riots took place where the rich and poor of either community lived in close proximity, with the rich targeting the poor. In the process, western UP, comprising Bareilly, Agra, Mathura, Moradabad, Meerut, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Rampur, Shahjahanpur, Etah, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Shamli, Etawah and so on, saw a dramatic social churn. Prior to the Muzaffarnagar riots, Jats in this part of India’s most populous state had never lent their support to Scheduled Castes. “This unsettling of social and political equations in the region (where Muslims account for 26 per cent of the population) will play a crucial role in the next polls,” says acclaimed sociologist and author Dipankar Gupta, who, however, rules out any “warming

The War Zone Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka will be the defining states Swing States Uttar of Election 2014

Direct Fight (BJP vs Congress)

113

113 seats from 12 states Total seats 2009

BJP’s best performance in last four elections

2 1

Goa

BJP’s 2009 wins

Total seats 2009

BJP’s 2009 wins

26 15

Gujarat

4 3

Himachal Pradesh

11 10

Chhattisgarh

25 4

Rajasthan

5 0

1 1

Andaman & Nicobar

Delhi

dibyangshu sarkar/afp

Madhya Pradesh

Uttarakhand

29 16

7 0

Dadra Nagar Haveli

1 0

Chandigarh

1 1 1 1

Daman & Diu

Direct Fight (NDA vs UPA) 99 seats from 5 states Total seats 2009 NDA’s 2009 wins

48 Total seats 2009

ashok dutta/ht/getty images

BJP’s best performance in last 4 elections

NDA’s 2009 wins

Seats Contested

13 10

ah M

a ry an Ha

ht ra

ar as

ar Jh

As sa

ry an

0 Ha

ab nj

ar as ah M

22 open

ht ra

d an kh ar Jh

As sa

5 5

33 ab

up” of Jats to Dalits. Gupta, who has studied inter-community relations closely, says the political situation in the state is expected to favour the BJP in these polls. Gupta dwells at length on how the BJP began to attract young Jats. “It began with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Young people had started showing interest in the agitation that catapulted the BJP to mainstream politics. By then, the rural economy was evolving fast and old boundaries were quickly losing their sanctity. It was par for the course until the 1970s for Hindu Jats or Muslim Jats to

symbolically make fun of each other on the day of Holi. But, by the 1980s, that was no longer allowed, though Muslims and Hindus were still part of the same wrestling team,” recalls Gupta. The only time the BJP made headway in western UP, by securing a chunk of the Jat vote, was after the religious polarisation wrought by the Babri Masjid demolition of 6 December 1992. Even then, pundits say, only the younger generation of Jats voted for the party. And very soon, they too switched to backing former Prime Minister Charan Singh’s son Ajit Singh of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) as the religious fervour faded over the rest of the 1990s. Sompal Singh, a rich Meerut-based farmer, says he would vote for the RLD, now a Congress ally, by force of habit. “That is all. I don’t think others in the community [of Jats] would continue to vote for [the RLD] or Samajwadi Party (SP),” he says, “Many young as well as some old people have started thinking: why not give the BJP a chance? There are 17 march 2014

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka account for 148 seats

The BJP can expect to improve upon its 2009 tally in UP, but then it will have to attain the right social mix of upper-castes and OBCs

VOTE SHARE

An improvement of its Bihar tally looks easy for BJP, especially after an alliance with Paswan’s LJP. Yeddyurappa’s return is a crucial gain in Karnataka

parwaz khan/ht/getty images

5 1984 LS

1989 LS

1991 LS

1998 LS

INC

1999 LS

2004 LS 2009 LS 2012 Ass.

SP/JD/LKD

BSP

many people who also launch a blistering attack on the Congress when the topic of elections comes up for discussion.” Gupta argues that the Muzaffarnagar riots were not pre-planned. Whatever the case, says Muzaffar Ahmed, a Pune-based law student whose family is from Muzaffarnagar, “Communal amity that existed between Muslims and Hindus has ceased to exist. The situation there [in western UP] is very dangerous. Animosities show no signs of mellowing. They are only thriving and Mulayam’s son [Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav] has done nothing to improve the situation.” According to this 22-year-old, many Muslims have lost faith in the SP, which he alleges is playing “dangerous politics” by appeasing both Muslim and Hindu wrongdoers by letting them off. “They are just eyeing votes, but in vain. Who would want to vote for a party that could not stop riot after riot erupting in the state?” he asks angrily.

Shome Basu/The India Today Group/Getty Images

BJP

1996 LS

UP FOR GRABS

Bad news for SP

Forging viable social combinations is crucial for poll triumph

Brahmin 11%

% ut 7 % Rajp h1 ast Kay

Muslim 17% Oth

te as

Yad av 1 0

um iha

dC ar kw

2% 3% Nishad

C 11 %

av 11%

Jat

Lodh 3%

Kurm i 4%

Maurya 3%

5% iya

n Ba

r/T ya g

i1 %

er S

Jat

Upper Caste

Yadav

Total Non-Yadav OBCs

Total SC

Muslim

25%

10%

26%

22%

17%

Source: Muslim and Dalit voter population has been estimated from Census 2001 while other caste numbers are approximations based on other statistical data

17 march 2014

This should indeed worry Akhilesh Yadav, says one of his party members who asked not to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media. Of course, for a party that did extremely well in the 2012 Assembly polls in western UP as well as the rest of the state, this is no good news. “Do you remember the euphoria with which Akhilesh came to power? The promise he as a young man held out to people? In effect, nothing changed within the SP. The old guard is still at the helm and the talk among corporates is that if you want to get anything done in UP, don’t meet the CM,” laughs this legislator. “The riots have completely altered the region,” notes Ahmed, “Unfortunately, there is strong polarisation open www.openthemagazine.com 23

The War Zone along religious lines there.” The SP, which saw a consolidation of Muslim support in its favour two years ago, has come under sharp attack from various community leaders in the past few months. Jamait Ulema-e-Hind (M) General Secretary Maulana Mahmood Madani had hit out at the state’s SP government for failing to protect innocent lives during the Muzaffarnagar riots and for its ‘tepid approach’ towards the rehabilitation of survivors. Meanwhile, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, seems to be veering towards throwing his weight behind the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). He has lashed out at Mulayam Singh Yadav for “joining hands with communal forces and ignoring minorities”. He was also upset with Mulayam for denying his son-in-law a berth in the UP cabinet. Clearly, Muslims, who wield significant electoral clout in a fourth of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha constituencies, don’t want to play the role of a mere pressure group any longer. This is an all-India trend, observe political analysts. Says Oxford University Professor Faisal Devji: “[Muslims] might return to the BSP in UP and to Nitish in Bihar. The Congress will be attractive only if there’s a general feeling that [the party] can increase its vote share among other constituencies as well, thus making it capable of offering protection and privileges to Muslims in particular.” The ‘general feeling’ that Devji talks about goes against the Congress. Various recent surveys indicate that anti-incumbency against the Congress, which led the scam-scarred UPA over the past 10 years, is much higher than once thought. Perhaps he is right about Muslims tilting towards the BSP despite being suspicious of Mayawati over her past association with the BJP. Virginia University Professor John Echeverri-Gent, an alumnus of Banares Hindu University, has studied India since the mid-1970s and has worked among Dalits in eastern UP, helping them acquire new agricultural skills. He expects the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to have a clear edge in the 2014 General Election for a variety of reasons, and this includes the remarkable cam24 open

paign capabilities of Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. He also expects the Congress to weaken in the run-up to the polls. “Modi has been highly successful in not only mobilising core voters for the BJP, but also in reaching out to other groups,” he says, “At this juncture, he appears to be a far more dynamic leader than Rahul Gandhi (despite the poor human-rights record of the former).” For his part, Atul Kohli, David KE Bruce Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, is disappointed with the Congress for its inability to come up with a non-Nehru-Gandhi-family PM who has an independent political base.

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka, the three key states in this General Election, have all witnessed a major political churn in the recent past The BJP, whose best Lok Sabha tally in UP was 57 seats in 1998, hopes that the ‘atmosphere’ in the state will help it win 4050 seats this time round, something that could see Modi achieve his ambition of becoming India’s next PM. Notably, for these polls, says BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan, the party will allot more tickets in UP than usual to ‘Backward caste’ candidates as part of its efforts to woo voters who feel they didn’t benefit much from the social engineering exercise that swept the state after the emergence of parties such as the SP and BSP. This would mean non-Yadav voters among Other Backward Classes, since the SP is seen as Yadav-dominated, and non-Jatavs or Mahadalits among Dalits, since the BSP is seen as Jatav-leaning. As for mak-

ing inroads among OBCs, Lodh Rajputs have already thrown in their lot with the BJP, thanks to Kalyan Singh, a Lodh Rajput who has returned to the party. Congress leaders Open spoke to agree that the states of UP and Bihar are crucial in this election, and say that the party hopes to do well in Karnataka as well. “We are betting big on an alliance with the BSP in UP and with the RJD in Bihar,” says a Congress leader. A fastidious partner, Mayawati could ruin Rahul Gandhi’s dream of reviving the Congress party in the state. She may also demand an alliance in various other states in lieu of an alignment in UP, and this might see her make a play for Dalit votes in these states at the Congress’ expense. Asked about the ‘tough nature’ of such a pact, the Congress leader says, “We will see when it comes to that.” As of now, he is of the view that a Dalit-Muslim power bloc could stop the Modi juggernaut, as the state has close to 50 Lok Sabha constituencies where Dalits and Muslims jointly make up over 40 per cent of the electorate. Yet, all that is easier said than done. Battle for Bihar

In Bihar, a state that could see a major swing thanks to a realignment of forces since the last Lok Sabha polls, the Congress has tied up with the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), hoping to pull in Yadav and Muslim votes. As part of this pre-poll alliance, of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state, the RJD will contest 27, the Congress 12 and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) one. They expect Dalit votes as well. But the electoral competition in Bihar is stiff. “It is clearly a three-cornered fight in the state,” says a Patna-based political analyst who sees the Muslim vote splitting between the RJD-Congress alliance and the JD-U. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of the JD-U is on a mission to expand his party’s social appeal. He wants to rope in more people—meaning MLAs from other parties and powerful caste groups—for multiple purposes. Having severed a 17-yearold alliance with the BJP less than a year ago, he doesn’t want to lose power in the state now that he expects a hostile dis17 march 2014

gi/ ind ia pa rv ee n ne

p/g et ty to day gr ou

im ag es

Diminishing Maya

The BSP is slowly losing its sway over the Dalit vote 16% Population of Dalits in the country Six states that account for 148 Lok Sabha constituencies have more than 20% In another 10 states that account for 153 lok Sabha seats, Dalits form 15-20% of the population Recent Assembly elections in 4 states have shown that Dalits are moving away from the BSP MEGHALAYA

7.4

AAP secured a good chunk of Dalit votes and BJP expanded its base among Dalits in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh

25.2

The entry of Paswan to the NDA, Ramdas Athawale of RPI and Dr Udit Raj, chairman of the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations is expected to strengthen BJP’s chances

J&K

18.9

HARYANA CHANDIGARH PUNJAB

RAJASTHAN DELHI

SIKKIM HIMACHAL PRADESH

0.6

4.6

UTTARAKHAND

20.2

18.8

ASSAM

UTTAR PRADESH

31.9

7.2

20.7

17.8 16.8

BIHAR

15.9 6.7 2.5

Dalit population in india (2011 census)

GUJARAT

DAMAN & DIU

1.8 DADRA AND NAGAR HAVELI

17.8

11.8 JHARKHAND

MAHARASHTRA

TRIPURA

15.7 12.1

1.7 GOA

PUDUCHERRY

17.1 15.7

9.1

Results in 55 remaining Assembly segments

17 march 2014

0.1

CHHATTISGARH

ANDHRA PRADESH

BJP+SAD

AAP

INC

BSP

Vote

37.4

23.8

9.7

9.1

seats

1 (IND)

Vote

32.9

31.4

3.9

5.8

seats

34.0

29.5

24.6

3.5

8.4

Results in all 70 Assembly Vote segments seats

MANIPUR

MIZORAM

12.8 16.4

TAMIL NADU

Results in 15 Assembly segments of Outer Delhi

23.5

MADHYA PRADESH

KERALA

SCs shift to AAP in Delhi

WEST BENGAL

17.1 KARNATAKA

3.4

ODISHA

Oth/IND

pensation at the Centre after the polls. After the JD-U’s breakup with the BJP over Narendra Modi leading the latter’s national poll campaign, Kumar’s party has just 115 seats in Bihar’s 243-member Assembly, and enough vacancies in the council of ministers: 16. Currently, Kumar’s survival is ensured by four Congress MLAs and as many independents. The upshot: widespread horsetrading. Kumar has managed to woo into his fold Samrat Chaudhury, an influential leader among Koeris. Son of former senior RJD leader and former MP Shakuni Chaudhury, he enjoys consideropen www.openthemagazine.com 25

