She is the perfect Queen

Brown Pundits Archive · March 8, 2014 · 1 comment

A middle-class, rajput girl from small-town Mandi (Himachal Pradesh), unconnected to film royalty and full of talent and blessed with her choice of films. Best wishes to Kangana Ranaut and Queen. The reviewers have been uniformly kind and this Vikas Bahl film is well on its way to be a “woman film hit.” Bravo.

Ranaut has been
charming us with her off-screen behaviour and, her National
Award-winning role in Fashion notwithstanding, Queen is the first time
she’s got a script that really allows her to confirm she’s more than a
pretty face. There’s no high fashion or flattering make-up to flaunt
Ranaut’s physical beauty in Queen, but this is a role that allows Ranaut
to showcase not just her acting talents but also her wit because Ranaut
is credited with contributing additional dialogues to the film.

Ranaut as Rani is pitch perfect. She brings out the sweetness, the hurt,
the belligerence and the head-screwed-tightly-on-her-shoulders
sensibility that is the pride of the Indian middle class. The cherry on
this acting cake is that this lady’s got superb comic timing.

Helping Ranaut along is a wonderful supporting cast, particularly Lisa
Haydon as the half-Indian Vijaylakshmi and Rajkummar Rao who has the
special gift of not acting roles but becoming them, and he does this
again as Vijay. Haydon does an impressive job with the French accent.
The real star of Queen, however, is writer-director Vikas Bahl. Bahl is
able to draw out fantastic, spontaneous performances from all his
actors, lead and supporting, Indian and foreign. It’s such a refreshing
change to see minor roles played by non-Indian actors being done
credibly.

The story begins in a
middle class Punjabi household in Rajouri Garden in Delhi, where Rani is
about to be married off to her boyfriend, Vijay (Rajkummar Rao). Amidst
electricity cuts, dance practice, last minute decorations and
overworked parents, we see Rani sitting and getting henna put on her
hands as her mind races with questions about her future and her “wedding
night”. Her London-returned fiancé, however, has completely different
plans. Vijay meets Rani at a coffee shop a day before their wedding, to
dump her. Grief stricken and depressed, Rani decides to go on the
couple’s pre-booked honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam, alone. (Does she
do it because she wants to experience life abroad just as Vijay did? Or
is it because she had been saving up for this trip since she was a kid?)

Bahl handles Rani’s awkwardness and her eventual transformation
beautifully. From a confused and under-confident mouse, Rani slowly
turns into someone who learns to look within and not around for answers.
In one scene at a dance club, we see her change physically — finally
letting go of her fiance’s admonishments about dancing in public,
teaching the entire crowd a Bollywood step or two, and literally letting
her hair down. Such moments are where Queen really scores. Rani not
being able to cross the road in Paris for hours; her wanting to clutch a
random stranger’s hand as she roams around the city alone; her drunk
conversations with random strangers about how terrible her life is; her
joking about how girls aren’t even allowed to burp in India; her
silences and gentle nervous twitches as she navigates her way in a new
city — all of these make Queen far, far more nuanced than any ‘woman
centric’ film that’s released of late.

It starts with a loud Punjabi wedding, and you enter the film, mildly
diverted by Rani’s loud Punjabi family, doing ‘giddha-shiddha’,
‘mehendi-shendi’, but not before you’ve had time to register that the
Rajouri Garden ‘mithai’-shop-owning middle-class-ness of the Mehras is
just right. And that Mummyji, Daddyji, the plump ‘chota bhai’, and
Dadiji are all pitch perfect.

Rani (Kangana Ranaut) is dumped just a day before her wedding by her
fiance Vijay (Rajkumar Rao). Devastated, she decides to flee, because
staying home to lick her wounds is not an option. So, she finds herself
in Paris, and the journey she embarks on makes ‘Queen’ the kind of
coming- of-age, discovery-of-self tale….She does make silly touristy mistakes, nearly
gets mugged but doesn’t let it get to her, and discovers she has a
spine after all. Lucking into a long-legged hotel maid Vijay Lakshmi
(Lisa Haydon) is the first departure from standard Bollywood practice:
this other Vijay takes Rani under her wing, drags her into a store with
lovely Parisian clothes (these Paris maids are not just drop dead sexy,
and enjoy their libido, they can afford all those designer threads?),
and generally hand-holds Rani for an enjoyable spell.

(Vikas) Bahl’s second directorial venture is a delight: his first, ‘Chillar
Party’, had some spark, but nothing prepared me for this. The story,
which could easily have slipped into mush, stays free of drippy
sentimentality, barring one or two raised-violin scenes….Kangana Ranaut revels in her solidly-written role, and delivers a
first rate, heart-felt performance.

regards

The (Lady) Enforcer

Brown Pundits Archive · March 8, 2014 · 1 comment

What is striking about Manju Bhatia’s profile is that she comes from a low profile background, is only 27 years young and running a 500 crore business. India needs more women like this to assume leadership in new areas understood as “mardon wala kaam”. Also it is not possible (neither practical) to dream of a class-free and caste-free sister-hood but these ladies can take a free-wheeling approach- derive their strength from traditional and modern society as well.

