OPEN Magazine 31 March 2014

UKRAINE AND PUTIN’S PUTSCH inside

RS 40 3 1 m a r c h 2 0 14

ARE INDIAN MODELS SIZE VICTIMS? l i f e a n d t i m e s . e v e r y w e e k

Faith Politics and Narendra Modi

VARANASI

Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Haima Deshpande (Mumbai) Mumbai bureau chief Madhavankutty Pillai associate editor Dhirendra Kumar Jha assistant editors Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor PR Ramesh Deputy Editors Aresh Shirali, Ullekh NP Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

g venkatraman

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

and East), Karl Mistry (West), Krishnanand Nair (South) Manager—Marketing Raghav Chandrasekhar Ajay Gupta

National Head—Distribution and Sales regional heads—circulation D Charles

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

The 24 March special issue on the economy covered many important issues. I agree that manufacturing should improve, we should employ more skilled personnel, make more of our armaments locally, and attract more FDI. As I went along reading, I realised I agreed with most articles in the magazine until I came to this story about a girl waiting for her 20th reconstructive surgery (‘Waiting for the 20th Surgery’). According to me, this should have been the first article in the issue. This is the kind of problem that Modi or Rahul or Kejriwal should address, but are instead avoiding the It is sad that the girl issue altogether. It is sad that the girl happened to happened to be a Bihari be a Bihari raped in raped in Rajasthan Rajasthan and now some and now some Kumar Kumar counts the counts the pennies pennies spent on her. I spent on her thought Rajasthan and Bihar were all part of India and AIIMS is a national hospital as the name implies. Her situation angers me and I hope her perpetrators get such a [stiff] punishment that they undergo 25 surgeries..  letter of the week

R Rajmohan

All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner is prohibited. Printed and published by R Rajmohan on behalf of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd., 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad—121007, (Haryana). Published at 4, DDA Commercial Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Ph: (011) 30934199; Fax: (011) 30934162 To subscribe, sms ‘openmagazine’ to 56070 or log on to www.openthemagazine.com Or call our Toll Free Number 1800 300 22 000 or email at: subscription@openmedianetwork.in For corporate sales, email ajay@openmedianetwork.in For marketing alliances, email alliances@openmedianetwork.in For advertising, email advt@openmedianetwork.in

Hindus, essentially a ‘tribal’ leader on a gigantic scale, incapable of offering any concession—no, not even that of the occasional token apology, or even the good-natured wearing of a Muslim skull-cap while on the campaign trail—to those not of his tribe.’ (‘Modi in the Time of Obama’, 24 March 2014) Mr Varadarajan should realise it is not important to us Indians who wears a skullcap, or who offers an apology. We need a decisive leader whose priority should be India first. Who can clean up the dirt and filth we are in and most importantly who can stand up to countries like the US and China, and in truth, we find all those qualities in Modi.  prabhash halder

Our Tribal Mess

Volume 6 Issue 12 For the week 25—31 March 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

the massacre of 15 security forces in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh by Maoists is a cowardly act. It is a clear attempt to not only demoralise and destablise the security forces, but also shock the Government (‘Terrorists of the Week’, 24 March 2014). The frequency of such dastardly incidents in the Tribal belt reinforces the fact that the Centre and the state governments have done little to redress the grievances of people in these regions. Such nonchalance alone is the reason that lets Maoists strike our clueless security forces so effortlessly. It is also clear that the deployment of security forces to crush the movement and bring sustainable peace to the region has been a miserable failure because of the ultras regrouping themselves to fight

the state with renewed vigour every time there is a security offensive, thereby posing a grave internal threat. The need of the hour is not militaristic action, but establishing the rule of law and addressing legitimate issues such as implementing the Tribal Rights Act properly, giving Adivasis the right to access natural resources, etcetera, besides laying out a blueprint to meet their social and economic needs in a concerted manner.  kr srinivasan

Healthy Eroticism

A Decisive Leader

i don’t know what Mr Varadarajan thinks about India, but these lines are the most foolish lines I have ever read: ‘Mr Modi, for his part, has never sought to be a uniter of India’s citizens; instead, he is an energiser of the country’s

i like the author’s unique style of writing (‘Her Spiritual Crisis’, 15 March 2014). If I find this book (Conversations in the Nude). I will buy and read it. There are no pretensions in it, no hypocrisy. He writes what he sees. Here is a journalist who respects women—he seeks permission from the Russian lady before making love to her. Now compare this with the editor who molests his employee in an elevator. Certainly, there is eroticism, but it is healthy and artistic. The truth is that we are all sexual creatures and enjoy artistic eroticism. From Michaelangelo to Picasso, we have artists who have painted and sketched nudes and those are worth millions. I would really like to read this book.  samir thapa

31 March 2014

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small world

The Great Indian Sunny Fantasy fans

Websites tracking internet traffic show that Sunny Leone’s porn audience is largely Indian tries Pakistan (6.1 per cent) and Bangladesh (4.1 per cent) are next. In comparison, the combined percentage of visitors from the US (2.6 per cent) and the UK (1.4 per cent) is less than that of Bangladesh. Her viewers, according to Alexa, are mostly male graduates, spending an average of 2.37 minutes on the website at their home computers. This analysis by Alexa focuses only on her website, and does not factor porn featuring her that is distributed free on online platforms. In a 2012 interview to The Globe And Mail, months after appearing in Bigg Boss, Leone revealed that 80 per cent of the traffic on her website and 60 per cent of her revenue was from India. A one-month membership of her website costs $9.95, a six-month membership $59.95. Shabir Momin, managing director of Zenga TV, a leading live and video-on-demand mobile TV service in India, says: “Sunny’s appeal is extraordinary.” Zenga TV launched its first official app in partnership with Leone about a month ago. The app features adult-free content that Leone makes available and brings her online existence on forums like Facebook and Twitter onto one platform. According to Momin, Daniel Weber (Leone’s husband), approached Zenga TV late last year, wanting something that brought together their many scattered online appearances. So far, the app has been reportedly downloaded 500,000 times across platforms. n Lhendup G Bhutia

W i t h t h e r e l e a s e of Ragini MMS 2 on 22 March, Sunny Leone continues her Bollywood career, but her porn also has a wide audience in India. Since her appearance on Bigg Boss in 2010, where a majority of Indians learnt about her career as an adult entertainer, viewers of her porn now mostly comprise Indians. According to Alexa, a top website that analyses internet traffic data, Leone’s X-rated website, sunnyleone.com, gets 75 per cent of its visitors from India. Neighbouring coun31 March 2014

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7

contents stumped

14 tribute

30 Bihar

34 candidate

Lighten up, please

13 locomotif

Remembering Khushwant Singh

The don of Mokama

Bhaichung’s new kickoff

18 cover story

The amateur’s day out

Varanasi: Faith, politics and Modi

person of the Week the ghost of NEHRU

The 1962 Albatross A day after the Henderson Brooks Report on the Indo-China war is made public, a tell-all website is blocked. What makes India so nervous about examining Nehru? lhendup g bhutia however, been rumoured that a former Times journalist, Neville Maxwell, had a third copy of the report, since he quoted from it in his 1970 book, India’s China War. A few days ago, Maxwell put up a large section of the report on his website. It is perhaps not surprising that since the report was made public, the website has been blocked. There has been such fear over examining Nehru’s role in the defeat that even after the report was made available to media houses, many years after the event, nobody dared touch it. While uploading parts of the report, Maxwell mentioned how in 2002, he approached and made available the report to the editors of five top Indian publications, who refused to publish it. The editors told him that the Government would turn its rage upon the publishers. He wrote, ‘The reasons for long-term withholding of 1962 war report must be political, probably partisan & perhaps familial.’ What is it that makes the report so sensitive? Among other things, the report faults Nehru’s Forward Policy, which came into existence a year before the war. According to the report, while this Policy in itself was desirable, the country was militarily in no position rangaswamy satakopan/ap to implement it. The Policy was a response to China’s patrolling along the McMahon Line and intermittently entering parts of India. Under this policy, India started creating outposts behind Chinese troops who had moved into Indian territory so as to cut off their supplies. In all, 43 of 60 such outposts were set up to the north of the McMahon Line. This made China see red. For all his greatness as a statesman, Nehru practised a disastrous foreign policy with China, just as he had with Tibet earlier. At first, he did not believe Beijing would take over Tibet—a country with which India shared a long border and which had accepted the McMohan Line—and when it did, despite sound entreaties to intervene, he did not believe Beijing would have a border row, and later a war, with India. n 31 March 2014

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defeat to China, the war continues to rankle and wound India. In the history of modern India, illuminated with victories over Pakistan and involvement in Bangladesh, the 1962 rout has come to be remembered as its most inglorious chapter. It is perhaps for this reason that those interested have sought to keep the role of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru away from scrutiny— to keep away from any serious examination or possible injury the image of a man Indians are often taught is India’s greatest political statesman. This is most evident with the fate of the 1963 Henderson Brooks report, authored by two Indian Army officers, Lieutenant General TB Henderson Brooks and Brigadier PS Bhagat, part of which was leaked recently. The report, supposed to review what led to the defeat, moved beyond its mandate of looking at military preparedness to eventually blame the political leadership. The report has since been classified. Periodically, demands to make the report public have been made, unsuccessfully. In April 2010, Defence Minister AK Antony refused to entertain such pleas when he told the Lok Sabha, “Based on an internal study by the Indian Army, the contents are not only extremely sensitive but are of current operational value.” Officially, it is believed that only two copies of the 1963 report exist, one with the office of the Defence secretary, and the other in the Indian Army’s Military Operations Directorate. It has,

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Vijay Raaz: Bollywood anomaly

Kangana’s star mentor

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f o r annexing Crimea, formerly

a part of Ukraine The carving and breaking up of nations may seem like a thing of colonial times, but Russia has done just that with complete impunity. Within a month of sending troops to Crimea, a semiautonomous region in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty at the Kremlin announcing that

No Lessons in Diplomacy Congress leaders Salman Khurshid and Mani Shankar Aiyar are of a similar bent of mind. And in more ways than one: they are known to embarrass their own leaders and party with their loose talk. While Aiyar earned the displeasure of party leaders over his ‘chaiwala’ remark on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi early this year, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid was chided by Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi for describing Modi as ‘impotent’.

31 March 2014 S u av e a n d k n ow l e d g e a b l e ,

Khurshid has done it again. Now, with elections around the corner, it is not unusual for political rivals to shoot barbs at each other. But Congress leaders themselves are of the view that it was

turn

Crimea would henceforth officially be under the Russian government. Crimea has a Russian ethnic majority and had its own parliament, though the Ukranian government had veto powers over it. It was brought under the Ukrainian government by the Soviet regime in 1954. Russian troops took over the region before Putin announced that the region was formally under the Russian government. He based his decision on a suspect referendum. Putin might announce the annexation as the ‘will of the people’, but it is a dangerous move that has upset the peace in the region. Ukraine has warned of war and the move has revived separatist movements in the region— with former Soviet republics like Moldova requesting similar action. n

After his favoured candidate was refused an election ticket by the BJP, Baba Ramdev first slammed Narendra Modi for being ‘eager’ for power, then blamed the media for misquoting him b a ck f l i p a a s a n

“Modi is eager to become the PM, but he should show some restraint... It would have been better if all the BJP candidates were clean... Some wrong candidates have been fielded by the party” —Baba Ramdev, in a TV interview in Nagpur, 16 March 2014

“I have not made any comment about Modi being in a hurry to become PM. This is a wrong allegation made by the media... Only he can get the country out of the present mess” —Baba Ramdev, in a press statement 17 March 2014

around

preposterous on Khurshid’s part to take personal potshots at Modi again. This time, he called the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate a ‘nursery child’. “Modi’s claim of a clean chit in the 2002 riots is like a nursery child claiming to have a PhD,” Khurshid mocked. “If a child in nursery gets good marks, and then the child considers himself to be a doctor and goes around claiming to have a PhD, how can that happen?” Perhaps Rahul Gandhi, who has warned Khurshid once, needs to be firm. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Android Wear Google has announced that it is launching Android Wear, a mobile operating system for wearable technologies. Much like Android is an operating system for smartphones, Android Wear will make smartwatches more intelligent. According to Google’s official blog its features will include showing ‘latest posts and updates from your favorite social apps, chats from your preferred messaging apps, notifications from shopping, news and photography apps’. All notifications appear in shortened form. A tap will open the details. If there are multiple messages, they will appear like a deck of cards and users can swipe them to read. Or ‘Just say “Ok Google” to ask questions, like how many calories are in an avocado, what time your flight leaves, and the score of the game. Or say “Ok Google” to get stuff done, like calling a taxi, sending a text, making a restaurant reservation or setting an alarm.’

On the Contrary

A Crisis of Opportunism On the flawed characters in the Devyani Khobragade drama M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

Android Wear will be an operating system for smartwatches the way Android is for smartphones

Smartwatches that run on Android Wear can also control other devices. The operating system incorporates Google Now, Google’s virtual assistant software. As developers make apps using Android Wear, the number of things that your smartwatch

Fabrizio Bensch/REUTERS

can do will keep increasing. For example, apps will be able to monitor your health and tailor fitness plans using real time updates from your body. Or as you step out of your door for office, the smartwatch will automatically tell you what traffic to expect. Along with companies like Samsung, Motorola and LG, Google is now also working with traditional watch companies like Fossil to put Android Wear on the market soon. Motorola has actually even announced Moto 360, its Android Wear watch. And LG too announced its Android Wear watch called the LG G Watch, set for launch later this year. n

n the latest twist to the Devyani Khobragade saga, a US court recently quashed the indictment against the IFS officer, and a day later prosecutor Preet Bharara reindicted her for visa fraud. If a movie is ever made around the events surrounding Khobragade, it would be interesting to ask who would be the hero or heroine. It will not be Khobragade, given that she allegedly lied in the visa application for her domestic help to avoid paying minimum wages as per US law. It’s always nice to have a servant but most people don’t have one in the US precisely because of the minimum wage; the reason to lie on the form was to have one cheap. In her first letter to her colleagues after her arrest, Khobragade asked for swift and strict action ‘to preserve the dignity of our service which is unquestionably under siege.’ It is hard to see where the national interest is in all this, unless the future of the country is umbilically connected to IFS officers not washing their own dishes. The heroine of the drama cannot be the maid, Sangeeta Richards, because she agreed to work at the pay specified, which was much more than what she would have gotten here in India. She realised the rights accruing her after she landed in the US and then allegedly tried to profit from it. If working conditions were tough, all she had to do was return to India. She is divorcing her husband, so it’s an ambition that has come at a price. The hero is definitely not Preet Bharara. To Bharara, and the creed of public prosecutors in that country, all high profile cases are stepping stones to a career in politics. The only curiosity is the Indian media repeatedly talking about his Indian origins as if that makes him a traitor. For a man who is angling for American votes in the future, Indianness will be somewhat at the

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bottom of the list of things to flaunt. The hero is not Uttam Khobragade, Devyani’s father, who seemed for a while to be pulling all his ex-IAS strings to protect his daughter. But along the way, he joined the Republican Party of India and started scouting for a Lok Sabha ticket. He thus tried to turn the crisis into an opportunity. In principle, that is not so wrong, but in the present case, is somewhat distasteful. The hero is not the Indian Government. Soon after Devyani’s arrest, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the action ‘deplorable’. After the reindictment, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said Is the future the episode was of the country ‘irksome’. From ‘deplorable’ to umbilically ‘irksome’ is a connected to long journey for IFS officers not an adjective and washing their it is one made on wings of own dishes? frustration and cowardice. For instance, in the initial ploy to even things out, information was demanded from the US embassy here about what American diplomats were paying their maids and tax evasions. What has happened to this information? Did we get it? Why not make it public? The absence of answers means we are presumably back to the golden mean of not annoying superpowers. Khurshid’s statement of irksomeness included a desire to not just maintain relations but enhance them. How can one not admire the imagination that wants relations to improve as a consequence of the Khobragade incident? The only thing common in all characters in this quasi tragedy is opportunism. The moral of the story is that a little bit of privilege and greed can go a long way to make a fine mess. n 31 March 2014

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Of Discrimination and Flying Phones MADHAVANKUTTY PILLAI

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leader Rahul Gandhi spoke at a rally in Manipur, he made sure to advertise his legacy and club it with an appeal to the region’s people on a subject they are sensitive about—discrimination by the rest of India. He said: “In 1972, Indira Gandhi came here and participated in the function that gave you statehood. And in that function she said that Manipur is a real gem and we wish that Manipur will shine like a gem and impart beauty to the whole of India. And that statement goes very deep into how Indira Gandhiji and the Congress party think about Manipur… Every single person, regardless of where he comes from, which state he belongs to, what colour he is, what religion he follows, is a gem for this country. We believe that every single idea that an Indian person has adds to the beauty of this country.” Discrimination and tolerance happen to be especially pertinent topics now in the Northeast, after the recent killing of a student, Nido Tania, in Delhi. A day earlier, that was also the theme of Gandhi’s speech in Arunachal Pradesh, Nido’s home state, to indulge in some Opposition bashing. He said: “Why did Nido die? Because of the thought that this country belongs to different people and there must be no place for the people of the Northeast in Delhi. This is the thought of the opposition parties which makes people fight with one another. Our thought is that everyone needs to walk ahead together.” Some days earlier, in a speech in Sambalpur, Odisha, BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi also had a few things to say about discrimination, but of a different kind—by the Congress against people in BJP ruled states. And what he used to highlight it was the recent hailstorm that caused extensive damage to crops in Madhya Pradesh. He said: “I have never seen Shivraj Singh Chouhan so worried. Yesterday when we had a meeting of the Parliamentary Board, Shivrajji said he was extremely troubled by the situation but the Delhi government is not worried. Farmers were dying, hailstones were falling but the Prime Minister, his leaders, his shehzaade, are not concerned with Madhya Pradesh farmers. They don’t think of them as their own. Why? Because they made a

n Wednesday, when Congress

bullu raj

sore strategy In Manipur, Rahul Gandhi took advantage of regional sensitivites over discrimination

government of the BJP. They think, ‘let the farmers die, they didn’t give vote for us’.” His speech was often quite unabashedly about himself—“It is not enough for Modi to be prime minister’—and kept returning to the theme of how the other parties had only one agenda—“Stop Modi, Stop Modi, Stop Modi.” When it comes to the Aam Aadmi Party, ‘Stop Modi’ is a strategy to pitch itself as a viable Opposition at a national level. On Sunday, 16 March, soon after it was announced that Modi would contest from Varanasi, Arvind Kejriwal said in a speech in Bangalore: “We have to defeat both Congress and BJP and we have to defeat them in these elections. How do you defeat them?