The War Zone able sway over this OBC group. In its fight for a share of the same vote, the BJP had earlier secured the support of Koeri leader Upendra Kushwaha, who will fight the elections in a tie-up with it. He is a former JD-U lawmaker who had quit Bihar’s ruling party last year to float his own Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. However, the real shot in the arm for the BJP has been getting Ram Vilas Paswan to ally with it. Paswan, the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader who was piqued at a ‘raw deal’ meted out to him by the Congress and RJD over seat-sharing for the upcoming polls, was pleased to join hands with the BJP. His main goal is to establish a political career for his son Chirag. As part of an agreement that Paswan has reached with the BJP, the LJP will contest seven Lok Sabha seats as opposed to the five offered by the Congress-RJD combine. The BJP sees a lot of symbolism in Paswan’s return to the NDA, which he quit in 2002. The veteran parliamentarian stepped down as minister from the Atal Behari Vajpayee Government in April 2002 alleging that the Narendra Modi government had failed to control the anti-Muslim conflagration in Gujarat after the Godhra train-burning incident. He had also demanded that Modi be sacked as CM and President’s rule be imposed in Gujarat. As a Dalit subcaste, Paswans comprise 4-5 per cent of Bihar’s electorate and the LJP’s loyal votes are considered transferrable to a party of the leader’s choice. A BJP leader close to the development says his party’s strategy is similar to its game in UP: retain ‘upper-caste’ votes and offer as many tickets to Backward class candidates as possible. The party is keen to flaunt Modi’s OBC credentials to attract voters beyond its traditional ‘uppercaste’ appeal base, a widening-out exercise that it has succeeded with in states like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. “The strategy will pay off,” says the leader, asking not to be named. Clamour in Karnataka

A Delhi-based psephologist agrees that besides UP and Bihar, the state that is expected to see a major swing in voting patterns this time round is Karnataka. 26 open

Together, the three states account for 148 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP is optimistic now that Karnataka’s former Chief Minister and Lingayat strongman BS Yeddyurappa has returned to the party. The 71-year-old, who led the BJP’s first-ever government in South India, will contest the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat. Disaffection with the party among Lingayats, a dominant community in Karnataka, for expelling Yeddyurappa (on corruption charges) was one of the reasons for its poor show in the May 2013 Assembly polls. According to Muzaffar Assadi of the Department of Studies in Political Science, University of Mysore, the Congress’ decisive victory over the BJP in the state elections was aided by the fact that, besides the many misdeeds of the then ruling party, “minorities, OBCs and Dalits swung back to their traditional platform, the Congress”. While many pundits expect the ‘Congress honeymoon’ in the state to sustain its chances in the Lok Sabha polls as well, it is important to note that in many Lingayat-dominated seats, it was the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP), floated by Yeddyurappa after his expulsion, that wrecked the BJP in last year’s polls. In 29 of the 224 constituencies, the BJP and the KJP together got more votes than the winning candidates. Overall, the KJP won over 9 per cent of all votes polled in Karnataka. No wonder then that the Congress won 41 seats more than it did in the previous polls of 2008, managing a tally of 121 in 2013. The BJP won only 40 seats, the same number as the Janata Dal-Secular of Deve Gowda. Last year, the BJP had tried to counter the Yeddyurappa factor by naming Jagadish Shettar, a Lingayat leader of stature, as CM and its campaign spearhead in the state. However, the Shettar magic did not click as the group’s votes were split three-way, resulting in gains for the Congress. Now with Yeddyurappa back in the fray under the lotus banner and hoping to ride a ‘Modi wave’, the BJP hopes to make some gains. “We will definitely do better than [we did in 2013],” says a BJP national executive member from the South.

hen BJP President Rajnath Singh held out an olive branch to Muslim voters at a minority meet in UP recently, his comments evoked scepticism, rekindled the issue of Gujarat’s 2002 riots, and also turned the spotlight back on the Muslim ballot and how it could make or break the Congress at this year’s hustings. The dynamics of minority politics in India, especially how Muslim voters view India’s two big parties, would be a crucial factor in the polls. The key question is whether such voters still see the Congress as the party best placed to thwart the BJP and Modi. Or whether they are looking for viable options among other parties. This is all the more relevant since the Muslim electorate, going by leaked 2011 Census figures that have been kept under wraps by the Centre, has registered a substantial increase since 2001—especially in 10 big states. By the 2001 Census, Muslims formed 13.4 per cent of India’s population, spread across the country in a way that most lived in constituencies where they did not even account for 10 per cent of the local electorate. Also, data gathered by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies showed that Muslim voter turnout averaged 59 per cent, a little less than the national average of 60 per cent. New Census findings, however, suggest a large number of constituencies where Muslims now form 10-30 per cent of the population. It’s here that the BJP hopes to nudge minority votes towards smaller parties and dispel the notion of the Congress being Modi’s ablest challenger. The rise in Muslim numbers is most noticeable in Assam, where they were found to make up 34.2 per cent of the population in 2011, up by more than 3 per cent since 2001. In West Bengal, this religious group’s share rose by almost 2 per cent to 27 per cent. In Kerala, by 2 per cent to 26.6 per cent. Uttarakhand has seen a similar rise to 13.9 per cent. In UP and Bihar, the increase is about 1 per cent, with the Muslim headcount at 19.3 and 16.9 per cent respectively. Jharkhand, Delhi and 17 march 2014

The Untold Census Story Assam, West Bengal, Kerala and UP have seen a significant rise in Muslim population over the past decade, according to a leaked report of the 2011 Census PR Ramesh 35

34.2 2001 30.9

2011

All figures in per cent of overall population

30 27 25.2

26.6 24.7

18.5

19.3 16.5 16.9

13.8

14.5 11.9

13.9 12.9 12.9 12.2 11.7 11.5 10.6

Maharashtra report similar increases, with the 2011 figures rising to 14.5, 12.9 and 11.5 per cent respectively, while Karnataka has seen a rise of just below 1 per cent to 12.9 per cent. In the scramble for seats in the Hindi heartland of UP and Bihar, several parties will be vying frantically for the Muslim vote, which is bulky enough now to determine outcomes in many places. In 13 constituencies where Muslims account for over 30 per cent of the electorate, this high concentration has resulted in high minority turnouts and set off a trend of po17 march 2014

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larised politics. In 14 seats, they account for 20-30 per cent of the electorate, while in another 27, they can influence results in a big way. In 17 others where they comprise 15-20 per cent of all voters, they can act as tone-setters for poll outcomes. In Bihar, with the ‘secular’ camp divided between the RJD-Congress and the JDU, the BJP must be hoping for a splintering of Muslim votes. Nitish Kumar, who snapped his ties with the BJP over Modi, perhaps expects a ‘thank you’ note from minorities in the form of votes. In recent years, Bihar’s CM has been aggressively

wooing ‘lower caste’ Pasmanda Muslims, a vast group of people seen to nurse a grudge over being overlooked by other ‘secular’ parties. Notes Oxford University Professor Faisal Devji: “For me, the most interesting political movement among Bihari Muslims is the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, which, while it may not be in a position to decide voting patterns, represents the most creative and radical politics among Muslims… for theirs is an internal critique, not the usual call for a bandwagon that all Muslims must join for security, etcetera. Pasmandas want to destroy the myth of a ‘Muslim community’, which they claim has always been dominated by exploitative uppercastes and not done any good to ordinary Muslims. It represents a new move towards a more confident politics not based on victimhood and paranoia, and for which the ‘community’ itself poses a problem.” In UP, the ruling SP’s archrival BSP is perceived as better placed to gain this year’s minority vote by putting together a Dalit-Muslim electoral combo to challenge the BJP. In Western UP, though, the BSP may alienate Jatav Dalits whose relations with Muslims have soured over the Muzzafarnagar riots. That the Muslim vote cannot be taken for granted by any party—something that the Congress appears slow to comprehend—was proved tellingly in 2007, when the community backed the BSP. But in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Muslims divided their allegiance tactically among the Congress, SP and BSP in different constituencies, picking a party that could defeat the BJP, which came in fourth overall. This time, Modi’s party is determined to put an end to such tactical anti-BJP voting, which explains some of its recent friendly overtures to minorities. The BJP’s efforts have already helped it gain allies. Most tellingly, in Bihar, the LJP’s Ram Vilas Paswan, once a strident critic of the BJP’s ‘communal card’, has rejoined the NDA and even lent some credence to Modi’s version of secularism: ‘nation first’. That is an impression the BJP now hopes to reinforce. n open www.openthemagazine.com 27

The War Zone ‘Rurban’ and Dalit Votes

the power of three

Political analysts suggest that the poll prospects of parties are best assessed in three key constituency categories: where the BJP is directly in combat with the Congress; where the Congress and BJP are fighting each other with the help of 28 open

BSP loses hold over Dalits in 4 state assembly elections

BSP vote share 2008 Assembly election BSP vote share 2013 Assembly election

Declining vote share of BSP afp

According to BJP General Secretary Pradhan, urbanised rural voters—villagers who aspire to be urban in their outlook—are expected vote en bloc for the BJP this time. The calculations, pundits aver, are based on the belief that the ‘rights-based approach’ championed by the Congress’ chief campaigner Rahul Gandhi may hold little appeal for young voters in the countryside, especially those who have started mimicking urban behaviour. And there are millions. Thanks to delimitation and migration, nearly 200 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 constituencies are either urban or semi-urban. Here, the state of the economy is of high relevance, though popularly discussed only as a question of jobs, earnings and inflation. BJP leaders hope that Modi’s aspirational narrative will be a big plus in winning these seats—termed rural-urban or ‘rurban’ constituencies. Given his emphasis on economic growth and job generation over State handouts, Modi has an edge over his rivals in what some call the ‘confidence quotient’, especially among potential BJP voters and powerful corporations. Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy thought Modi would be an acceptable PM if he merely apologised for the riots that hit Gujarat under his watch twelve years ago. Late last year, Modi did break his silence over that episode, saying he was shaken to the core by the ‘mindless violence’ of 2002. Investment banks, too, have begun to root for him as PM. Goldman Sachs’ pronouncement that Modi could be a change agent invited the Congress’ wrath. CLSA, Nomura and others, too, went on to heap praise on the ‘investor friendliness’ of the larger-than-life CM of Gujarat. Even Congress leaders admit—sotto voce—that the traditional template for political messaging may have rather little traction in this election.

Delhi 14.05

BSP’s Loss

8.7

9 6

5.35

Rajasthan 8

7.6

7 6

BSP’s Loss

4.21

5 4

3.39

MP 10

8.97 BSP’s Loss

2.68

6.29 6

Chhattisgarh 8 7

The just concluded polls showed dalits moving to other political tents

6 5

6.11 BSP’s Loss

1.84

4.27 4

allies; and where either the BJP or Congress take on regional parties. According to election experts and Election Commission officials, the first category accounts for some 113 seats; the second, 100 odd (across states such as Punjab, Maharashtra, Assam, Jharkhand, and Haryana); and the third, 105 seats across Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. What is crucial, notes Delhibased political analyst TVR Shenoy, is how many seats the BJP secures fighting regional political entities such as the SP, JD-U and BSP. The BJP, for its part, wants to add 28 Karnataka seats to that list as well. The Delhi-based psephologist argues that Dalits, who account for nearly 16 per cent

of the country’s electorate, are up for grabs with new claimants emerging for their favour. The BSP suffered hugely in Delhi’s recent Assembly polls, with a rank outsider like AAP making off with a significant chunk of the city state’s Dalit vote. This vote bank, which once formed part of the Congress’ famed ‘rainbow’ of assorted social groups, cannot be counted on by any party anymore. Not the Congress, nor the BSP. The Election Commission has sounded the bugle for the hustings. It has announced a nine-phase polling schedule starting on 7 April and ending on 12 May. Exactly how the churn has reshaped India’s political landscape shall be known four days later. n 17 march 2014

first timers

her first time Lavanya Garg, a first-year student at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College, doesn’t want a right-wing party like the BJP to come to power but finds Modi’s promises of development persuasive

Ballot Virgins They talk development on college campuses AANCHAL BANSAL

raul irani

ranav Gupta, a third -year stu-

dent of economics at St Stephen’s College, has been keeping busy. Not so much with his books and classes in college, but attending every political rally held in the capital over the past two months. “I have been to Rahul Gandhi’s rally, and Kejriwal’s junta durbar,” says the 20-year-old, with the excitement of a tourist recounting his itinerary. The next destination on his list is Rohini in northwest Delhi where the BJP’s Narendra Modi is expected to address a rally this month. The agenda is to keep oneself informed before making a decision to vote, says the Noida resident. “You should feel the excitement and buzz of such events. That is the purpose of an election rally. Television discussions are noisy but I really enjoy rallies as you can see the leader upfront, and gauge his capability,” says Gupta, who hops on to the Metro or a DTC bus to get to these political events. Be it Kejriwal’s 49-day stint as Chief Minister of Delhi, or the image war between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, Gupta likes to have an opinion. “I am a student of economics, but somehow politics interests me—an interest in politics is also as important as economics for nation building and I am looking forward to vote this time,” he says. Gupta is among those citizens who expect to lose their ‘ballot-virginity’—as it open www.openthemagazine.com 31

ashish sharma

There will be more than 100 million first-time voters

specific agenda A second-year student at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, Atreyi Bhattacharya is looking at voting for a party that will support LGBT rights

is known on campus these days—this year. According to figures released by the Election Commission recently, there will be over 100 million Indians eligible to vote for the very first time this year. It is a number no political party can afford to ignore, and all major parties have pumped resources into imagebuilding exercises, even stunts, to woo the youth. These young minds, however, do seem to have their minds and hearts set on governance and efficiency in running the country when it comes to choosing a candidate to elect. While Gupta is enamoured of political figures who can attract crowds to their speeches and public rallies with their “stardom”, he insists on an assurance of efficient governance and honesty. Moses Koul, his classmate, has been reading the political manifestos of most parties, “studying” their economic policies. “Arvind Kejriwal wasn’t too bad for 32 open