Enter Manju Bhatia, joint MD of Vasuli Recovery, an all-female loan recovery agency. “Women are given respect all across the country, we are not
discounted,” she said in a telephone interview. Really? Yes, she
countered, “Look at our banks, from ICICI Bank to Dena Bank to the State
Bank of India, they’re all led by women.”

No surprise if Bhatia identifies with the likes of Chanda Kochchar
and Arundhati Bhattacharya because they too, like her, have blazed their
trails in male bastions. Perhaps, it is this unprejudiced world view that made her entry into a male-dominated business–of loan recovery–easy.

At 27, Bhatia’s Vasuli handles recoveries valued at over Rs 500 crore
annually, with more than 250 staff in 26 locations across India. The
company has come a long way in the eight years since it first began
operations, with a monthly income of Rs 25,000, eight employees and one
client, the State Bank of India. It now boasts most of the country’s
publicly owned banks as clients.

As a 16-year-old growing up in Indore, Bhatia began working as a
receptionist at a pharmaceutical company the day after her last
twelfth standard board exam, in 2003. In no time, she was handling
accounts and trading in raw materials. Over the next two years she learnt the inner workings of the
business, including how to get export licenses and increasing the client
base, while getting her bachelors in law. It was then that her boss and
family friend Parag Shah asked her to help out with his loan recovery
company, Vasuli.“There was only one client then, State Bank of India, and they
provided a list of defaulters,” Bhatia said. One of the defaulters was a
high profile minister, whom Bhatia decided to tackle. “The bank said he
won’t be accessible at all but I just called and got an appointment,”
she said. It turned out the minister had no idea he’d missed his loan
payments and the matter was sorted out in no time.

She decided to get into the recovery business full time and started
populating her team with women of all ages and for all roles – from
revenue licensing to legal procedures to recovery agents and everything
in between. In 2007, Bhatia moved the company to Mumbai to be closer to
the major banks.

But, there have also been stray instances of violence that forced
Bhatia to now send recovery teams with police protection and
videographers. During a visit to a factory near Aurangabad to carry out
an inventory, the workers at the site locked Bhatia’s employees inside
the warehouse. Another time even the police weren’t of much help as the
defaulters rained down acid on the Vasuli employees and accompanying
police officials who had come to make collections.

But the dividends have made it all worth it. Bhatia’s success in
giving women purpose and putting their skills to constructive use pushes
her everyday. She had a real victory when talking to the Police
Commissioner of Kolkata about security protection last year. “I explained what we did and he was very interested,” she said, “and
then he asked if I could take on the widows of officers who had died in
duty so that they would have a revenue stream and come out of their
depression… I was very overwhelmed and said yes immediately.”

From smaller accounts and agricultural equipment, Vasuli has now
added property auctions to its retinue of services offered. Bhatia
continues to challenge herself by pursuing her PhD in law alongside
running the business.

On being asked what her advice would be to women entrepreneurs she
said, ”Belief is very important…if your mind can conceive it you can
achieve it.” She illustrated her point by describing how family members
mocked her during the early days of Vasuli and how her conviction helped
her carry on.

regards

A woman (not a girl) needs a husband

Brown Pundits Archive · March 8, 2014 · No comments

A little girl has to bear so much (unfair) burden on her shoulders, if she stays silent it will be torture, if she speaks out it may mean jail for her loved ones.Thus it is the society as a whole that needs to catch up and act as a mediator. It is really simple- girls need to stay in school and then be encouraged to “go to college.” I am not sure why parents in this day and age are ignorant of age restrictions (unless as often faith creates confusion). The groom’s family should be also blamed for trying to take advantage of innocence (the worry is that older girls will not be as willing to bend to the wishes of her elders, especially mother-in-law).

Isha (name changed) told TOI that she always wanted to study but as soon
as she turned 15, her parents decided to marry her off. In December,
they told her that they had fixed a match for her and she must get ready
for marriage.

The Class IX student protested, pleaded and
confronted them but her parents refused to understand why she wanted to
“finish school and go to college”. In fact, they grew alarmed by her
resistance and stopped her from stepping out of the house. They even
barred her from going to the school in Tangra.

The marriage was
fixed for March 7. The groom was a youth from Sodepur, a small-time
businessman. As the day grew closer, Isha got panicky. Luckily for her,
some friends supported her after she confided in them.

On Thursday night, a little after 8, she persuaded a friend to call Childline. Volunteers immediately sought the help of Pragati Maidan police station and a combined team of police and NGO activists landed up at her house around 11pm.

“I had been trying to reason with my parents that I wanted to study and
that I am too young to get married. But they couldn’t understand. And
they kept insisting I would not get a better match than this one. I was
at a loss as how to deal with the situation because no one was trying to
understand the trauma I was going through,” recounted the girl.

“Also, I knew nothing about the man ‘arranged’ for me,” she said. “All
that I wanted was to escape the marriage so that I could continue with
my studies.”

Help came just hours before she was to be decked up as a bride. Her parents were served a warning.

“We were not aware that we cannot marry off our daughter before she
turns 18. We arranged the marriage thinking of her future and because
the groom is a good lad,” said the father, who was summoned to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) office on Friday.

