FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK www.theindianopinion.co.in THE TEAM Founders: Aman Charles Luke, Manchit Mahajan, Poorva Gupta, Subhashish Bhadra Interns: Seerat Kaur, Vibhuti Singh Consultant: Rahul Jain Logo: Samriddhi Gupta
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS EDITION
Dr. Aravind Ganesh Aravind is a neurology residentphysician, of Indian origin, who lived in the Middle East for several years before immigrating to Canada as a teenager. He is also a clinical researcher, public health advocate, and a Rhodes scholar, currently working at the University of Oxford's Manchit Mahajan Centre for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia. His healthcare column, “What's up, Doc?” appears biweekly in the Calgary Herald.
Pranav Gupta Pranav is a Research Assistant at Lokniti, a research programme based at Centre for the study of developing societies. He has completed his undergraduate studies in Economics from St. Stephen's College
Poorva Gupta Poorva Gupta works with a leading impact investing fund. A graduate of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, she is a theater enthusiast and is also a closeted singer.
Subhashish Bhadra An M.Phil. Economics candidate at the University of Oxford, Subhashish is a former management consultant. Now a Rhodes Scholar, he is interested in politics and history. He is also a part-time novelist and poet.
Swati Thakur Swati is a supposed economist, proven day-dreamer, self-certified poet. She is a PGP student at IIM Lucknow and is currently interning at a Management Consulting firm
Narendra Modi has already built a reputation for being the most globe-trotting Prime Minister in recent history. From Madison Garden to the Sydney Olympic Park, Modi has been mobilizing the expatriate Indian community. Yet, conspicuous by its absence in his travel plans is the Middle East - home to one of the largest Indian communities outside of India. Outlook magazine recently covered the situation of Indians in the Middle East, and the glaring lack of interest from the new Modi dispensation. It insinuated that three reasons are driving this indifference. Firstly, that most of the Indians in the Middle East come from Kerala, a state in which the BJP has little political base. Secondly, most of those who are from North India - the BJP bastion - are Muslims, a constituency to which the BJP has not traditionally appealed. Thirdly, as the poorer cousins of their more prosperous counterparts in the West, these NRIs have lower incomes to contribute to the Modi election juggernaut. Yet, precisely these reasons make it important for us to focus on this large and ignored community. Racism, in itself an often insidious institution, is compounded manifold when correlated with economic deprivation. In a world where even Mittal Steel’s takeover of Arcelor wasn’t free of accusations of racism, the plight of the hapless Indian in Dubai is unimaginable. The narrative of racism has often been built around the colors black and white. The story of a people exploited as slaves, and the challenges that they continue to face, has been the centrepiece of this debate. However, there is clearly a spectrum between ‘black’ and ‘white’ - not least the ‘brown’ and the ‘yellow’ that makes up the bulk of the human population. India, as home to the largest number of poor people globally, will be especially susceptible to racism as increasingly prosperous Indians - still probably poorer than their western counterparts - turn abroad for better economic opportunities. The challenges faces by Indians living abroad must therefore concern us. We must also look within. It is important to talk about racism in the Indian context because of how viciously and rigidly it divides our society. The North Indian characterization of everything south of Mumbai as ‘Madras’ reflects not only our greater tolerance and affinity for crude humor, but also deep-seated notions of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ The controversy over Aishwarya Rai’s Kalyan Jewelers advertisement only highlights how far we really need to go to get rid of our skin color preferences. The interaction of the ‘mainland’ with the North East, meanwhile, reveals the ugly side of the divisions in our society. Very few Indians would be able to name all the eight states of the North East, leave alone their major cities or religions or cultural beliefs. Residents of the North East also often face the greatest discrimination in the housing market. Occurrences in the North East rarely make national headlines, and a very-Punjabi Priyanka Chopra is roped in to play the lead in Mary Kom, only showing that even the otherwise secular Bollywood is racially handicapped. If we want to succeed as a nation-state, these divisions must be erased. Quickly. The Indian Opinion seeks to keep alive the discussion around race, and bring to the fore any issues of race-based discrimination involving Indians, both abroad and within the country.
INSIDE
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AAP: An Uncommon Victory
Once thought of as finished politically, the AAP made a stunning comeback in Delhi. What changed? What does this mean for Kejriwal? And most importantly, is Modi Mania over?
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Islam and I
A recent study said that by 2050, India will once again have the world’s largest Muslim population. But what does it mean to be a Muslim in a Hindu - majority nation?
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A World Cup Without Sachin
The World Cup fever gripped India in March, but did the absence of a much - beloved generation of cricketers take the flavour away from an otherwise scintillating performance?