All major parties have pumped resources into image-building to woo the youth, who, however, seem to have their minds and hearts set on governance and efficiency in running the country when it comes to electing candidates starters, but after he stepped down, I think it is all a joke,” says the 22-year-old, who is now considering voting for the Congress as is tradition in his family, he

says. While most of his friends were impressed with the Anna Hazare movement, and the anti-graft dharnas that followed on and off campus, Koul feels that the movement was a long street party. “I do not want to sound pretentious, but most candle-light vigils and protest marches are a farce,” he says. Second-year student Atreyi Bhattacharya, who is planning to make a trip to her hometown Dehradun, to cast her vote for the first time, however, believes in marches and protests. Looking at voting for a party that will support LGBT rights, Bhattacharya has been a regular at gay pride parades and protests organised against Section 377. “Protest marches might be mere street parties, but at least they are fun and still hold some significance,” she says. While many members of her family have joined AAP back home in Dehradun, Bhattacharya is still to make up her mind on whom to vote for. Nineteen-year-old Lavanya Garg, a student of history at Lady Shri Ram College, is also unsure. “I wish we had more parties. I don’t want corruption, but definitely our country should look to progress. I am not sure if I want a right-wing party like the BJP to come to power, but Narendra Modi promises development,” she says. Devika Chaturvedi, a student of Hansraj College, however, fumbles for words when asked what she expects of the new government. Impressed by the way her new voter’s ID card landed at her doorstep right after her nineteenth birthday, Chaturvedi is looking for a party that values human life. “The Congress was all about corruption while the BJP promises growth with a topdown approach. I am not sure I want either. I want a party that looks at economic growth for its people—not using its people for economic growth,” says the second-year economics student. n 17 March 2014

foreign view

This Uprising will not be Televised

There is more to this election than Modi and Rahul Bennett Voyles

ou might think that the election of a new government for

one-seventh of humanity would attract some attention in the West but it actually hasn’t made much of an impression yet. Given that in 2006, a National Geographic survey found that 47 per cent of 18-24 year-old Americans couldn’t find India on a map, this is perhaps not too surprising, but even among foreign news junkies, the Winter Olympics, Ukrainian coup, and Russian stealth invasion have all pushed Indian coverage off the front pages and far from prime-time. The election is so distant that Ladbrokes, the English bookmaker and zeitgeist handicapper, isn’t even offering odds on it, though it offers bets on everything from whether David Cameron will be seen in a pub during an England World Cup game (6/1) to who will play the next James Bond (Idris Elba leads at the moment, 4/1). intolerance and incompetence

Those few stalwart observers who aren’t distracted by figure skaters and street fighters do not seem very enthusiastic about the Modi-Gandhi match-up, at least outside Wall Street and the City. The parliamentary race between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress party tends, on the whole, to be framed as a choice between intolerance and incompetence—a familiar dilemma to Western voters. 34 open

“The significance of this election lies in the fact that for the first time in Independent India’s history, a leader who personally faces—and has yet to be convincingly acquitted—of very serious charges to do with anti-Muslim pogroms which took place in the state which he governed, has a serious shot at being the next Prime Minister,” says Priyamvada Gopal, a lecturer in English at Cambridge University who specialises in post-colonial literature, and a frequent contributor to The Guardian. Some have seen Narendra Modi’s popularity as analogous to the tilt to the right they have seen in the West, where in a number of elections, an angry minority of frustrated voters have turned toward nationalist and far-right candidates who promise to ‘throw the rascals out’. In Europe, far-right parties have made gains in the past few years, in the face of mounting economic frustration: Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National, now has a 29 per cent approval rating, a full 10 per cent higher than Francois Hollande, the hapless Socialist president. Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, who specialises in the impact of national identity, religion and ethnicity on politics, agrees that there are some parallels in the rising popularity of the BJP and rightwing parties in Europe. “In Europe, ethnic change has outpaced assimilation of minorities, which creates the demand for the far 17 March 2014

right. In India, Muslim birthrates have emerged as higher than Hindu in recent decades, which has led to a rise—though not dramatic—in the Muslim share of India’s population,” he says. However, demographics haven’t been nearly as important to the BJP as they have been to Europe’s extreme right wing, even counting immigration from Bangladesh, Kaufmann says. “European ethnic nationalism is focused on immigration, the BJP is focused on supposed Muslim privilege and building a united Hindu ethnic group out of the variety of language groups in Hindu India,” he explains. But Kaufmann disagrees with the link analysts often make between economic hard times and ethnic nationalism. “I don’t think economics has much to do with it in either place. The consensus in the far right literature is that cultural questions and immigration are more important than deindustrialisation or recession. Both the BJP and FN have been strong in good times and bad,” he says. modi and the market

A Rahul Gandhi government would not be very different from the current Congress regime, Gopal predicts. “I think it will be more of the same as we have had under [Manmohan] Singh, with the taint of open dynastic rule to boot.” Two narratives are now developing among Western policy experts about what a Modi foreign policy might look like, according to Gareth Price, senior research fellow of the Asian programme at Chatham House, a London foreign policy thinktank. Price says some believe Modi might use his nationalist credentials to play a sort of Nixon-in-China gambit to thaw relations with Pakistan. Others worry that he might be quicker on the draw in the face of a difficult situation, such as another terror attack, he adds. Some business publications have had favourable things to say about what Modi’s leadership might mean to the economy. The Economist is enthusiastic that Modi has pushed the political rhetoric more towards markets than subsidies, and asks is ‘the ghost of Margaret Thatcher lurking in Indian politics?’ But it also notes that so far, the BJP has not laid out a specific economic platform, and chosen instead to run on the general economic record of Gujarat under Modi’s direction. Standard & Poor’s is not taking economic reforms by either party for granted, however. In a November note, the American credit rating agency said it would leave India’s bond rating unchanged until it saw some economic reforms after the election. Nor is Price sure whether improvements to the domestic business environment would also extend to opening more sectors to foreign investors. Despite the lack of specifics, however, analysts for Moody’s, another US credit rating service, predicted in January that a BJP victory would help the economy gradually improve over the next two years because the BJP would drive reforms and attract investment. Goldman Sachs is also bullish on the BJP: last November, the US investment bank released a report titled ‘Modi-fying our view: raise India to Marketweight’. But Gopal worries about the price of that investment, and sees lasting damage to India’s reputation ahead if the BJP takes control. “Under Modi, what will become apparent is the ferociously Hindu majoritarian chauvinism that has been growing in India over the last several decades and it will cast doubt 17 March 2014

on whether India ever had a genuinely tolerant and expansive political culture,” she predicts. However, Gopal doesn’t expect the West to come to the rescue if that happens: disapproval would likely rate more of a raised eyebrow than a slap from the West, in her view. She predicts that “many Western governments, quick to condemn Muslim religious extremism, may choose to keep quiet in order that business links be preserved and furthered…” But maybe not if Indian American Muslims have something to do with it. In 2012, one conservative US Congressman, Illinois Republican Joe Walsh, petitioned then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to consider revoking a 2005 denial of a diplomatic visa to Modi, a request that drew a sharp reaction from Indian American Muslims and may have contributed to his defeat later that year. On 24 February, the Indian American Muslim Affairs Council, an advocacy organisation for Indian Muslims in the US, observed the 12th anniversary of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom with a call to bring the perpetrators to justice, citing testimony of Modi’s ‘complicity and active connivance in the pogrom’. Earlier that month, another US group seeking justice for 2002’s victims, the Council Against Genocide, registered a protest after a visit to Modi by Nancy Powell, the US Ambassador to India. “We do not believe Ms Powell’s meeting with Modi serves any purpose other than providing the Modi camp some sound bites for use in the election campaign,” said a CAG spokesman. Indian American Muslim groups have also sponsored a Congressional resolution to maintain the visa ban, a bill that has attracted 43 co-sponsors in the US House of Representatives, even as Hindu organisations such as the Hindu American Foundation have fought against it. The good news is that whatever happens during and after the election, foreign views of India may change less than you might think—and not only among the 47 per cent who don’t know their subcontinent. Although opinions about India are slowly trending upward, perceptions of governance have not changed in the past five years, according to Simon Anholt, a Londonbased consultant who has advised more than 40 governments on their image and reputation. Anholt, architect of the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index, says India now ranks 42 out of 50 countries in public perceptions of governance, more or less where it ranked in 2008, and he predicts that even a few bad or chaotic episodes during the election would not do much to harm the country’s image. Anholt’s theory is that the people foreigners actually know build impressions of a country more. Personal contacts have much more impact on people’s perception of India “than any number of reports in the media about the country’s internal politics. The former is real human contact which feels highly relevant to the recipient; the latter is distant, unreal and generally boring and irrelevant to most people,” Anholt explains. If Anholt is right, India’s image in the West may depend less on Modi or Gandhi and more on that nice Dr Gupta who took care of your mother at the hospital, Professor Banerjee who taught you accounting, or Deepak in the infotech department, who fixed your computer. Think NRI, not INC or BJP. n A US citizen, Bennett Voyles is a Paris-based observer of global trends. He was formerly with the Economist Intelligence Unit open www.openthemagazine.com 35

high stakes

bookie city (L – R) A north Delhi satta venue; Ginni, a 30-year-old wrestler and real-estate agent who runs the den; a bookie in one of Delhi’s peripheral satta venues

BET AND BETTER

t looks like any other small-time real estate agency in Delhi. The office is modest, with the usual charts and props. Look around, and you spot an iron door. It leads from the office to a dark hall—a venue for sattabaazi. It could be mistaken for a cheap bar, bulbs dangling above square wooden tables surrounded by anxious people, the air damp and heavy with the smell of liquor. Listen in, and you hear the sound of bets being placed. But this is not a den for gamblers. Most of the people present are acting on behalf of others. “The betting originates somewhere else… we do not know where,” says the 30-year-old ‘ginni’ (literally ‘gold coin’, 36 open

Mihir Srivastava

ventures into the clandestine satta bazaar, a political betting market where the stakes are as high as $2.5 billion. And guess who’s a safe bet?

a common term for a satta operative in the city), back in the real estate office. He is a wrestler too, and is pleased to see business pick up as polls approach. He gets about 5-10 bets a day. Whenever he is informed of one—usually via SMS—he puts it into play, preparing a ‘game’. This means he collects the cash, mostly sums between Rs 5,000 and Rs 50,000, issues payment slips in exchange, and then sends all his collections to ‘the company’. Which one, he won’t say, but it’s known that Delhi has six major ‘companies’: the Delhi Bazaar, Ghaziabad Bazaar, Gali Bazaar, Faridabad Bazaar and Dishawar Bazaar. Once the results are out, it is also his job to pay the 17 March 2014

illustrations by mihir srivastava

winners what’s due to them. By the way the wrestler-ginni dresses—in soiled clothes, the top buttons of his shirt open even in Delhi’s chill—one wouldn’t guess that he drives a Honda City. The satta business is lucrative. He gets a commission of 10 per cent on the amount he collects as bets. The catch is that he has to share his cut with local cops. “The police nearly take half of it,” he says, “All illicit businesses in this city are run with a nod from the police.”

he Indian satta bazaar is abuzz

with excitement. This promises to be a general election like none other. By the time it’s done, an estimated Rs 15,000 crore ($2.5 billion) worth of illicit bets will have been placed. The fortunes of candidates, parties, alliances, just about everything electoral is up for specula-

17 March 2014

tion. As with any other market with thousands of participants, the going rates are indicative of popular expectations. So, what does the bazaar have to say? Broadly, that Narendra Modi is a safe bet. The market is upbeat on the BJP candidate’s prospects of taking over as India’s next Prime Minister. In Delhi’s satta bazaar over the weekend, this bet is being quoted at odds of ‘1.5’: that is, if you bet Rs 10 on it, and he becomes PM, you get Rs 15 back. In contrast, the odds are stacked against Rahul Gandhi, with a bet on his becoming PM cited at 7.5: if you wager Rs 10 on this outcome, you get Rs 75 back if it actually happens. If the Congress leader’s chances seem grim, consider the odds being offered on this election’s enigma, Arvind Kejriwal, as PM: just above 10. Anyone who dares a bet on an AAP-led government at the Centre would get ten times that sum if it materialises.