What has been missing in the speeches of Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal is levity. The man who can teach them that is Tamil Nadu filmstar-turned-politician Vijaykanth, a DMDK leader

First you defeat their top leaders, put good candidates against their top leaders.” He said the party had asked him to contest against Modi but he would first ask the people of Varanasi. He added, “I will go to Varanasi. On 23 [March] we will do a rally; let all people in the country come to Varanasi. The party has given me a ticket but it does not mean anything. When the people of the country give me a ticket, then I will contest against Narendra Modi. Whatever the people of Varanasi say I will listen to it. If they give me the responsibility then I will accept it.” Going by AAP’s previous experiences with referendums, it is always an answer already known. What is missing in the speeches of all three—Modi, Gandhi and Kejriwal—is levity. The man who can teach them that is Tamil Nadu film star turned politician, Vijaykanth. The Hindu reported that at a rally, the DMDK leader chose to comment on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s governance thus: “They say change has come. But where is the change? When I was coming to this spot, the roads were so bad that the cellphone in my pocket jumped out and went into the next person’s pocket.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 7

31 March 2014

business

The Great Game over Global Gas Supplies e ne r gy International diplomacy of late has centred on ‘sanctions’ against two countries. While Russia has invited them for its adventurism in Crimea, Iran has been in talks with the West to have those imposed on it eased. The other thing common to both is that they hold huge hydrocarbon reservoirs, which explains why global markets are watching events so closely: any shift in the status quo could impact energy prices. The significance of Russia can be gauged by the fact that it is the third largest producer of oil and its top exporter (rivalling Saudi Arabia). It is also the second largest producer of natural gas. Nearly three-fourths of its oil and gas is consumed by Western Europe. “Russia is a major and irreplaceable (in the short term) supplier of Germany and Europe’s oil and gas,” says Robert McNally, president of Rapidan Group, a US-based energy consultancy. “An oil cut-off or sanctions on Russian hydrocarbon exports is unlikely because it would be damaging for all the parties involved,” he adds. According to Lydia Powell of Observer Research Foundation, “Russian gas, exported to Europe, is mostly pipelined gas, and such contracts are considered more stable and dependable and cannot be so easily replaced [by LNG].” Since Western Europe appreciates the consistency of Russian gas supply, it may create fissures within the EU on how far the West ought to punish Russia for Crimea’s annexation. Iran is especially significant for its oil misha japaridze/ap

under pipeline pressure The Crimean Crisis has put Russia’s gas supplies to Western Europe under threat Hydrocarbon markets are watching the West’s policy on ‘rogue’ nations for a reason

supply. The oil market is heartened by the very fact that earnest negotiations are underway between the West and the Islamic Republic. This upholds the spirit of the November round of talks, under which Iran agreed to cap its nuclear ambitions in exchange for an easing of trade sanctions that have hurt its economy by choking its crude oil exports. Yet, on the whole, uncertainty prevails. McNally feels that the Crimean Crisis

could have an adverse fallout on the world energy scenario if hostilities escalate; an Iran emboldened by Russia’s defiance of the West, for example, may be tempted to extract bigger concessions from the US, which could unsettle a power balance in the Middle East. Also, a protracted loss of Russian gas would prove disruptive not only for Europe, but for Asia too. If Europe takes to LNG, this demand would pressure Asian gas prices up as well, says Powell. Russian revenues would suffer, perhaps granting the US a chance to export gas to Western Europe. n SHAILENDRA TYAGI

Statistical Snapshot of a Global Flare-up Russia and Iran together hold the world’s largest gas reserves and sanctions against them would have an impact on global energy costs Russia Iran Qatar United States* Saudi Arabia Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Venezuela 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 All figures are in trillion cubic feet Source: U.S. Energy information administration compiled by Shailendra Tyagi

“People in [Silicon] Valley jumped at the opportunity, as they have seen how the Western world has changed and that change is possible [in India] because of technology” Pran Kurup, CEO of Silicon Valley-

* wet gas reserves

based e-learning firm Vitalect and an AAP volunteer, explaining why techies of Indian origin are impressed enough by a political startup called the Aam Aadmi Party to raise funds for it in America

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THE AMATEUR’S DAY OUT tesy of their bloodline. And that is one reason why the new generation in Indian politics is old in its thinking; it is a generation that is preordained to carry forward the ancestral legacy. That is why, to cite just one example, Akhilesh Yadav is as good or as bad as his father. The young in Indian politics are not swayed by the romance of change; they don’t challenge the existing order; they are not children of idealism but purveyors of redundant ideologies. That is why we need the outsider—the amateur. Remember, it was in a theatre called Magic Lantern that the first draft of the Velvet Revolution—the most poetic moment in Eastern Europe’s liberation struggle against communism—was written, and it was a revolution led by playwrights and novelists and rock singers. That said, India today is not the ideal place for a revolution, no matter what hallucinations propel Arvind Kejriwal. But it is certainly not the ideal address of democracy. It is a place that has become the worst case of mismanaged democracy. Just think of it: Manmohan Singh, once the wisest old man from the East feted at the highest tables of international summitry, is currently presiding over a regime that has made India one of the most talked-about nations today—and for all the wrong reasons. The bestselling Indian story is about how to be corrupt and remain in power, and this story is made possible by a prime minister who could have been different from your average Congress leader—or any other professional politician. The failure of Manmohan Singh brings out the larger failure of the apolitical politician in India. Still, does the amateur on the stump mean a cultural shift in politics? The Aam Aadmi Party is the obvious magnetic field to which the newly awakened are attracted. The only good thing about this trend is that being political is no longer a state of passivity. Suddenly, the good citizen is out there on the street, talking India and fighting for it. The only problem is that the India of the amateur in the fray is either a regressive alternative or just a variation of the present. The ‘change’ the AAP revolutionary talks about is the retro-terror of an India as a mofussil autocracy. Elsewhere, new entrants may not be as ambitious as their AAP counterparts, but, going by their words, they are more status quoists than tradition breakers. Up close, the amateur in this election is too familiar to be different. n open www.openthemagazine.com 13

India of the moment, politics is too serious a matter to be left to professional politicians alone. Some time ago, the Marxist pundit Martin Jacques famously wrote about the end of politics. He was, to some extent, following the market trend of ‘Endology’: after the End of Ideology and the End of History, the Death of Politics was inevitable. Like the demise of its great predecessors, the End of Politics, too, was a false alarm. We saw, in the post-Soviet world of triumphant market liberalism, history returning with a vengeance to the streets of the Balkans and elsewhere, and it was such an awesome sight that the original obituary writer from Rand Corporation in the US had to rewrite his argument. And of politics, it is the one thing that makes a difference to our destiny, for better or worse. For the worse, in the most hypersensitive democracy. If India today is one of the most misgoverned nations in the world, it is a reflection of the worth of our political class. There was a time when the so-called banana republics were the only addresses of kleptocrats in power—the bloated liberators-turned-rogues. They are here now. The Indian story, particularly of the last ten years, is a textbook case of how the freedom that democracy offers to the elected politician can be turned into a mandate for pillage. The worst stereotypes of politics are at play here: a prime minister whose sensory faculties are conveniently switched off as scams and scandals swirl around him; a cabinet whose moral deficiency is so acute that that national interest has already ceased to be its concern; and the condemned and the discredited in public consciousness have a safe house in South Block. The irony of it all is that the rise of the devalued politician paralleled the fall of the accidental politician as prime minister. The stage was set for redeeming politics from its professional practitioners. And it is wonderful to see in this election ‘smart’ people as candidates, among them journalists and high-profile technocrats. The sight is all the more heartening because politics in India is generally incompatible with merit. The new entrant into politics is invariably a beneficiary of hereditary entitlement. Most of our young MPs, in their thirties or below, are there in the House cour31 march 2014

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here can’t be a second opinion on this: In

What a Tamasha!

in memoriam

KHUSHWANT SINGH 1915-2014

photos express archives

Nothing was sacred for the writer who never aged INDRAJIT HAZRA

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o this is where Khushwant went each evening after shooing us away. This is where he went after ensuring I had downed at least two stiff glasses of Black Label whiskey while he nursed his stiffer one glass in his living room a wee bit longer. This is where he retired, leaving the ever-flowing entourage of friends, not-so-friends, publicity-collectors, hangers-on, users, book-squeezers, admirers and disciples to their own devices. So this is where he disappeared. This is the first time I have entered Khushwant’s bedroom. He lies there still, under an Arpana Caur painting of Guru Nanak. In fact, this is the first time I see him not sitting, or reclining with his feet up on a mora, or walking, or even standing. He is lying down, still covered by a blanket as if winter’s not yet withdrawn, inside a room above whose doorway a tile reads: ‘Dios bendiga cada rincon de esta casa.’ God bless every corner of this house. For someone who didn’t believe in God but loved so much that was produced by the belief in his existence, this Spanish tile is just another reminder of how Khushwant saw the world, saw life: as a celebration by men. The non-believer was firm in his many beliefs: that there was something rotten about people who took themselves seriously; that the poetry of Ghalib and Faiz is divine; that Manmohan Singh, despite his failings, is a good man; that India needed the Emergency at that particular time (‘...the right to protest is integral to democracy. You can have public meetings to criticise or condemn government actions. You can take out processions, call for strikes and closure of businesses. But there must not be any coercion or violence. If there is any, it is the duty of the government to suppress it by force, if necessary’); that nothing is sacred. I first met Khushwant Singh when I would visit Ravi Dayal, my publisher and Khushwant’s son-in-law, who lived open www.openthemagazine.com 15

the company of women Khushwant Singh with close friend Sadia Dehlvi and an unidentified lady

across the hall in his ground floor flat in Sujan Singh Park. He had reviewed my first novel, about which he had written: ‘I enjoyed reading it because it is wellwritten, the episodes about which he writes are entirely fanciful and rib-tickingly comic. However, at the end I was left with an uneasy feeling that I had perhaps missed the message, if there was one, that the author wished to convey.’ Adding, in case I had missed it: ‘I admit a second time I was not able to decipher what Indrajit Hazra was driving at.’ There I was, proud as first-time authors are wont to be when their writing is found to be incomprehensible by a member of the ancien regime, while he welcomed me for my first drink with him. Over the next fourteen-odd years, it became obvious to me that it was Khushwant who was the curious cat and unflappable reveller in mischief, while I was still the mumbler, wondering whether what I wrote would go down well with this reader or that. Nothing was sacred and everything was a ‘tamasha’ for Khushwant. This is something about him that reassured me over the years. He became the one living example of someone who wasn’t afraid 16 open

to write anything, because he didn’t care about the consequences. Khushwant Singh wrote the way he spoke and spoke the way he wrote. I was summoned once by Khushwant when I was with Hindustan Times. He had complained that his column ‘With Malice Towards One and All’ was being ‘pushed around’, with readers complaining. My job was to placate him. After the problem was quickly sorted out, he quickly moved on to other things. ‘Who was the editor of HT now?’ ‘Did Shobhana [Bhartia, the proprietor] decide on editorials?’ ‘And what news of that boy...?’ My wife Diya, one of Khushwant’s editors when she was at Penguin India, was the one who really introduced me to the man and the man to me. Over whiskey and snacks during those 7 pm-8 pm ‘open house’ visiting hours, I slowly stopped being ‘Diya’s husband’ and he ‘Khushwant Singh’. He regaled us with stories about his days as editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India and The Hindustan Times and his encounters with politicians, actors and writers. Interspersed with them were the real nuggets of information, such as

“Have you heard of the whiskey Kuchh Nai? Some sardar is selling it to the goras, can you believe it! I’m told it’s rather good,” followed by a laugh. As all good raconteurs do, Khushwant liked exaggerating his own personality. His persona of a man rolling about in his Scotch and women, I realised early on during my visitations, really boiled down to a healthy respect for drinking—and a suspicion towards the abstainer—along with an almost childish happiness at being in the company of women; the prettier, the more likely to be turned into a subject of his chatter. More than the whiskey, Khushwant would look forward to the idlis, fried fish and ice cream that Diya would occasionally bring. Over the last few years, with his hearing getting worse, I would have to speak louder over the other guests. With other people talking, he would tell me about his father Sir Sobha Singh, a prominent builder in Lutyens’ Delhi, about how Delhi was in the 50s, what he was reading at that moment. And how he felt that his time was up and he was ready to go. In ‘Posthumous’, a hilarious piece he wrote in 1943 when he was 28, Khushwant has written his own obituary: ‘I am in bed with fever. It is not serious. In fact, it is not serious at all, as I have been left alone to look after myself. I wonder what would happen if the temperature suddenly shot up. Perhaps I would die. That would be really hard on my friends. I have so many and am so popular. I wonder what the papers would have to say about it. They just couldn’t ignore me. Perhaps The Tribune would mention it on its front page with a small photograph. The headline would read ‘Sardar Khushwant Singh Dead’—and then in somewhat smaller print: ‘We regret to announce the sudden death of Sardar Khushwant Singh at 6pm last evening’... At the bottom of the page would be an announcement: ‘The funeral will take place at 10 am today’.’ After having soup in the early afternoon and not feeling well, Khushwant died peacefully around 1 pm on 20 March. The funeral took place at 4 pm. I can just see him throw his head back with laughter and say to all those gathered around, “Ha, ha, ha! Kya tamasha! Did you see that? Ha, ha, ha!” n 31 March 2014

varanasi

PILGRIM’S PROGRESS Hinduism’s holiest destination has become Indian politics’ hottest dateline which will test the faith and tenacity of the man around whom the arguments about our national destiny swirl. A report on the political symbolism of Varanasi

Ullekh NP in Varanasi photographs by raul irani

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older than Jerusalem and Athens, has beckoned the faithful. Now, amid the clamour of temple bells and heady fumes of incense, it is Narendra Modi’s turn. The Gujarat Chief Minister is here to seek blessings in a campaign that could be as defining for the BJP as was the Ayodhya temple movement of the early 1990s. Modi must consider himself ‘the Chosen One’, says PN Singh, a sixth-generation trader based in Varanasi’s Assi Ghat. “After all, his party chose him over others to contest the polls from Varanasi. I believe it is divine intervention. He is destined for something bigger,” insists this 50-yearold as he sits in lotus position on the steps of Dashashwamedh Ghat as mind-bending sounds of percussion instruments and devotional songs fill the air and lights from gheesoaked wicks light up the evening sky over the Ganga. “It is his faith in the gods that has brought [Modi] here. It is no coincidence. There are no coincidences in Varanasi. Call me superstitious if you wish,” offers this strong man with a squat gym physique, save for his ample tummy, referring to the Gujarat CM’s candidacy from this constituency that houses one of Hinduism’s holiest shrines, the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Such a display of ‘faith’ is par for the course in Varanasi, where iconoclasm gets muffled by layers of myth. For Adi Shankaracharya, one of the greatest Hindu sages of all time, life’s four big wishes were to live in Varanasi, enjoy the company of good people, bathe in the Ganga and worship Shiva. Over the centuries, the historical and spiritual resonance of Varanasi, also known as Kashi, has drawn people here for their last earthly step in their quest for Nirvana—final freedom from a cycle of birth and death. No other place in the country is as symbolic of Hindu culture as Varanasi. The busy life of its riverfront, the exhaustive rites at its temples, and the exuberance of its festivals have stood testimony to the celebration of that faith.

Karmic Links

or centuries, Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city,

Singh says he is excited about the Hindu nationalist rhetoric that is building up in Varanasi for a man who hasn’t even uttered the word ‘Hindutva’ yet in any of his recent speeches. Having acquired the halo of a militant Indian nationalist, Modi simply does not need the blatant use of such terms anymore. “The slogan, ‘Somnath se Vishwanath’, has a greater ring to it than what you’d see,” argues Singh, who describes Varanasi as a showpiece of “Indian culture that withstood invasions from far and wide”. The parallels evoked by such rhetoric are inescapable: Modi comes to Varanasi from the land of the Somnath Temple, which had been razed about a thousand years ago by Islamic invaders and was rebuilt after Independence on an initiative taken by Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad. The Vishwanath 20 open

Modi momentum A teenager wears a mask distributed by BJP workers at the Dashashwamedh Ghat in Varanasi

temple, also devoted to Shiva, has its own historical echo of Hindu resistance. Rakesh Srivastava, a Kedar Ghat resident, feels Modi is now where he belongs. “In the cradle of Hinduism where anti-Muslim sentiment is the underlying feeling—you just have to scratch the surface, and it is there,” he says, “As political Hinduism’s most-photographed figure, he will now parley on equal terms with the high priests of the Brahminical order of Varanasi that has held power at a shrine revered by millions of Hindus.” All this looks like a natural progression for Modi, political Hinduism’s trustworthy soldier, Srivastava adds. This mixing of faith and politics and raking up of animosity-filled history—of how Hinduism survived centuries of Islamic invasions—upsets Professor Ashok Kumar Kaul of Banares Hindu University (BHU) no end. He calls the BJP’s efforts to hardsell Modi’s Hindutva credentials and propagate its hardline message in eastern UP a form of “tapping into primordialism”. But then it happens in Varanasi, Kaul admits. “All that history and faith needn’t be used up to ensure Modi’s victory,” he adds, “but then, that will help inspire a section of Hindu voters.” Invoking faith and Hindutva sentiments to penetrate Poorvanchal, which includes 22 districts spread across eastern UP and western Bihar, is a strategy that the party hopes will click well. “And in India, no one symbolises the image of a Hindu alpha male more than Modi. Whether I am an admirer of this posturing or not, there seem to be storm waves in his favour, especially because he is the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate,” notes BHU Sociology Professor Sohan Ram Yadav.

For Whom the Bells Toll

There is a flip side to being the holiest of all Hindu pilgrimage centres—and being the oldest living city in the world. Evidently, it isn’t just faith or the Hindutva posterboy appeal; Modi’s ‘Deng Xiaoping’ aura, too, is at play. “The perception here is that Modi is a man who has done well on the development front. People are comparing him with the Chinese leader Deng, moderniser of the People’s Republic of China. And that perception is very strong whatever the national media may say about his development ‘claims’,” says Professor Yadav. Despite the mystique around it, the age-old city of Varanasi is wrestling with modern-day pollution woes and crying out for development. Over three-fourths of the city’s residents drink untreated sewage water. They have got used to it, Kaul avers, adding that it is time to change. “We need development and we know only a powerful person can make it happen in this holy city where time almost stands still,” contends Mohan Yadav, a cabbie from Godowlia. Puffing a cheap cigarette, he cranes his neck towards a toropen www.openthemagazine.com 21

rent of cycle rickshaws and passersby—and that includes ‘spiritual travellers’ from around the world here for the high of hash as much as the call of gods—who throw up dirt, grime and dust on a pothole-riddled junction next to St Thomas’ Church, and says, “We can’t take it anymore.” People across the religious and caste spectrum that Open has spoken to say they want much more than mere cleanliness. Believed by Hindus to be more than 5,000 years old, Varanasi is also one of the world’s dirtiest cities where millions of pilgrims who take holy dips in the Ganga release close to 200 million litres of untreated human sewage into the river every day. According to official reports, the Ganga near Varanasi’s ghats contains 120 times the faecal coliform bacteria per ml of water than is suitable for bathing. RK Pathak of Nai Sarak, a bursting-at-the-seams market that sells cheap shoes and clothes, says he has begun to dream of a Metro service in Varanasi, along the lines of Delhi’s, and multi-rapid transit systems like those in Ahmedabad. “Our hopes are high, thanks to Modi coming here,” he says. Various development projects are hobbled by inaction—including construction work on various ghats, creation of new ghats named after political leaders associated with Varanasi such as Madanmohan Malviya, Rammanohar Lohiya, Rajnarayan and others—and are still pending approval.

Faith in Modi

says Professor Kaul. Varanasi goes to the polls in the ninth and the final round of the 2014 General Election, and campaigning has not yet picked up momentum. Yet, there is enough buzz. The BJP’s campaign strategy is calculated to help it secure as many seats as possible from Poorvanchal, political pundits agree. In the process, Modi wants to establish a base for himself in UP, India’s most populous state which accounts for 80 Lok Sabha seats, more than any other in the Union. Professor Badri Narayan, a social historian and cultural anthropologist at GB Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad, has observed the state’s politics for long. Of all the places in UP—which has elected eight Indian prime ministers, so far—Varanasi suits Modi the most, thanks to its religious appeal. Like Professor Narayan, Professor Yadav also feels that Varanasi offers Modi both spiritual and political comfort. First, it is an RSS stronghold. “Then there is a religious fervour associated with the place, making Modi mix with it like milk with water, especially since he

Meanwhile, a BJP slogan has created a storm here. ‘Har Har Modi Ghar Ghar Modi’ is a takeoff on ‘Har Har Mahadev’, an ode to Shiva, the deity in whose honour the Kashi Vishwanath temple was built. While BJP cadres are pitching it hard to project the BJP honcho as Varanasi’s saviourto-be from its atrophy, the Congress is piqued that the catchy slogan is going viral on the internet and is popular among the people of Varanasi. Not everyone is comfortable with such fervour. “Why is [Modi] placing himself above Mahadev himself? The slogan is an insult to Lord Shiva,” argues Ajay Rai, a Congress MLA given to hyperbole and menacing facial expressions. Much to the anguish of Modi’s rivals, no noteworthy opposition to him seems in sight. The office of the Samajwadi Party (SP), which has fielded Kailash Chaurasia in this constituency, bears a deserted look. So does the Congress office. Many Congress leaders are crestfallen that Modi will contest from Varanasi. Says one of them, “The RSS is very active in this constituency and they are working round the clock to ensure Modi’s victory.” On its part, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had emerged second here back in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, is concerned that Dalit votes may shift to the BJP this time round. “Modi is someone who can get votes across caste lines because he is a polariser of Hindu votes. Second we don’t have a good candidate to project here,” admits a local BSP leader. Former BSP leader Mukhtar Ansari, a history sheeter who emerged runner-up to Murli Manohar Joshi in Varanasi five years ago, is in the fray this time as a candidate of the Quami Ekta Dal (QED). “The fact, as of now, is that there is no good opposition to Modi, which is why it is going to be a cakewalk for him,” 22 open

Invoking faith and Hindutva sentiments to penetrate Poorvanchal, which includes 22 districts spread across eastern UP and western Bihar, is a strategy that the party hopes will click well is seen as able to transcend caste priorities. Upper caste voters are already in favour of him. Plus, his OBC credentials, which the BJP is flaunting through murmur campaigns, will come to his aid. Kurmis and Vaishyas are expected to vote en bloc for him,” forecasts Professor Yadav. Professor Narayan is of the view that whiffs of dissent in constituencies such as Deoria, where the BJP has fielded Kalraj Mishra, may turn a spoiler. “However, I believe it is likely that the Modi wave buffeting Uttar Pradesh may help tide over all such inconsistencies,” says Kaul.