COVER STORY
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An Indian’s Guide to Racial Hierarchy
Even as racism remains a daily occurrence for the widespread Indian diaspora globally, India’s worst kept secret - of a nation deeply divided by race - continues unabated.
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Of Roasts and Freedoms
At a time when Charlie Hebdo was discussed globally, India dealt with its own freedom of speech controversy - the AIB roast. The debate taught us much about ourselves.
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An Indian’s Guide to Racial Hierarchy Aravind Ganesh The man fell quickly, easily clearing fifty storeys before hitting the ground. At first, I must confess, I didn’t notice him. Looking out at the skyscraper rising in the distance on that burning hot summer’s day in Dubai so many years ago and miles away, I remember being slightly blinded by the glare from the numerous panes of glass that had already been placed halfway up the side of the building. And I remember being slightly mesmerized by the whole endeavour. As Dubai’s PR machine knows only too well, there’s definitely something romantic about the whole idea of a brilliant city rising out of what used to be desert just a few decades ago. From where I was standing, you could see the several dozen labourers scattered across the face of that glass and metal beast, mostly without any safety helmets or boots, of course. A few of them were working on the very edge of the topmost storey – and that’s when one of them just fell. As he fell, he must have had a bird’s eye view of the awesome spread of buildings that is Dubai, built with the sweat and blood of hundreds upon thousands of labourers like him from the Indian subcontinent. “Labourers” being a euphemistic expression for slaves. Yes slaves, because these workers probably hadn’t been paid in several months, some of them in years. They couldn’t go back home, as their employers held on to their passports. They couldn’t strike. I wonder what the falling man felt as he was
trucked back each night from the so-called City of Gold, to the labour camps outside the city, which the workers ironically call Sonapur. Their own nightmarish version of the City of Gold – dozens of workers crammed into unsanitary accommodations that go unventilated in the sweltering heat … hovels that the Sheikhs of the Middle East wouldn’t even have their dogs live in. Sometimes I wonder if he fell by accident, or if he actually jumped. After all, an Indian labourer commits suicide about once every three days in Dubai. But that would be an insane choice – wouldn’t it? He must have realized that we wouldn’t read anything about his death in the local papers. He must have known that word of his death probably wouldn’t even reach his family. Did he, even for a moment, think that his family would get the money he was owed? He couldn’t have. No, as those storeys he built passed him by, he must have cursed that treacherous land. Cursed its inhabitants, living either in ignorance or denial, as yet another slave bit the dust. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. Indeed, we read nothing about it in the papers. I heard a mother crying on the local Malayalam-language radio a few months later, saying that she hadn’t heard from her son in a long time and feared he was dead. I shuddered, but then realized it probably wasn’t the falling man’s mother. Dead Indians are a dime a dozen, after all. And by then, at the age of ten, I knew my place in the Middle Eastern hierarchy. It was one tier above the labour class, a heterogeneous “sweet spot” of sorts
occupied by everyone of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or Filipino origin who had the good fortune of not being labourers. We didn’t have to live in Sonapur, for one, and we did get paid. It was also easy to remember that you weren’t in the top two tiers (Local Arabs or “Emiratis”, and White People) because you could see helpful indicators everywhere. For example, each month, we’d be reminded that we were only brown when my father would get paid one third of what his Emirati and White colleagues made, doing the same work. Each week, when we went to the bank, we’d remember our place because there would always be a separate line for us non-Emiratis or “expats” where we could wait longer for poorer service. Each day, I’d remember my place because I couldn’t go to the same school as a “local” child but had to go to an “Indian” school where, ghetto-style, we could get an education, with government officials occasionally stepping in to helpfully censor our books. Tearing out pages in our history book that had images of idols or temples, for example. If I wanted a postsecondary education in the country we had built, I didn’t have to worry, because I could always pay three times more than the local kids and get a degree. And if we sometimes got the odd feeling that things were unfair, we’d again be helpfully reminded of our place – like that Indian man last year who was arrested for filming an Emirati publicly beating an Indian driver and calling him an animal. The Emirati didn’t face any consequences, of course. It has been ten years since I left the UAE. Sometimes, I wonder, could things have changed? But then I come across painful articles like Johann Hari’s biting piece on “The Dark Side of Dubai”, and realize that the racial hierarchy is alive and well, and that the slavers are still winning. *** My Indian counterparts reading this might be deeply offended by the idea of an overt racial/ethnic hierarchy like this existing in the 21st century. But it’s an odd reaction, considering how comfortable we are with such hierarchies in our own culture. After all, I became aware of my darker skin tone and weird mother-tongue as a Madrasi long before I became aware of my place in the Middle East, thanks to helpful reminders from my North Indian brothers and sisters. Still, I was eternally grateful that I wasn’t Black – that way I didn’t have to worry about people constantly calling me “blacky”, trying to buy drugs or sex from me, or randomly beating me up. And I always knew that I was better than the funny looking people in North-East India, with their South East Asian features, like that one Assamese kid in school whom we called “chinky” – it’s like they’re begging for us to pick on them. Funny how those people no longer want to be a part of India. Sure, we Indians have had the benefit of 200 years of British imperialism to remind us of how terrible our skin colour is and how barbaric that makes us.