The BJP’s chances of securing a majority in the Lok Sabha are also seen to be bright, with odds of 1.8 on offer. On this count, the Congress is seen to be far behind, its figure hovering around 8. There are many other kinds of bets political gamblers can place, and the odds are likely to shift as polling draws closer and palms are rubbed with increasing anticipation. “It’s ironic,” says a Janakpuri bookie who runs a monthly betting business of Rs 50 crore, “Punters are going to make the most if Kejriwal becomes PM, since the odds in his favour are slim.” But “if he comes to power, the whole satta bazaar will suffer”, he adds, given the tough stance taken by AAP against black money, which this market thrives on. The bookie, a lawyer by profession, claims to have donated lakhs of rupees to AAP, but is disillusioned with Kejriwal: open www.openthemagazine.com 37

“He meekly surrendered by resigning as Delhi CM.” Yet he claims he doesn’t let his political views interfere with his satta acumen. “The surprise package is now the third most likely candidate for the top job,” he says, referring to the AAP leader. On Rahul Gandhi’s chances, he erupts in laughter. “The shehzada’s fate is anybody’s guess.” Cabbie is a tour operator who doubles as a bookie every election season. He lives in Greater Kailash-I, boasts an engineering degree from a university in the UK— where he drove a cab for five years before returning to India—and uses the internet for his betting operations. Seated in his travel agency’s office in Connaught Place, he credits his understanding of Indian politics for his success in the satta bazaar. “Most of the bets originate outside India,” he says. Where exactly? “Nobody knows,” he replies. In Cabbie’s reckoning, political punts this year will be five times the sum of all cricket bets. He offers no figures, just makes comparisons. The money at play, he figures, is ten times the Election Commission’s budget for conducting the polls (presumably higher than the Rs 1,200 crore spent in 2009); satta money will shoot up now that election dates have been announced, and then keep rising. He speaks at length about his business and high-profile clientele. “Dozens” of politicians, he claims, are his clients— leaders of the Congress, BJP, SP and other parties who find the satta bazaar both engaging and informative. As a way to keep tabs on popularity trends, they know, the market is more reliable than opinion polls that appear on TV. Many politicians are a “spent force”, quips Cabbie. Staring at defeat, they are trying to make the most of a satta opportunity now. “Many of them will put money on the success of opponent parties and rival candidates once the list is out,” he laughs, “It’s a good strategy. If they don’t win votes, at least they’ll win some ready cash as consolation.”

eripheral parts of Delhi such as

Mangolpuri, Timarpuri, Sultanpuri, Jahangirpuri and Trilokpuri form key nodes of the vast satta network. These are shadowy venues where thousands of people make daily bets. They can place 38 open

bets at all times of the day, but the busy hours are between 6 pm and 8 pm, when punters drop by on their way from work. For most, it’s just another form of entertainment, something to break the monotony of their daily routine—with the chance of winning extra cash thrown in. For those who ply the trade on the ground, it’s serious business. Mangolpuri, for example, has as many as five satta venues, each in fierce competition with others. They operate under the aegis of local mafia groups. Speak to satta operators, and they start running down the modus operandi of their rivals. There have been several clashes among them in the past, some of them violent. Guns have been fired and lives lost over territory battles. “Last month alone, there were five murders in clashes to fix domains for satta operations in Delhi,” says the wrestlerginni. Three of the five who died were

As a way to keep tabs on popularity trends, politicians know, the satta market is more reliable than opinion polls that appear on television from his hometown of Morena in Madhya Pradesh. “The police didn’t register complaints because no one formally approached the police,” he says. Seated in his real estate agency office, he sounds almost preachy when he talks of how the satta bazaar shapes public opinion for the better. The office is not far from Delhi University’s north campus, and he says his team has several students, mostly youngsters from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Among them is S Singh, a 27-year-old college dropout who claims to have gunned down three rival gangsters last years and now wants to write a book on his tryst with crime.

very betting circle seems to have

a local overlord of sorts. In Timarpur,

a middle-aged Bengali man known as Dada is the undisputed satta lord. In Gandhi Vihar, it’s Davinder alias Kapil alias Chhotu, who runs operations next to a mosque. He is believed to be a migrant from Dhaka.Nehru Vihar in north Delhi is another locality infamous for rampant sattabaazi. Jhangi is among the big bookies here. He once wanted a government job, that of a policeman, he says, but he didn’t get a chance. It still nags him, he says, this unfulfilled dream—for he would make an excellent cop. Anyhow, he has been a bookie for some five years. He adopted this livelihood “for the sake of my family” and has learnt to like it. “I love honesty,” says Jhangi, “The satta bazaar operates with utmost honesty. Once a slip is issued, there is no going back on it. If someone has won a bet, his money will reach him within a day… it will be delivered to his house even if he is dead and in his grave.” Needless to add, the payment ethic works both ways. Those who make bets on credit and later owe money must pay up, no matter what. “There is no escaping it, for we can get people to pay up from their graves as well,” says Jhangi, grinding his teeth, “We keep others’ money, but don’t allow others to keep ours.” Cash flow is crucial to the entire system. Delays are unacceptable. Defaults are downright dishonest. And there are groups of armed young men—mostly from rural parts of Haryana and Western UP—who ensure that trust levels remain high and default levels are kept low. “That happens very rarely,” says Jhangi, referring to a payment failure. Everyone who plays the satta game, “raja or rank” (king or pauper), knows that the rules apply equally to all. He cites instances of drug addicts and alcoholics who settle their dues before indulging their addiction. The ‘company’ he serves is so strong, he says, because it has the support of cops who are participants as well as beneficiaries. Jhangi believes Kejriwal is right in saying corruption in this country will not stop unless the corrupt are scared of punishment. But who he thinks will become Prime Minister, he does not disclose. Right now, what’s important to him is which way the betting trends are going and how much money he can make this election season. For the sake of his family, of course. n 17 March 2014

flights of fancy

ruling air waves Why campaigners prefer helicopters

dav/I nd ia Sh ek ha r Ya

p/G etty To day Gr ou

Im ag es

Anil Budur Lulla and Lhendup G Bhutia

war, election rally at Je helicopter after an a s rd wa to lks l Gandhi wa rally ride Rahu

henever India goes to polls,

a peculiar situation arises— every political leader of some reckoning is forced to travel to the country’s hinterlands to address far-off voters. Given the number of places he or she has to pack into the schedule, the only feasible way to go about it is by air, and that usually means helicopters. This time is no different. Demand for choppers, say helicopter operators, is gaining force by the day as campaigning goes on. According to industry sources, there are about 55 air operators running 40 open

around 260 choppers in the country. This is at least 12 fewer choppers (most of which have been sold to private entities) available for campaign duty compared to the last general election in 2009. And this market shortage, say operators, has put enormous pressure on those in use. “Not a single chopper will be available for booking now,” says Captain Uday Gelli, CEO of Heligo Charters, which has oil and gas firms—which need them to fly executives to offshore rigs—as regular clients for its fleet of five choppers.

February 2012 Uttar Pradesh, in

Most commercial helicopters in India are put to corporate use. But come election season, they go rally-hopping along the campaign trails of star campaigners. “Of what we have seen so far,” says Gelli, “chopper hiring fees are currently 15 to 20 per cent higher than in non-election periods. A Bell 412, one of the most popular chopper models in India, is being leased out for Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh per hour; at other times, it costs only Rs 2 lakh at most for an hour.” The Bangalore-based Deccan Charters, one of India’s largest aircraft charter com17 March 2014

panies, claims that this election season has already seen demand soar by at least 50 per cent over the poll season of 2009. Says Colonel Jayanth Poovaiah, cofounder and director of the firm: “Business has been growing, but it’s seasonal—once in five years. We are already leasing out vehicles in the run-up to the polls, but it’s going to get much more hectic in the coming weeks.’’ Deccan Charters—whose other cofounder Captain GR Gopinath is famous for his low-cost aviation initiative Air Deccan (sold to Kingfisher in 2007) and is an AAP member to boot—offers single and twin-engine helicopters, propellerdriven aircraft and business jets for hire. In preparation for rush hour, Poovaiah says the company has already marked out four or five choppers and bases that the company will operate from.

doubt. Air operators in India say they prefer dealing with agents rather than political parties. Agents often pay in advance (while making bookings). A Delhi-based agent who does not wish to be named claims most agents pay charter companies upfront on behalf of political parties, saving them the worry of chasing parties for payments later. He admits that on many occasions, they accept cash from individuals not directly associated with political parties, since such expenses are officially not shown as poll expenditure. According to former Air Vice Marshal, K Sridharan, now president of the Rotary Wing Society of India, an organisation that works for the growth of the civil and military helicopter industry, the use of choppers during election campaigning

While a twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter can cost between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh per hour, smaller single-engine choppers are rented out for Rs 75,000 per hour

ccording to helicopter opera-

tors, while bigger names use twinengine choppers, which are more spacious and costly, others make do with single-engine ones. Chopper services are most in demand in large states or those with poor road connectivity such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra. When Deccan Aviation, as the business was once called, began operations in 1997, its charter rates for a twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter were as low as Rs 45,000 per hour; now it charges between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh per hour. While the Bell 412 has a twin-engine and can seat nine passengers, smaller singleengine choppers are rented out for Rs 75,000 per hour; these require relatively frequent refuelling and are used for short-hop campaigns—say, by a regional party within the same state. For all-India electioneering done by PM aspirants and so on, of course, jet aircraft prove the most efficient way to travel. A business jet such as Falcon 2000, Hawker 850 XP and Citation CJ 2 can be rented for Rs 60-70 lakh per hour. Often, a hub-and-spoke arrangement works best to optimise a top leader’s time: jets for trans-Subcontinent flights and then choppers for short hops from rally to rally in the same region. All of it rakes up quite a hefty bill, no

17 March 2014

is a logistical nightmare. “Politicians often fly to a number of far-flung areas in a single day, places where oil companies do not supply fuel. So fuel trucks have to be kept ready at designated spots. But at the last minute, a politician might change his plan and the truck must travel for hours to some other spot.” Apart from fuel trucks, operators also send maintenance crews and signalmen to these designated spots. An experienced air operator says: “[Signalmen and motormen] who travel by road could take more than 12 hours. Signalmen are required to guide choppers as they often have to land on makeshift grounds like college football fields or on patches of land next to highways. The crew has to service the craft immediately and keep it ready for the next hop.’’

Sridharan claims that liberties are often taken with safety measures on campaign tours. “Politicians are known to pressure pilots to undertake missions in violation of safety regulations, causing pilots unnecessary tension,” he says, “They are made to fly in poor visibility and land at under-prepared helipads. Pilots are also overworked. But the Directorate General of Civil Aviation typically turns a blind eye to these excesses.” According to him, during the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, chaos reigned at an underprepared Varanasi airport for two days. At one point, four choppers were hovering above the airport wanting to land at the same time, even as commercial airlines flew in and out. “Priority was given to scheduled aircraft, so the choppers were made to hover around,” he says, “Disaster was averted only narrowly—almost all of them were nearly out of fuel.” According to a former pilot who has flown several politicians in a state helicopter, “The danger with politicians is that they tend to override pilots’ judgements and force them to fly.” Quoting a DGCA crash investigation report, he says, “The Lok Sabha Speaker GMC Balayogi’s chopper crashed near the Andhra Pradesh coast. He had forced the pilot to fly in bad weather.” During the 2004 General Election, South Indian actress Soundarya died in a crash on her way from Bangalore to address a BJP political rally in Andhra Pradesh. Minutes after takeoff, the Cessna aircraft she was aboard suddenly lost altitude and crashed. Gelli says that safety standards of the use of choppers for electioneering have only improved marginally. At one time, most politicians would demand that they alight right next to their speech podium. This was not just to save time; many saw it as a status sysmbol of sorts, a signal of their importance, as also a way to impress crowds. But people swarming around choppers would suffer injuries, especially when they failed to spot the tail rotors. “Now,” he says, “choppers land some distance away from the podium, but the audience is always divided—half of them waiting near the podium and the other half at the helipad.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 41

TIBETAN CHOICE

THE BURDEN OF Tibetans in India are caught between the right to vote and their commitment to the cause. Is it hypocritical? Lhendup G Bhutia photographs by ruhani kaur

n a single-room apartment on a run-

down road in McLeod Ganj, Upper Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, a Tibetan princess runs through her sparse possessions. She is a descendant of the great Dharma kings of Tibet, whose empire in ancient history extended from parts of Bengal in the south to Mongolia in the north. Namgyal Dolkar Lhagyari overturns the unwashed utensils on the kitchen slab, ruffles through books on the bookshelves, and checks under the mattress of her bed. Resting her hands on her waist and pursing her lips, she says, “Crap! Now, where did it go?” Almost on cue, a Lhasa Apso appears and barks as if in disapproval of her language. Behind her is a photograph of the Dalai Lama with her sisters, mother and brother, and her—taken several years ago at the coronation of her brother, Namgyal Wangchuk Lhagyari, as the king of Tibet. The brother, mother and one of her sisters now live in the US (the other sister is in Australia). She is the only member of the family who is still in India. As she runs through the bookshelves, a slim booklet drops to the floor. “And to think of all the trouble I went through for this,” she says, picking it up to reveal a familiar lion emblem. It’s an Indian passport. And it bears her name.

ittle is known about the legal status of Tibetans in India. Officially, they are not ‘refugees’, as often believed, and do not enjoy any rights derived from such a status; India is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations’ Refugee Convention. Rather, they are ‘foreigners’ who have to register themselves at a Foreigner Registration Office every year 42 open