Kejriwal Who?

While there is no doubt that the political arithmetic of eastern UP and western Bihar has changed dramatically with Modi in the fray, opposition party leaders such as Ajay Rai argue that if they can form a ‘major alliance’ against Modi in Varanasi, the BJP strongman may yet bite the dust. Rai dismissed an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), whose leader Arvind Kejriwal is expected to contest against Modi in Varanasi on the back of a popular referendum in the city. A local Congress leader also says Ansari may pull out of the race to strengthen the “hands of the opposition”. Ansari, who won 28 per cent of the votes polled 31 March 2014

Holy city A couple of political posters amid images of Hindu deities on a wall in Varanasi

in 2009 on a BSP ticket, had shocked Murli Manohar Joshi, who won 30.5 per cent. The QED, the party Anasari now leads, has hinted at a possibility of backing Kejriwal if he emerges as the strongest opposition candidate. Rai, though, laughs off any suggestion of backing the AAP candidate. “Kejriwal is a creation of the media. In Delhi, leaders who live frugal lives may be few, but here there are many. Kejriwal is a blown-up balloon that can’t stand any test of faith in Varanasi. He is a joker,” Rai says, adding that the Congress will ‘expose’ Modi as an outsider interested only in winning votes and apathetic to the city’s civic problems. But locals aren’t too bothered about sons-of-the-soil versus outsiders when it comes to development, asserts Singh, the Assi Ghat trader. “Though my family has been around for six generations here, most of our neighbours are first or second-generation migrants from across north India,” he says, “Varanasi is a place that has seen a lot of migration.” What stokes the ‘outsider’ debate is Joshi’s tepid involvement in the affairs of this constituency. He had come under sharp attack from within his party and outside for not investing enough time in Varanasi, but the senior BJP leader has defended himself saying he was instrumental in initiating various development projects for the temple city.

Muslim Anxiety

Several residents of Varanasi feel that Modi belongs there, a historical city known as the cradle of Hinduism, and where anti-Muslim sentiment remains an underlying feeling munities any good. He has a history of being anti-Muslim and has shown no sympathy to those who perished in the 2002 riots,” he says. His 55-year-old business partner merely smiles back when asked what his name is. “This is the beginning of something really bad. I see something bad happening to both the Hindu and Muslim communities here,” he states as burkha-clad women dart past en route to neighbourhoods where mosques jostle for space with temples and Muslims and Hindus live side by side. Away from this middle-class neighbourhood, in the back alleys of Bada Bazaar, densely populated by poor Muslims, Jalaluddhin, a grocer, says he isn’t scared of “Modi coming to Varanasi”. He wouldn’t vote for him, though. “He is coming here after having built a huge position for himself at the national level, and there is nobody here who can take him on. What he should keep in mind, therefore, since he is going to win anyway, is that he must treat all as equal, Hindu or Muslim. He must change,” suggests Jalaluddhin. Naseer, who runs a small tyre shop a few blocks away, says all opposition parties, including the SP, Congress and BSP, have failed the minority community that accounts for 400,000 people of the city’s 1.4 million population. “They did nothing for Varanasi because they thought this was a open www.openthemagazine.com 23

Many of Varanasi’s Muslims that Open has spoken to— both leaders and others—express deep fears over Modi’s candidacy, describing it as an attempt by the BJP to gain an edge by polarising the electorate along communal lines. On Madanpura Road—where groups of well-heeled Muslim men in skullcaps huddle on the sidewalk chatting about business and politics softy enough for only them to hear—there is concern about the future, says Ajmal, 35, who doesn’t disclose his surname. “We are worried that the politics [Modi] will bring in here will not do our com31 March 2014

Many of Varanasi’s Muslims express fears over Modi’s candidacy, describing it as an attempt by the BJP to gain an edge by polarising the electorate along communal lines

anxiety in minority quarters A lane in the Madanpura locality of Varanasi; some Muslims in the area say they are worried about Modi’s politics

BJP stronghold. It is too late to prepare yourself to take on Modi,” adds this man in his fifties. “What adds to fears is the propaganda that Modi is a danger to these parties. None of these parties has the sting to counter Modi,” chips in Naseer’s lungi-clad teenaged son.

Nothing Intellectual About It

In the tea shops of Assi Ghat once frequented by the likes of Lohia, Raj Narain and other socialist leaders—who had made Varanasi an ‘adda’ for their political activities—the hot topic of discussion is no longer rural empowerment or right-based programmes, but Modi. Dinesh Mishra, a BHU alumnus now running an NGO focused on child health, says that threadbare political analysis is only a fringe activity undertaken by small socialist groups. “The average Benarasi is not interested in any such analysis because religion is deeply ingrained in him or her. Just because there are no riots doesn’t mean there is communal harmony. An average Hindu is anti-Muslim and vice-versa,” he posits, sipping tea at Kashi Café, a place filled with foreign tourists. Most Hindus in this trader-dominated society spend a lot of time in temples, where senior priests and other officials still hold sway. Varanasi’s Brahmins, a powerful group handling the affairs of various temples, have in the past few decades shifted allegiance to the RSS and BJP, unlike in the days of Congress leader Kamalapati Tripathi who enjoyed enormous clout among the puritanical keepers of the religion. “These people who hold key posts in temples are still influential leaders in a society where religion is absolutely important. Brahmins have been at the forefront of all political activity in the city,” says a bureaucrat asking not to be named. Which explains why a party that draws on religious 24 open

sentiment finds an automatic base in a city like Varanasi. “There is no one here who is worried about secularism. That is why Modi’s candidacy has generated so much excitement,” says the bureaucrat. On why Varanasi has seen fewer riots than other north Indian cities, he says: “This is a trading town that requires a lot of cooperation between Hindus and Muslims, and riots have a debilitating impact. ‘No riots’ does not mean communal harmony.” The city’s weavers are mostly Muslim while shopowners are mostly Rajasthani Marwaris. SK Patel, a beefy and crossbar-mustachioed textile trader who runs a few shops near Pandeypur Mandi, adds that there is a latent anti-Muslim feeling among most Hindus in the city that has seen numerous invasions over centuries. “They both co-exist, but there are deep animosities. Weavers who work with me are deeply worried that the police will take sides if there is a conflagration,” he says, “They are, in fact, right.” Not surprisingly, there are signs of euphoria among Hindus over Modi’s coming to town, a reflection of Varanasi’s socio-cultural fabric. The city has been of great importance to several prominent leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi, who made his first political speech here. “This is because of the mystique associated with it, its survival and continuance,” says Professor Kaul. “Varanasi is a bastion of Hinduism. How can it not be a fertile ground for someone like Modi? If someone thought development is the key concern of voters, they are only partly right,” says Patil, tucking into rice and daal fry garnished with karmabusting cumin seeds. The mood in this undeniably holy yet maddeningly filthy city—where history beckons and heritage sleeps— mirrors his views. n 31 March 2014

conversations

The Ghats are Alive Talking Modi by the Ganga Text and illustration by Mihir Srivastava

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t’s the same old city, reputed to be the world’s oldest settlement of people. No one is in a hurry, it’s as if everything moves on a cosmic timescale. But beneath the calm, one can sense something astir among those who swarm Varanasi’s ghats, streets and shops that sell chai, khana and thandai (with bhang as an option). With Narendra Modi set to contest this seat to gain entry to the Lok Sabha, and Arvind Kejriwal as a direct challenger, voters here seem to know the country is watching them. The dhobis (washermen) have not been out on the ghats for two days in a row, when Raj Kumar Dhobi, 40, comes out for a walk by the Ganga. He settles at a tea stall next to a temple on an elevated platform. He sits by the temple, legs folded, to have chai. From here, he has a panoramic view of the Ganga that flows languidly in front of him, like the passage of time. “I cannot stay away from Ganga maiyya even for a day. It’s like an eternal love story.” He is thin but has a muscular frame. Though he has a teenager’s body, his face gives away his age.

His short hair is greying. His family has been in the profession of washing clothes by the holy river for generations. For the past 25 years, he has spent five hours a day, knee-deep in water, all year round. His feet are broad and swollen, and look like that of a duck—they might almost be webbed. “We even dream of washing clothes,” he jokes, and says he doesn’t know any other way of earning a livelihood. Last time, he voted for Mayawati. This time, he will do the same. His extended family, numbering close to a hundred across four generations, are all supporters of Behenji. “They (agencies that work to clean the Ganga) want us leave the ghats because we pollute the river. The Ganga is our mother. How can we pollute our mother?” he asks. He says his community felt secure under Mayawati’s rule when the agencies didn’t bother them with eviction notices. Now, they have to depend on caste patronage networks to deal with the situation. Another Dalit, 65-year-old Sukha Ram is meek and small. Attired in a soiled dhoti kurta lined with sweat marks, he forcefully starts rubbing the shoulders and back of the neck of a lean Italian nirvanaseeker with a goatee sitting with his partner on the steps of Dashashwamedh Ghat. The man is stunned; after regaining his composure, hands folded, he politely asks Sukha Ram to stop. He pretends he

doesn’t hear him and continues. Finally, the Italian gives him a hundred rupee note and Sukha Ram stops reluctantly. He puts the note in his back pocket and joins Raj Kumar at the chai stall. He, too, is a Mayawati supporter, but insists that she has done nothing to change his life. His wife is critically ill, and he has no means to pay for her treatment. He hopes for a respite from her prolonged suffering, perhaps even death. Politics offers a temporary release from his miseries. “Modi is an outsider, so is Kejriwal,” he says, flashing a toothless grin, “Outsiders are good.” He gets all his business from outsiders. “Kejriwal is oonest,” he says in his accented English. “But honesty is not always the best policy,” he laughs. Another elderly man sitting nearby, who doesn’t reveal his name because he believes names are unimportant, pipes in to correct Sukha Ram: “Didn’t you read the newspaper today? How will you?” He belittles him; Sukha Ram is functionally illiterate but can sign his name. The old man mentions that he is a ‘senior’ government functionary who works for the irrigation department before he adds, “Modi’s ancestors are from Varanasi. This election is a homecoming for him.”

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he mood at Swaminath Akhara on Tulsi Ghat is upbeat. A dozen-and- ahalf wrestlers, young and old, are here

for evening exercises. Vinod Yadav, 55, owner of a dairy farm and an erstwhile wrestler, is clad in just a langot as he lies in a pool of mud. “The Modi-wave is catching on,” he says, matter-of-factly, before qualifying, “but it’s too early to say anything for sure.” Though a Yadav himself, he is disillusioned with UP’s Akhilesh Yadav government. “Kejriwal is gaining support,” he says, confidently, “because he is honest.” Honesty, or the lack of it, in his view, is the single biggest reason for spiralling prices. “The system is made deliberately inefficient to profit very few at the cost of the rest. Modi might be in for a surprise.” Yadav’s views are not shared by Amit Maurya, 21, who belongs to one of the city’s few Dalit families that have done well in business. His family owns engineering colleges, malls, and has recently ventured into housing projects. He heads an engineering college with his brother. Like almost every business family in UP, their political clout has much to do with their dramatic increase in wealth. Maurya feels that Modi will win the Varanasi seat by a large margin. In the rest of eastern UP, it will be a direct fight between the BSP and the BJP. “Varanasi is a stronghold of the BJP. Here anyone, you and I, let alone Modi, can win an election on a BJP ticket,” he says. Holi festivities here will culminate in a protracted summer of intense campaigning. It is a late spring afternoon, but the sun is menacingly hot. The stone-paved ghats are too hot to walk barefeet. A group of 25 Modi supporters are sitting on the shaded steps of a ghat. Some photographers and media representatives surround them. Sitting at the centre of this frenzy is a Modi lookalike—a poor substitute, really, sporting a white beard and wearing the garish headgear of an Indian groom. Kejriwal’s assertion that he will humble Modi here in Varanasi is being ridiculed by the Modi party. Apart from two local BJP workers, most people in the group are outsiders. There are hardly any locals in the audience. Some expats sit at a distance, gawking at the scene. Some young men stand around, their faces smeared with Holi colours. They are not part of the sloganeering group, but are nevertheless ardent Modi supporters. They assert that if students support Kejriwal, the youth support Modi. But 31 March 2014

“Varanasi is a BJP stronghold. Here, even you and I, let alone Modi, can win an election on a BJP ticket,” says Amit Maurya, who’s from one of the city’s rare Dalit families that has done well in business aren’t students also the youth? Among them, Bhuwan Pratap is getting restless. He cuts short a friend to say, “Whether Modi represents development or not, we will vote for Modi.” Why? “Because Modi is Modi,” he says. They agree with Kejriwal’s assertion that the media is unduly biased in favour of Modi, and is thus compromised. Prasad is not amused. “This is not new. The only difference is, earlier the media portrayed Modi as a mass-murderer at the behest of the Congress, now the same media talks about Modi as the man behind Gujarat’s success story,” he says. As an afterthought he adds, “If anyone, it’s Kejriwal who is a product of media hype... now everyone is talking about him.” Many locals like the idea of increased media focus on Varanasi. If their MP goes on to become the PM, Varanasi will get a much-needed facelift, they feel. Rakesh Singh, owner of the famous Harmony Book Shop at Assi Ghat, however, is worried. All the extra political focus on Varanasi will attract all sorts of goons from neighbouring regions, he expects. The sedate life of the city will change, he fears, turning the air ugly.

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cheek-by-jowl here in complete harmony for centuries, pandits and ustads, as co-workers. But Modi’s candidacy has instilled a sense of vulnerability among many Muslims in the area. Azam Miya, 62, a retired railway employee, lives in Sarai Harha, where Bismillah Khan lived and composed music for seven decades. This is not very far from the Kashi Vishwanath temple that shares a common wall with a mosque. Considered a potential communal flashpoint, this complex has been a high-security zone for decades. But for Azam Miya, it’s a symbol of mutual brotherhood. He is out in the evening to savour Holi sweets in the local market of his congested locality where lanes and bylanes, lined by unbroken chains of tall houses on both sides, criss-cross each other like a maze. A man smears yellow gulal on his face. He smiles and hugs him thrice in customary Holi tradition. It is Jai Dev, his childhood friend. Jai Dev is a Modi supporter and argues that he supports the man not because of the BJP, but for his strong credentials as an able administrator. Azam Miya smiles to

indus and Muslims have lived

say politely, “I will never vote for Modi. The reason for this is not he is a BJP leader, but a threat to our Ganga-Janumi tehzeeb (etiquette). I don’t say this as a Muslim, but as an Indian.” Jai Dev agrees that Modi has dictatorial tendencies, but points out that as Prime Minister, he can’t do things like he did as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. He asks Azam Miya, “Won’t you agree that a benign dictatorship is good for our country which has been pushed to the brink of collapse?” Azam Miya responds with due politeness, “Dictatorship is never benign,” and then laughs and swallows a gujjiya in one gulp. “We have agreed to differ on this issue,” he says. In the same bazaar, a group of Muslim clerics, dressed in spotless white and sporting beards, are talking about Modi. He can’t ‘break’ India, they say, referring to the sense of outrage over Gujarat among local Muslims. But at the same time they are equally unhappy with their own state’s Akhilesh Yadav government. Muzaffarnagar is fresh on their minds. “Communal passions had flared up for siyasati rajniti (politics of power). Muslim youth are unhappy. The Allahabad High Court judgment on Ayodhya—the Babri Masjid demolition case—some four years ago was proHindu... They want us to forget everything. How can we forget?” asks Abbas Haider, a teacher at a local madrassa. Abdul, 55, a rickshaw puller, is relatively restrained in airing his views. He is unwilling to say anything about Modi. “We will see,” is all he ventures. “I am not only a Muslim, but a poor Muslim.” Speaking of a local Muslim strongman, Mukhtar Ansari, Abdul says, “He always fights elections as an Independent and divides Muslim votes. Such leaders are khush khabari (good news) for Modi.” He lists those he could support: Kejriwal, the BSP or SP, against the BJP. The Congress is missing from his list. “On the eve of voting, we Muslims will get a message, in rural and urban areas, about who to vote for. Then, we as a community will vote for that party. This way, the entire quam (community) will remain politically relevant,” Abdul says. Muslims constitute more than a fifth of Varanasi’s population. Like Abdul, many believe that the Muslim vote in Varanasi will play a significant role in shaping the country’s politics. n open www.openthemagazine.com 27

consensus

it was a faith accompli Varanasi for Modi was chosen… six months ago. The inside story of how the House of Saffron took its boldest decision— unanimously in the end PR Ramesh

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n 15 March 2013 , top term for it in the opposition. RSS leaders gathered at This much was clear: the old Jaipur for a Pratinidhi and the elderly had to be penSabha meeting of the Sangh. It sioned off, the new had to urwas exactly one year before the gently be empowered. The Sangh leaders were unambiguBJP’s election committee met ous: Modi, of the indefatigable at its Ashoka Road headquarand galvanising energy, was ters in New Delhi to formally decide on Narendra Modi’s canthe man with the political heft didacy from Varanasi, plumb to take the party to victory. He, they concluded, should contest in the thick of Uttar Pradesh’s Poorvanchal region. Apart from a Lok Sabha seat from a Hindi chalking out the Sangh’s plans heartland state—that too, the for the months ahead, RSS bossmost imposing—to generate a es had another important agencascade of electoral support da to transact: how to get the BJP across the entire region. battle-fit to cash in on the meltRSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan down of the Congress and the Bhagwat wasted no time in dialliance led by it at the Centre in recting his deputy Bhayyaji the upcoming general election. Joshi and Suresh Soni to convey Across the country, there the wishes of the fountainhead organisation to the party. The were already clear signs of voting habits, beliefs and emotions RSS’s proactive role in easing moving away from the ruling Modi’s elevation to the BJP’s party. The in-your-face corruptop was interesting, especially tion of the central Government since the Gujarat Chief had driven a firm wedge beMinister did not share a warm tween the Congress and the relationship with the high UPA. But the BJP, torn by an incommand in Nagpur. He had tense, bitter inner-party strugsteadfastly refused, for examsailing on modi’s charisma The Varanasi call was made in June last year gle, was finding it hard to find a ple, to fall into the soporific winning USP and a charismatic rhythm of ingress and egress messenger to deliver that proposition. shake-up, and for sharper minds to lead from Nagpur—or even the RSS camp ofThe cadre was demoralised despite an im- the party. fice in Delhi’s Jhandewalan—as BJP aspipressive third term for Narendra Modi in The RSS bosses gathered at Jaipur were rants are wont to. Gujarat. Even from among those friendly unanimous in their view that the drift Months ago, before re-installing with the BJP, there were loud calls for a big within the BJP would ensure another Rajnath Singh as BJP president, the upper 28 open raul irani

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echelons of the RSS had considered three names for the post, including Modi and Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar. The Goa leader was seen as too junior. Modi, on the other hand, showed little interest in singing a duet with the RSS. This left the path clear for Rajnath Singh to the key post. Many in the RSS were not fully happy with Modi’s manner of functioning in Gujarat, given how little heed he paid to the Sangh’s directions. But it refused to let these misgivings get in the way of a decision considered best for the BJP to regain power at the Centre.