“I am
relived and happy that the marriage did not take place. But I am worried
for my parents. I do not want them go through any kind of trouble. I
hope they are not jailed. The marriage did not take place so they have
not committed any crime. I want them to be let off,” said the girl.

regards

The bridge stretches from Pune to Potsdam

Brown Pundits Archive · March 8, 2014 · 1 comment

Raghunath Purushottam Paranjpye was a super-scholar who pioneered cultural bridge building between Indian and Germany. Germany has a long tradition of admiring Brahminic culture, in contrast to the English downplaying of the same (especially the missionaries). This is turn was appreciated by a new generation of scholars in Maharashtra and Bengal (including muslims who came over to Germany during/after the Khilafat movement- for example, Syed Mujataba Ali from Bengal).

Recent scholars have continued to explore this phenomena (termed Indomania- see below) and to even liken to India-Germany bond as akin to that of kindred spirits. Was there possible “anti-semitic undertones” (muslim for Indians, jews for Germans) in this appreciation?

The teaching of German began in the Indian
sub-continent — in Pune’s New English School — 100 years ago at the
initiative of the mathematician, educationist and social reformer
Wrangler Raghunath Paranjpye. Though he had earned a tripos at
Cambridge, he was in thrall of the excellence of German universities and
reckoned, correctly as it turned out, that Indians pursuing higher
studies in one of them would be doubly blessed. They would not only
receive fine education in their respective disciplines but also get
exposure to European culture in a country that had no colonial ties with
India.

There could well have been another reason for Paranjpye’s
fascination for Germany. Educated Indians in his time, especially in
Maharashtra and Bengal, were aware of the lively interest that some
leading German thinkers had taken in India`s philosophical and literary
traditions for close to two centuries. That sort of flattering attention
stood in stark contrast to how many Christian missionaries, encouraged
by British colonial rulers, sought to debunk those traditions.

Indeed,
late in the 18th century, Johann Gottfried Herder, in his critique of
the European Enlightenment, projected India as the cradle of
civilisation. Around the same time (1791), Kalidasa’s play ‘Shakuntalam’
was translated into German to great critical acclaim. One enthusiastic
reaction to it came from Goethe. He hailed the poet as a “representative
of the natural condition of the most refined life-style, the purest
moral endeavour, the most dignified majesty and the most serious worship
of God…”

Early in the 19th century, another distinguished
thinker, Friedrich von Schegel, hailed Sanskrit as the “source of all
languages, all thought, all poetics…” His brother, August Wilhelm, who
became the first professor of Sanskrit at Bonn University in 1818 and
is regarded as the founder of the discipline of Indology, translated
Bhagvad Gita into Latin. None other than Hegel showered fulsome praise
on it in a lengthy review.

Translations into German of other
Indian philosophical and literary texts sustained the scholarly
engagement with classical India. Its echoes reverberated through the
writings of the Grimm brothers, those of philosopher Schopenhauer and
even in Schubert’s musical compositions. But the one scholar who scaled
the tallest summits of Indology was Friedrich Max Mueller. He studied
Sanskrit at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin, taught at Oxford and
translated the Rig Veda and other ancient texts by the score — without
once visiting India.

What prompted such great minds to extol
Indian classical traditions of learning and creativity is not quite
clear. Some scholars hold that their earlier sources of inspiration —
ancient Greece and Rome — had dried up. So they turned to Indian
civilisation to expand their intellectual horizons and finesse their
aesthetic sensibilities.

Now, a group of Indian experts on German
Indology have begun to question this theory. In early January, Joydeep
Bagchee, a brilliant young scholar, had an altogether different take on
what lay behind German interest in ancient India. He argued, in
substance, that the Protestant heritage of German Indologists prompted
them to interpret Indian texts in ways that were conducive to their own
intellectual interests that often carried anti-Semitic undertones.

[Another excellent reference on Indo-German link and Indomania]

Transcultural Encounters between Germany and India: Kindred Spirits in the 19th and 20th Centuries; Edited by Joanne Miyang Cho, Eric Kurlander, Douglas T McGetchin

Providing a comprehensive survey of cutting edge scholarship in the field of German–Indian and South Asian Studies,
the book looks at the history of German–Indian relations in the
spheres of culture, politics, and intellectual life. Combining
transnational, post-colonial, and comparative approaches, it includes
the entire twentieth century, from the First World War and Weimar
Republic to the Third Reich and Cold War era.

The book first examines the ways in which nineteenth-century
“Indomania” figured in the creation of both German national identity and
modern German scholarship on the Orient, and it illustrates how German
encounters with India in the Imperial era alternately destabilized and
reinforced the orientalist, capitalist, and nationalist underpinnings of
German modernity. Contributors discuss the full range of German
responses to India, and South Asian perceptions of Germany against the
backdrop of war and socio-political revolution, as well as the Third
Reich’s ambivalent perceptions of India in the context of racism,
religion, and occultism. The book concludes by exploring German–Indian
relations in the era of decolonization and the Cold War.

regards

Bend it like a (Bihari) Beckham

Brown Pundits Archive · March 8, 2014 · No comments

Our poverty is demonstrated in many visible ways. One invisible way is this: we need inspired foreigners to inspire us. Why are these girls not being supported by society? At any rate it is nice that they have something to look forward to.