(in some cases, every five years) to extend their stay here. The Indian Government gives them a Registration Certificate (RC), which they have to keep renewing, and an Identity Card (IC) to be used while travelling overseas. The Tibetan government-in-exile issues each Tibetan a Green Book, which is proof of their original nationality. As foreigners in India, they are not permitted to own land, cannot avail of most job opportunities, and must keep their political voices muffled. However, a recent Election Commission (EC) directive and a Delhi High Court ruling a few years ago changes all that. It enables a large population of ethnic Tibetans born within the country to become Indian citizens. According to Indian citizenship laws, anyone born in India between 26 January 1950 and 1 July 1987 can be an citizen. Going by this, a large section of the estimated 100,000 Tibetans living here and their children can claim citizenship. But few Tibetans have applied for it; most of those who have, have been denied citizenship. When Namgyal was denied an Indian passport, she took the matter to the Delhi High Court, which eventually ruled in her favour in December 2010. This has proved to be a landmark case for Tibetans in India; some of them are now using this case as a precedent to apply for Indian citizenship. The EC recently issued a directive asking that eligible Tibetans be issued Indian voter cards so they can vote in this general election. “It is a big deal,” Lhagyari says, dressed in a grey Tibetan bhakku and a pink blouse. “You are stateless for so many years. Then suddenly, you have a legal standing, you have rights.” Her father, Trichen Namgyal Gyatso Lhagyari, en-

FREEDOM

as tibetan as ever Namgyal Dolkar Khagyari, a Tibetan princess, fought a case in court to obtain an Indian passport. But this, she feels, does not dilute her Tibetan identity in any way

The younger vibe This colourful young Tibetan man stands in McLeod Ganj’s market square thrice a week to announce his solo-drama act. The town has a rather youthful air with outlets of Cafe Coffee Day and several cosmopolitan restaurants

joyed a ceremonial role as a king in Tibet. Following the Chinese invasion, the Lhagyari palace was ransacked and he was imprisoned for 20 years. When he was released, he sought asylum in India, where he remarried. Namgyal, who now works as a vice-president in the Gu-ChuSum Movement of Tibet, an association for former political prisoners in Tibet, is the first child from his second marriage. She was born in Dehradun in 1986. When she applied for a passport, the Indian passport officer in Dehradun denied her the document and warned that she could be jailed for applying for one. Namgyal then sought financial help from her mother and fought a three-year long case in the Delhi High Court before she got a ruling in her favour. “I never realised I was doing something important. But as people started calling and congratulating me, I have come to understand its importance for my people,” she says.

et, the recent EC directive hasn’t

been welcomed by all. It has, in fact, created a deep schism within the exiled community. Those against seeking Indian citizenship argue that Tibetans in India must remain ‘refugees’, as symbols of their captive nation; it should not ap44 open

pear, especially to Tibetans still living in Tibet, that for the sake of a comfortable life, Tibetans in exile have given up their national identity and taken up Indian citizenship. Tenzin Tsundue, a well-known Tibetan activist and writer, dressed in his characteristic red bandana and horn-rimmed glasses, says, “We can argue for arguments’ sake about the pros and cons [of taking up Indian citizenship]. But the fact remains that very few Tibetans will take up Indian citizenship.” He points out the complicated web of issues involved, of forgoing one’s identity, of how this could eventually lead to the dilution of the Tibetan identity, the fate of various Tibetan institutions like its ‘parliament’ and schools if Tibetans apply en masse for such citizenship. A number of Tibetans, however, are secretly applying for citizenship. The daughter of a Tibetan shopkeeper in Dharamshala, born here in 1986, has recently given birth to a baby girl. After hearing of the EC directive, the shopkeeper has recruited the services of an Indian lawyer to help his daughter and granddaughter attain citizenship. “When I came to India, I came as a refugee, but it needn’t be so for my daughter and granddaughter,” he says. The shopkeeper who sought refuge in India at the

age of 10 in 1962 rents his shop premises, since he is not allowed to buy one. He lives in a flat he has purchased, but the paperwork shows that the previous owner gifted the apartment to him. A 35-year old Dharamshala-based Tibetan, Tenzin Dhendup voluntarily adopted an RC and IC when he finished schooling. His mother, a resident of Darjeeling, was an Indian citizen. He believed that these documents would strengthen his Tibetan identity. But now with the current directive from the EC, he too is applying for a voter’s card. “For a young Tibetan getting on with his life, I need citizenship and opportunities,” he says. Dhendup is an event manager in McLeod Ganj and is in the process of setting up an event management company in the town. “With ‘foreigner’ status, it is difficult to travel, to get the necessary permissions,” he says. The Tibetan government-in-exile, known officially as the Central Tibetan Administration, lets Tibetans seek citizenship of other countries, but has in the past spoken against adopting Indian citizenship. A young deputy secretary in the exiled Tibetan government’s Department of Information and International Relations, Tsering Wangchuk, says, “We neither encourage nor discourage Tibetans to seek Indian 17 March 2014

citizenship. It is an individual choice. Personally, I am against it. Tibetans are relatively comfortable in India, and we shouldn’t forget that we are here temporarily. That we, at some point in time, have to return to Tibet.”

here has been a dra-

matic transformation within the local Tibetan community since the Dalai Lama, along with a large Tibetan population, sought refuge in India 55 years ago. Tibetans are no longer simply sweater-sellers and road-construction labourers, but ambitious entrepreneurs. Many have migrated to the West, and many are working their way to achieve that. No place is more illustrative of this than Dharamshala, the home of the exiled Tibetan government and the Dalai Lama. A sleepy town at the foothills of the Dhauladhar range, it is now a bustling tourist destination. Here, cafes and restaurants offering apple tarts and chicken Florentine alongside momos and thukpa dot the market square. There are Café Coffee Days, nightclubs with bouncers, Japanese and South Korean restaurants. There are White men and women running garages and trinket shops, dressed in Tibetan clothes. Many are on journeys of self-exploration. There is a young Tibetan man who dresses in a lavender-and-red shirt, wears oversized yellow glasses, a multi-coloured tie and bright blue trousers, and stands in the market square thrice a week to attract people for a solo-drama act. There are reiki classes, rock concerts and spiritual retreats. There are young Tibetan men teaching foreigners the Tibetan script over cups of cappuccino. There are monks who have renounced their vows and taken White brides. Fights are common between Tibetans and local Gaddis, resolved with the intervention of elders. Yet there are also Tibetans, old and young, who circumambulate the hill at the end of the Dalai Lama’s monastery, unperturbed by the developments of modern life sweeping the town, praying for the cleansing of their sins and the long life of the Dalai Lama.

17 March 2014

We can argue... about the pros and cons [of taking up Indian citizenship]. But the fact remains that very few Tibetans will take up Indian citizenship

t is not as if the desire for a free Tibet

has lost its hold on Tibetans, for it still remains the bedrock on which the exile community stands. But the 21st century has pressed in, too. When Tibetans first escaped to India in 1959, following the fall of Lhasa, they were not expected to take up permanent residence here. There is now a structural crisis unfolding, as old Tibetan settlements across India are disintegrating. Many young people are moving out, resulting in broken homes, while those staying behind are mostly poor and aloof from the rest of India. The ageing Dalai Lama is officially recognised as an ‘honoured guest’, but no one is sure what will happen to Tibetans in India once he passes away, especially at a time when even India is courting Beijing. The Tibetan government in exile is officially not recognised by any country. There is also something hypocritical about the discussion within the Tibetan community against seeking Indian citizenship. Such a discussion was largely absent when Tibetans began migrating to the West, seeking citizenship there. Among the current kalons or Tibetan ministers-in-exile, there are at least three who have the citizenship of other coun-

tries. The kalon of religion and culture, Pema Chhinjor, is an American citizen, the kalon of international affairs, Dicki Chhoyang, is Canadian, and the kalon of home affairs, Dolma Gyari, is Indian. The sikyong or prime minister, Lobsang Sangay, is also known to possess a US green card. The news that some Tibetans are officially entitled to become Indian citizens has sparked jubilation among some. A 30-year-old Tibetan man born in Sikkim, Lobsang Wangyal, who works as a receptionist at a hotel in McLeod Ganj, is preparing to apply for an Indian passport and voter’s card. After his father died, his mother and sister moved to the US, leaving him behind as a child in the care of a monastery in Karnataka. Wangyal has since worked at the monastery without a salary. A month ago, he found a job as a hotel receptionist. He believes that with Indian citizenship, he can overcome the setbacks of his early life. He carries with him a bag containing his documents–a birth certificate, an RC, a driver’s licence, and a bank account passbook. One morning when we are there, he is happy; his lawyer has told him over the phone that he has adequate documents to apply for Indian citizenship. But by evening, his mood is gloomy. The lawyer has informed him that the date of birth mentioned on the birth certificate does not correspond with that mentioned on the RC. The person who had applied for his RC when Wangyal was a child had filled in his date of birth incorrectly. “I thought I had it. Now I have to rectify my RC’s date of birth,” he says. Outside, the day is turning dark. It is cold, but the darkness carries with it a strange sombre colour. And then it comes, a light drizzle, announcing itself first on window panes. Young Tibetan boys race on their motorcycles on the road outside, while old grandparents circumambulating the hill below rush through their chants. Women’s voices call from street corners, hawking sweets and firecrackers. In a few days, it will be Losar, the Tibetan new year. But the ordinariness of the evening does not suggest it. Through the rain and half-closed windows, all you see are young Tibetan faces waiting for the weather to clear. n open www.openthemagazine.com 45

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Books

Her Spiritual Crisis

Conversations in the Nude

By Mihir Srivastava Harper Collins india original | 224 pages | `499

I draw naked people. Sketching live models is my hobby. I have drawn over a hundred individuals from all walks of life, and Conversations in the Nude captures my tryst with nudity. It’s a collaborative art project—between me and my subjects. I am inspired by the curves of the human form and there is an element of me in every sketch of mine. I began sketching nudes to ward off boredom. And it did pull me out of the rut of life’s predictability. But soon, it became so much more. This book is not a justification but an assertion of selfhood. Nudity evokes in me the Indian philosophical truth that dispossession is a sure path to the ultimate possession—enlightenment. Nudity teaches me that there are no stereotypes. Just individuals. Sadly, I am hardly ever complimented for my art; what impresses people is my ability to persuade others to pose nude. India, they say, is a conservative country. My experience has been that Indians are fairly radical in a closed room— so long as anonymity is guaranteed. Some call it hypocrisy. I call it privacy. I assure my subjects anonymity, even if they are willing to reveal their identities. It’s the phenomenon that is important to me, not the participant. The following chapter, one of the book’s eleven, is about sketching a stranger—a Russian girl I met in Haridwar. We were together for 12 hours Mihir Srivastava

read a piece on the sharp spike in teenage suicides in Russia in recent years. These copy-cat suicides are bizarre. Young couples, for instance, jump off high-rises holding each other’s hands. Experts blame it on the usual things: alcoholism, drugs and dysfunctional families. But who can deny that politics too has a role to play? In post-communist Russia, there are few jobs and many woes, and an increasing sense of disillusionment. There are a lot of troubled young people there struggling to cope. I met one such girl. She posed for me and described her affliction as an acute spiritual crisis. This was the second-last day of the year. I had been out on a birding trip to a resort in Corbett National Park. After two days with slow-walking birdwatchers, I decided to do a spot of vagabonding on my own. I decided to do it on noisy, rickety government buses. They are very uncomfortable, but certainly

17 March 2014

have character. And they don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are: bone-breakers. I was bored and looking for some adventure, and this avoidable discomfort was part of the package. I trekked for two hours along a canal to reach the nearest town, Ramnagar, and then took a bus to Haridwar. I was in a bus for the next ten hours, so clearly Rishikesh wasn’t as close to Ramnagar as I had thought it was. It was 8.30 pm when my mangled, roaring ride came to a shuddering halt at Haridwar Bus Stand. I tottered out and looked for another bus to complete the last leg of my journey. By now, I was done with the rickety buses. I wanted a decent one with cushioned seats and a head rest for last 35 kilometres of the journey. There was one such ‘deluxe’ bus parked there. It was inviting. There was only one unoccupied seat left, and I rushed to grab it. I saw a blonde woman sitting on the adjacent seat, and

was disappointed. Perhaps, this seat belonged to a boyfriend or travel mate. ‘May I?’ ‘Okay.’ Good for me and my poor sore back. The bus would start in about half an hour, the conductor announced, and encouraged his passengers to take a tea break. She wanted the translation, which I provided. She looked kind of worried. It was very cold and getting colder. ‘By Russian standards, this weather is springtime, isn’t it?’ I asked, zipping up my jacket. She smiled. We were talking. Over the next hour, she told me about her stay in India, her trip to Kerala for a week at a spa resort. She started her two-month-long India tour with a stay in Varanasi for a month. Now, she would learn yoga in Rishikesh for two weeks and fly back to Moscow mid-January. We were enjoying the conversation. I introduced her to my hobby and open www.openthemagazine.com 49

showed her my sketchbook. She felt confident enough to share her problem with the expectation that I would be part of the solution. ‘I have no idea where I am going to stay tonight,’ she said. I had the same problem, but being a native (and male), I wasn’t overly worried about that. She had no objection to us sharing a room and the cost. But for that, I advised her that we should pose as if we were in some sort of a relationship. She agreed. Her English was very heavily Russianaccented, so we decided that I would do all the talking and she would just say yes, if required. We checked into a decent room with a powerful heating system. We allowed the room to get warm while she told me about her new-found love for Hinduism. ‘This is the only religion that has the potential to help me deal with the spiritual crisis I am facing,’ she said. She was in search of solace. She was running from her own life, and there was nowhere to go. To me, part of her problem was that she was desperately looking for a solution. She needed to stop and take stock.