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lmost immediately, Bhaiyyaji

Joshi and Suresh Soni of the Sangh held several rounds of talks with BJP leaders. Although the BJP made Modi its presumptive candidate for the top post at the party’s Goa conclave—he was designated its chief campaigner—senior party leaders kept placing hurdles in his way. These had to be eliminated without ado. Meanwhile, Modi’s trusted aide Amit Shah, armed with the RSS’s charge, had already begun the groundwork for identifying a seat in the Hindi heartland for the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. He began the exercise in early June 2013, and concluded by month-end that Modi contesting a UP seat would deliver substantial dividends to the party. Varanasi was seen as the best battleground, as it would influence voter behaviour across Kashi Kshetra and the adjoining areas of Bihar. Once Varanasi was endorsed by the RSS leadership, its workers and leaders were asked to reinforce this decision on the ground. RSS leader Krishna Gopal was put in charge of creating the requisite backup for Modi in Uttar Pradesh.

told them that a formal decision should be put on hold until after a round of Assembly elections later in the year. Under the impression that his views would prevail within the BJP Parliamentary Board meeting on 13 September, Advani prepared to leave for the party’s Ashoka Road headquarters from his Prithviraj Road residence around 3 pm. Just then, he received a call; Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley had directed Gadkari to call Advani before the meeting and inform him that a decision on Modi could not be delayed any longer. The penny had fallen for Advani. In the meantime, his protege Sushma Swaraj had taken her own objections to the Parliamentary Board, only to be checkmated decisively by Arun Jaitley,

Modi was ‘unanimous’; and the prime ministerial nominee himself announced that he would seek Advani’s blessings. As if by clockwork design, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan came out in full support of Modi’s claim to the Prime Minister’s post. His Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh also endorsed Modi resoundingly through tweets soon after. A long and bitter power struggle had ended.

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Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley asked Gadkari to call Advani before a BJP Parliamentary Board meeting in September and inform him that a decision on Modi could not be delayed further Venkaiah Naidu and Thawarchand Gehlot, all of whom maintained that the choice of Modi was propelled by sentiments in his favour among party cadre as well as the public at large. “All of Advaniji’s closest aides appear to have deserted him,” remarked a member of the panel to Advani—in jest—after the 13 September meeting. At the subsequent press briefing, Swaraj sat next to Modi in an apparent show of solidarity. The party paraded every Board member in a decisive show of support for Modi—and a clear indication of the marginalisation of Advani and his ilk. Swaraj left the meeting soon after. What followed was orchestratedly final. Rajnath Singh said that BJP support for

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he next big task was to formalise Modi’s candidacy for prime ministership. Veteran party leader LK Advani, who was in constant touch with former BJP president and RSS favourite Nitin Gadkari, was under the impression that there was a division on the choice of Modi for Prime Minister. Advani made his reservations known to leaders of the Sangh and BJP on several occasions. He

process of announcing its candidates for the Lok Sabha election. That day, only non-contentious seats and those in states where the party has little presence were to be taken up, but the question of a seat for Modi hung heavily in the air. Privately, BJP leaders let it be known that the leader would contest two seats: Vadodara and Varanasi. But the sitting MP from Varanasi and former party president Murli Manohar Joshi, who’d been informed of the decision by Bhaiyyaji Joshi weeks earlier, played the drama queen, claiming that the party had yet to clarify the matter to him personally. BJP leaders went through the motions of placating him. When he persisted, Amit Shah drove down to his Raisina Road residence on the evening of 13 March. Shah told Joshi in no uncertain terms that he would have to contest from Kanpur. Discovering that he had little option but to comply, Joshi effected a calibrated climbdown from his staunch only-me-for-Varanasi stand. On 15 March, party leaders at the Ashoka Road headquarters took up another list of probables—this time, for 53 Uttar Pradesh seats. The Varanasi column had just one name against it: Modi. It was the other candidate choices that the panel had to debate that day. At the end of that long session, though, there was only one piece of eyeball-grabbing news in the country: Narendra Damodardas Modi would seek election to Parliament from Uttar Pradesh’s holiest city. A barrage of objections, questions and anti-Modi voices had been silenced. The message was clear. And cacophony had made way for a harmonious monotone: the Sangh Parivar had embraced Modi as one. n open www.openthemagazine.com 29

n 27 February, the BJP began the

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nexus

THE DON OF MOKAMA Chinki Sinha

The rise of Anant Singh and the sham of Nitish Kumar’s clean politics

‘It is not always the same thing to be a good man, and a good citizen’—Aristotle

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o begins the man’s introduction on his blog, where he refers to himself as ‘Chote Sarkar’. Perhaps he reasons that his crimes are for the greater good; since justice usually means an endless wait, it may as well be dispensed in other ways. Faster ways. Efficient ways. With guns, and clout. He is a close aide of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. And in the parallel state that he runs in Mokama, law is what he decrees. There are no nuanced conversations with Anant Singh. He says he swam across a river once to murder his brother’s killers; Naxal sympathisers had shot his eldest brother Birachi Singh. Mokama, on the banks of the Ganges, is a place rife with legends of the man in control. That even Nitish Kumar can’t rein him in only adds to the mystique of the man who claims he kept a python in his house and danced with nautch girls, cigarette dangling from his lips, as he brandished an AK-47 in 2004. A case was registered, but nothing happened. larger than life A file photograph of Anant Singh at a function in Patna in 1998

K M Sharma/Times Content

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Things are now in a state of flux. Singh has always been seen as a protector of Bhumihar interests in Mokama. But he says he is done with the JD-U, the state’s ruling party. It is mid-February, and he is working out his options. Before he walks into this room at 1 Mall Road in Patna, gunmen position themselves. Guns are slung over their shoulders, and in the living room, a private militia seems to be in control. Outside, a ferocious dog named Mary is held in chains by a man, even as an elephant is fed. There are four horses in a stable at his sprawling government bungalow. The Chief Minister’s patronage is no longer a given for Anant Singh. For long, the JD-U dodged questions about Anant Singh’s role, his criminal acts, and the patronage extended to the man. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had promised to rid the state of its criminals (and of corruption) when he fought against Lalu Prasad in 2005. According to Shaibal Gupta, a social scientist and founder of Asian Development Research Institute in Bihar, by June 2013, almost 83,000 criminals had been convicted by the state. The rule of law made a comeback in Bihar, says Gupta, who is also Nitish Kumar’s economic advisor. Thousands were arrested, trials were held, and many are serving time in jails across the state, including the once-dreaded mafia don Mohammad Shahabuddin, infamous as an aide of Lalu Prasad. A senior police official says they can’t guarantee protection on Anant Singh’s turf. From such talk emerges the image of a man who knows no fear. After he came to power, Nitish Kumar held a meeting of senior police officials and briefed them to rid Bihar of its so-called ‘jungle raj’ and fix the law-and-order scenario as a priority. But even with the free hand he was given, Bihar DGP Abhyanand, who took over as the state’s top cop in 2011, has not been able to touch Anant Singh. More than a dozen cases list him as an accused, but he remains free. “He is a dangerous man,” explains DGP Abhyanand.

his moustache, smiles and folds his hands. I stand up too, confused and nervous about being here. Before Nitish Kumar’s ‘Adhikar’ rally in November 2012 asking for ‘special status’ for Bihar, Patna had been plastered with posters. Among the faces that looked down from these, Singh’s was the most prominent—in his customary cowboy hat and dark glasses. Now, he is no longer a JD-U posterboy. With polls approaching and anti-incumbency working against him, Nitish Kumar knows he must tread cautiously. “Nitish had to establish the rule of law. Earlier, if you’d committed murder, you would get a poll ticket. Now, [thugs] are feeling marginalised. I am not saying such criminals have been eliminated

In 2005, Nitish Kumar used Anant Singh’s mass mobilisation skills in Barh to win an election. Guns and captured booths helped dethrone Lalu Prasad as Chief Minister but they are not invincible anymore,” says Gupta. “Maybe there will be a temporary setback in these elections, but in the long run, there will be an advantage. Criminal politicians flourish because of state patronage.” Bihar’s dons have already become footnotes in the state’s history, Gupta says, and in a couple of years, they won’t even find footnote mentions. Singh motions me to sit closer, and I shift to another sofa. But there is still a sofa between us. I am in a room with a dozen men—and Anant Singh. I have been told to be careful. A man would later bring in an AK-47 to show me. “Is this yours?” “I am the sarkar,” Anant Singh replies, and smiles.

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hose who are in the room stand up

to acknowledge the man who twirls

On the walls, there are photos of Singh. There are horse-racing trophies he won. A man brings in his cowboy hat, and another gets his dark glasses. A third comes and lights his cigarette. The stage is set. Almost on cue, a woman—a “friend”— walks in and takes a seat. He speaks in Magahi, the local dialect. “You know he hasn’t studied much. Ask simple questions,” a front man had advised us before we entered the gates of his official residence, where he spends most of his time. Singh is from Barh, but he has enemies there. He got shot once. Ten years ago. Family feud, says Singh. Mokama, not far from Patna, is where Singh holds sway. It is a rural belt, and the facts about his criminal background aren’t unknown to the people of the area. But he has emerged as a Robin Hoodfigure who organises mass weddings and helps have-nots in the region. He claims he has organised 10,000 weddings in his constituency so far. He says there were 150 cases against him. He has got bail in most of those, he adds with a smile. After he challenged Surajbhan Singh in 2005 and established himself as the next bahubali (strong man), both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad had approached him to lend their parties a hand. He has always been seen as Nitish Kumar’s man, though. “They are a bunch of liars,” he says. “They ask you to work in politics for three months, and then keep extending it. I am not liking it. I want to go back and help the poor.” Being an elected representative of people doesn’t mean much to him, he says. He has the area’s villages under his control anyway. It takes effort, at times. Once, a gunbattle had to be waged on his home turf at Nadma against the Special Task Force. From his house, his men had to fire bullets from holes punched into the walls in anticipation of such a battle. Eight of his men and one STF jawan were killed in the encounter. Some reports say that Singh suffered bullet injuries too. Late last year, the JD-U welcomed three history-sheeters and bahubalis into its fold—Babloo Deo, Chunnu Thakur, and Shah Alam Saboo. In an interview, Nitish Kumar said he was unaware of this development. open www.openthemagazine.com 31

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biharphotos.com

comrades in arms Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with Anant Singh in cosier times

While most academic literature has situated India’s criminal politicians in the context of ‘backward’ caste empowerment, insufficient attention has been paid to their ‘upper’ caste counterparts like Anant Singh and his brother Dilip Singh. It was the killing of the latter, a local don who rose to prominence over land issues, that drew Anant Singh into the game as his avenger and successor. In 2005, Nitish Kumar used Anant Singh’s mass mobilisation skills in Barh to win an election. Guns and captured booths were deployed to dethrone Lalu Prasad. Nitish Kumar had said he would rid the state of the corrupt Prasad, and all means to that end stood justified.

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powerful leaders in Bihar, in terms of muscle power, is disgruntled at the moment. According to researchers, the era of bahubalis is on the wane. Even so, men like Anant Singh can’t be dismissed.

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ut the man who is one of the most

When Munna Shukla, a criminal politician from Muzzaffarpur, was put behind bars in 2009 for masterminding the murder of an RJD leader, Nitish Kumar fielded his wife Annu Shukla in the Assembly polls of 2010. She won. There are other such instances of political patronage. In 2007, the Chief Minister did not lift a finger or say anything when Anant Singh beat up two NDTV journalists who had inconvenient questions to ask about his alleged involvement in the rape and murder of Reshma Khatoon, a young woman. In another case, the family of a contractor called Sanjay Singh named Anant Singh in an FIR, but the police didn’t notice. There are many other such tales of how he acts with impunity. “[Nitish Kumar] got me stuck in this politics mess. I wanted to be a saint once. I don’t like politicians. They say one thing, do another. At first, Nitish said ‘Three months as an MLA.’ Then, it became ‘six months’. Now, it is like forever. I want to go back. Politics makes you lie.

I am religious. I don’t want to lie,” he says.

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uns were booming, and through a window, a few bullets hit him. But Anant Singh puffed away at his cigarette. He was taken to hospital later. He survived. This was ten years ago, he says. So far, he has been shot 20 times, he says. “I always count day and night at a time. When death comes, I will deal with it,” he says. “What is fear? They tell me there is an emotion like fear. What does it feel like?” he asks. “Weren’t you worried about your life?” “No,” he replies. “Are you afraid?” Asa young boy, he says, he would catch snakes in his village. Perhaps that is when fear parted ways with him. That he was living with sadhus in Haridwar as a child and later in Ayodhya is something that is difficult to reconcile with his current role. Singh says he left with a sadhu in his village because he wanted to reach a higher consciousness.

31 March 2014

His father, he says, was a sadhu, a vow of renunciation he’d taken after Anant Singh was born. He was the youngest of four brothers. Three are dead. One died of a heart attack, he says. The deaths of the other two have been avenged. He didn’t like school. He is almost unlettered. His election affidavit mentions ‘some education’. His cronies say he is an uneducated man. It seems they feel vindicated that a man who is known as Chote Sarkar despised education—a privilege of the elite that didn’t come in his way of getting to this Mall Road bungalow. His eldest brother was killed when he was away. It was a time when land tensions were peaking. He just had to pay the killers back. He was 28 years old at the time. Legend has it that he swam across the river and gunned down his brother’s killers. His reputation spread, he began to be feared. That’s when power went to his head and fed an appetite for more. He became Chote Sarkar. “You killed your brother’s murderer?” “Yes, justice needed to be done,” he says. Simple facts mixed with pride, and a sense of entitlement. A man intervenes and says this shouldn’t be reported in print. Singh isn’t bothered. Bihar had slipped into anarchy long ago. Criminal politicians rose to power, there was a parallel form of ‘justice’. Milan Vaishnav, an associate in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explores how democracy co-exists with criminal politicians in India in The Merits of Money and ‘Muscle’: Essays on Criminality, Elections and Democracy in India. During interviews across the Mokama region to study why voters elected Anant Singh, Vaishnav found they were aware of his criminal acts and thought he could protect their interests. In a fractured society where caste and land are decisive points, Anant Singh’s criminality became his credibility. Since he was ‘upper’ caste, his supporters felt, he could contain Yadav power in his area. Local Yadavs resent him, but have not been able to challenge him yet. His archrival Viveka Pahalwan, also from the same village in Barh, is currently serving time in Beur Jail. Both Singh and Pahalwan are ‘upper’ caste tough guys.

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“The poor vote for me. The rich don’t,” claims Singh.

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stand in veneration of the man. Not just the trophies and pictures. Just a whiff of the air in here suggests power of a sort few others wield. Singh wants me to see some videos that his aides shot of him riding a buggy on the streets of Delhi. He used to drive a Mercedes that he claims someone left behind for him as a gift. But on a visit to Rashtrapati Bhavan, he was taken in by a buggy he saw. He says he tracked down the man who fashioned this vehicle and got him to make a similar one for him. He brought it to Patna and now rides it to the Vidhan Sabha.

verything in the room appears to

On a visit to Rashtrapati Bhavan, Anant Singh was impressed by a buggy he saw. So he tracked down the man who fashioned the vehicle and got him to make a similar one for him A filmi number, Hum hain Magahia don, log kahen Chhote Sarkar (I am a don from Magadh, people call me junior boss), plays on. Singh is fond of cinema. He was supposed to act in a Bhojpuri movie once, but the film never materialised, so he got hold of the music score and made his people shoot a video of him riding his buggy. It is a long video. “Himmat na hari la zindagi ke jung mein (I don’t lose courage in life’s battle)” The men clap. There is a photo of Badal, a horse that belonged to Lalu Prasad. Singh bought it at Sonepur Mela in 2007 for Rs 1 lakh. The horse wasn’t worth it, since one of its legs was wounded. Moreover, Lalu Prasad— whose party was the one his murdered brother Dilip used to worked for—didn’t

want to sell it to him. Singh says Lalu later turned on his men, and murderously so. “Lalu had called to say he will ruin me,” he says. “I just bought his horse on a whim. The horse died but here’s a photo of Badal.” This is when Purvi walks into the room. An elephant, led by its mahout. “Don’t be afraid,” Singh says. The elephant looks awkward in the room. “I love animals,” says Singh, and pats Purvi to demonstrate as much. The elephant kneels compliantly at the don’s feet. Everyone seems to approve. Distinctions are important, and so are places, and vantage points. Perceptions are important too. Especially perceptions of power. But Singh is losing relevance in the politics of Bihar. With the state changing, the state’s infamous criminal-politician nexus has begun to weaken. Caste, which has always mattered in the state, is no longer the rallying point it once was. “The JD-U is done for. When people get arrogant, God won’t let them live,” says Singh. “Nitish Kumar wasn’t so nice. I was misled. I don’t need politics. I will go back and help my people.” For a rally in Delhi in 2012, Singh managed to mobilise a crowd of more than 100,000 people. That skill, he has not lost. He has done some work too, his flunkies claim. A man lists out his achievements in his constituency: Rs 3,000 crore has been spent on building bridges. Also, investment is coming in, he says. “If he were a criminal, why would people invest in the area?” asks the man. Now 52 years old, the MLA has recently been charged with grabbing land in Patna. He faces a new extortion case too. Still, it is too early to predict a jail term for him. It’s not clear if he is leaving the JD-U, or joining another party.

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another cigarette. Tea is served in steel glasses. “What more can I do for you?” The men with guns are smiling. He extends an invitation to Barh for me to visit his house, which he says is better than the Rashtrapati Bhavan. “That just looks like a house,” he says. Albela hai, mast … goes the music in the background. n open www.openthemagazine.com 33

nother man gets up and lights yet

debut

A NEW BALL GAME FOR BHAICHUNG BHUTIA

India’s most famous footballer runs for a perfect strike in a Trinamool jersey Lhendup g bhutia Photographs by raul irani

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hen Bhaichung Bhutia arrives at Gangtok’s picturesque Paljor Stadium one crisp sunny morning, just three days after he has been nominated by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) as its candidate for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, pockets of the near-empty stadium burst into a frenzy of movement. The 15-odd players scattered in the field rush to the dugout, groundsmen and security staff station themselves near the entrance with cellphone cameras, and curious faces emerge from the windows of houses overlooking the stadium. Bhutia appears, dressed in a blue pullover and jeans. Carrying a brown leather case, he walks with big, calculated steps as if taking his mark for a penalty shoot, and heads straight for the dugout. Later in the day, Bhutia will embark on a whirlwind journey, one that will take him from the plains of Siliguri in the hill constituency to the Gurkha heartland in Darjeeling town. Over the next few weeks, he will travel to villages and urban centres, making public speeches and temple visits, addressing rallies and drumming up support. Yet, here he is this morning, minutes after dropping his youngest child, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, to her first day in school, now speaking to football players of his club, United Sikkim. As a warm sun bears down and he tells them he won’t be around for a while, he notices a player missing. “Where is he?” “Sir,” a player with arms folded behind his back says. “Stomach problem, sir.” “What?” “Sir, diarrhoea, sir.” a new turf Bhaichung Bhutia at the Siliguri Indoor Stadium in West Bengal, where he held his first public rally on 11 March

“You tell him, ‘If you have fever, you come to the field’,” says a stern sir, “...‘you don’t have to play but you come here and watch. If you have diarrhoea, you come. You can go to the toilet here but you come and watch.’ Do you understand?” Since his retirement from India’s national football team in 2012, Bhutia has been attending to his businesses. He has moved from Kolkata to his hometown in Gangtok and expanded his football schools in Delhi, Mumbai, Jammu and Chandigarh. He owns a gas station in Siliguri, a high-end fitness gym in Gangtok, and there is talk that his wife, Madhuri Tipnis, a former hotelier with ITC in Kolkata, might start a hotel in the city. He is currently building a bungalow for his family in Gangtok and managing his football club. Some say that United Sikkim’s financer, a Dubai-based sports investment group, Fidelis World, is pulling out and the club’s expenses must now be borne mostly by Bhutia himself. “I’ve been busier after retirement than my playing days. I can’t even remember the last time I worked out in a gym,” he says and checks the sides of his belly. “As you can see, I’m sure.” The former footballer’s frame is now slightly bulky. He is 7 kg heavier than his playing days, he says, although he does not disclose his exact weight. “I’ve just been running around so much for the club, for this and that. And now this,” he says, referring to the election campaign. Bhutia lives with his wife and three children—five-year old twins, Ugen Kalzang and Keisha Dolkar, and two-anda-half-year-old Samara Dechen—in a rented apartment in Gangtok. In this town, Bhutia is everybody’s agya (elder brother), someone who helps others out. He regularly organises local football

camps and tournaments, and often takes talented youngsters under his wing. As is often said in Gangtok, Sikkim’s two most famous individuals are Danny Denzongpa and Bhaichung Bhutia. But since Danny is a villain, Bhutia is the hero that people idolise. A few months before the TMC released its list of Lok Sabha candidates, its chief Mamata Banerjee, with whom Bhutia says he shares a close relationship, asked him what he’d make of contesting an election on a party ticket. She saw him, his friends say, as someone people look up to. “I didn’t know what to say. I just wasn’t sure and I think I said something like that. So I was made a party observer in Sikkim, which I was okay with, someone who could help out the party in the state a bit,” Bhutia says. “I did not think about what madam had said, nor did I care to consult anyone. And then some days back, it was on the news.” “People say ‘Wow, gee, now you are a politician’, but do you know there’s a revolution underway at home? Madhuri didn’t speak with me for two days. She didn’t talk to me at home nor answered my calls. And my mother, she hardly shares anything with me now,” he says. Both appear upset about not being consulted and fearful of the violent agitations that often rock the hills. “How do I explain, ‘I had absolutely no clue I was going to be given a ticket’?” Retirement from active sport has done little to contain Bhutia’s restless energy, which his businesses alone aren’t enough to absorb. “You see,” he says, “I don’t want to sit on a couch and watch TV. So in a way I was happy when this opportunity came along. When I retired, I moved to Sikkim to start a football academy. I am yet to receive any land. I realise you open www.openthemagazine.com 35

31 March 2014

blessings of the hills Bhutia visits the Mahakali temple in Darjeeling on his campaign trail after being fielded as a TMC candidate in this hill constituency

might be a football star, but without political patronage, you are never going to get ahead.” Darjeeling, however, is a curious choice. The TMC has little presence in the hills, and though it has some support among Bengalis in Siliguri, these voters are also known to vote CPM. Banerjee’s party has been wooing non-Gorkhas such as Lepchas and Tamangs by setting up development boards for them, but the region’s best known leader is still Bimal Gurung of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), whose struggle for a separate state has won him many followers. In the 2009 polls, it was Gurung’s support for Jaswant Singh that saw the BJP leader win the seat so easily, and this time, the GJM leader has pledged his support to SS Ahluwalia of the BJP. Will Bhutia make a fight of it? In his own style, yes. When he speaks, his voice appears rehearsed and unemotional, without an accent, but if you listen carefully, it has a youthful vigour to it. In public, he dodges all questions on his stand on statehood for Darjeeling, preferring to address issues of development in the 36 open

hills. His party colleagues—such as Goutam Deb, TMC’s North Bengal head—lose no opportunity to attack Gurung, who usually returns the favour, but Bhutia likes to maintain a studied silence. It is as if he is too nice a person.