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Perhaps that left some deep marks of insecurity upon us. But we also have the benefit of our caste system, which has been around even longer, has deep connotations of skin colour and race within it, and endures not only within Hinduism but also in Indian Christianity and Islam. In fact, genetic studies reveal a fraying of Indian bloodlines that began 1900 years ago, around the time that the forbidding of inter-caste marriage is thought to have become codified. We are veritable experts at segregating ourselves and knowing our place. So for those of us who struggle to navigate unfavourable racial/ethnic hierarchies abroad, like those overtly manifested in the Middle East, perhaps a trip back home is all we need to help us understand. *** It’s a typically warm afternoon in Kochi, Kerala and I’m lounging in the living room with my mother, who (hopefully in jest) is looking over the matrimonial section in a local English-language magazine, which proudly lists dozens of young local women seeking a suitor. As with all things Indian, the column is meticulous in its attention to detail. Each post in the column tells you everything you need to know about the girl – her age, her education, her father’s contact, the alignment of key planetary bodies at the time of her birth (that’s a whole other story)… and, of course, her Colour, or as the classier ones put it, her Complexion. In a beautiful reflection of everything that is wrong with Indian self-conception, almost every woman in the list is apparently “Fair”, “Very Fair”, or, hilariously, “White”. The rest are apologetically disclosed as being “Wheatish”, “Bit Dark”, or “Dark… generous dowry available“. In a beautiful caricature of itself, the section is followed by a full-page ad that depicts the Bollywood superstar Shah-Rukh Khan, presenting a container of “Fair and Handsome” cream to a wannabe youth – presumably so that he can become some kind of Caucasian chick-magnet, if one is to believe the ad. Preach on, SRK, preach on. The references can be found on our website, www.theindianopinion.co.in
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AAP: An Uncommon Victory Pranav Gupta Much has been said and written in the past two weeks about the Aam Aadmi Party’s massive victory in the 2015 Assembly Elections in Delhi. It is indeed important to analyze such victories as one must know what led to this wave (the term might be an understatement for this victory though). This article presents answers to some common questions and claims regarding the Delhi verdict. I use both aggregate data and survey data from a post poll survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 24 constituencies and 120 polling stations in the state. How big is the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory? While it is indeed a rare occurrence that a party manages to win more than 95 percent of the seats in the legislature, what is really historic is the party’s high vote share. The seats though could well be a reflection of the idiosyncrasies of the first past the post system. What is really stunning about the AAP’s victory in Delhi is its 54.3 percent vote share in what started as a clear three way contest. What makes the victory even bigger is the massive turnaround compared to the Lok Sabha Elections. While no one expected the BJP to replicate its Lok Sabha performance of 60 assembly segment leads, it was unimaginable that it would come down to its 2013 vote share. It is a matter of outlook, as to whether the BJP should find it worrying that it has come down to its 2013 support or comforting that it hasn’t fallen below
that. What the party must introspect, is why it hasn’t been able to hold on to the voters who had drifted away from the Congress and voted for it in the Lok Sabha Elections. The steady decline of the Congress in Delhi has only helped the Aam Aadmi Party. The party has managed to enter the record books with a victory which has been surpassed only by the SDF in Sikkim. Unlike the hill state, where the opposition is barely present and the SDF has been ruling for multiple decades, AAP has been able to defeat the two principal national parties. Who voted for AAP? As noted political scientists Suhas Palshikar and Sanjay Kumar argue, there is indeed a flattening of social cleavages in verdicts like these, where one party takes an overwhelming lead over the others. However it is interesting to look at the voting patterns of various social groups, since relative differences continue to exist. AAP’s massive mandate is a reflection of its success in replacing the Congress as the ‘catch-all’party in the state. The party has been able to build an umbrella social coalition both in terms of social groups and economic classes of the voters. Data from the CSDS survey shows that the party dominated among all social groups except the Brahmins, Baniyas and Jats. Even among these the party managed a considerable proportion of votes. The Congress was placed third among all communities except the Muslims. The Muslims in Delhi, who were supporting the Congress till 2013 have now shifted en masse to the Aam Aadmi
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Table 1: Party Performance in Delhi, 2013 - 15