Franz Gastler shot into the limelight last
year when his team of under-14 girls from rural Jharkhand came third at
the Gasteiz Cup in Spain.

Q. Congratulations again on coming third at Gasteiz, but why is it that you decided on taking a team from here all the way there?
A. We
met a few Spanish students from the University of Mondragon at Dharavi,
where we were running a football camp for slum girls. They asked us
whether we had a more regular team — we said yes, back in Jharkhand —
and whether we would like to come to a tournament in Spain? They also
helped arrange the funding to get us there.

Q. You’ve
talked about the difficulties involved in getting there. That the local
panchayat sewak slapped the girls and got them to sweep his office when
they went to ask him for birth certificates (the certificates were
needed to prove they weren’t overage)... has that third-place finish
made things easier for these girls?
A. It’s made
some things easier, and it’s made some things more difficult. We’ve lost
the football field we used to practise on — probably due to jealousy.
The person who owned the field dug it up, and then left it like that, so
we couldn’t use it. But I kind of believe in what Gandhi said: “First
they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.”

Q. You’ve
talked earlier of how these girls have to fight for everything. That
nothing that is meant for them ever reaches them. Are things still the
same?
A. The girls have got better at fighting. They
don’t put up with the patriarchy that that they might have earlier.
Just this time, coming to a football camp in Delhi, there was a man on
the train who got funny with one of the girls. He put his hand in her
front pocket. Women often tend to keep quiet about things like that, but
not her. She pulled his hand away, then pushed him off, and called the
police.

Q. Can football be expected to do something for these girls lives? Change them in some way?
A. To
some extent, it already has. What we’re hoping for these girls is that
their lives will take one of three tracks. Either they will go on to
government jobs; or they will go on to University which should then lead
to better lives than just looking after the home. (I read recently, in
the Times of India, that people who speak English earn 34% more than
their non-English-speaking counterparts. We’re teaching our girls
English, so that should help too.)

And thirdly, I believe some of
these girls could go on to become elite athletes and get into some of
the top universities in the US. I believe they have that talent. A few
of our girls qualified for a national coaching camp, but they were
miserable there. It was the same thing again. Abusive coaches
mistreating the girls in their care. So we don’t send our girls to
national coaching camps any longer. I also mentioned that to Sara
Pilot — she’s heading the committee on the development of women’s
football in India — when I was called to advise them about the women’s
game. They were talking about the usual things — sponsorships, marketing
— and I asked them why we can’t have a few good coaches? Non-abusive
ones? They weren’t very happy about that.

Q. You yourself aren’t a
football player. You played ice hockey. Are you a good coach? I imagine
people would be sceptical of a football coach who hasn’t played the game
himself…
A. The girls don’t have much choice. In
some ways, we’re the exact opposite of football in the US. There they
have lots of space, lots of equipment and very few people. We have very
little space, very little equipment, and lots of people. So we do
depend a lot on peer-to-peer coaching, where a 16-year-old will teach a
13-year-old, who will then teach a 9-year-old. The same thing happens
in the favelas of Brazil. I did however attend a coaching camp in the US
last year.

Q. Now what? Are you going back to Gasteiz this year?
A. Actually,
we’re going back to my hometown. Minneapolis. To the USA cup, the
largest youth football tournament in the western hemisphere. (The 2014
edition will have over 950 teams and 14,000 players from 16 different
countries taking part.)

Q. You arrived in Jharkhand as a 26-year-old. You wanted to teach in the villages. Exactly what were you thinking?
A. I’d
met Sam Pitroda in Chicago, who fixed up a job for me with the
Confederation of Indian Industries in Delhi. I was 25 then. I did that
for a year and then I had this romantic idea that I wanted to go see the
villages. So I got a job with an NGO in Jharkhand, but they seemed to
do everything out of the office. Nobody ever went out into the field. So
I left and started Yuwa, doing the one thing a student understands —
teaching English. Then, one of the girls asked if I could teach her to
play football, and that’s how it all started.

Q. What happens when you leave?
A. I don’t intend to.

regards

Democracy against Brahmins

Brown Pundits Archive · March 7, 2014 · 2 comments

From appearances it looks like California now has a Brahmin (Asian) problem. Historically, the ancestors of Karthick Ramakrishnan have enjoyed their position at the top of the social pyramid in Dravida-Nadu.

Then came democracy (and more importantly the social justice movement) and the Brahmins (aka northern invaders) were driven away to the North, West, and Eastern corners of India, as a consequence of the (in)famous 69% reservation policy [ref. wiki]. The history of quotas and various arguments for/against are debated in this article. There is no doubt that reservations help seed a creamy layer in each category (which may or may not benefit the less well off people in the same categories). All in all about 80% of Tamil Nadu population are said to be protected by reservations.