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Gangtok in his SUV, the town is abuzz with news of his having called up Gurung the previous night. Gurung’s flunkies have leaked this information and most newspapers here have flashed it on their front pages: ‘Did he really call him up?’ ‘Why would he do such a thing?’ ‘Is he scared?’ This morning, these questions rage in the marketplace. I ask Bhutia, the corners of whose mouth I see curling into a smile in the rear-view mirror. “You see, I’m just about three days into politics. I don’t understand these matters,” he says by way of explanation. According to his friends, it was a set-up. They got calls asking for the former footballer to speak with Gurung. “The conversation was barely for a few minutes,” says Bhutia, lifting an imagi-

hen Bhutia picks me up in

nary phone to his ear with a sinister smile, “And after a point, it was unclear why I had even been asked to call [Gurung] in the first place.” We zip down Gangtok’s streets trying to make it to a press conference on time. Outside, young Sikkimese girls stand in corners, waving their arms with ‘Bhaichung’ forming on their lips. In the backseat, I find myself squeezed between two TMC men, a large amiable man dressed in formals and a smaller man who identifies himself as CP. Bhutia is in the front with a Bengali driver. The vehicle’s occupants are anxious. The driver, perhaps new to these winding roads, drives hesitantly, while CP appears surly and worried about being late to the conference. Bhutia, though, is playful. He punches the driver and says in broken Hindi, “Sikkimese girls are pretty. But you, boy, you look straight.” Without turning around, he calls the frail CP his bodyguard, saying aloud,“Remember, sukeko jiu ma, lukeko kala (‘In tiny bodies lurk hidden talents,’ a playful Nepali couplet).” We park by the road and walk up a din31 March 2014

gy staircase to reach a small room filled with plastic chairs and a wooden table. This room—owned by the general secretary of TMC Sikkim, Tshering Lepcha, a man with glistening spiky hair and a goatee—turns out to be the party’s local headquarters. Lepcha is dressed for the occasion in a black suit and pink shirt. Pleased at the turnout, he complains to some journalists, “Other times, you people never come.” Men after men emerge from the darkness of an adjacent room to garland and praise the party candidate. Once the press conference starts, Tshering reads out a statement he has painstakingly written by hand in a notebook. But it is far too long, the journalists are fidgety, and with people interrupting him to garland Bhutia, Tshering gives up. The former footballer, though, has them listening when he speaks. A few minutes later, I feel the tug of Tshering’s hands on my shirt sleeve. He passes me his cellphone and whispers, “Can you take my photo with agya Bhaichung. Please, me and him. And please get the crowd.”

him further.” Eventually the two gave their assent, and Karma Bhutia took the teenager to Kolkata. For Bhutia, who had played football in the pleasant climate of Sikkim, the trial, which was conducted in Kolkata’s scorching heat of May, proved extremely difficult. He would walk up to his uncle every few minutes, saying he wanted to give up. “‘Agula (paternal uncle in Sikkimese )’, he would say, ‘It’s too hot, I don’t think I can play here’. But I didn’t allow him that.” The club eventually signed him up for an advance of Rs 40,000 plus a pay of Rs 4,000 a month, with a free bed in a dorm thrown in. He played for a few minutes in the next few matches but achieved nothing remarkable. The footballer made his name, however, later that season. In a Durand Cup

teams. “The word then was ‘kidnap’ and it wasn’t uncommon,” Bhutia says. His uncle Karma, who used to negotiate his contracts in the early days, would find himself summoned to far-flung areas in Kolkata where club officials flanked with thugs would try scaring him into getting Bhaichung to play for them. And that, in short, is how Bhaichung Bhutia became the country’s first authentic football star.

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four children in Sikkim’s remote Tinkitam village. His parents, Dorji Dorma and Sonam Topden, who are cardamom farmers, named him ‘Bhaichung’ which in Sikkimese means ‘younger brother’. His talent evident even as a preadolescent, he won Sports Authority of India football scholarships at the ages of nine and 14, and moved to Gangtok to pursue his education and sports dream. Here, with a distant uncle as his local guardian, he played local football. Karma Bhutia, that uncle, was the first to spot his talent. After the youngster turned 16, his uncle got Bhaskar Ganguly, a former Indian goalkeeper, to check him out as a player. In turn, Ganguly got East Bengal officials to call the lad for a trial. As soon as his uncle learnt of the trial, he sent a wireless message to Bhutia’s parents in Tinkitam asking them to come to Gangtok for an important matter. Afraid that some harm had befallen their son, they showed up that very night. When they learnt why they’d been summoned, they were dismayed. “This boy is no good,” his uncle remembers Bhutia’s father saying, “And Bengalis will only spoil

hutia was born the youngest of

A few months earlier, Mamata Banerjee, with whom Bhutia says he shares a close relationship, had asked him what he’d make of contesting an election on a Trinamool ticket

semifinal versus BSF, the 16-year-old scored a match-winning goal with a back volley with just a minute or two left before the final whistle (of extra time). “From then on,” Karma Bhutia recounts, “there was no stopping him.” Bhutia went on to play for top clubs in the city, represented India for 16 years—as captain for 11 of those—and scored 42 international goals in all. He was also the first Indian to play for an English club and was the rare footballer endorsing brands in ad campaigns. Twice in his career, he found agents of rival clubs waiting for him at Bagdogra airport to abduct him, fly him to Delhi, and force him to sign up with their

n the morning he is to deliver his first public speech as a politician, Bhutia is conducting meetings with various community leaders at a resort in Siliguri. Seated inside a dark room with closed windows, the football star is surrounded by burly men who drink tea in miniature plastic cups and analyse newspapers in sunglasses. Every few minutes, one of them takes off his shades and pushes forth a news report that features a Bhutia photograph, saying, “Agya Bhaichung... too good!” But the candidate does not seem as jolly as he did the previous day. Perhaps this is because he is nervous about speaking in Bengali, a language he isn’t too fluent in. He appears exhausted and anxious, and is unusually quiet. Later in the evening, Bhutia is seated on a wooden dais inside an indoor stadium with other political leaders. Outside, the road leading to the stadium is choked with vehicles. Bengali and Nepali men and women come in cycle rickshaws and motorbikes, while hundreds seem to tumble out of trucks and jeeps. Within minutes, all plastic chairs are taken; latecomers must stand. As leader after leader delivers his speech, Bhutia can be seen on the dais with his nose buried in a bunch of sheets. He scribbles and strikes, the furrows of his eyebrows deepening as he looks at what he’s written. It turns out he is writing his speech. Bhutia’s turn to speak is last, and once it comes, he delivers an enthusiastic speech in broken Bengali. He promises transparency and clean politics. And when he tries to leave after he’s done, a gaggle of hands, cameras and notebooks reaches out for him. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the idol, whether it’s his signature, a photo or a handshake. n open www.openthemagazine.com 37

31 March 2014

open essay

By Samantha de Bendern

THE ENDGAME IN UKRAINE AND PUTIN’S PUTSCH The tragedy of a country caught between history and geography

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he Livadia palace, often called the jewel of Crimea, ference room where the three world leaders had met in 1945 to carve up Europe. The most moving part of the visit, however, stands in a luscious park of cedars, pine trees and wyswas a unique exhibition of informal family photographs takteria, where rose gardens and flower beds draw conen by Tsar Nicholas II just before the Bolshevik Revolution. The centric rings on the paths that lead up to its white neo-renaiswhole place oozed nostalgia for the past, for Russia, for the sance facades. Here and there, the odd palm tree reminds one lost empire. that we are in the South, by the shores of the Black Sea, just Later during the trip, we visited Balaclava, the site of the one degree North of Nice or Saint-Tropez. Indeed, everything Russian victory over the British during the Crimean War (1853here mirrors the French Cote d’Azur, the balmy weather, the 1856). A British war cemetery stands to this day on a grassy incandescent light, and the deep blue of the sea a few metres hill overlooking the beach where British troops had landed in below the palace. If ever there was a place close to Paradise, surely this must be it. Yet it is here, within the very walls of the 1854. As far as my Ukrainian hosts were concerned, they were giving me a grand tour of one of the most beautiful parts of Italianate palace built a few kilometres south of the Crimean Ukraine. For me it was a fantastic opportunity to see many of town of Yalta, that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met in February 1945 to seal a pact that put an end to World War II. In the key places in Russian history I had hitherto only read about. The purpose of my trip had been to lecture a class of young the process, they created deep fissures within the European Ukrainian army officers on the nature of the NATO-Ukraine recontinent that continued to fester for the four and half delationship. They were cades of the Cold War. Yevgeny Khaldei/Corbis all part of the famous Historians often cite 1989 and the collapse of Black Sea Fleet that has the Berlin Wall as the again been thrust into end of this war, and in the news headlines by the decade that folrecent events. Their lowed, many East very diverse questions European countries seemed to epitomise that had fallen under the split attitudes toRussian or Communist wards Russia and the control after WW-II reWest in Ukraine: turned to the European “What are you doing fold. Some joined it for here in Crimea?” asked the first time as indeone, somewhat aggrespendent states, and the sively, “are you going to map of Europe that was force us to join NATO?” drawn in Yalta simply “Will you protect us if faded away. Russia attacks us?” But ask any asked another. Ukrainian, and you Throughout the will hear that the dividshort history of its indeing lines that had torn pendence, Ukraine has they’re all russians now A 1950 image of Crimea the European contitried to emerge with a nent apart for nearly strong single identity, half a century never stopped being part of Ukraine’s past and and decide whether it faces East or West. The problem is that present. And if Crimea is where the Cold War began, it could under the weight of history and geography, Ukraine faces both well be the place where the endgame is finally played out. On ways, much like the double-headed eagle so emblematic of its 16 March, the peninsula voted to rejoin Russia in a contentious giant brother to the East. The very name ‘Ukraine’ is derived referendum that has been declared illegal by Kiev and much of from Russian words that mean ‘on (U) the edge (krai)’. the international community including the US, EU and 13 of Parts of western Ukraine were only incorporated into the the UN Security Council’s 15 members. Troops have massed on Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1939. The west speaks both sides of the Russia-Ukraine border, the US and EU are Ukrainian, the east Russian. The cleavage was exacerbated durthreatening sanctions, and Europe is now in the throes of its ing World War II when the Nazis designated those west of the worse security crisis since well before the end of the Cold War. Dniepr river (which runs through Kiev) as people to be assimWhen I visited the Livadia Palace in the Spring of the year ilated into the Reich, and those to its east as Slavs to be extermi2000, I was a NATO civilian officer responsible for relations nated (along with all Jews). Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, is rootwith the newly-independent states of the USSR. More than half ed in Russian history as the birthplace of the Russian nation. of my work was with Ukraine. As my Ukrainian hosts took me Crimea, to the far south, is heavily etched in Russian political around the baroque interiors of this early 20th century palace and military history as well as literature. The peninsula was built as a summer residence for the last Tsar of the Russian part of what was known as the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic Empire, what struck me most was how much part of Russian within the USSR until it was given to Ukraine by the then Soviet History this place was. Pride of place was, of course, the big con- leader Nikita Khruschev in 1954. open www.openthemagazine.com 39

31 March 2014

in moscow’s grip People in Sevastopol, Crimea, watch a broadcast of Putin’s 18 March address to the Russian Federal Assembly explaining the peninsula’s annexation

However confused Ukraine’s identity may seem when viewed through the prism of history, a few things nevertheless are clear. One: when Ukraine became independent in 1991, it was recognised as a sovereign state by the international community, including Russia, within the borders of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. These include Crimea. In 1994, Russia, the US and UK made a further commitment to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity by signing the Budapest Memorandum, which gave Ukraine assurances that it would not come under attack by any party after having given up its nuclear weapons. Two: Crimea is of vital strategic importance to both Russia and Ukraine. For Russia, Crimea is the historical home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and has been for centuries a significant (but not unique) warm water port with access to the Black Sea and Mediterranean. Because of its importance to the Russian navy, Ukraine agreed to lease some its naval bases to Russia, initially until 2017, then until 2042 in an agreement signed by President Yanukovich in 2010. For Ukraine, it is (was) home to its largest naval base. Moreover, as Keir Giles, associate fellow, International Security and Russia and Eurasia Programme at Royal Institute of International Affairs, a London-based thinktank, explains, the heavily-industrialised east of Ukraine relies on access to ports in southern Ukraine for access to the sea. Cutting off Crimea from Ukraine will effectively hand these ports over to Russian control, strangling all heavy industry in eastern Ukraine, and making the region significantly economically dependent on Russia. Putin does not need to invade or otherwise destabilise eastern Ukraine to assert significant control over the region: control over Crimea effectively gives him two for the price of one. Three: Until now, the West, as incarnated both by the EU and NATO, has been incapable of working out a consistent, coherent and unified attitude towards Ukraine. Ukraine could not 40 open

decide whether it belonged to the East or the West, and the West could not decide either.

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hat I took away from my years working at NATO is that the unspoken understanding among all of us was that Ukraine was firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence and would never join the Alliance, no matter how many reforms it undertook to qualify for membership. Ukrainians knew that, Russians knew that, and even the Allies knew that. While not offering any tangible security guarantees to Ukraine, this policy of neither opening nor closing the door to Ukrainian membership handed Russia the perfect propaganda tool to continue invoking the threat of encirclement and NATO encroachment, and, thus, stoke pro-Russian, anti-Western sentiment in the regions inhabited mostly by Russians. By sticking to a policy that all knew deep down to be a non-starter, the West also lost the opportunity to help Ukraine address some of its internal security problems via institutions that would have been more universally welcome throughout Ukraine and less unpalatable to Moscow. Moreover, because many NATO members are also members of the EU, to the extent that the two together are often referred to as the ‘Euro-Atlantic community’, both Putin’s and ousted Ukrainian President Yanukovich’s propaganda machines were able to easily conjure the confused spectre of Western economic and military domination, incarnated by an EU Association Agreement that was to be signed between Ukraine and the EU in November 2013. It was a rejection of this agreement by President Yanukovich in favour of a trade agreement with Russia that sparked the protests in Kiev, that eventually lead to the current crisis in Crimea. But contrary to propaganda being peddled by the Russian media, these protests were not overwhelmingly inspired by anti-Russian sentiment. They were actually a rejection of a cronyist corrupt regime which was choosing to associate with an31 March 2014

baz ratner/rueters

other cronyist corrupt regime, instead of moving towards integration into a system that guaranteed—imperfectly perhaps—the rule of law, transparency, governance, and respect for human rights. The irony of all this is that while in Western Europe ultra-right wing parties are rejecting the EU and brandishing new found nationalist sentiments, in Ukraine such parties supported the EU as a guarantor of its economic future and sovereignty. The Russian media and Russian politicians now talk of protecting Russian speakers in Crimea against ‘fascists’ and ‘terrorists’ in Kiev, but so far the only people bearing any remote resemblance to terrorists in Ukraine are the heavily-armed men in unmarked uniforms now patrolling the Crimean Peninsula. As they bear no insignia, they do not come under the protection of International Humanitarian Law, and it would have been hard to fault Ukraine for treating them as guerilla fighters or terrorists while Crimea was still under Ukrainian control. Russia has denied that the troops currently in Crimea are Russian, but all eyewitness accounts and video footage of the troops point to the fact that they are Russian. In denying the Russian presence in Crimea, President Putin has shown a level of hypocrisy that even the most hawkish Kremlin watchers had hitherto not thought possible. The offensive against the media has also reached a height of lies and propaganda that has shocked those who were used to the frequent silencing of journalists through violence, imprisonment or murder. Western journalists in Kiev have been harassed and their equipment confiscated. Local Ukrainian media has been blocked and the airwaves in Crimea were dominated by Russian controlled media in the run-up to the referendum, thus, stifling any chance of a balanced debate. In Russia, websites and newspapers critical of Putin or of the events in Crimea have been either blocked, shut down, or had editorial teams removed. Nothing like this has happened since the beginning of the Glasnost era in 1987. Putin has also shown a cynical attitude towards legal processes in his refusal to accept the ousting of President Yanukovich, voted by a strong majority in the Ukrainian parliament, while at the same time accepting the takeover of the Crimean parliament by the new pro-Russia Prime Minister who came to power on the back of an armed militia. On 1 March, at a Kremlin press conference, Putin overtly stated that the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, no longer had any validity because there had been a regime change in Kiev, which he likened to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. As Jim Greene, former head of the NATO military liaison office in Kiev put it: “Putin just picks and chooses what he likes and makes up his own version of international law.” The cherry on the cake has to be the wording of the referendum on the status of Crimea, which could have been a spoof on the worse type of Soviet speak gone adrift. Voters had the choice between ticking two boxes: · One: are you in favor of Crimea becoming a constituent territory of the Russian Federation? · Two: are you in favor of restoring Crimea’s 1992 constitution [which basically allows Crimea to shape its relationship with Kiev as and how it seems fit]?

31 March 2014

According Keir Giles, this amounted to asking voters whether they want to join Russia or leave Ukraine. None of the options offered the choice of keeping the status quo. Even before the vote on Sunday, Crimea was lost to the West.