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She considered the point and agreed. ‘Would yoga help?’ ‘It might. But a sketching session with me would surely soothe you.’ She was expecting it. ‘I can try,’ she replied, in the tone of a sexagenarian agreeing to try a new line of treatment for her chronic backache. This was not for the first time that she was posing nude. Her former boyfriend loved to take photographs of her in the nude. She was not particularly fond of those pictures. ‘My body looked strange to me in them,’ she said. Those pictures appeared impolitely stark to her. ‘My sketches will not be a replica of you,’ I explained. ‘Nor will they be blunt like those pictures. Your curves will only inspire my drawings.’ It was already eleven when we started the sketching session. I was tired, but very keen to sketch her. I wanted to see if posing for me would quell her unrest somewhat. The room was warm enough for her to shed her clothes. She undressed facing a wall. Her red underwear was translucent. She did not remove it. I did not insist, but I did remind her softly, ‘I draw nudes. And you would agree that there is no scale to nudity. Either you are nude or not.’ I could see her blond, curly pubic hair tightly packed inside her revealing underwear. She had a red scar on her lower abdomen, which matched the colour of her briefs. ‘What is this scar?’ I asked her, pointing to it. ‘All I can say is this is not a birth mark.’ She allowed me to touch the red patch. Her body was emitting heat waves. Her soft and smooth skin smelt like sandalwood. ‘Either it is an insect bite, or you tied your belt too tight,’ I concluded. She lay down on the bed to pose. I was too tired to pursue a conversation. In the last two hours of incessant talking, we had left little unsaid. But she expanded on the nature of her spiritual crisis. Sex, she declared, is not impor-

tant. It is a mechanical act that corrodes the soul. We demand so much from each other, but no one is ready to give an inch. People are takers. There are no givers. That was the gist of what she said for the next half an hour. In the past five years, her relationship woes had kept building. She felt that the burden of her relationships was solely on her. Her boyfriend of two years had cheated on her, hooking up with her best friend. It was months before she came to know about the affair. When she did, they were unremorseful. ‘Yes, we love each other,’ they announced. ‘They were suddenly not the people I knew for years,’ she said, voice choking. ‘Suddenly, there was a big vacuum. They were unfair to me. Life was unfair to me. Initially, I thought I was to blame for this situation. And then I started to blame them. I still can’t

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get over hating them.’ She wanted to kill them. She wanted to kill herself. She started dating her ex-boyfriend’s cousin. It was a reaction. She just wanted to prove a point, she didn’t even know what. This new flame in her life was ten years her senior. They were together for six months. She ensured her former boyfriend knew just how happy things were in her new relationship. She ended up compounding her own miseries—she was trying hard to be happy when she wasn’t. There was no future in that relationship either. They were together in body, but their souls were poles apart. ‘When he made love to me, I would stare at the roof,’ she said, looking up at the ceiling. Now she is dating a doctor in Moscow. ‘This is the first time my partner needs me more than, or at least as much as, I need him. The problem is that I don’t need him bad enough,’ she confessed. ‘I still love that cheating bastard.’ Her doctor boyfriend came with her to India and stayed in Varanasi with her. He left before she went to Kerala. ‘There is this restlessness in me. It refuses to go. Yoga might help,’ she said again. I finished my second sketch and walked to her side of the double bed to show her the sketch. Her clear blue eyes were wet. ‘Can I tell you something frankly? Don’t take yourself so seriously,’ I said. The air in the room was dry and hot. Her red translucent underwear was disturbing me. ‘I have to tell you one more thing frankly. Please remove your red underwear. It looks like the last remnant of communist rule in a capitalist world.’ She laughed for the first time since we met, but did nothing. Perhaps she thought it was just a joke. Anyway, about ten minutes later, she went to the loo and returned naked. I made six sketches in all. They were rough and quick. ‘I like the aggression of your lines,’ she complimented me. ‘I will do a couple of sketches in the morning too if there is time and if you are up to it.’ With that, I called off the sketching session and got into bed 17 March 2014

next to her. I was too tired to fall asleep. And the fact that a naked woman was lying beside me was difficult to ignore. In the dim light that came in through a glass ventilator on top of the main door, I saw that her eyes were still wide open. She was making no special effort to sleep. I asked her hesitantly, ‘Can we make love?’ It was a reckless act that showed little respect for her. ‘You too want sex?’’ ‘I want to make love with you,’ I said, stressing on the word ‘love’. ‘No,’ was her sharp, loud reply. She sounded furious. She turned the other way, but did not put on her clothes either, in spite of the fact that I had made my intentions clear. I observed her back for a while, and was tempted to

‘I have to tell you one more thing frankly. Please remove your red underwear. It looks like the last remnant of communist rule in a capitalist world.’ She laughed for the first time since we met sketch her in that pose. Her abrupt ‘no’ had killed all of my hopes for any further intimacy, and that allowed me to finally fall asleep. I am not sure exactly, but something like a couple of hours later, she woke me up and said, ‘Let’s make love.’ We did. She was only half there. ‘I will not let you stare at the roof,’ I said, covering her eyes with my hands. I was trying to soothe her with my body. It was a long encounter that lacked passion. I woke up the next morning to the bright sun and a cold breeze on my face. She was sitting on the chair in front of me, dressed and ready to go, and staring fixedly at me. She had already opened the window and drawn the curtains. I got up, startled.

‘We should not have done it,’ she said. ‘Yes, I was too tired to sketch,’ I replied, and forced a smile. She was in no mood to entertain jokes. ‘I wanted to avoid this. I want no lust in my life for some time. It serves no purpose,’ she said. Grimness settled in the room in spite of the bright morning light. ‘I regret it if you regret it. But let me tell you this. The problem with you is very simple. You make simple issues complex. And then fuck your happiness. Fuck men instead. Learn a few tricks from us Indians. Blame every bad thing that happens to you on one of these three divine factors: God’s will, fate or maya. And then get on with your life.’ I was having a hot shower when she entered the bathroom. She had forgotten her towel in there. It was a nice one, with bold pink and red checks. She was worried that I may use it. I dropped her off at an ashram that was pleased to admit her. We hugged. She expressed her happiness about the fact that we met, and kept two of her favourite sketches. I gave her my contact details and invited her to stay with me when she was in Delhi. ‘I will drop you to the airport,’ I offered. I never saw or heard from her again. n open www.openthemagazine.com 51

Books Overwrought with Love The prose is a triumph but the story, set in Sri Lanka during the civil war, plays too safe to leave a lasting impression divya guha

on sal mal lane

By Ru Freeman penguin books india | 408 pages | Rs 499

When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And every thing else is still —The Nurse’s Song, William Blake

al Mal Lane is a residential street

200 km from a clearing in a forest where a war was declared in 1976. Though this war would take place in Sri Lanka, and see its share of horrors conducted against a backdrop of a sunkissed ocean, this conflict could well be in Crimea, or this street in Gujarat. And Ru Freeman, an immensely talented writer, conducts the narrative as if she were the air that lingered in verandahs that Tamils and Sinhalese, Muslim, Catholic, Hindu and Buddhist, inhabited. They lead lives affected by power struggles whose epicentres are remote, but they themselves are safely ensconced by love and shared responsibility, at least to begin with. These parents and children, husbands and wives, and servants, have everything and nothing to do with this war whose atrocities—whether true or spread through rumour—are too familiar. Pregnant women split open, children snapped like dry branches, rape, looting, arson, mass graves, night raids, burnt libraries, assassinations, all before the eyes of sisters, brothers, fathers and wives. These incidents are reported with as much reliability as real-life interactions allow. The majority of the story unfolds while there is

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still the false hope that despite lurking trouble, reminiscent of the recent period in Kiev, peace might prevail. This vicarious contact with events leading to war aside, the most special thing about this book are its children, and there are many of them. They are characterised in a way that makes us want to protect and know and nurture them. The narrative opens with the Heraths having just moved into a new neighbourhood, and as the newest imports to this utopic-seeming place, they are objects of unabashed curiosity for the rest of the neighbourhood. They are mistaken for Catholics when in fact they are Sinhalese Buddhist, this misjudgment being highly symbolic; and identity, especially religious and class, is crucial in this book. The four cherubic Herath children call our attention to their perfect hair, clean nails, immaculate clothes, divergent talents, and their evident love for each other: ‘It was the way they stood together even when they were apart.’ Their transition from innocence to experience is not smooth. This quartermile stretch occupied by ‘small people’, as the author calls them in the prologue, must maintain their ‘high’ ideals, even if they are under-equipped to do this. Then there is a fair bit of music, too— to introduce mystery through the beautiful singing of a hymn by the Herath children, heard up and down Sal Mal Lane; people also meet through music. In fact this novel might come with its own eclectic soundtrack that includes Western and Hindustani classical, church music and innocuous music hall greats. We are engaged by their ambitions such as playing cricket for the first eleven, doing well at school, winning at

chess. We suffer with an overprotective brother who abandons cricket because of a superstitious dread for his sister, Devi. There are also the feral little Bolling twins who first show up commando at the Herath home, and are adopted and swaddled by the scandalised Mrs Herath who has only ever brought up sprites made wholly of light and snowflakes. The children fly kites, fall off trees, but heartbreak is around the corner. Many a kind of love, acceptance and forgiveness is examined, bullies are challenged, people die or survive trauma and old age. And, predictably where there is love and trauma, there will be poetry. Freeman’s prose is made pleasant with its sustained use in her prose. It eases us into stillness, our fear and questioning never more rancorous than looming war. The characters’ hurt becomes subordinate and the last 100 pages of the book become unbearably beautiful and invigorated because everything is endangered; but the small people, the good people of Sal Mal Lane, cope. An awakening will come and the young shall learn resilience, the knowledge that harm will come to those they love. Everything reaches death, or as Buddhists like to put it in their plain but accurate way: ‘Nothing lasts’. The story feels a bit too prescribed and unbesmirched, despite being a triumph for its prose. It aspires to be the work of someone neither ‘entirely broken’ nor ‘entirely whole’, and the narrative hovers above suffering, never drowning in it nor fetishising it. The novel is finely wrought and carefully balanced, and therein lies the nub. When something is too perfect, that is what it is: smooth jazz is not jazz. This book is readable, but because it plays safe, it is ultimately trite and forgettable. n 17 March 2014

Books Experiments in Meritocracy Amy Chua’s controversial new book suggests ‘outsiders’ can and do succeed in unequal America—but at what cost? DEVIKA BAKSHI

tifying successes, figuring out what they have in common, and suggesting those commonalities as a prescription for success. It is a provocative one too, striding rashly into the tense territory of American identity politics. This shaky, provocative premise unfolds into a uneasily simplistic argument built largely on anecdote, correlation and words like ‘culture’ and ‘group’ and ‘success’.