2013 Seats AAP 28 BJP+ 33 Congress 8
2014 Votes Seats* 29.5 10 34.0 60 24.6 0
2015 Votes Seats 32.9 67 46.4 3 15.2 0
Votes 54.3 32.7 9.7
* - assembly segment leads Party. Claims that the vote of 2015 represents a class divide seem misplaced as AAP had a narrow lead over the BJP even among the rich. While the party led by more than 40 percentage points among the poor, this narrowed to just 4 points among the upper class. Class was indeed a factor but not important enough for one to declare that Delhi has witnessed a class divide. AAP has managed an unprecedented level of consolidation among the marginalized groups – poor, Dalits and religious minorities, while making serious inroads into the BJP’s traditional upper caste and upper class support base. AAP was also able to mobilize a greater proportion of younger voters as compared to the BJP. This gave the party a decisive edge over opponents, similar to the Modi wave in 2014. The party’s vote share among the youngest age group (18-22 years) is much higher than its overall vote share. The gap between BJP and AAP changes from 27 percent among the youngest age group to just less than 10 points among the older voters (See Table 4). What factors led to the AAP victory? One can probably argue that AAP’s victory in Delhi reinforces the importance of the lessons learnt from the 2014 Modi campaign. The pillars of the AAP’s victory in Delhi were similar to those of the Modi campaign. The party had a strong leader, ran a long sustained campaign which peaked at the right moment and most importantly, was able to set the agenda. Similar to the Lok Sabha Elections, this election turned into a referendum about one leader – Arvind Kejriwal. The Aam Aadmi Party did not contest any other assembly election and concentrated solely on Delhi. This allowed the party to start their campaign much before other parties and helped them in laying a foundation. By the time the elections were officially announced, Kejriwal had already addressed people in most parts of the city. In terms of overall reach of the campaign, more than 80 percent of the voters said that the campaign of both the BJP and the AAP was visible. The Congress on the other hand was almost absent, as half of the city’s electorate claimed that the party’s posters and hoardings were hardly/not visible. AAP and BJP workers managed to directly contact and speak to more than 40 percent of the voters in the city. The Delhi election probably shows how economic resources only help to a limited extent in running a campaign. The message that parties take to the voters is clearly more important. Had financial resources been the sole determinant, then surely the BJP could not have been defeated in this election.
The main factor that helped the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi was Kejriwal’s trump over Kiran Bedi in the leadership battle. Close to one third of the Delhi voters claimed that the CM candidate was the most important consideration for them while voting. Kejriwal’s popularity was massive, as more than half the city’s electorate wanted to see him as the next Chief Minister of the city. Similar to Modi in the Lok Sabha Elections, Kejriwal was a major pull factor for AAP’s triumph. 43 percent of AAP voters said that they would have voted differently had Kejriwal not been the party’s CM candidate. The same criteria for Modi as PM in the Lok Sabha Election, was relatively lower at 33 percent and significantly lower for Kiran Bedi at less than one fifth (18 percent). Also, more than 60 percent of the traditional BJP voters thought that the party had ignored and disregarded other leaders by declaring Bedi as the CM candidate. The above data clearly shows that the Bedi move which was considered a master stroke by many, clearly failed to enthuse the voters. However, I am of the belief that the party had no option but to play the Bedi gamble. More than half the voters said that they had decided who to vote for even before the campaign began. AAP had a healthy lead even among these voters and the party’s campaigning in the last quarter of 2014 had successfully created a momentum that they could build on. The BJP clearly had few options to save the election and had to do something out of the box. In this election, it was clearly the Aam Aadmi Party which was able to set the agenda. The party’s promise of cheaper electricity and water appealed to a large section of voters. Price rise and corruption were the biggest issues that affected the voters. Concerns about price rise among the lower classes reflect a worry about the cost of living and diminishing real incomes. Table 2: Vote by Caste and Community
Brahmin Punjabi Khatri Rajput Vaishya/Jain Other Upper Jat Gujjar/Yadav Other OBC Dalit Muslim Sikh
Congress 8 13 9 7 7 5 7 9 6 20 8
BJP 49 33 44 60 39 59 35 29 20 2 34
AAP 41 52 44 31 48 31 53 60 68 77 57