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that both parties had radically different worldviews and played the game according to these. Within this system, mutually accepted misunderstandings dominated relations between the Soviet Union and the West, and a certain degree of stability ensued. Today, Russia claims to be part of the capitalist world order, and has joined or wants to join the various clubs of countries that set the rules of this world order: the G8, WTO, OECD (the latter froze Russia’s accession process on 13 March). But its blatant disregard of all the rules of international conduct, both in Georgia in 2008 and today in Ukraine, show that it not only has no concern for them, but is prepared to twist them in order to have its own way. Following protests between pro- and anti-Russian groups in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared on 14 March that Russia ‘realizes its responsibility for compatriots’ lives in Ukraine and reserves the right to protect these people’. In a strictly legal sense, this would apply to Russian citizens, not the Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east of the country that this text is clearly referring to. By blurring the lines between ‘Russianness’ and Russian citizenship, Putin seems to be recreating the history of Hitler’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland on the Eve of World War II. Back then, the threat of nuclear war between great powers did not exist, but nevertheless the world stood by and clung to the belief that it could maintain ‘peace in our time’ in the face of Hitler’s boot stamping across Europe, rather than go to war for a couple of small countries on Europe’s periphery. Today, the prospect of mutually assured destruction makes it even more unlikely that the world will budge beyond some shuffling of feet and wringing of hands in protest. While we may bemoan the fact that Russia is not respecting the Budapest Memorandum, neither is the UK, nor the US. In the tripartite relationship between what can broadly be called the West (incarnated either as NATO or the EU), Ukraine and Russia, two parties have more or less been internally divided from the outset. Under these circumstances, it became inevitable that the third party that always knew what it wanted would at some point step in and stake its claim. The haste with which the referendum was organised (just ten days) and the speed with which Putin signed the treaty annexing Crimea to Russia—just 48 hours after the referendum—raises the question of how long this had been in the works. By acting in such a manner, Putin has opened a new chapter of history in which all pretense of cooperation and common values between Russia and the West will have to be cast aside. Nothing will ever be the same again. n Samantha de Bendern has worked for the European Commission and NATO, specialising in relations with Russia and Ukraine. After leaving NATO, she worked as a banker in Russia. She quit in 2011 and came to India to set up a consultancy open www.openthemagazine.com 41

uring the Cold War , the unspoken rule of the game was

in whose image? Candice Pinto (left) and Alisia Raut are both size 6

fa s h i o n

It’s the Size, Stupid!

Why Indian models don’t walk on international ramps Aastha Atray Banan

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t the recently concluded Lakme Fashion Week, the one noticeable thing was how ‘normal’ sized models were, with broad shoulders and hips, ample bosoms and slightly curved waists. Model Alisia Raut, 34, says: “Internationally, female models are all size 2s. Their measurements have to be 32 chest, 24 waist and 35 hips. But in India, the average size of a model is anywhere between size 6 to size 10. I myself am size 6, and I have never wanted anything else. Even at size 6, I have a body of a teenager. But if I had to go abroad now, they would want me to reduce.” For the unaware, a size 6 (by US standards) would be around 35 inches at the chest, 28 at the waist and 38 at the hips. A size 10 would be around 37 at the chest, 30 at the waist and 40 at the hips. Though their sizes ensure that Indian models fit into traditional wear with grace, they also mean that they can’t ever really walk international ramps. “Internationally, the standards are very strict,” Alisia says. “I know someone who was 35.5 at the hips, and they wanted her to be only 35 inches. She couldn’t model then. They are very strict with their specifications— if they want a blonde, they want a blonde; if they want a brunette, they want a brunette, and if they want a girl with shoulder length hair, that’s what it is. When you fill out forms internationally, you have to be very specific.” Because of India’s liberal attitude towards sizes, many curvy Western models are now walking Indian ramps. Alisia laughs, “I feel like an alien in my own profession. They come here because we accept girls with curves. Also the shelf life of a model is much longer here. Internationally, they are done at 21. But in India, if you maintain yourself, you can keep going.” Internationally, models who rule fashion runways are like Cara Delevingne, a size 2, with measurements 31-24-34. But

there was once a time of the big supermodel. Cindy Crawford has said that back in her days, size 6 was average, like her contemporaries Christie Brinkley, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. But then came the era of the waif and Kate Moss became the new ideal. Moss was once criticised for encouraging bulimia by saying “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. According to a 2012 report in PLUS Model magazine, size 6 would be considered a plus size in the world of modelling. ‘Twenty years ago,’ it said, ‘the average fashion model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23 per cent less.’ Also: ‘most runway models meet the Body Mass Index physical criteria for Anorexia.’ Model Deepti Gujral says she has always been a size 8, thanks to her Indian genes. “We will always be pear shaped women. There is no getting past it. We have small torsos and large hips. We won’t fit into size 2s and 4s ever. So modelling internationally is hard, though these days Indian models can try, as they are considered exotic. Indian designers need girls like us to showcase their clothes—especially Indian wear—so that they can show their market that any woman can wear what they are making.” Indian ramps are a fry cry from their counterparts in Milan, Paris or New York, where extremely skinny girls show off garments of fashion houses such as Chanel. Androgyny is encouraged and most models have figures that could remind you of young boys in a concentration camp. In India, the women who walk fashion ramps have nearly regular bodies. But as fashion writer Shefalee Vasudev says, there is no Indian model who makes you go ‘wow’. Vasudev feels Indian ramps simply accept what they get. “It’s true that no one looks starved. They are longer limbed, broader and even have larger feet. That’s

just the way Indians are. But there is no one striking anymore—no one makes a mark.” She says the success rate of an Indian model internationally would depend on the trends at work in that market at that time. “There was once a time when the ‘exotic’ factor was ruling, and so models like Laxmi Menon did well. Then came a time when UK ramps became partial to plus size models. Indian models have to find a sub trend to fit into if they need to model abroad.” Russian model Anastasia Kuznetsova, who has modelled for Max Azria, Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Valentino, and who walked for Lakme last season, has encouraging words to offer curvy Indian models. “I like it when a model is in good shape—not too thin, not too big,” she told IANS, “India can be a trendsetter for this in the international market.” Candice Pinto, a well-known presence at Fashion Weeks, feels that it works the other way round: lots of foreigners land up in India looking for jobs. “There is so much work here—catalogues, ads, movies, ramps. They are working all the time.” Pinto, who fluctuates between size 6 and size 8, says that the newer girls are taller and thinner. “But many people are thin and not fit. You have to work really hard to maintain your figure. You can’t have fat jutting out from anywhere.” She feels that the possibility of an India model making it globally depends on a host of factors. “You should live in that country, you have to be taller and thinner. But India is a great to work—money is faster, and work is plenty.” She also says that even if Indian girls try looking Western, they can’t escape their Indian body type. “I can’t be skinnier, I just can’t. It’s just as well that Indian clothes look great on our bodies. We cater to this market well.” At sizes 6 and 8, Indian models may be too large for the world, but given the market’s shape fixation, maybe India’s unwitting defiance is a good thing. n open www.openthemagazine.com 43

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true life

How to Frame the Taliban

50

Books

India in Love by Ira Trivedi

52

cinema

Vijay Raaz, Bollywood anomaly

54

music

The Jodhpur Flamenco & Gypsy Festival

58

t h e at r e

Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler

60

Science

Open Mouth Contagion Big Bang Evidence Benefits of Dark Chocolate

61

Tech & style

HP Slate 6 Voice Tab Lenovo IdeaPad Z510 Asus Chrome Box

62 Cinema reviews

Bewakoofiyan 3 Days to Kill

63

n p lu

mindspace Kangana Ranaut Vidya Balan

culture Scenes from the inaugural edition of the Jodhpur Flamenco & Gypsy Festival 54 O p e n s pa c e

64 The Sacred and the Profane

ashish sharma

true life

How to Frame the Taliban A veteran of many wars, photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg found Afghan terrain tricky, the language unfamiliar and the recklessness scary. Yet, he kept returning to document it all, says Chinki Sinha

H

nam person. Anti-war sentiment was running high in America with protests across university campuses. The media, he thought, was biased. Robert Nicklesberg was a teenager at the time, the 1960s, and he was intrigued by events so far from home. The war didn’t make political sense to him, and he wanted to see for himself

e calls himself a post-Viet-

events as they unfolded. Over the 1970s, he travelled to such conflict zones as Nicaragua, and other countries in Central America, where he was concerned with the role of America and “how [it] got into these regions to eliminate oppressive Communist regimes”, and in 1981, he moved to the region as a photographer for Newsweek, and also shot for Time.

This was before the internet era, back when visual storytelling was a challenge. The narrative form was still not what it is today, says Nickelsberg. But war and its stories were everywhere. He would have to shoot on film roll, sneak his rolls out of the countries he was shooting in, and wait to see what he had captured. It wasn’t easy, but it could be done.

It was in 1988 that he first went to Afghanistan on assignment. By then, he was already a veteran war photojournalist. He would return again and again to document the war. It had started with the retreat of the Soviets, just before the end of the Cold War. In his book Afghanistan: A Distant War, published by Prestel, there is a shot of Russians on their tanks, and a rose held by a soldier. In the background, you see mountains rise, black and threatening. It wasn’t an easy landscape. The war continues. But these photos document a period that’s crucial to understand a phase in the history of this region, and why it continues to be a mystery. History is a matter of perspective. Nicklesberg went to the region as an American photojournalist who thought the world was like a chess board and this was the biggest match. Everything had to do with the Cold War. It hadn’t really ended. The blocs remained, so did the geopolitical stakes and opinions. But again, in visuals there are truths—of the photographer, and of the subject. In layers, you could begin to unfold the events. But there is no single truth to be found. A photo shows Taliban commandos sitting on the wings of a plane after the Taliban took over Khost province in 1991. It spelt the end of the Kabul regime, he says. The photo is significant because it also shows the importance of borders, and the reach of the Taliban in recruiting almost-illiterate young men from villages, men who were delighted to perch themselves on the wings of this plane. Photos are significant in the telling of the story of a war. But again, it is the perspective that counts, and fighting prejudices is hard. It wasn’t an easy place to be. Central America, where he had been previously assigned, had no winters. He didn’t need armoured vehicles to dodge any bullets there. Here, in Afghanistan, it was a battle on many fronts. The terrain was difficult, the language unfa-

in the crosshairs “It is not fun to be shot at,” says Nickelsberg, “but it is attractive.”

31 march 2014

miliar, and the recklessness scary. But he kept returning. The compelling concern, he says, was to document the time before 9/11. Understanding this rugged country also meant having to understand its neighbours: Pakistan and India. A lot of reading was part of his work here, which spans almost 25 years, a period of much action. ‘Settling into New Delhi at the end of 1987, I had little time to orient myself to the region before I left for Peshawar to cross the Khyber Pass in mid-January, 1988, and enter Afghanistan on a one-day visa,’ says Nickelsberg via email of his time in Afghanistan. ‘The event was a funeral for 98-year old Abdul Gaffar Khan, or Bacha Khan, a Pakistani-Afghan and well-known Pashtun nationalist who had asked to be buried close to his native land near Jalalabad. Fighting between the mujahideen and Soviet army was relentless, though a one-day truce was declared in eastern Nangahar province for the funeral service. Soviet Army Spetsnaz (special forces) met us at the Torkham border, staring at us suspiciously from eight-wheeled armoured vehicles.’ ‘Halfway through the funeral ceremony near Jalalabad airport, two massive explosions occurred a few hundred metres away in the parking area. Pandemonium ensued, with several thousands in attendance fleeing for their cars, trying to escape. Everyone expected more explosions or a firefight to break out. In this chaos, I was unable to locate my driver and jumped into a vehicle with a Pakistani driver who spoke only Pashtu and whose car’s windscreen had been blown out from the two bombs’ impact,’ he recounts. ‘We reached the Torkham border at sunset. The final two-hour drive to Peshawar was pure white-knuckle agony, both of us were barely able to see the 90-degree turns on the Khyber Pass. The driver’s eyes were already halfclosed and bloodshot from smoking hashish all day. Each time he overtook a slower-moving vehicle, I figured we’d crash through the guardrail and end up at the bottom of the ravine. The only help I could offer the driver was to yell out if we got too close to a stone wall.

The night was clear, but our eyesight was totally blurred. He dropped me at Peshawar’s Pearl Continental Hotel around 11:00 pm whereupon reaching my room, my windblown body collapsed on the bed. The next morning, I read the headlines: 15 people had died in the two explosions in Jalalabad. The bombs had been planted in two Pakistani buses,’ writes Nicklesberg. To Nickelsberg, risk is a relative term. “Going to Karachi is also risky,” he says. “Only through locals, can you get there. I am always scared. You operate with fear. You study the terrain, and the people, and you have to be aware. I read, I explore, and I am a good observer.” Afghanistan is a multi-layered country, he says. It’s a mystery, and to document a country like this, one must embrace mystery. “It is not fun to be shot at,” he says, though. “But it is attractive.”

T

For instance, he has shot a portrait of Jalaluddin Haqqani, an ethnic Pashtun of the Jadran tribe who was the leader of the Haqqani Network, an insurgent group fighting against USled NATO forces. Haqqani, with his piercing eyes and a face that betrays no emotion, also fought in the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan, and later also directed pro-Taliban militants in their jihad against the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Those days, they were happy to pose for a photo,” he says. “As journalists, we had access to them.” It became dangerous for journalists in the region only later. There were killings and kidnappings. Yet, the need to capture events overrode such worries. “Everybody was following this,” he says. “When the US closed its embassy, look what happened. Civil war ensued. It created a vacuum.” Again, in storytelling, one often takes sides. This could be shaped by one’s affiliation—ideological or otherwise. But a body of work cannot really be independent of the creator’s personality. When Nickelsberg speaks of the Great Game—in which the Cold War open www.openthemagazine.com 47

hings changed over the years.

played a 20th century role—he tends to dismiss other countries and their points of views. Take the late 1970s. The Soviets had invaded and America would help. People in India often see it differently: from varied points of view. Most times, these need not tally with one another. Take 2001. Is it America’s ‘commitment’? Or an occupation? It may all depend on how one sees it. And what people get to see is never the whole picture, just snapshots. In visual storytelling, the photojournalist says, there is always a risk the picture might be used to project something false. That’s how vulnerable photos are. Again, working with reporters on a story is a challenge in itself, he says. The reporter analyses the situation and brings in his or her perspective. “I am documenting a particular event and I understand the environment. I bring in the noise and the colour, and the descriptions of the frontline. I work on my own. But again, it is also about what the viewer brings in. Any photo is a documentation of the moment, an educated one, but not the ultimate truth.” Doing his book, he says, has helped him understand the country better. “America’s disengagement could mean bad [things]. If we leave, or disengage, the threat of violence could possibly return,” he says. It is among this ‘we’ then, that the photographer places himself. Whether one can disengage from this ‘we’ is again a contentious issue in journalism. But the book is important. As a visual history of the region that also lost its own narrative somewhere. “All this is going back to the country. It is going to be translated, and donated to Kabul University. The pictures belong there. They need it,” he says. But history is owned in parts. It is coloured. Whose history is it? That is always up for debate.

afghanistan: a distant war

Robert Nickelsberg prestel usa | 192 pages | $60

There are destroyed cities, and caves, and

unrelenting mountains, and tankers, and guns.

But there are also homes and markets.

There is past, present, and a hope for the future.

S

photos are significant and beautiful. The region, with all its chaos and violence played out in medieval settings— trenches and fields and moun-

uch things aside, Nickelsberg’s

tains—seems so far off and yet so close. His images hold you, and sometimes provoke you. There are reactions— sadness, fear, and marvel. Those alone are redeeming factors for any creator. He manages to transport his audience to a country that has remained out of bounds for many but has never quite let go of one’s imagination. Pictures bring it all to vivid life. Faces of fighters, like ones he has captured shooting missiles from the ground, or of Jalaluddin Haqqani, staring straight into the camera. Or refugees, generals in their uniforms, children with vacant eyes, the dead with their limbs mutilated, the shock of death visible on their faces. There are shots of just the land with its future and past and its desire

to be what would be a ‘normal’ place, like the photo of a busy marketplace in Kabul that Nickelsberg says Afghans want their country to be like—bustling with routine things and not booming with guns. One look at such scenes, and it would be clear to any Indian that it is not a distant war. Besides Nickelsberg’s brief notes on various images, his book offers essays by experts and journalists on Afghanistan. There are images of hope. There are also images of pain. There are destroyed cities, and caves, and unrelenting mountains, and tankers, and guns. But there are also homes, and markets. There is the past, the present, and a sense of the future. “I miss the chaos, and the drama,” says Nickelsberg. A perfect photo, he says, is a mix of content and chaos. To me, that image is the one of the ‘illiterate’ young Taliban fighters on the wings of a plane in Khost. Nickelsberg’s descriptions are only incidental, beyond a point. The image can be viewed in a million different ways. At some point, the creator will lose his hold on it as it rolls into the world. The book ends with a photo taken at the end of his Afghan mission as a photojournalist. ‘On 16 May 2013, 25 years later, on my last day in Kabul, I took pictures of two blown up and destroyed Chevrolet Suburban SUV’s carrying 6 US instructors traveling to a training session for the Afghan National Army. They had been rammed by a suicide vehicle packed full of explosives near Bala Hisar, a fifth-century fort. Ten Afghan civilians were also killed, a total of 16 dead, with dozens wounded. The violence remains unpredictable but still comes with a lethality that all those exposed to it want to see go away, to disappear, forever,’ he writes in his email. That’s why his image of the market with bananas and umbrellas and women and men and cars and everything else that a bazaar should look like is an important one. That’s the hope. That Afghanistan will return to normalcy— if such a thing is possible. n 31 march 2014

48 open

Books India Unzipped Ira Trivedi’s book presents an efficient—if predictable—analysis of Indian sexual behaviour Divya Guha

india in love: marriage and sexuality in the 21st century

By Ira Trivedi aleph book company | 424 pages | rs 595

I

cottage-like bungalow in a VIP district in central Delhi that was built for the British by the British, in a lawn that was designed for exactly such a day as today: sunny and bursting with flowers, decorated as if Lady Spring were about to visit with Lady Privilege. One wonders if spring were made for such a garden, for this early afternoon, this perfect moment in March. I spot a gormless-looking beagle past a crop of pansies, flox and poppies, a sexist who only barks at male visitors. I am waved in from under a garden umbrella by a slender, seated silhouette that belongs to the author. Fortunately for hacks and writers, the world is in love with India and will read any non-fiction on the subject. And that, if anything, is India in Love’s promise and premise. It is Ira Trivedi’s fourth book. She is 28, a former beauty pageant contestant, and looks as though she could be on a Grihashobha cover. She is pretty, dressed in a two-tone rust and dark green raw silk kameez and churidar, a matching dupatta flung modestly over her torso. It is an outfit at odds with her innate model-like glamour. For some reason, this get-up seems deliberate. Her first book, titled What Would You Do to Save the World? Confessions of a Could-Have-Been Beauty Queen, published when she was 20, is chick-lit written with precocious self-awareness—about a pageant contestant

ra Trivedi is seated in front of a

and the horrors she encounters in the greasy world of Indian modelling. Former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen helped launch it. Her third book, There’s No Love on Wall Street, about women trying to make it in the sybaritically charged world of high finance, was launched by Junot Diaz at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2011. Her previous book was called The Great Indian Love Story. India in Love is her first book of nonfiction. It is a serious summary of what goes on between people’s ears about what happens between their legs in this holy country. Trivedi traces the roots of India’s dominant social milieu

Labiaplasty procedures— surgical reconstruction of the hymen—at a doctor’s clinic in Delhi have gone from one a month in 2010 to over six a month in 2012 back to the Puranas, the beginning of Hindu memory, through the Mughal phase of history and Victorian legacy of the British. The book analyses and entertains but never titillates. For research, the author undertook hundreds of interviews with Indian men and women over four years. For much of the rest of the book, she cites academic studies, compiled in a way that offers a readable account of what goes for love, is understood as desire or misunderstood—too often—as consent in India. We might discover bewildering things about Indians. What Manu said about sodomy, for instance: that one must take a cold bath after the act as penance. Ancient ‘laws’ had

nothing as draconian as Section 377. This book’s main revelation is that India is going through a major social revolution in two parts—one marital and the other sexual, even if the latter remains a behind-closed-doors transformation. “Sexuality in India has changed more over the past ten years than it has in the last 10,000,” she says. Whither the said revolution? The BBC recently reported that divorce rates had trebled in the past five years in India, but is divorce easy? No. The number of judges and courtrooms remain the same, women have their maintenance unpaid for decades, and staying single can pose another set of problems and threats. So they often stay in a bad marriage not because they cannot see abuse for what it is (though this may also be true) or take their wedding vows a bit too seriously. Muslim men may legally marry up to four wives, and not pay anything more than a lumpsum to those they divorce. Female foeticide is rife across India, and dispossessed widows are still left with meagre choices. The patriarchal setups of all religions repress women, and religion has been gaining sway over public and political life. One might agree that popular culture is turning sexually explicit, but is this indicative of a social or sexual revolution? Divorce is still stigmatised, though its rate has gone up. According to the 2001 Census figures cited in Trivedi’s book, from 0.2 per cent in 1970, India’s divorcee count rose to 7 per cent of the population by the end of the 20th century. The author herself was born to a conservative Brahmin family. Her grandfather, she says, has served a hat-trick of terms as president of the All-World Brahmin Samaja, whose primary focus is to arrange marriages. But by an eso31 March 2014