In the weeks since its appearance, the book has been roundly criticised for poor methodology, racial insensitivBy Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld ity and courting controversy—the latbloomsbury india | 225 pages | rs 499 ter likely due to the provocative nature of Amy Chua’s previous book, Battle t a time when meritocracy in Hymn of the Tiger Mother. America is widely understood ‘Chua and Rubenfeld’s book is many to be a sham, undermined by things,’ wrote Richard Kim for The deep systemic inequalities, Amy Chua Nation online, ‘pop psychology, ersatz and Jed Rubenfeld suggest, in their self-help manual, shallow cultural hisbook, The Triple Package, tory, a Who’s Who of nick cunard/ap that certain groups ‘outrich and famous people side’ the American mainwithout a WASPy last stream that may seem at name. But first and forea disadvantage are in fact most, it is an epic feat of better placed to succeed. trolling.’ Why? Because they posIndeed, it does seem to sess ‘the Triple Package’, have been received as a three qualities that comdeliberate, shit-stirring bine to form a sort of ensnub to the unspoken gine of success. rule in liberal America These three qualithat the success and failties are: a superioriure of groups cannot be ty complex, insecuriascribed to their race, ty, and impulse control. ethnicity, religion, counWhich is to say, a sense try of origin, or any ‘atof one’s own specialness, tributes’ thereof. But an uncertainty about does Chua care about poone’s position or proslitical correctness? “No,” pects, and a mix of selfshe replies immediatediscipline, restraint, ly, over the phone from and deferral of gratifiManchester during a cation. The book sintour of the UK. “I hate gles out eight groups— political correctness.” Mormons, Nigerians, That is no surprise. Lebanese, Chinese, It is somewhat of a surIndians, Persians, Jews prise that this book’s arand Cubans—who ‘outgument has not been perform’ other American more vigorously emsubgroups, and argues ployed in the service of that their success is due the American Right’s to their collective posses‘majority under threat’ sion of these qualities. shtick—‘Look out, guys, This is a shaky premthe immigrants are risise, to say the least: idening!’ But let’s be clear outsider Chinese-American Amy Chua attributes much of her success to her outsiderness the triple package

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anyway: the alleged hyper-mobility of certain groups is not a concern commensurate with the systemic disadvantages faced by minorities and marginal communities in America. The fabled meritocracy in which much of the country continues to put its faith cannot function in the service of equality when the deck is stacked against so many. America’s liberal half appears to have internalised this, and its awareness of systemic inequality comes with a kind of privilege-shame. Privilege, here, is meant in the sense of success, or a greater chance at achieving it, that is inherited, unearned or possessed by default; a jump-start, an unfair advantage, anathema to the notion of a level playing field so central to an equal society. Now more than ever, privilege in America is understood to have calcified. It is clear not everyone has an equal shot at success and not everyone can be successful at once—the one per cent can only accommodate, well, one per cent. In this context, meritocracy is a delusion, more likely to reproduce inequalities than offer equal chances of success. ‘A seemingly un-American fact about America today is that certain groups starkly outperform others,’ opens the first chapter, rather obviously. But it goes on to suggest that most of these groups are not successful because of systemic privilege; in fact, they write, ‘America’s successful groups are all outsiders in one way or another.’ This is what makes Chua and Rubenfeld’s argument intriguing— they are self-proclaimed ‘outsiders’ arguing, in a way, for meritocracy. Or arguing, at least, that success is possible in a system where the odds are stacked against you, provided you have the right tools/values. Unlike critics of America’s structural inequalities, they see privilege less as an unfair advantage and more as an Achilles heel, a source of complacency. Those not born with privilege, they argue, those who have not grown up feeling entitled to success, are more likely to succeed—precisely because of their determination, their uncertainty, 17 March 2014

and their willingness to rough it out. The effectiveness of the Triple Package as a tool-kit—not to mention the authors’ spurious claim that it is a value system endemic to certain groups, and their fairly myopic use of ‘group’ and ‘culture’ and ‘success’—is ultimately less interesting than the authors’ suggestion that beginning at a disadvantage can help you crack the system. Nevertheless, the authors seem to have been aware that exceptions would be taken, and so have included plenty of caveats. They seem especially concerned that they not be seen to be making the laughably backward argument that certain groups—races or ethnicities or cultures (often used interchangeably throughout the book)—are simply destined to be worse off than others. Critics have largely been uncon-

Individual success, here, is a kind of escape from outsiderness, an audition for the American mainstream. Once achieved, it renders group identity irrelevant vinced. In a scathing critique for Time, Suketu Mehta called the book racist and took it apart for ignoring structural realities in favour of vague ‘cultural’ factors. A rather more concise gut-punch came from writer and expert tweeter Teju Cole: ‘The real Triple Package: exploit some people, enslave others, and kill off the rest. Or just show up later and benefit from this scenario.’ The authors anticipate this response early in the book, and make a point of saying that they are not about raceblame. ‘In almost every case,’ they write, ‘America’s persistently low-income groups became poor because of systematic exploitation, discrimination, denial of opportunity, and institutional and macroeconomic factors having nothing to do with their culture.’ Speaking after the book’s release and the first wave of criticism, Chua is emphatic that they “are not using [the

term ‘culture’] in an essentialist sense… We start off with some basic assumptions: that a group’s culture is highly dynamic [and] capable of changing radically even in one generation; that culture is usually many sided, not monolithic; and most importantly that people can change their cultural condition. That’s the way we’re using it.” Past that, though, they stick to their guns. To support their thesis, they demonstrate that many of America’s ‘poorer groups’ lack the Triple Package. And though they clarify that this lack ‘was not the original cause of their poverty,’ they nevertheless suggest that ‘now that they do lack it, their problems are intensified and harder to overcome.’ In effect this means that, in their worldview, it is a kind of cultural deficiency that keeps a group’s fortunes from rising. This is problematic of itself, but the solution is still more disheartening: individuals can cultivate Triple Package values to achieve success regardless of their ‘background’. Individual success, here, is a kind of escape from outsiderness, an audition for the American mainstream. Once achieved, success renders group identity—so important on the outside—irrelevant. Chua is sensitive to this loss—she is her own best example. She is aware that what motivated her to succeed is, in a way, destroyed by her success. Her daughters, no matter how tigerparented, will never possess the Triple Package in quite the same way she did, and one or two generations on, the package will self-destruct. Success will atrophy, leaving privilege. It is not the loss of the engine of success she laments, however, but the loss of her ‘heritage’, her group identity, to which she is deeply attached. Chua says this book is, to her, “about how to turn being an outsider into a source of strength.” This is the warm, well-intentioned, personal core of Chua’s work— her previous book too. It is clear she has drawn strength and support and a sense of self from her identity as an outsider. It is less clear what remains of her identity once the outsiderness has given way to success. Or perhaps success is its own identity. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

CINEMA The Mind of Imtiaz Ali Revelations on his art and craft after two days of trailing the filmmaker Aastha Atray Banan

ilmmaker Imtiaz Ali and I stand outside PVR Cinema in Andheri. We are talking about his latest film, Highway. “Now, everything in Jab We Met tied up together, you know. But this movie—it was somewhat like a Haruki Murakami novel—open ended, floating—what really happens, who knows? You know what I mean?” I say. He nods and says, “That’s the right attitude to see this movie. There was a lot of improvisation. It developed as we travelled across.” Then he becomes serious. “Did you like it?” I don’t really know how to answer. “It moved me,” I say. “It made me feel like doing something different with my life.” He says, “And are you going to do it?” “How can I? I can’t just get up and walk away from my life, can I?” “You can,” he says. “You can, obviously you can. You just have to do it.”

onversations like this help understand why Imtiaz Ali makes the movies he does—be it the sweet Jab We Met about two people diametrically opposite in temperament changing each other’s lives, or the mad Rockstar, about a man wanting to experience heartbreak so that he can become an artist. And now Highway, about a city girl and a country bumpkin who develop a strange bond despite the fact that he is her kidnapper. Imtiaz likes to think about the things he feels we usually don’t want to think about. “Anything that is contrary to the norm is regarded as wrong. But is it?” Existential questions matter to him. “You always get what you want. Life is like that,” he says. I tell him the package you get may not be

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what you had expected. I have been trailing the filmmaker for two days and we are sitting in his car, him driving with a cup of coffee in his hand and checking messages once in a while. He smiles, “Exactly, but also, I have changed since I first wanted it, you know...” “Life is strange,” I say. “I said that to my daughter today, and she looked at me and said seriously, ‘I know’,” he laughs. Spending time with Ali is about having such conversations. They are like his movies—thoughtful, full of romantic overtones and about life and love in general. It’s no wonder then that people relate to his movies. We

Men look with a certain respect and girls stare with eyes that say ‘He’s so cute too.’ People come up often, asking to be assistants or just telling him how they love his movies. He smiles at everyone, sometimes even before they do walk into PVR Andheri and sit down in the hall playing Highway. The movie is yet to start. A lady comes and sits down next to him. “Hi Imtiaz. I love your movies. I am getting a surgery done soon, but I wanted to catch this before I did.” He smiles graciously, “I hope everything goes well with you. You take care, okay?” Another lady takes her place soon, “Hi Imtiaz, I am only watching this because you made it. Can we please

take a picture?” she asks. Outside, as we walk around, everyone stares. Men look with a certain respect and girls stare with eyes that say ‘He’s so cute too.’ People come up often, either asking to be assistants or just telling him how they love his movies. He smiles at everyone, sometimes even before they do. He smiles at a girl outside PVR and she looks at him strangely. He then walks up to her and apologises, “I am sorry, I thought you were someone else.” She doesn’t mind. 17 March 2014

aman dhillon

the thoughtful romantic Imtiaz Ali on location for Highway

They now take a picture. “I smile at everyone, you know, because I don’t want people to smile at me or say ‘hi’ and I ignore them. That’s not something I like doing.”

he buzz over Highway has been

appreciative. I watched it alone sitting in a packed hall on a Tuesday afternoon. It makes you go through different emotions. You marvel at the India you never bothered seeing, the one that

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surrounds the highways of the country; you marvel at Alia Bhatt, who at 20 delivers a performance that’s mature and heart-wrenching; you marvel at Randeep Hooda, who says very little and yet manages to say a lot through his silence; you cry, you laugh and then you introspect. Imitaz says, “What I have discovered visiting the movie halls (which he has done every single day since it released) is that this is a movie people watch in silence. It’s a silent movie,

even though it does have background music. But it’s a silent movie and people watch it in silence.” The music by AR Rahman, who Imtiaz worked closely with, is haunting. “We get each other.” His favourite scene “is the one where Alia sits on a rock in the middle of a stream in the valley, and then she just laughs and laughs. We didn’t plan these scenes. We just went with it.” Another scene has Alia getting wet in the rain in Rajasthan, and you know open www.openthemagazine.com 57

he is right. “Alia surprised me in every frame. It was like that throughout. And Randeep and I connect well because both of us have done theatre. We keep telling each other, ‘life is not a dress rehearsal’,” he pauses, “This is your life Aastha, you are living it. There is no chance to rehearse this.”

n Sunday evening, he sits in front of an audience at club Escobar in Bandra to give a talk. Young people, all wanting to be filmmakers or actors, have turned up to ask him questions. He asks for a show of hands of those who want to become directors, and then says, “Guys, ask me whatever you want. Get as much as you want, okay?” He is self-deprecatory—“After five movies, maybe I will make one good one”; modest—“I am very middleclass. For years, I washed all of me with just a bar of soap, even my hair!”; and encouraging—“Bollywood is a great place to work in. Just don’t whine.” He talks about growing up in middle-class Jamshedpur, getting lessons in direction from filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, and how his own movies change him. “Highway has actually made me less polite. I don’t think too much before I talk now. I am more open and rude.” There are a lot of laughs, and he gets photo-bombed after the talk. There is also a lot of talk about his hair—the curly mop that is so him. “I don’t mean to be arty, you know.” Despite the crowd milling around him, he makes sure that I get a drink and then returns to posing for pictures. Later, we sit in the open air, him drinking soda and digging into some food as we watch the busy roads of Bandra pass by. “Tell me, I didn’t talk too much, did I? I like the questions the kids asked. They really think about all this.” One of his friends drops by, DJ Rekha from New York, and he starts talking about his next story. “It’s about a boy and a girl who meet in unusual circumstances, where they are uninhibited. But when they meet later, he has changed. He is now what the world wants him to be. Does she still want him?” Half an hour later, over an 58 open

Americano at a corner coffee shop in Bandra, he talks music. “I often listen to old Hindi music on the radio in my car. But personally, I like classic rock—that’s what I grew up with in North Campus (he went to Hindu College in Delhi). Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. During Rockstar, Ranbir came up to me and said he had no clue of that kind of music. So I used to give him one song a day, and he used to be like ‘Sir, what is happening, I don’t get this’.” Ali talks of the live music in Highway, and recalls, “You know I realised that some music needs ambience. Like the songs of the valley need to be sung and heard in the valley. The hills need to be around for it to sound the way it needs to sound.”

“When Anurag narrated Bombay Velvet to Ranbir and Anushka, he called me too. Anurag, Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Basu, Karan Johar— we all like encouraging each other. Or just listening in”

riving back from Bandra to

Andheri, where he stays, Ali is talking about how he doesn’t watch TV, doesn’t read much and is not a web junkie. “I am now wondering what I do with my time. I am always free,” he says. He returns to talking about how he liked the question-and-answer round today. “I like it when people ask me serious questions. Like the guy who asked about the first few lines of Kun Faya Kun from Rockstar and what these words meant: ‘Jab kahin pe kuchh nahin, Bhi nahin thha’. I am glad I had an answer, that they are from the Rig Veda. Otherwise, people ask you, ‘How was it like working with Alia Bhatt?’ and ‘What was the journey like?’ Yaar, I don’t know what the journey was like!” Did he see Highway as a love story, I ask him, because I really didn’t.