Main Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Sub Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Reservation Percentage for each Sub Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Reservation Percentage for each Main Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Category as per Government of India
Backward Class (BC)	Backward Class (BC) – General	26.5%	30%	Other Backward Class
Backward Class (BC)	Backward Class (BC) – Muslims	3.5%	30%
Most Backward Class (MBC)			20%
Denotified Community (DCN)			20%
Scheduled Castes	Only Scheduled Castes	15%	18%	Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes
Scheduled Castes	only for Arunthathiyar)	3%	18%
Scheduled Tribes			1
Total Reservation Percentage			69%

But the great northbound movement proved only to be a temporary respite. The quota battles spread out to the north as well, though settling at a lower level of 49.5% for now (more importantly enforcement was better than before, as Shudras and Dalits came to power on their own steam). The next (logical) step for many of these Brahmins was to move out from Sharat Bose Avenue (Kolkata), Ramakrishna Puram (Delhi) and Matunga (Mumbai) to the green(er) pastures of the West where (apparently) meritocracy still prevailed in California, enshrined via the equally (in)famous Proposition 209. Asians of many stripes (driven to excel by the Tiger Mother syndrome) managed to take advantage of race-neutral admission policies and savoured the model minority badge from the white majority (who used the MM stick to beat up the blacks/latinos).

However democracy has now managed to catch up with the super-castes in California as well. The game changer (as KR reports below) is that whites who resented preferences for blacks in the 1990s are now resentful of asians (mostly Chinese but I would imagine also Koreans and Indians) for the sin of grabbing too many university seats. The dreaded specter of quota being (sort of) tied to population percentages has been raised. Once that genie is out of the bottle it will not be possible to push it back. Even if the Asians manage to win a few battles they will surely lose the war (one problem is that Asians are not all equally doing well- Pacific Islanders and Laotians for example). The 10% will inevitably need to bow before the heft of the 90%. The logic of democracy is relentless (and it is how it should be). For the super-castes there will be now no more place on earth to run (and to hide). For folks like Karthick Ramakrishnan, the writing on the wall (and the desperate anguish reflected in his writing) is clear.

Is the debate on affirmative action versus race-blind policies mainly
about principle, or mostly about preserving narrow group interests? We
are beginning to find out in California. A bill passed by the state
Senate and pending in the Assembly would put a constitutional amendment
on the ballot that would overturn portions of Proposition 209 to exempt
public college and university admissions from the ban on racial, ethnic
and gender preferences.

Interestingly, many of these fears are emanating not from
conservative white voters but from a few vocal Asian American
organizations. National advocacy groups such as the 80-20 Political
Action Committee, editorial writers in Chinese-language newspapers and
activists from Chinese-language schools have begun to bombard Assembly
members, urging them to vote against restoring affirmative action. They
worry that Asian American students, who saw a sizable increase in UC
enrollment following 209’s ban on affirmative action in 1996, will see a
big drop in enrollment if affirmative action is restored.

Just as important, the focus on narrow group interests might also
change the opinions of white voters in California in surprising ways.When whites voted overwhelmingly against affirmative action in 1996,
the UC admission rates for whites and Asian Americans were roughly
equal, at 83% and 84%, respectively. Today, under the ban on affirmative
action, the admission rate for whites is 65%, compared with 73% for
Asian Americans. These gaps may become relevant to the attitudes of white voters
confronted with a new choice on affirmative action. Experimental studies
of white voter opinion show that support for merit-based university
admissions drops significantly when respondents are provided information
about the high success rate of Asian Americans. If the primary consideration in voters’ minds is the potential loss
or gain for their own racial group, we may indeed see a reversal in
voting patterns of whites and Asian Americans on affirmative action.
This is particularly true if group fears are based on the kinds of
erroneous or exaggerated claims we are already seeing.

For example, some ethnic media stories claim that affirmative action
would cap Asian American admissions to their share of the resident
population. Not only has this kind of quota been ruled unconstitutional
since 1978; such fears also ignore the fact that the Asian American
share of UC students was about three times their state population share
in 1995, when affirmative action was last in place.

regards

The Muslims of Uttar Pradesh

Brown Pundits Archive · March 7, 2014 · No comments

…may help determine who wins Election 2014. IMO the muslim vote will go for AAP in urban areas and BSP in rural ones. SP the current ruling party will be heavily penalized due to the Muzaffanagar riots. Thus Mayawati and Arvind Kejriwal will benefit from the muslim vote, even though NYT may have found isolated support for Modi. In Gujarat he has got plenty of muslim votes following logic #1 (see below)- If he looks like winning why waste your vote on someone else??

There is an old political saying in India that the way to Delhi goes
through Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. From an American point of
view, Uttar Pradesh has it all: the electoral heft of a
California-Ohio-Michigan combination, the uncertainty of a Florida
recount, the political tricks of a South Carolina primary and the stark
community divisions of Mississippi.

Salim Shah was cooking egg and
chicken rolls on a dusty side street here when India’s most controversial
national politician flew to a nearby park in a red helicopter and addressed
hundreds of thousands of screaming supporters. Mr. Shah said that he and his
12-year-old son, who sliced boiled eggs by Mr. Shah’s side, were too busy to
attend the rally. But when asked how he intended to vote in what many observers
believe is the most consequential Indian election since 1977, Mr. Shah gave a
brief shrug. “I’m inclined to support Mr. Modi,” Mr. Shah said quietly. “It
looks like he’s going to win, and why waste your vote by voting for someone who
is not going to win?”