50 open

a former beauty aspirant Ira Trivedi has authored three books of fiction before this. This is her first book of non-fiction

teric twist of irony and Hindu logic, he is also a top divorce counsellor. While this might strike some as Kafkaesque, to ‘Dadaji’, this is not strange at all but Kalyug 101, an expected outcome of all the bad karma accumulated by all and sundry in this Hindu Dark Age. The book includes an obligatory section on homosexuality. A chapter titled ‘The Dark Side’ covers rape and backward-looking and ill-informed attitudes to sex education. Until as late as 2013, Indian policymakers were against children being given lessons on sexual intercourse in school. Parents, too, appear to have wanted it that way. This myopia stems from widespread worries that sex education will teach children about carnal practices that could corrupt their sense of morality at an impressionable age. As a result, unsafe sex, sometimes leading to illegal and lethal abortions, has been rampant across the country among both rural and urban populations. Other chapters in the book dutifully cover prostitution and porn consumption. According to research cited, seven Indian cities rank among the most prolific users of porn in the world. The search volume index of ‘porn’ doubled in India between 2010 and 2012, as internet-enabled phones made access easy and affordable. The city most in thrall of smut is Ahmedabad. The only avid porn consumer profiled in this book—of the millions 31 March 2014

available in the country—is the misguided Prayag, whose story Trivedi tells compassionately. He is born to parents who have to let him go away to work in Chennai, but expect Mahatma-like celibacy and vegetarianism in return. Prayag, a standard victim of absurd Indian orthodoxies, remained a virgin through college and prepared for his sexual debut by watching thousands of hours of porn—his only lessons in sex education. He later rejected the same woman as a potential spouse because he would only ever marry a virgin. Such topsy-turvy logic is traced to its mythological roots. Wendy Doniger says in an interview with the author: “In most of the history of Hindu culture, a girl must be a virgin [at the time of her marriage], or all hell breaks loose, and you get your money back.” The Rig Veda, says Doniger, misleadingly informed Hindus how ‘dangerous’ hymenal blood was. Manu imposed fines on people who deprived women of their virginity; the Arthashastra declared that a marriage was invalid if blood was not seen on the conjugal bedsheet; the Kamasutra dedicates one of its seven volumes to the kanya, the virgin, instructing men to be circumspect with her on the wedding night. While sexual activity increases, the guilt, contradictions and shame associated with it remain. Bearing the brunt of all this are Indian women. At home, Indians remain sexually conservative;

in cities, single women find their choices contrained—they must think twice before stepping out at night, must pay more rent if they live alone, etcetera. As widows, they face social disenfranchisement, even destitution. In villages, women will take beatings from their husbands and in-laws but continue to live with them because this alone gives them social legitimacy. Domestic violence is rife the world over, regardless of education and class. Young, educated and ‘sober’ girls are preferred in the arranged marriage market. Absurdly, this is often the preferred profile for desirable prostitutes sought by wealthier clients. Labiaplasty procedures—hymen reconstruction through surgery—at one doctor’s clinic in Delhi have gone from being as infrequent as once a month in 2010 to over six a month in 2012, writes Trivedi. What does this say about attitudes in this part of the world? Contemporary Indian society is still conservative. Chastity is still prized— and might continue to matter so long as marriage and religion do. The book does not need to be encyclopaedic, but since sexual activity in rural areas has also undergone plenty of change— though this varies widely across regions—there are rather few village voices in the book. The revolution will come, and it will be led by India’s young, but let’s be clear: it isn’t here yet. n open www.openthemagazine.com 51

raul Irani

CINEMA

Other Lives, Other Interests Uninterested in acting theory, indifferent to stardom—Vijay Raaz is a Bollywood anomaly SHAIKH AYAZ

P

eople—the very few who did— walked into Dedh Ishqiya thinking it’s a Madhuri Dixit movie. But they walked out convinced it’s a Vijay Raaz movie. In the film, Raaz is a wolf in sheep’s clothing—an MLA who’d kill to be a Nawab. And he’d kill some more for Begum Para (Dixit), the woman he loves as wryly as he recites poetry in honour of her beauty. A decade ago, it would have been difficult to imagine an actor like Raaz romancing Madhuri Dixit. Thankfully, this is an age of meritocracy and endless possibilities. The allure of Raaz is, essentially, his lack of allure. And according to critics, Raaz’s beaten-down version of a man was the highlight of Dedh Ishqiya. A reviewer on Rediff.com, raving about Raaz’s darkly comic performance, wrote: ‘Too often do we Hindi cinema audiences unfairly sideline villains and comedians, but here is a gem 52 open

of a part, a truly meaty role—the kind of character that, in a Hollywood film, would have been played by Christian Bale or Javier Bardem—and Raaz sinks his teeth into it magnificently.’ Raaz is 44, and has spent nearly 20 of those years as an actor, starting with theatre in Delhi. He is routinely listed among the country’s finest character actors. Yet few may have heard of him outside a circle of charmed critics. He probably knows he has no commercial potential. But he doesn’t care. You could try placing him in the category of unconventional-lookers like Nawazuddin Siddiqui. But instead of accepting that as a backhanded compliment, he’s more likely to snap, “Who’s Nawazuddin Siddiqui?” So let’s not go there. He’s eager to talk about Kya Dilli Kya Lahore, a Partition drama with which he turns director. Gulzar, whose work reflects the pains of Partition and who

has supported several Indo-Pak peace initiatives in the past, is the film’s mentor: “Our Bhishma Pitamah,” as Raaz puts it. A father figure. Besides writing the lyrics, Gulzar is also presenting the film. “When Gulzar saab read the story, he accepted it immediately. I think he agreed because he wanted to encourage us and help us see this film through,” he says. Set in 1948, in the newly-formed states of India and Pakistan, the film, set to release this May, is about the lives of two soldiers who find themselves on opposite sides of the border post-Partition. The film, Raaz says, tries to deal with identity issues and how, almost overnight, people from both sides had to get used to being called Indians and Pakistanis—“a confusion” that didn’t exist before Partition and “a confusion that the film tries to tap.” “The title Kya Dilli Kya Lahore says everything. It’s a statement in itself.

31 March 2014

Why do we need boundaries? The film is trying to question that.” Raaz calls it a “layered” film, which can be an obscure description, but let that be. “It has a lot of humour,” he says, promising much-needed bursts of levity in an otherwise grim subject. Raaz grew up in Delhi of the 1970s, at a time when Partition was something of a recent event. “We used to hear stories of Partition all the time,” he says. “People killed. People displaced. People longing for their homes. There were all kinds of stories. Bada emotional attachment thha unn kahaniyon se (We had a great emotional attachment to those stories).” For Raaz, somehow, Partition will always remain a relevant issue. Terror, he feels, is a direct result of Partition and the subsequent creation of the state of Pakistan. With weariness in his voice, he says, “I do not know a single good thing that has come out of Partition, but I can point out a hundred bad things that have.” The film is antiwar. It is also anti-terror. While directing, Raaz discovered one crucial thing about himself—that there’s a “creative man” inside him and that he is capable of doing something other than acting. He’s not the sort to plot, ponder and plan in life. He calls himself “aimless”, someone who takes anything and everything that comes his way. He never dreamt of becoming a film director, but life and luck thrust it upon him. “At first, I was only acting in it,” Raaz says, his wiry frame and wavy hair belying both his age and experience. And then the film’s producer popped a surprising question at him: “Would you mind directing it?” Initially, he was apprehensive. “I’d never done it before. Acting is such a small part of filmmaking. When you are an actor, you are concerned only about what you are supposed to do. You have a limited role. You sit in your vanity van and when your shot’s ready, they call you.” Direction spelt a deeper involvement and responsibility. It also meant greater creative control over the film, in a way that actors, however important and saleable they may be, can never have. But actors, according 31 March 2014

to Raaz, have their own creativity that he thinks few ever appreciate. “What is bringing a character alive on screen if not creativity?” he asks. “Ek actor kisi bhi cheez ko beautiful bana sakta hai (An actor can make anything beautiful).” For him, acting is lying—the art of lying truthfully. “Even a child lies. He bluffs his mother that he ate the tiffin she prepared for him. He doesn’t tell her that actually he gave it to a friend. If he lies convincingly, he’s acting.” Raaz mocks the whole idea of good versus bad acting. “There’s no such thing. People judge, they give you labels, they categorise you and then they say, ‘Okay, this is good. This is bad. Woh achcha hai, woh chutiya hai (He’s good, he’s a sucker).’ Every performance, every film is good in its own way. It’s just how you look at it. Some people may

“Some actors say that they are members of this family called the film industry. There’s even that song: Jeena yahan, marna yahan. I don’t feel the same way. I feel acting is just one part of my life. It’s not my entire life” like it, some don’t. Woh joh hum log ek zimmedari le lete hain na tay karne ki, woh galat hai (That responsibility we people take on to decide things, that’s wrong).” He feels the same way about success. “Society has made its own rules about success. If you have money, a big bungalow, cars and servants, then you’re successful. If you don’t have any of these things, you are a loser.” Ironically, he’s in a profession where only the top stars can afford all that. “Acting—I’m talking about me—is an insecure job. There’s no safety. My father who was in a government job and is now retired, always said don’t get into it. But I loved my work. I’m glad I still haven’t got bored of it.” It’s not money that drives him. “Do you think I’m in it for money? We actors— I’m again talking of me here—live

such lives that we are not even sure if we will get work tomorrow.” He’s not one of those actors who like theorising about acting. “Usmein kuch naya nahin hain (There’s nothing new in that),” he says, dismissing the question with the wave of a hand. He doesn’t watch films. Before he met Mira Nair for Monsoon Wedding, for his first prominent role, he hadn’t even heard of her. He has no favourite actors. Great performances do not move him to tears, like they do other actors. “I’m in awe of nobody and nothing,” he says, except maybe “nature”. If Al Pacino were to walk past him, he may not even recognise him. Wait: he just might. After hearing about The Godfather for 20 years, he finally saw it a few years ago. It left him mildly impressed: “Achchi film thhi—theek thhi (It was a good film—it was alright).” Raaz says he is terrified of cinephiles. “I’m shit scared of the big names” that some of his colleagues can rattle off. He especially cannot bring himself to properly pronounce famous directors’ names that end with ‘sky/ ski’. Like Tarkovsky and Kieslowski. But do not misconstrue his indifferent responses as arrogance. He explains, “I take films as a way of work. Beyond that, it does not excite me. And I say that with all due humility.” Clearly, Raaz is an anomaly in Bollywood. He doesn’t ever push for work. If it comes his way, he’s happy. “I could have been there...” he says, stopping short of completing that sentence. But you get the drift. “I could have, but I don’t care.” This is not a bazaar, he says, and, “I am not on sale.” He works in the industry, he is clear, not for the industry. “Some actors say that they are members of this family called the film industry. There’s even that song: Jeena yahan, marna yahan (We live here, we die here),” he says, “I don’t feel the same way. I feel acting is just one part of my life. It’s not my entire life. I have other lives, other interests.” Like what? “Like life’s mysteries—par koi aur din baithenge, uske baare mein baat karenge (But we’ll sit down some other day and talk about all that).” n open www.openthemagazine.com 53

music

A Fort Full of Folk At the inaugural Jodhpur Flamenco & Gypsy Festival devika bakshi

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juttis, standing in a rickety old elevator surrounded by minor royalty and celebrity in silk and pearls, ascending to a pigeon-infested, cannonstudded terrace at the Mehrangarh Fort where you are able to witness a sunset of staggering beauty. And if you promise the gentleman in jodhpurs that you absolutely will not infiltrate the VIP cocktail party up ahead, you might find yourself walking the fort’s spectacular edge, windwhipped, with the blue city below and strains of flamenco coming down the rampart through the VIP chatter. It is this romantic atmosphere that makes the Jodhpur Flamenco & Gypsy Festival—and the other two music festivals held at the Mehrangarh fort—so appealing. Ordinarily, paying Rs 3,000 for an evening of music would seem thoroughly indulgent, if not slightly insane, but the fort is terribly persuasive. Mehrangarh is the fortiest of forts. Its height, its labyrinthine multi-level structure, the intricacy of its stonework, the romance of its courtyards (pigeon shit and all)—it’s overwhelming to take in all at once. You’re almost grateful to be allowed in. A fellow guest muses that it is only a matter of years before it becomes unsustainable to maintain, and is turned, like so many other forts and palaces, into a hotel. The kind of hotel, one imagines, that would require coffee-shop reservations for casual entry, and would remind you when you call to make them that there is a several hundred rupee minimum charge per person. So when you shell out for tickets to the Jodhpur Flamenco & Gypsy Festival—or the Rajasthan International Folk Festival, or the World Sufi Spirit Festival—you are optimistic that your romantic consumer behaviour will go some way in ensur-

o you’re in Jodhpur in a pair of

ing that this feat of material beauty remains at least somewhat accessible to the non-silk-and-pearl public.

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Festival aims to do a lot of things: to bring flamenco music and dance to India, to provide a platform for local Rajasthani musicians, to highlight the shared roots of the two and to facilitate collaborations between them; to trace the trajectory of ‘gypsy’ music across the world, to ‘present a more contemporary view of desert music and dance’, and to keep local folk music alive. This is a tall order, but there is more. The festival’s artistic director, Roberto Nieddu, an Italian designer and music enthusiast, says the festival is only the first step in a long commitment to creating a platform for gypsy and folk culture. He intends to use the festival as a forum to find sponsors for an institute of study, which explains why it is such an opulent affair. Chanda Chaudhary Barrai, director of VIP relations and programming for the festival, says it was her endeavour to create an exclusive experience—unlike most other music festivals in India, which she feels are mainly aimed at youth. Chaudhary, who seems to be somewhat of a high-society superstar, was responsible for bringing on board big-money sponsors, such as Chivas Regal and Vedanta, and inviting ‘patrons’—the carefully curated group of donor-VIPs whose money would make the festival possible. This year, most patrons were invited, with the hope that they would become ambassadors for the festival; only six people actually bought the Rs 1,15,000 VIP weekend pass, which includes hotel, transport, music, food, drinks, pre-parties, after parties, a table in the raised VIP area at the back of the vast

he Jodhpur Flamenco & Gypsy

collaboration Contemporary Flamenco dancer Karen Lugo dances with every musician and sound onstage

courtyard that houses the main stage (from where, one imagines, VIPs must squint at the stage as they sip their Chivas), and access to an exclusive cigar lounge with a view of the stage through little arched windows. This lavish experience is no doubt a way to persuade patrons to be patrons in the old sense—to part with their money for art. Art takes money. But seeing as Mehrangarh’s upkeep, too, relies on these festivals, it must also be true that art makes money. Wealth— 31 March 2014

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whether private, corporate or royal— makes possible this festival, and director Nieddu is adamant it is necessary. He is conscious that it is expensive, but chalks it up to a cost of its existence. Normal ticket holders are by no means ill-treated. They are allowed a free run of the courtyard, with a substantial bank of comfortable seats in the middle and several mattress-andbolster set-ups off to one side. But they must pay for their drinks, and for their dinner—Rs 995 per plate. (Cigars are 31 March 2014

also on sale, for between Rs 8,000 and Rs 40,000 a box.) In this plebeian marketplace, you might (if you’d studied the festival website) spot one of the 18 or so Spanish musicians and dancers hanging around, smiling broadly at the stage. You might catch folk-inspired dance performer Queen Harish passing by, glittering under a black cloak. You might meet a French traveller distraught at the difficulty of finding a decent bottle of red wine in the city.

The 20 or so Rajasthani musicians, all from the Muslim Langa community, are the hardest to run into, usually seen sitting in a row to the far right of the stage, slipping in and out of the black curtain behind which the musicians— perhaps the most excited of anyone— are preparing to perform.

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usion of any sort can be a worrisome prospect. Too often motivated by a kind of fetish for art that can ‘tranopen www.openthemagazine.com 55

ashish sharma

scend’ cultural specificity, it can turn into an exotic mish-mash. But if not to collaborate with local musicians, how does one justify flying a bunch of flamenco musicians into Jodhpur? And can either art form retain its impact displaced from its original context? Flamenco, particularly, seems to be a form that resists the stage, though perhaps that’s another romantic notion. Watching guitarist Pepe Habichuela play with a slowly growing ensemble on the second night, it becomes apparent that flamenco is a total art form— visual, aural, physical, social. It is music and dance, melody and percussion, and neither is accessory to the other. There appears to be no creative entropy either—each instrument adds to the richness and complexity of the music, each member contributing to a collective energy. Every mode of expression is utilised—dancers and vocalists clap rhythmically, musicians chatter at each other as they play, interjecting with exclamations of joy and encouragement. Several travellers in the audience call out too. ‘Ale guapa!’ yells a young woman rolling a cigarette in the chair next to me as a dancer strides on stage. Several enthused audience members attempting to clap along on the first night discover quickly why calling out is a better expression of appreciation. With its complex rhythms and jazzlike improvisational quality, flamenco is not compatible with the standard 4/4 audience clap. Even the Langa musicians, having rehearsed their collaborations, sometimes fell out of joint with the flamenco players. There were other awkward collaborations. The simultaneous appearance of flamenco bailaora Tamar Gonzalez and Kalbelia dancer Asha Sapera gave both their highly stylised forms the unfortunate air of interpretive dance, though it was the sort of thing that provoked the painted ladies in the second row to pinch out several ‘Superb, ya’s. Earlier in the same performance, however, Gonzalez’s molasses-fluid movements paired beautifully with the long, sustained vocal laments of 12-year-old Langa vocalist, Abdul Khan. And on the second night, a jugalbandi between the utterly magnetic 56 open

contemporary-flamenco dancer Karen Lugo and Langa kadtal player Jakir Khan elevated the collaboration from the realm of spectacle to experience.

counters, real conversations. It is here that the festival is at its best.

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aren Lugo is 27, originally from Mexico, but living and performing in Madrid for the last decade. She has no contemporary training, but her dancing is nevertheless unmoored from the strict formalism of traditional flamenco. She is fluent in its rhythms and silhouettes, but appears to play fast and loose with its syntax. Creeping onstage, she has the air of a praying mantis—a punched-up, almost sinister version of the already confrontational bearing of the flamenco bailaora. She dances with every sound, musician, rhythm and dancer onstage, responsive to everything. She comes on in a dress with a long ruffled

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A jugalbandi between Flamenco dancer Karen Lugo and Langa kadtal player Jakir Khan elevated the cross-cultural collaborations from spectacle to experience train and it becomes its own entity— she kicks it, lifts it, whips it around. She points her hands like guns. She is sassy, intimidating, a flirt, a ham, a vamp, almost a vaudeville act, facing off with musicians, beguiling the audience. On the final night, hair loose, she seems almost to be dancing with the wind and the moon in addition to Jorge Pardo’s yearning flute and saxophone. Lugo is proof that dancing is the best, and perhaps the only appropriate response to music. On the final night, Tamar Gonzalez makes it seem like flamenco was intended to be danced to Rajasthani folk. Her hands are hypnotic—they seem to grab music from the air, curl it into the body as movement, and squeeze it back out toward the musicians. These collaborations were all rehearsed for days before the festival, but in performance they feel like actual en-

oberto Nieddu’s home is part haveli part heaven. There is a four poster bed on the lawn, with white muslin drapes, right next to a shallow, meandering water body. Many of the festival’s star performers are lounging around the covered verandah dining area, puttering, chatting, drinking coffee out of chic stainless steel cups. In a room full of Indian curiosities, no doubt collected over his 20 years living in India, Nieddu speaks passionately about the importance of preserving India’s rich cultural heritage. The Vedanta representative who spoke on the festival’s opening night invoked this same heritage, and affirmed Vedanta’s commitment to preserving it, as “a responsible corporate house”. (He also spoke of Rajasthan’s “huge wealth of natural resources”, with a markedly graver sense of commitment.) There is a sense of urgency underpinning Neiddu’s earnestness—a sense that something needs saving, and a failure to save it would be a loss to all. A short while later at the fort, where the festival’s Langa musicians are sitting backstage having chai and kachoris for lunch, 23-year-old kadtal player Jakir Khan expresses his gratitude toward His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh II (‘Baapji’) and Nieddu (who also refers to His Highness as Baapji). Khan was among the Langa contingent Nieddu took to a music festival in Murcia, Spain last August. This global exposure has given him a sense of optimism about his inherited, ancestral profession—and a great pride.