5 The Delhi election defeat marks a halt of the Modi – Shah Ashwamedha but the question remains – is it a localized mandate or a negative appraisal of the central government. Data from the CSDS survey reveals that two thirds of the respondents were satisfied with Modi’s work as the Prime Minister. Interestingly, only three out of ten respondents felt that Modi should be held responsible for the inciting remarks made by fringe Hindutva elements. The proportion of respondents who felt that relations between people of different religions had improved or deteriorated in the last few months in the city was equal (25 percent). Thus, it would be incorrect to say that the Delhi verdict was a vote against Modi or the central government. Thinking ahead, one needs to ascertain whether this verdict holds any wider repercussions. Whether it would lead to any larger political changes? Firstly, the verdict has broken the myth around Shah-Modi’s invincibility. For the BJP, this verdict should come as a realization before Bihar. Table 3: Vote by Economic Class
Congress Poor 9 Lower 10 Middle 13 Upper Middle/Rich 6
BJP+ 22 29 35 43
AAP 66 57 51 47
The party must realize that a dimension of ‘Anti-BJP’ politics is also a consolidation of the ‘Anti-BJP’ vote. This means that the party would need a Lok Sabhalike consolidation of support to take on the challengers. The party must also realise the importance of running a sustained campaign. Secondly, the inability of the Congress to open its account and dismal vote share means that the party might find it extremely difficult to make a comeback in Delhi politics. The party has lost deposits in 63 of the 70 seats that it had contested. Thirdly, for the Aam Aadmi Party it erases all questions over the survival of the party – the party will now be a permanent fixture on the Indian political landscape. But the real challenge for the party is to shift from campaign mode to governance mode. During governance, the party would often have to make tradeoffs and choices. The Delhi victory, however, offers them an opportunity for national expansion. Table 4: Vote by Age Group
18-22 Years 23-25 Years 26-35 Years 36- 45 Years 46- 55 Years 56 and above
Congress 10 8 6 7 11 16
BJP 26 32 31 34 34 36
AAP 63 57 60 54 50 45
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Islam and I Subhashish Bhadra A few months back, I experienced communal fear for the first time in my life. Until then, I was brought up in a cocoon with only upper-middle class Hindu, Christian and Jain friends. That day, the realisation of the strained relationship between Hindus and Muslims dawned upon me. The right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP of Narendra Modi had just stormed into power at the center, but at the fringes of India, the party remained weak. Along the entire eastern border, from Kanyakumari to Aizawl, the BJP’s presence was minimal. But the BJP had tasted blood in West Bengal, having won its first Lok Sabha seat without an alliance partner. A BJP meeting took place that month near my house, located in a suburb of Kolkata. After the meeting, several members who attended it were rounded up by the residents of nearby villages (all Muslim-dominated), beaten up and threatened. The villagers, obviously, were supporters of the Trinamool Congress. My interaction with Islam can be said to be both fleeting and profound. I often reflect on how I had no Muslim friends while growing up, and knew only a handful of Muslims in school. Come to college, and I cannot recollect a single Muslim in my class. However, this never made sense to me because Delhi’s cultural heritage is mostly Islamic. Most of our famous landmarks, like the Humayun’s Tomb and Qutab Minar, are Islamic monuments. Our cuisine is an amalgamation of Indian and foreign traditions, perfected during Mughal era. Ask any Delhiite to speak Hindi, and what you’ll get is an amalgamation of Hindi and Urdu, which itself is an amalgamation of Hindi and Persian. And yet, beyond these indirect
influences, Islam was noticeable in my life by its absence. This case of the ‘missing Muslim’ always puzzled me. In an insightful article, Gazala Jamil sheds some light on what could have caused this. If we start with the assumption that Hindus avoid areas with Muslim presence, it is obvious that this would result in spatial segregation of Muslims and Hindus. If to this, we add the assumption that Muslims are poorer, on an average, then these areas would generally have less access to amenities and would be more prone to crime and lawlessness. Finally, if we assume that Muslims do not have much political voice, we end up at a dead-end for the Indian Muslim. Unfortunately, the first two assumptions are true, and with the meteoric rise of the BJP under Modi, the third might soon come true. The Sachar Committee (2006) identified Muslims as being amongst the poorest socio-religious communities, better only than SCs and STs. There could be several reasons for this anomaly, a few being (1) the migration of well-off Muslims to Pakistan during the partition, leaving behind a community that is poorer, on an average (2) employment of Muslims in the traditional industries that suffered most against automated industries (3) lack of employment opportunities due to poor educational status, aggravated by cultural or economic factors. Whatever be the reason, the advent of capitalism can only be expected to strengthen this process. Capitalism, which exacerbates the difference between the have’s and the have not’s, will feed off the historical disadvantages suffered by the Indian Muslim.