Disgust with the present government
and disappointment with the Gandhi political dynasty are so widespread that Mr.
Modi comes to the election with a huge advantage. But the scale of his success
depends in part on whether he can persuade Muslims like Mr. Shah to support his
candidacy, a difficult challenge. Muslims make up about 14 percent of the
country’s population, and they have been a crucial part of the support base of
the governing party, Indian National Congress, for years.

Mohammad Jaffar Ali, a 27-year-old stockbroker who
lives in a Muslim enclave in Lucknow, acknowledged hours after the rally that
Mr. Modi seemed to be a good leader. “But I think being a good human being is
far more important than being a good leader,” Mr. Ali said. “I’m not voting for
him.”

A crowd soon gathered around Mr. Ali, a common
occurrence when politics are discussed here. Among the young men was Karim
Jafar, a 25-year-old medical product wholesaler and Muslim, who made a point of
saying that he was a “an Indian first and a Muslim second.” Mr. Jafar said:
“I’m young. I don’t know much about the past, but I’m hopeful for a good future
and I think Mr. Modi could help bring that. No leader is perfect. I’m going to
vote for Modi and see.”

Mr. Modi’s call for a more business-friendly
government could also lure younger voters, many of whom are leaving school with
few job prospects. India’s economy must create more than 115 million additional
jobs over the next 10 years to accommodate the country’s youthful flood, a rate
of growth its economy is far from achieving.

Mohammad Shakeel, 44, said he remembered the past too well
to support Mr. Modi. Standing in front of about 70 caged chickens with fresh
chicken blood brightening his shop floor, Mr. Shakeel said that he voted in the
past for Congress, but this time would vote for a regional party. “There’s some
concern, even some fear, about what Mr. Modi will do to Muslims if he becomes
prime minister,” Mr. Shakeel said. “We don’t forget.”

regards

“I prefer the company of women while drinking”

Brown Pundits Archive · March 7, 2014 · No comments

All the unpleasant stereotypes are confirmed, the grasping family, the (not so gentle) abuse of the golden egg, what is missing is a quote on the (absent) role played by her father. At least we should be thankful that due to the preference for “plump women” the ladies are not deprived of food and may not develop aneroxia etc anxieties. Small mercies in a cruel world.

To understand how popular Shakeela is down South, you have to
read the three-year- old autobiography of Surayya Bhanu. Bhanu, a
Chennai-born Commerce graduate, had developed a passion for cinema since
childhood. She ended up on the margins of the Tamil film industry as a
body double for porn stars unwilling to go completely nude. Like
Shakeela. Bhanu filled those ‘gaps’. She exposed her nude body in
bedroom and bathroom scenes in almost all Shakeela films.

In the book,
Bhanu talks about the South Indian porn market’s crush on plump women:
Shakeela’s body type. Bhanu was slim when she began her career. Later,
on realising the popular demand for well-endowed curves and heavy
thighs, she put on weight and shaped herself to ‘industry standards’. It
gave her the chance to play Shakeela’s double.

Extracts from her autobiography:...I decided to
write this book on myself because people should know how a Shakeela is
formed and shaped..…During an interview, a journalist once told me that I was the woman
who embodied the sexual desire of Malayalee youth. When somebody is
hungry, we have to give them food. Nothing else will make them happy….

I have no good memories of my mother. I never experienced love and
care from her. It was my mother who spoiled my life. I think my mother
did not like me since my childhood. She often ignored me and cursed me.
But one day, she appreciated my beauty. This was soon after my sixteenth
birthday. Then she informed me that a person would come to pick me up.
She asked me to go with him to a place where I have to ‘please’ a rich
man who would help rid us of our financial constraints. She asked me to
obey him, and do whatever he wanted me to do. I was shocked. I was grown up enough to understand what she was asking for. A stranger
came to pick me up, I had no choice. I accompanied him. We reached a
hotel room. That ‘rich man’, who was in his forties, was waiting there. I
was frozen with fear and sorrow. He undressed me, and raped me. But he
could not penetrate me due to my resistance. It was only a beginning. I
was forced to sleep with many such ‘rich men’ thereafter. I experienced
both pain and pleasure. I am not able to recollect when I lost my
virginity.

regards

Religion gets in the way of human rights

Brown Pundits Archive · March 7, 2014 · No comments

This is my sincere belief, religion should be used as a shield (to comfort the afflicted) and not as a sword (harm the powerless). Since this is not the way things are, it is desirable that religion (and religious doctrines) be banned from the public place.

I understand the difficulty of doing away with age-old traditions, but still the question needs to be asked: why does the Bheel community not cremate the (dead) bodies? Is it not a win-win situation, no unnecessary offense given to the majority, while satisfying criteria set by your own religion (presumably one cant escape by being an atheist). Finally cremation with assistance of electric furnaces are probably a better deal for the environment. Of course in extremis (and that will come for sure in a few decades time) the only possible options will be to convert or to migrate.