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into the blue city I’ve been admiring from above. Most of it has only the quiet bustle of a Sunday morning, absent the exotic splendour represented at the fort to visitors. The previous night ended on a wild crescendo of music and applause, and both flamenco and Langa musicians dragged themselves reluctantly off the stage, some still singing ‘Avo ni mare des! Avo ni mare des!’ n 31 March 2014

he day after the festival, I venture

theatre Echo of a Battle Cry Eve Ensler’s new play Emotional Creature calls on women to reclaim their emotions, but lacks the power of her classic Vagina Monologues RICHA KAUL-PADTE

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small town in China, works in a sweatshop where she is responsible for the “very important task” of attaching Barbie’s head to her body. As she sits on a lone stool centre stage, taking us through her story, she ponders the fact that there are over one million Barbie dolls across the world. “Imagine if we freed them,” she says. “Imagine if they came alive in all the villages and cities and bedrooms and landfills and dream houses. Imagine if they went from makeover to takeover. Imagine if they started saying what they really felt. Let Barbie speak! Free Barbie!” Being staged for its first paying audience on International Women’s Day at Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre, Emotional Creature is feminist activist and author Eve Ensler’s new play, brought to India by Poor Box

hang Yin, a young girl from a

Productions, the folks responsible for keeping The Vagina Monologues alive and kicking for over a decade. In keeping with the form Ensler is most accustomed to—and known for—the play comprises a series of semi-fictional monologues tracing the not-all-toodifferent lives of girls across the globe. ‘Free Barbie’ is perhaps the finest of these, using the image of a million ‘chained’ Barbies coming ‘alive’ as a call to young women to free themselves: to speak. As far as the play’s other noteworthy monologues go, sadly, they are few and far between. From the Democratic Republic of Congo, a part of the world in which Ensler has worked extensively, comes ‘A Teenage Girl’s Guide to Surviving Sexual Slavery’, the story of a girl who “went on vacation for two days [and] came home after two years”, told in

‘rules’ (“Rule 2: Never look at him when he is raping you” through to “Rule 8: No one can take anything from you if you do not give it to him”). From Iran, we meet a girl whose large nose was put under a cosmetic surgeon’s knife, thanks to well-meaning parents “helping” her be “pretty”. Or there is the girl who maintains a hunger blog, starving herself day in and day out, very literally shrinking out of this world. In theory, the premise of these stories is acutely relevant: they seek to remind women of shared struggles, deeply felt emotions and intrinsically connected lives. The experience of watching Emotional Creature, however, falls short of any real praxis. The most starkly jarring aspect of the production is the unnatural distance between the words spoken and the realities they seek to signify. When a group of girls

Sheriar Irani

speak up Eve Ensler’s new play, based on a book of the same name, calls for an end to silence

huddle together on stage, speculating about doing ‘it’—“It can kill you”, “It can free you”, “Guys don’t know what they’re doing”—the audience doesn’t experience a genuine representation of giggly, gossipy, tentatively curious schoolgirls. Rather, we see actors playing their parts, dutifully delivering their lines. As the play progresses, from schoolgirls to sisters to daughters, we continue to see and hear performers rather than the women they try bringing to life. Poor Box Productions’ rendition of Emotional Creature does, to its credit, make very real and useful attempts to contextualise the play for Indian audiences. We have no dearth of stories of violence against girls, and this play reminds us of several of the most brutal—or rather, most reported—incidents of the past few years. From the now-infamous gangrape of a physiotherapy student in Delhi in December 2012, to the less known rapes of young girl children, Emotional Creature forges a common ground, a common voice, between stories of violence across the world. Sadly though, not all attempts to make the script regionally relevant are as successful. In an attempt to incorporate ‘dancing for justice’—a central aspect of One Billion Rising, Ensler’s global campaign to end violence against women—actors break into a choreographed Bollywood dance routine. Poorly coordinated and excessively lengthy, audiences must sit through it in uncomfortable reminiscence of the wedding season just gone by. Visually, the performance is perplexing. Each scene or monologue is supplemented by a large projection across most of the set. Comprising a childlike image and the title of each monologue, these slides, apart from bearing the appearance of a rather hurriedly put together PowerPoint presentation, do a disservice to the audience’s experience of the play. By announcing the scene’s central message before it begins, the play deprives the audience of intrigue and surprise, even robbing itself in some cases of basic interest. As far as both the script and direction of Emotional Creature are con31 March 2014

cerned, its primary failing lies in its inability to sustain a world of its own; in its refusal to allow audiences to forget the medium and fully experience the message. Our disbelief remains unsuspended, intact.

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me in its thrall. In its richness of voice, its searing poignancy of language, her writing and her art have often crept into my own engagements with feminism and my various forays into writing. I so clearly remember my first ever experience of seeing The Vagina Monologues, a 17 year old in the back row of a school production, trying to look blasé but pulled hook line and sinker into the world of first-times before me. The first time an orgasm wasn’t confined to plastic porn; the first

ve Ensler’s work has always had

Emotional Creature is a war cry, calling on girls to reclaim their emotions; to stare down the insults of ‘cry baby’, ‘neurotic’ and ‘intense’; to reclaim their voices and speak in their own tongues time the word ‘cunt’ was not a boy’s locker-room insult; the first time I said the word—whispered, tentative—vagina. Over the years, I have seen the play performed several times, with different sets of people, including an entirely Marathi-speaking audience for a translated version. Each experience has been wrought with something new, something bold and altering. Watching Emotional Creature, I badly wanted to like it; I wanted it to be as perfect as her original Monologues. The foundation on which Emotional Creature was created is both compelling and necessary. In the introduction to her book of the same name— on which the play is almost entirely based—Ensler speaks to all the girls and young women she hopes will hear themselves within its pages: ‘This book is a call to listen to the voice inside you that might want something different,

that hears, that knows, the way only you can hear and know. It’s a call to your original girl self, to your emotional creature self, to move at your speed, to walk with your step, to wear your colour. It is an invitation to heed your instinct to resist war, or draw snakes, or speak to the stars.’ This call is brave and important in a world that demonises women for feeling too much, laughing too loud, sounding hysterical. That the word ‘hysteria’ comes from the Latin hystericus, ‘of the womb’, is telling of a way of thinking that reduces women to their organs; that sees their reproductive systems and bodies as inherently something to be controlled and contained. Disgust monitors the disgusting. These are the tenets young women grow up with: ‘Don’t shout. Don’t Talk. Clean. Scrub. Arrange. Don’t stand on the balcony. Don’t lose your virginity. Don’t look from the window. Clean. Scrub. Arrange.’ (From the monologue ‘Don’t’.) Emotional Creature is a valiant attempt—a war cry, if you will—to call on girls to reclaim their emotions; to stare down the insults of ‘cry-baby’, ‘neurotic’ and ‘intense’; to reclaim their voices and speak in their own tongues. Throughout literature and history, women’s voices have been deemed ‘too irrational’ to be taken seriously, too emotional. In her book, Ensler speaks to this silencing; she calls for a refusal. This message has not fared as well in its translation to theatre as a performance art. Rather than reinforcing these battle cries of reclamation, the script infantilises the girls it represents, reducing them to cardboard cutouts, to text on a page. Their lives are flattened, made unidimensional by the language that seeks to give them expression. They cannot escape the highly Westernised script; they do not speak on their own terms. I miss the unashamed orgasms of The Vagina Monologues, which even though obviously faked, felt real. Emotional Creature and its women skim the surface of a powerful and empowering message. The constraints of their medium, however, render their journeys merely skin deep. n open www.openthemagazine.com 59

science

big bang This term was coined by an English astronomer named Fred Hoyle on BBC radio in 1949. A critic of the ‘Big Bang’ theory of how the universe came into being, he’d used the term pejoratively

Open Mouth Contagion Some yawn more than others: why they do may lead researchers to a treatment for autism

Big Bang Evidence

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The first, a spontaneous yawn, occurs when someone is bored or exhausted. The second, a contagious yawn, does not begin until early childhood, and occurs only among humans and chimpanzees. This sort occurs in response to thinking about yawning, or, as ‘contagious’ suggests, seeing or hearing someone else yawn. So far, scientists have been unable to understand why contagious yawning occurs, or why some individuals are more susceptible to such yawns than others. Previous studies have suggested a link between contagious yawning and empathy, or the ability to understand another’s feelings. Those who suffer from autism or schizophrenia, it has been found, both of which involve impaired social skills, have fewer contagious yawns than others. It has also been thought that tiredness can contribute to contagious yawning. A new study suggests that contagious yawns have no link with empathy or tiredness; the only factor is age. People are less likely to yawn when others do as they get older. This study, conducted by a team of researchers from the Duke Center

here are two kinds of yawns.

for Human Genome Variation and published in the journal Plos One, is the most comprehensive look so far at factors that influence contagious yawns. As many as 328 healthy volunteers, put to a cognitive test with a comprehensive questionnaire that included measures of empathy, energy levels and sleepiness, were made to watch a three-minute video of people yawning. They had to record the number of times they yawned while watching the video. Researchers found that some individuals were less susceptible to contagious yawns, and, with age neutralised as a factor, there was no strong connection between contagious yawning and levels of empathy or tiredness. Age, it was found, was able to explain 8 per cent of the variation in contagious yawning. The researchers are examining whether the ability to catch yawns from other people is inherited, with the hope of addressing mental health disorders. Understanding the genes that might encode susceptibility to contagious yawning, they hope, could lead them to genes (or their variants) that are associated with schizophrenia and autism. n

According to the most accepted theory of how the universe began, an event called the ‘Big Bang’ occurred about 14 billion years ago. In a fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially. This theory has remained unproven, with evidence of an expanding universe (confirmed by ‘red shift’ light observations) taken as proxy proof. Now, a team of astronomers has detected gravitational waves or ripples in spacetime that are claimed to have been created just after the Big Bang. The astronomers scanned the sky for years with a telescope at the South Pole for a specific pattern of light waves within the faint microwave glow left over from the Big Bang. n

Benefits of Dark Chocolate

Does the consumption of dark chocolate have health benefits, as often claimed? According to a recent discovery by researchers at Louisiana State University, certain bacteria in the stomach gobble the chocolate and ferment it into anti-inflammatory compounds that are good for the heart. The cocoa powder in chocolate contains several antioxidants and a small amount of dietary fiber. Both components are poorly digested and absorbed, but when they reach the colon, microbes like lactic acid bacteria and Bifidobacteria feast on chocolate, producing compounds that are anti-inflammatory. When these compounds are absorbed by the body, they lessen the inflammation of cardiovascular tissue, reducing the risk of a stroke. n

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31 March 2014

tech&style

android This is Google’s user-interface for all kinds of smartphones, seen as a copy of what Apple pioneered exclusively for its iPhone. What Windows was to Apple’s Macintosh, Android is to Apple’s iOS

HP Slate 6 Voice Tab If large phones are your thing, this Android tablet is a good option gagandeep Singh Sapra Its finish is rather premium. Running a Quad Rs 22,999 Core 1.2GHz Marvel PXA1088 processor, and with 1 gigabyte of RAM, and loaded with Android 4.3, the phone manages to take on everything you throw at it—gaming is seamless, it manages multi -tasking easily and your apps load and get cracking quickly. It also has 16 gigabytes of onboard storage, which can be expanded by using a micro SD card of up to 64 gigabytes, offering you plenty of space for your videos, songs and documents. With its 1280x720 resolution, the IPS screen puts out some great pictures; only when you look at it closely do you realise that the screen is not fully hi-definition. The phone also features dual-front firing speakers, making this a great option for multimedia content. The phone weighs 160 gm and feels light in one’s pocket. But the screen is only six inches, which means it is inadequate as a content creation tool. As a consumption device to browse the internet, though, or check a few documents on the go, the Slate 6 does perform pretty well. It takes two SIM cards, and its battery life is long. I didn’t need to charge it till the end of a second day. It also features an FM radio, and offers a headphone jack and micro USB 2.0 port for charging and data sync. The device has a 5 mega-pixel camera with an LED flash at the back and a 2 mega-pixel front-facing camera. Both work well outdoors but—alas— not indoors. In a premium product, this is a let down. Still, if you like large phones that run Android, the HP Slate 6 Voice Tab is a great buy. n

Lenovo IdeaPad Z510 w

Rs 52,954

Stylish design, apart from topend features, is the USP of Lenovo’s Z510. Running on the 4th Generation Intel Core i5 Processor, with Windows 8.1 as its interface, the laptop also puts out great sound with it’s JBL Dolby Home Theater-certified speakers. The 15.66-inch screen is antiglare, and it has a VGA connector if you want to hook up this laptop to your TV set. This is also among the first laptops to offer a 1TB Hybrid SHDD, which is faster than regular hard disk drives. n

Asus ChromeBox

$179

P has had several attempts at making phones earlier, with its iPaqs which were my favourite, to its acquisition of Palm later, but with its third major attempt in the phone market, HP seems to have a winner on its hands—albeit with some shortcomings. I used its Slate 6 Voice Tab extensively over a three-week period before and after its launch to find out how it is, and here is my take. The moment you take the Slate 6 Voice Tab in your hand, you notice how nicely built it is. Its beautiful IPS display comes up with rich colours; with chrome all around its body and a shiny texture on its back panel, the device feels good in your hand.

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Roku and Apple TV may be the rage, but not everything is available on these platforms just yet. This is where the Asus Chromebox fits in—it runs on a 1.4 Ghz Celeron processor with 2 gigabytes of RAM and is primarily a small computer running a Chrome OS desktop. You can connect it with a monitor or to your television. Whatever works through a browser on your computer will work through the Chromebox, whether you want to stream matter from a website or use services like Netflix. A memory card reader and dual USB 3.0 ports allow you to watch content from external media. And there’s built-in wireless, so you don’t need to plug it into the LAN . n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

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CINEMA

habib faisal’s Indie origins Bewakoofiyaan writer Habib Faisal has scripted several recent Yash Raj releases, including the 2010 hit Band Baaja Baaraat. His directorial debut Ishaqzaade was a YRF production too, as will be his forthcoming Daawat-e-Ishq. Faisal’s filmography also features Electric Moon, a 1992 independent film written by Arundhati Roy and directed by Pradip Krishen

Bewakoofiyaan An affable romantic comedy that slips out of your mind minutes after you leave the hall ajit duara

o n scr een

current

3 Days to Kill Director McG cast Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfield,

Amber Heard

Score ★★★★★

, ann Khurrana Cast ayushm or po i ka kapoor, rish r asthana Director nupu

sonam

T

dy with three characters who could easily win popularity contests. The boy would win ‘Mr Congeniality’, the girl ‘Ms Agreeable’ and the girl’s father, with a bit of luck, ‘Mr Endearing’. Put together they give you a breezy, easyto-watch film that slips entirely out of your mind half an hour after seeing it. The sub-text of Bewakoofiyaan is the ongoing recession; about how thousands of jobs have been lost in India, particularly in vulnerable sectors like the aviation industry where Mohit (Ayushmann Khurrana) works. But you would never notice the seriousness of the subject, given its candy floss treatment in the film. Mohit is with an airline’s marketing department and earns a little less than his girlfriend, Mayera (Sonam Kapoor), who is an executive at a bank. This doesn’t seem to hurt his ego, but when he is suddenly and unexpectedly laid off, he flounders. He keeps looking for jobs in his area of expertise, before 62 open

his is an affable romantic come-

it dawns on him that he simply has to take what he gets. His rent is overdue, his bank balance is down and he starts borrowing money from his girlfriend. This is where the film could have turned interesting—had it focused on money as a conflict area between a couple; how it dampens romance and affects the man-woman equation. Instead, the movie shifts attention to Mayera’s father (Rishi Kapoor), an IAS officer about to retire, and his amusing—though exaggerated—cross examination of his prospective sonin-law. With all due respect to his performance, Rishi’s character is over written and cliched and distracts from real issues between the couple. Apart from one minor break-up scene in his car, when Mayera yells at Mohit about his irksome money niggling before she gets out and takes a rickshaw, writer Habib Faisal softpedals all discord. The result is an easy-come-easy-go film that passes you by. n

This film is a Franco-American production and Luc Besson is its story writer and one of its producers. Besson was once described as a pioneer of ‘Cinema du look’, an amusingly deprecatory description of his style, one that favours ‘the look’ over the content. Though shot fairly competently in Paris, the only real ‘look’ that 3 Days to Kill seems to favour is the good looking Kevin Costner. The movie wants to show how a tough CIA agent called Ethan Renner (Costner), diagnosed with cancer, wants to get back to family life and express regret to his wife and teenage daughter for being an absent husband and father. But it goes about this task with a peculiar sense of humour. When his daughter asks him on the cell phone to get hold of a recipe for spaghetti sauce, Ethan first confirms that the gangster he is beating up at that moment is Italian, then transfers the call to him so that the hoodlum can dictate how his mother’s special sauce is made. This may appear funny to Europeans, but leaves the rest of the world a little cold. Non-stop action, interspersed with bad jokes and a cliched perspective on American family life, makes you wonder why a star like Costner agreed to act in this film at all. n AD

31 March 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

An Unlikely Threesome

It’s hard to imagine what Nawazuddin Siddiqui could possibly be doing in a Salman Khan film, but the Gangs of Wasseypur star is in fact currently shooting with the muscled action star for producer Sajid Nadiadwala’s directorial debut Kick. To be fair, it isn’t just Nawaz. Even Randeep Hooda has a significant part in the movie. These aren’t the sort of actors you’d typically expect to turn up in Salman Khan starrers, given that these films are mostly mindless action-comedies that only serve to build on the superstar’s existing popularity, and not necessarily tell engaging, credible stories. But one hears Sajid offered Nawaz a sizeable paycheck to accept the film’s chief negative role, whereas Randeep was seduced by the fact that he’d been promised a parallel role to Salman’s (ha!)—he’s the third angle of a romantic triangle that has Jacqueline Fernandez and Salman as well. Unit hands have revealed that Nawaz looks perpetually out of his depth on the sets, while Randeep has managed to strike up a warm friendship with his superstar co-actor, who tends to enthrall the crew with jokes and banter in between shots.

Kangana is nevertheless being cautious in her choices, she says, seeking out “only the best roles”. While she had already said ‘yes’ to Raanjhanaa director Aanand L Rai’s Tanu Weds Manu 2 (opposite R Madhavan again) months ago, Sujoy’s film is the only new project she appears to have signed. A self-admitted ‘fan’ of Vidya’s, Kangana doesn’t seem perturbed by the fact that she was the second choice for the movie, or that it may be forever referred to as ‘the film Vidya couldn’t do’. The actress has apparently asked Sujoy for a few weeks to prepare for the part—so she can get under the skin of the character, which she says is unlike anything she has done so far.

Weight Throwing Contest

Passing the Torch

Less than eight weeks to go until filming was to begin on Kahaani director Sujoy Ghosh’s next, his leading lady Vidya Balan has dropped out of the movie, reportedly citing health reasons. Industry sources reveal that the actress may be pregnant, and has been advised against doing intense physical roles, thereby completely ruling out Sujoy’s action thriller that is once again set in Kolkata. But far from having created a rift between filmmaker and muse, turns out Vidya has been recommending possible replacements for her role, which she claims she was excited to play. There is news now that Queen star Kangana Ranaut will replace Vidya in the film, having committed to the project as soon as she heard a script narration. Having received, in her own words, “dozens of offers” since the recent release of Queen, 31 March 2014

Organisers of a Bollywood awards show that’s held on foreign shores annually are currently fielding calls from stars who’re making unreasonable demands in exchange for attending the show. One diva has reportedly asked for 35 VIP seats to be reserved for her guests to attend the show, and her manager balked when the organisers sent her a bill for the tickets. A male B-lister has asked for free hotel stay for a few days in another city while in transit on his way back to Mumbai. But it’s a young actor best known for his comic performances who has shown the most grace. He has apparently asked the organisers to book him and his wife onward to another holiday after the awards show, and has entrusted them with hotel and flight arrangements, all the while insisting he’d pay for the personal trip himself. The actor has told them he wants to assure his wife a good time, and he’s happy to pick up the tab. That’s a nice change from the promising young star who has asked that his parents and siblings be flown with him to the awards show venue where he’s already being paid a fat fee for a live performance. Informed that the cost of their flight tickets and hotel stay will be deducted from what they owe him by way of his performance fee, his managers reportedly threw a hissy fit. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

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The Sacred and the Profane

by ro n n y s e n

Holi 2014, Varanasi.

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31 March 2014