“He says, “It’s not a love story at all. It’s about their lives and how they live it. The movie ends before anything happens between them. Would they have had sex if they would have lived like that? Maybe. But who knows? Would that have changed things? Who knows? Why talk about all that? I deleted a few scenes which I thought were interfering with the flow, but they were really profound. There is a scene that handles the class difference between their characters. But then, I feel that that would have been giving away too much. Not everything needs to be said.” And then he looks at me: “But what is a love story really? Was Jab We Met a love story—I don’t think so. It’s about this girl who lives the way she wants to and is a positive person, but then becomes negative, and this boy who she once touched with her attitude in turn comes and makes it all positive again.” I tell him it is a love story. “They get together in the end, don’t they? All the couples who went to watch it saw it as a love story.” “Correct,” he says, “that’s what matters. How does the person watching it see it? It doesn’t matter what I think.” It’s 11 pm, and we now sit in a neighbourhood pub in Andheri and talk industry. “There is a nice group of us who like taking interest in each others’ work. When Anurag [Kashyap] narrated Bombay Velvet to Ranbir [Kapoor] and Anushka [Sharma], he called me too. Anurag, Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Basu, Karan Johar— we all like encouraging each other. Or just listening in.” Before the night ends, he talks about Geet from Jab We Met, the most popular character he has created so far. “You know Geet says something very lovely before she runs away from home with Shahid’s character. She says that this is her life, and she wants to do what she wants to do, wrong or right, so that later she can’t blame anyone else but herself. She also says that even if you do everything correct, does that mean you end up happy? Life is like that, you know.” I want to take his word for it. n 17 March 2014

science

flavanol It is a naturally occurring antioxidant found in various types of plants. The cocoabean, for example, contains a significant amount of these compounds

The Evolution of Dark Skin A new study finds that humans first developed deep pigmentation to combat skin cancer

Dark Chocolate for Your Heart

According to a study published in The FASEB Journal, dark chocolate helps restore flexibility to arteries while also preventing white blood cells from sticking to the walls of blood vessels. Arterial stiffness and white blood cell adhesion are known factors that play a big role in atherosclerosis—a condition where arteries become narrow and hardened due to plaque build up around artery walls. The study also found that increasing the flavanol content of dark chocolate did not alter this effect. “However, this increased flavanol content clearly affected taste and thereby the motivation to eat these chocolates. So the dark side of chocolate is a healthy one,” says Diederik Esser, one of the researchers. n

t is believed that thousands of years ago, before Homo sapiens travelled out of Africa, they all had dark skins. When humans migrated to parts of modern-day Europe, because of the weak sunshine in those regions, they developed fair skin to synthesise Vitamin D. However, because chimpanzees, from whom all humans have split, have pale skin under their hairy coats, it is believed that humans too were originally fair. An evolutionary process made them develop dark skins, and later when they migrated out of Africa, they again started developing fair skins. A new study now claims that humans developed a dark skin tone to deal with skin cancer. According to the study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, the change occurred after ancient humans shed most of their body hair and ventured out into the sun-drenched African Savannah. The sun’s rays, it is claimed, exerted powerful selection pressure on ancient humans. Only those with darker and better protective skin 60 open

could thus escape dying of skin cancer. They then passed their genes onto future generations. The research was conducted on people with albinism in modern Africa. Albinism, an inherited disorder, prevents people from making melanin, a black or brown pigment. The research found that at least 80 per cent of all people with albinism from African countries like Tanzania and Nigeria die of skin cancer before their 30th birthday. The researchers point out that this link of albinism with skin cancer has also been noted in other tropical sunny regions besides Africa, like Panama. The lead researcher, Mel Greaves, a cell biologist at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK, told Live Science, “Cancer has been dismissed (for causing dark skin) by effectively all scientists in the past… They did so believing that skin cancer cannot be a selective force acting on survival and reproductive success, because in present-day white-skinned people, it is usually benign or impacts too late in life.” n

Perils of Late Fatherhood

Advancing paternal age can lead to higher rates of psychiatric and academic problems in offspring than previously estimated, according to a study published in JAMA Psychiatry. Among the findings: compared to a child born to a 24-year-old father, a child born to a 45-year-old father is 3.5 times more likely to have autism, 13 times more likely to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, 25 times more likely to have bipolar disorder and 2.5 times more likely to display suicidal behaviour. The working hypothesis for the study is that unlike women, who have limited eggs, men continue to produce new sperm all their lives. Each time sperm replicate, there is a chance of a DNA mutation to occur. n

17 March 2014

tech&style

JBL Voyager With its innovative docking system, this speaker can be used both at home and on the go gagandeep Singh Sapra

SoundClear This technology utilises patented intelligent speech tracking and adaptive processing software to exploit speech patterns and environmental conditions. The result is self-adjusting algorithms that emphasise voice quality whether in a quiet room or a noisy vehicle

Bvlgari-Bvlgariw Catene

Price on request

Rs 19,990.00

This precious ladies’ watch from Bulgari has approximately 140 gm of pink gold links that form a subtle extension of the 18K gold case which bears not just the double BVLGARI logo on its bezel, but also a mother of pearl dial featuring 12 0.133 carat diamonds and a rubelite cabochon accenting the ridged crown. This sophisticated timepiece is inspired by gourmette—the French name for the vintage ‘name-plate bracelet’. n

Motorola G

BL has over the years created

some iconic designs for speakers, and with the Voyager, the company has done it again. The speaker looks pretty in a living room with its transparent enclosure, and has sonic power to fill up a biggish room; walk up close to it, and you notice a detachable speaker, the first of its kind, undock it and you can carry it with you. In the past few months, we have seen a vast array of Bluetooth speakers being launched. Such speakers are becoming a necessity as more and more of our music now resides on phones and tablets, or is streamed via the internet; and the Voyager fits the bill. The speaker has two drivers built into it, one removable and one fixed, and is powered via an external power supply link. It also has an auxiliary port to connect a music source that may not have Bluetooth. Take the central speaker out, and you have a hands-free unit, with which you can answer calls as well as

17 March 2014

travel. The central speaker has a battery built-in that lasts 5 hours, so you can take it with you and enjoy music where you go. Back at home in the evening, dock it right back and you have a home speaker. The speakerphone on the Voyager works well, and with its SoundClear echo cancellation technology, the voice is crystal clear to both parties; you can now have a family voice call from your living room, or use it alone in your office for a conference call. With an innovative simple docking system and iconic design, JBL has created a wonderful speaker. It maintains good sound quality and answers the need for both a home speaker as well as a portable one. I would have loved to see an option that lets me connect another Voyager to get a better sound across the living room, but for now a single speaker ends up filling the room, though it lacks clarity at the lower end of the frequency range. n

Rs 12,499

A budget smartphone, the Moto G’s design is basic yet modern. It has a sharp and bright 4.5-inch touchscreen that makes it easy to use this phone even under a bright sun. The phone also features a 1.3 megapixel front camera and a 5 megapixel rear camera that give pretty good results. The device comes with Version 4.3 of Android, an operating system. At the heart of the phone is a Quad core Qualcomm processor with 1 GB of RAM. The entry level model comes with 8 gigabytes of storage. The MotoG has dual SIM capability. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

the farhan we haven’ t seen Shaadi ke Side Effects is Farhan Akhtar’s sixth release as an actor in India, but his seventh film overall. One of his first films as an actor, The Fakir of Venice, was completed in 2008, the same year as Rock On!!, but has not been commercially released yet

Shaadi Ke Side Effects This is not a film, it’s a recipe for a romcom. And a very middle-class one at that ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Dallas Buyers Club Director Jean-Marc Vallée cast Matthew McConnaughey, Jared

Leto, Jennifer Garner Score ★★★★★

a balan akhtar, vidy Cast farhan ar t chaudh y Director sake

his movie doesn’t have a script, what it does is a recipe from an old cook book. The first step reads: add some excitement to your marriage. So Siddharth and Trisha breathlessly book themselves into a hotel room, like a couple looking for premarital sex. The second step says: add a baby to the frying pan; the third reads: extract husband from baby when baby is well done, and so on, till we run through the whole gamut of the supposed side effects of a marriage. Siddharth (Farhan Akhtar) is a musician who composes jingles for commercials and calls himself ‘creative’ and Trisha (Vidya Balan) is a homemaker. The couple make ends meet on a single income, but look like they are living beyond their means—in a posh apartment in an upmarket locality. Being a music composer, Siddharth always has the perfect set of excuses for being late or never there—demanding and fussy clients, recording studios that are booked 24X7, tracks that take 62 open

forever to be mixed appropriately. To escape the endless routine of marital strife and babysitting, he consults a ‘marriage counsellor’ (Ram Kapoor)— actually a friend, a fellow-victim of matrimonial discord and a total fraud. He is given this sage advice—‘Make yourself happy so that you can make your wife happy.’ Whatever that means. So Siddharth hires a bachelor pad for his nights out at the recording studio. He gets a roommate called Manav (Vir Das), the second lead in a TV commercial made in 2009 and the only entertaining character in the entire movie. But Manav is a man, and this is the cop-out in the movie. The film is cloyingly conformist and will not speak seriously of an extra-marital affair, which is the real ‘side-effect’ of a marriage, either from his side or hers. So the movie ends up in the same category as situation comedy on television, the middle-class consensus firmly in place. n

This movie successfully recreates the ambience of a homophobic society in the machismo soaked, Rodeo obsessed city of Dallas, Texas, in the late 1980s. The AIDS epidemic had just hit the heterosexual population but Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) doesn’t believe that anyone other than a ‘faggot’ can get it. The movie works on two levels. First it shows Ron’s transformation from gay baiter to ardent defender of the human rights of people with alternative sexual orientations. And then, like the recent documentary Fire in the Blood, it expose the skullduggery of pharmaceutical corporations that allied with the FDA to stop alternative drugs to patients who ran out of alternatives. When Ron set up the ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ to circumvent the FDA and get experimental drugs to patients, they clamped down to protect the US market for the toxic AZT, the most expensive medicine ever marketed till then. Actor McConaughey’s dedication to his profession is extraordinary, but that does not necessarily make him a great actor. His body looks ravaged from the effects of HIV/AIDS, and that is an astonishing achievement of diet and discipline. But his performance, looked at objectively, does not really stand out. Jared Leto, who plays Rayon, a transgender woman, may not look AIDS afflicted, but is by far the more expressive actor. n AD

17 March 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Sonam’s Four-Month Role Call

Sonam Kapoor reportedly took four months to mull over and say ‘yes’ to Hum Aapke Hain Koun ...! director Sooraj Barjatya’s offer to star in his new movie opposite Salman Khan. A source close to the actress reveals that she had a bunch of concerns, chief among them the very valid worry that Salman might took too old to be paired opposite her romantically. Also, apparently she wasn’t sure she wanted to spend a year working on an “old-fashioned family drama” at a time when she’s consciously seeking out new-age films and contemporary stories. Turns out it was her Raanjhanaa director Anand L Rai who persuaded Sonam to sign the film, insisting that it would be good for her career. The actress, who has repeatedly announced in recent times that she’s more or less stopped signing “big” films because they have little to offer in terms of roles or money, made an exception for Barjatya, whose movies typically have substantial female parts. The film is slated to go into production in June on a set that will be constructed in Karjat, rumouredly because Salman won’t travel to Ooty, where Barjatya was keen to shoot on real locations. And Sonam will have company in her Raanjhanaa co-star Swara Bhaskar who’s also been signed on for the film.

SuperStarbucks

What do you do if you’re the country’s biggest superstar and your daughter absolutely loves a particular brand of franchised coffee? Here’s what you do—you invite the brand to set up an outlet on your premises! Well, that’s what Shah Rukh Khan did. Apparently, the actor’s daughter Suhana is crazy about Starbucks frappuccinos and can’t have enough of them. So SRK reportedly had his people call up the Tatas (who’ve brought Starbucks to India) and offer them “a fantastic rate” to rent out the ground floor space in his spanking new Khar office building. Suhana and her friends now frequently drop in at the sprawling outlet in the Red Chillies building, and SRK himself—who’s been addicted to black coffee for 17 March 2014

years—gets his caffeine fix from downstairs, although it’s usually his staff that pops in and out for his coffee.

The Man on the Wrong Flight

An up and coming actor who’s made some popular films managed to piss off his entire retinue of managers and handlers with his high-handed behaviour during promotional city visits recently. Last week, he refused to board a flight to Delhi, insisting he’d fly nothing but Business Class. He refused to take Emergency Exit seats either, which offer more legroom. As a result, an entourage of six persons—including a make-up man, spot-boy, publicist and manager—had to ditch the flight despite having boarding cards already, because there were no available Business seat for the star. Left with no choice, the producer quickly rebooked the entire group on the next available flight, which also didn’t have Business Class but was offering front row seats at a premium price. Reluctantly, the actor agreed. On the same promotional tour for his new film, the actor reportedly put down a condition that if he had to travel to Chandigarh, he couldn’t spare more than an hour for media interactions in the city. The publicist explained that there was little that could be packed into an hour, and that it simply didn’t justify the cost of flying so many people. But the actor wouldn’t budge. He swore he had a packed schedule in Mumbai, and while was happy to go straight to a press conference on landing in Chandigarh—and not stop at a hotel to freshen up—he couldn’t possibly spend half the day doing interviews and mall appearances. A successful actor and singer back in his home country, he made a splash with his Bollywood debut in a hit comedy some years ago, and has followed it up with interesting film choices. Insiders say he was recently summoned by a superstar who gushed about how much his kids and he enjoyed watching his debut film—so much, in fact, that they watched it twice the same day. That still doesn’t allow the rising star to throw his weight around, does it? n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

The Travelling Troubadour

by r i t e s h u t ta m c h a n da n i

69-year-old Swapan Sett plays the violin at Shiv Sagar restaurant in Girgaum, Mumbai, at lunchtime. For 15 days each month, Sett travels from his home in Kolkata to a different Indian metro so he can sell his music at popular restaurants and temples, each CD priced at Rs 150. The money he earns helps pay for the twice-yearly cancer treatment his wife Purnima needs. She was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2002. Sett says that in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s day and age, money comes and goes, but if two people speak to each other with courtesy and affection, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s priceless. n

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17 March 2014