But that day, as Bhoro Bheel’s relatives were digging his grave, his
elder brother Moti Bheel says, “Some people warned us against burying
Bhoro in Haji Faqeer graveyard.” He says he was told that the cemetery
was reserved for Muslims and that the Shariah did not allow the burial
of non-Muslims in a Muslim graveyard.

As news of the problem over
the burial spread, many locally influential people, including the
Muslim landowner who employs Bhoro Bheel’s family as farm workers, got
involved. Together, they ensured that the burial took place.

But,
as the Bheels were leaving the graveyard, says Moti Bheel, a few people
turned up and told him and his relatives to exhume Bhoro Bheel’s body
and bury it somewhere else. “They threatened us. They said they would
exhume the body themselves if we did not do so on our own,” Moti Bheel
tells the Herald. The next morning, the Bheels informed the local police
of the threats. This, however, did not deter the other side. “In the
evening, a member of the Bheel community informed us that some people
were digging Bhoro’s grave,” says Moti Bheel. “When we reached there, a
charged crowed of 300 to 400 people had gathered and Bhoro’s body was
lying outside the grave,” he adds.

The crowd had come together
through the efforts of one Qari Abdul Basit, the administrator of a
madrasa in Pangrio. Working through local mosques, he had distributed a
fatwa against the burial of non-Muslims in Muslim graveyards. He also
had prayer leaders announce that those who had exhumed Bhoro Bheel’s
body had discharged their religious duty and had not committed any
crime.

Perhaps deterred by such massive mobilisation, Shaukat
Khatyan, the senior superintendent of the local police, did not take any
action against those who had dug up the body even though he reached the
graveyard immediately after the exhumation. Instead, says Moti Bheel,
he told the Bheels to bury Bhoro Bheel elsewhere.

For the next
eight hours, Bhoro Bheel’s body lay in the open because the landless
Bheels did not have any place to bury it. Their employer came to their
rescue again and donated a six-acre plot of land to them for a
graveyard. Some of the Bheels, however, say they do not know how long
their landlord will allow them to bury their dead in the donated plot.

Two
months later, a similar incident took place in another part of Badin –
in Goth Yar Mohammad Lund in Tando Bhago subdivision – where a recently
buried body of a Hindu was exhumed because it was buried in a graveyard
said to be reserved for Muslims. The only difference, this time around,
was that the exhumation was undertaken by the dead man’s own family
under severe pressure from the local Muslim community.

Allah Dino
Bheel, an old Hindu man, had died in Goth Yar Mohammad Lund on December
23, 2013, and was buried in Bachal Shah graveyard, near Tando Bhago
town. The next day, Allah Dino Khaskhaili, a Muslim prayer leader at a
local mosque, approached Allah Dino Bheel’s sons – Laung, Ramchand and
Dano – and told them to exhume their father’s body and bury him
elsewhere. The prayer leader told them that the Islamic Shariah did not
allow the burial of non-Muslims in a graveyard for Muslims. Khaskhaili
said his followers would exhume Allah Dino Bheel’s body if the Bheel
brothers refused to. With Bhoro Bheel’s example still fresh in their
minds, Laung Bheel and his brothers decided to retrieve their father’s
body and bury him elsewhere.

When Aftab Aghim, the deputy
superintendent of local police, received information about the
exhumation, he rushed to the spot and ordered the Bheels to stop. This
angered Khaskhaili so much that he called for a shutdown of Tando Bhago,
leading to the immediate closure of all local businesses, while some of
his supporters blocked all entry and exit points of the town. Aghim,
then, held prolonged discussions with the elders of both communities and
proposed to build a wall within the graveyard to separate the graves of
the Hindus from those of the Muslims. Luckily, say eyewitnesses, the
two sides agreed to his proposal and the situation was defused.

regards

High HDI peeps fight (fear of) extinction

Brown Pundits Archive · March 6, 2014 · 1 comment

The demographics of Kerala is as per this 2012 citation (may not be authoritative)

Religion	Population	Percentage	District (Highest Population	District (Lowest Population)	Decadal Population Growth
Hindu	1,78,83,449	56.2	T’puram	Wayanad	– 1.48
Muslim	78,63,342	24.7	Malappuram	Pathanamthitta	+ 1.70
Christian	60,57,427	19.0	Ernakulam	Malappuram	– 0.32

Anyhow the actual numbers do not matter (as usual) it is the perception that counts. There are Christians who fear (or claim that fellow Christians feel this) that they will be swamped by Muslim population growth.

Accordingly, the St Vincent De Paul Forane Church in Kalpetta has presented an innovative plan to reverse population decline: pay every Catholic family 10,000/- for the fifth child.

This being Kerala the fight the extinction plan has a number of detractors within the flock as well as without. The comments were the least to say interesting (my response in bold). The most interesting comment IMO was from a Muslim who supported the initiative wholeheartedly.

(1)“The incentives are not going to help increase the population”:T M Thomas Issac ( Former Finance Minister of Kerala & CPIM central committee member)

– as he is in a party of non-believers so this may have biased him against the initiative.

That said I actually agree that the incentive is too low and for too many kids (1 Lakh per child for 3 kids may be fine, the church can certainly afford it, also the incentive amount can be connected to family assets as well).