7 My worry however, lies elsewhere. Muslims are no different from any other (historically) disadvantaged community that inhabits India. That is precisely the role of the state – to temper these differences. However, partially due to the phenomenon of the ‘missing Muslim’, the true nature of this community is lost on the general population and stereotypes and myths abound – making effective interventions difficult. Take the myth of an explosion in Muslim population, being either due to higher fertility or due to immigration from Bangladesh, which is very often part of electoral rhetoric. Facts, instead, paint a less alarming picture. While Muslims do indeed have a higher fertility rate than Hindus (which is expected due to their poorer economic conditions), it is declining more rapidly and is converging towards the national rate. In any case, the proportion of Muslims in India, currently at around 14%, is expected to stabilise well below 20%. Even in the eventual ‘steady state’, India will be a Hindu-majority nation with 75% Hindus. Moreover, while immigration does remain a problem, especially in the border states of West Bengal and Assam, it must be noted that the 2011 proportion of Muslims in India is exactly equal to that predicted by the Sachar Committee nearly half a decade earlier – implying that immigration, while real, is almost insignificant in the larger picture. In several social indicators, such as the sex ratio, Muslims easily outperform Hindus. Finally, to return to a fact that I often point out – Bangladesh, a Muslim majority nation with one-third the per-capita income of India, outperforms India in nearly every single educational and health-related metric. It is banal demographics, rather than a religious ‘conspiracy’ that is steering the community in India. Clearly, therefore, the truth about Indian Muslims needs winder dissemination.
The tragedy of the Indian Muslim, however, is the politics of the sub-continent. The Indian Muslim has never been above suspicion, even in the early idealistic days of our nation. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, widely regarded as a staunch nationalist, harboured an evident suspicion of Muslims, whether justified or unjustified. Because the Indian state defined secularism as active (and equitable) engagement with every religion, successive ruling governments of the Congress have oscillated between mild pro-Muslim policies to dangerous liaisons with the Hindu right. The end result being that communalism is the worst-kept secret of Indian polity, and even the most ‘secular’ party will have to acknowledge and participate in the debate on religion. Even the most recent landslide victory of AAP in Delhi was described by a Union Minister as a ‘polarisation of a particular community’ despite the fact that AAP’s vote share (54%) was much higher than the proportion of Muslims in Delhi (13%). Politics, however, is changing the very nature of the community in India. The fact that Muslims are most severely impacted by politics in India is undeniable. In his book ‘Votes and violence: electoral competition and ethnic riots in India’, Steven Wilkinson establishes that proximity to elections sharply increases the likelihood of a communal flare-up, whereas factors such as the ratio of Muslims in the population and economic competition are not statistically significant. Riots have been used to consolidate both Hindus and Muslims. Communal tension is also seen to cause other socio-economic changes. For example, more men start wearing skull caps or praying at mosques more often after a communal incident. While this is not worrisome in itself, the idea that a community has to turn inward in its search for security is disturbing. I share President Obama’s views that India will thrive, as long as it is not split on religious lines. Sometimes, I feel despondent. I fear that my beloved nation will become an unstable amalgamation of different communities – linguistic, ethnic, cultural and most of all, religious. I also fear that if India, to the extent that it is an unprecedented experiment in democracy and liberal values, fails, then it will be a major setback to global peace. But then, when I sit with my Pakistani friend at Oxford, I realise that a man’s value system is often independent of religion, and driven more by culture and language. I am optimistic, that with greater interaction between the two communities, India can and will one day emerge as a leading example of religious harmony.
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A World Cup without Sachin Swati Thakur I am an average Indian, born in the early 90s, belonging to a generation that has grown up on a staple diet of players such as Laxman, Ganguly, Kumble, Dravid and Sachin. I recognize names like Azharuddin and Irfan Pathan much better than Ravindra Jadeja. Like millions of people in my country, I have also loved and lived cricket for a fairly long time, and cricket for me has been synonymous with these names. The change started in 2008 with Kumble and Ganguly playing their last matches. I was silently thankful to Dhoni, when he respectfully allowed Ganguly to lead the side one final time in the last few overs of his last match. I was one of those who bid a tearful adieu to Kumble as he gave his farewell speech. I watched sadly as a man of Dravid’s stature lost himself in the sea of politics that Indian cricket had become. But, that’s a discussion for another day. The point here is, I was there – witnessing it all, living it all, albeit sadly. The change was inevitable and the nation was able to bear the departure of each big name in the team only by placing an even greater hope on the so-called “senior” players, who were Sehwag, Yuvraj and Sachin, amongst a few others. Yes, the last name bore the heaviest burden – he had been playing for over two decades by the time the 2011 World Cup rolled around, his contemporaries had retired several years before him, yet he continued shouldering a billion hopes on his 5 foot 5 inch frame. His game was questioned as critics passed verdicts
on how he was unable to give his best any longer. The world made predictions, gave suggestions, on when he should retire, yet deep down, no Indian wanted him to retire. Deep down in our hearts, we were hoping that he’d stay on forever. Most of us couldn’t imagine Indian cricket without Sachin, and we didn’t want to either. We wanted our impending dream of winning the World Cup to come true. He made 5 World Cup appearances, coming agonizingly close to the coveted trophy in 2003. 2011 was different, it was special. The World Cup was being jointly hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the side was strong. There were mixed feelings associated with it, as Sachin, one of the many great men who defined Indian cricket for over 2 decades was on the verge of making history. He owed it to us, the team perhaps owed it to him. We brought the Cup home and I still get goosebumps when I think about our final victory, the crazy celebrations, the relief, the euphoria. The pictures of Sachin on his team-mates’ shoulders, who dedicated the victory to him, are still embedded in the memories of every one of his fans. There were other milestones, the century of centuries for example. As the hoopla over the victory died down, obsession over this milestone began. It took a painful year of criticism but Sachin did deliver in the end. It was a moment that was revered; it was another moment that was awaited. He had done something
9 that possibly will never be matched, at least not anytime soon. Finally the moment arrived when Sachin declared his retirement. The team India, that had played all through the 90s, for the most part of the first decade of the 21st century, was now gone. Even the torchbearers of the next brigade like Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj got lost somewhere on the way. Though Yuvraj made a commendable comeback after battling cancer and won us the Cup, yet he couldn’t stay long. It is time for another World Cup – the team looks alien to me. I saw the interesting commercial about our intense rivalry with Pakistan, and the unbeaten record that we have against them. I had sort of given up on cricket after Sachin – my excitement mellowed down with the God of cricket retiring. The World Cup advertisement reminded me of another fact – this is the first time I was watching an Indian World Cup match against Pakistan without Sachin. I tried to resist and didn’t watch the match when it started at 9 am. But then the Indian in me won over the fan who couldn’t let go of the old timers. I did watch the match, rued every Indian wicket, and cursed every extra that an Indian bowler gave away. I had an exam to write that day and I remember the impatience with which all of us wrote it – eager to complete it and go watch the match. The madness was back – maybe not in equal measure, but it was there. Kohli hit a century and I begrudgingly applauded him. I realized this is now the future of Indian cricket – and the Indian population will eventually accept it or already has. Yes, there are loyalists, there are people like me whose craziness has lost its sheen, but the Indian in us keeps the hope alive. Yes – the World Cup is not the same, it will never be, as is evident from the countless banners displayed in the stadium during the Indo-Pak match. Yes, we are still looking for Sachin, trying to find him in the World Cup logo, happy that he is associated with the World Cup as its ambassador this year. But, will it be enough? It has to be, for the dusk has arrived on those shining careers and Indian cricket is looking at a new dawn, even if a bit subdued. We have entered the tournament as defending champions, hoping that we exit with the same title, with the new brigade taking on the mantle.
10
Of Roasts and Freedoms Poorva Gupta
It feels like freedom of expression is the flavour of the season. To the extent that there are at least two headlines that you end up reading every day that talk either about how the tenth celebrity refused to comment on the AIB Roast or how the seventeenth journalist you follow tweeted and got flak for being weird (for lack of a better word to describe most twitter controversies). There are literally so many views being expressed and so many counters being presented on each of the views expressed that people like me at least have lost track of what the actual issue being debated is. The problem isn’t that people choose to express their opinions. Given the title of this magazine, it is clear that would be far from any issue I could ever have, but the real problem is that it appears as if most people seem to be expressing their opinions more for the sake of inclusion into an existing cultural debate, than to express any original ideas. And so, I ask myself a few questions with regards to the debate on freedom of expression (and in several cases, the lack thereof), the first being, what do we feel we lack as far as our fundamental right to express ourselves is concerned? Where do we draw the line between freedom of expression and ensuring we don’t hurt someone’s feelings in the process? When we talk about hurting someone’s feelings, how do we decide which person is getting hurt “rationally and understandably” and who on the other hand is being hyper-sensitive regarding a not-so-sensitive topic? Which subjects can we classify as touchy and
controversial and which can we decide must remain in the realm of mundaneness? These are all fairly subjective questions and I don’t believe anyone should take the liberty of presuming that they can sufficiently or necessarily qualify them objectively. Having set the premise of this article, I must mention now that I completely and wholeheartedly believe in the freedom of expression- through art, music, theatre, cinema, comedy, literature, sarcasm and even twitter, and not simply because as a thinking woman I’ve been stereotyped to ideally be fighting for everyone’s rights (except men’s of course) but because I actually do and because if you’ve grown up as a fiercely opinionated individual with an unusually sarcastic and mildly acerbic manner of expressing yourself, you will value freedom of expression to crazy extents. When I first saw the AIB Roast trailer I was slightly taken aback, primarily because Indian media doesn’t witness such profanity regularly (at least not without censoring beeps). I’m fairly averse to most expletives because they are directly addressed to women and I find it difficult to not take them literally, in spite of most of my guy friends trying to explain that they are cursing the “circumstance” and not the individual in question (not saying my female friends don’t abuse at all, just a bit less). When I actually watched the Roast, I was almost disappointed because expectations had been high and whether it was because of the heavy editing or simply the fact that I was watching it on
11 YouTube instead of a live auditorium buzzing with comic timing, it somehow didn’t seem much more than a barrage of repetitive jokes with the actors surprisingly doing a much better job at making us laugh than the comedians themselves. And then the problems began. I think what came as a surprise to many of us in the aftermath of the release, the FIRs and the taking down of the video, was the fact that this was a case in which nobody was getting victimized. Both those making fun and those being made fun of were party to the joke and enjoying it thoroughly, yet a third party, utterly unconcerned with the whole situation decided to protest against what was done. Since then, the views don’t seem to end. Whether it’s Aamir Khan speaking up against it and later revealing that he hadn’t watched it in the first place (oops!) or Kareena Kapoor claiming that she would never want to associate herself with something like this, the hysteria doesn’t seem to end. When the Charlie Hebdo incident happened earlier this year, much of the world became Charlie, yet confusion ensued between the relative importance of protecting the rights of a community versus protecting the rights of millions of writers, journalists and illustrators looking to express themselves. What was more important? Understanding that perhaps even the freedom of expression did not allow you to hurt the sentiments of a section of society or recognizing that you can’t take somebody’s life because they hurt your feelings? Again, the world couldn’t take a satisfactory stand on what freedom of expression really meant here. The Indian film industry also saw a few controversies recently, not the least of which was press around Haider’s release and scenes cut. While the cinema lover in me couldn’t understand why it mattered so much to a certain section of society what one of our finest filmmakers chose to portray on screen when all that mattered when I watched the film was his brilliance, the patriot in me can never speak ill of the Indian Army. But it was a film, depicting a delicate subject, pertaining to the nation and as fabulous as it might’ve been it didn’t seem completely illogical for the FilmFare not to have been able to give it the Best Film award because yes, controversy had ensued. Beyond a point I’ve begun to wonder if the only motivation for us to fight for freedom of expression is increasingly becoming an attempt to either be able to contradict other people’s points of view simply because we disagree with them, or to say something that will be controversial enough for us to get enough retweets. Which is why even though I understand that it’s a completely harmless statement to call your countrymen ugly and your neighbours (whom you are ceaselessly at war with) hot, I’m genuinely not surprised that you could end up facing a lot of hostility from a lot of different kind of people and in a lot of unimaginable shapes and formats and no. And no, I
am not trying to be sarcastic here. Freedom of expression in today’s day and age comes with footnoted terms and conditions, several of them, none of which will protect you from facing the ramifications, some of which will come in the form of other people exercising their freedom of expression to prove you wrong, or right or in some cases, insane. You could want to demand a certain ‘class’ with which people choose to do this, but at the end of the day, that would be an unreasonable demand because freedom of expression is for all, irrespective of their thought processes or their v o c a b u l a r i c p r o w e s s . I believe that even though we, as a country are still far behind as far as education or socio-economic indicators, women empowerment or minority rights are concerned, for citizens of a country as young and ethnically complicated as ours, we tend to underestimate the freedom of expression that has been afforded to us. Maybe as a race we have earned the right to freedom of expression, but I wonder if as individuals we have yet learnt that our duty as members of such an evolved race of human beings is to take this overwhelmingly fulfilling right with a pinch of salt, neither misusing it, nor ignoring its possible repercussions. The day we manage to internalize that, we will truly be expressing our opinions, and not merely doing everything in our capacities to exercise a right laid down for us in our constitutions.