(2) “Christian extremism is more intense than Muslim extremism”: Sister Jessmy (Former Principal of St Mary’s College)–

I am quite orthodox in thinking when it comes to the number of
children in a family. I was born in a family of seven children. The more
the number of children the more the training you get. Not just from
your parents but also from your sisters and brothers. The argument for
reducing the number of children is that they can be given better care
and education. However, if you consider the money spent on counseling
the children of families having single or two children, we may conclude
it’s much better to have more children.

If there are more children, when they grow up and start working, it
would be economically beneficial for the entire family. But there is no
holy intention behind the church’s five children programme. Their only
aim is to increase the vote banks. They want to increase their
representation in the administrative system. This is an attempt to
reduce the Muslim influence too.

In Kerala Christian extremism is more intense than Muslim extremism.
Muslim extremism is visible from outside. The extremism and fanaticism
hidden inside Christians are more dangerous. Who were the worst? Those
who chopped off the hands of T T Joseph or those who kicked him out of
his job.

– Here is a true believer who actually endorses the policy but raises important questions about intent. As an aside I agree with her that the Church was simply in the wrong to kick out Joseph (also when it claimed that it will use its muscle to ensure that the (Christian) fishermen killing Italians will go home free).

(3) “Increasing the population by paying money is anti religious”: Stephen Aalathara (KCBC spokesperson)

– This is not the first time that the Church has encouraged families to have more children but they do not want to incentivize this. Why? It makes no sense??

(4) “This is anti- democratic unified civil code needs to be implemented”: U Kalanadhan (State president, Yukthivaadi Sankhadana) ( Atheist Association)

Article XXX of the Indian Constitution confers certain rights to minorities. This is against the XIVth
article of the Indian Constitution that states that all individuals are
equally before law. The article gives right to the minorities to the
act against the constitution. For example take the case of marriage
among the Muslim population. According to Muslims there is nothing wrong
in having four wives. If you have five wives the child born out of the
fifth wife will have no right on their ancestral property. This has lead
to an increase in the Muslim population to a great extend.

The Christians are trying to compete with them by giving incentives
to have more children. The funding comes from abroad. Christians
recognize only monogamy and hence they have come up with this solution.

The only solution to this increasing competition among religious
groups is implementation of the universal civil code mentioned in the 44th schedule. But the politicians are not willing to implement this law as they are afraid of losing their vote banks.

– Par for the course for spokesman of an atheist organization (in his manner of speech he can substitute for a member of any Hindutva group).

(5) “While farmers were committing suicide they were busy spending crores for constructing churches”: Lean Thobias (Creative Director, Panorama)

While I was working in Malayala Manorama, I had been to Wayanad to study farmer’s suicide over there. While talking to one family we realized that there were a few factors
besides agricultural problems that had caused these suicides. He like
many other farmers had to pay huge amounts to the church. His son was
studying in a private management school. All these problems coupled
together led to the suicide of that person in that particular family.
While the suicides were being committed huge churches were being
constructed in that area.

I am a catholic believer and am quite active member of the church. I
informed the church about the distress faced by the farmers over there
no one was bothered…..

The present offer put forth by the church is 10,000 for that the 5th
child. Can you imagine the problems the family will face once the
child grows up? I think this offer is made for increasing the fee in
Jubilee Medical College and the Christian vote banks. Poor men are
getting nothing out of any Christian institutions.

– This is a new angle on farmer suicides. While it is possible that anger is clouding his thinking, he raises some uncomfortable points (for all of us). The hopelessness will perhaps be felt more in high HDI societies like Kerala and that may be a causative factor behind the high suicide rate.

(6) “No need to be afraid of an increase in population”: T Ariff Ali (Jammat- e- Islami Al Hind, Kerala President)

This is a very basic issue. Manpower can be seen in two ways;
Intellectual and physical. The people from Assam, Bihar, Bengal and the
like are pouring into Kerala. But here we don’t have anyone. We are
exporting manpower to foreign countries.

All groups are afraid of the decrease in population. In the beginning
Christian society was afraid of increase in the population. Now they
are trying to correct it. There is no need to see any sort of
communalism in it. These reactions should never be considered communal.
According to Jamaat -e -Islami there is no need to be afraid of
increasing population.

– !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(7) “The aim is not to increase population but to encourage life”: Salu Mecherill ( St Vincent De Paul Forane Church Project Director)

The aim of the project is not to increase population but to encourage
life. There has been a drastic decline in youth population. We intend
to rectify this problem. The aim of the project is to preserve life
until death.

The project couldn’t include other communities as the church can
conduct this project at present only in a small scale. We are part of
KCBC’s providence committee. We didn’t consult KCBC about this project.

These days women are reluctant to give birth to children. Many
couples are reluctant to have kids at all. In Kalpetta the rate of
farmers committing suicide are much less. The rate of increase of
population is much less than even the developed nations.

According to the central government, by 2030 Kerala would be a large
old age home. Hence it is necessary to have able youth that can work. So
let other states do whatever they want.

There is nothing to be scared of. This is not meant for conducting
war or anything. Many countries in the world are carrying on with such a
project. It is not true that job opportunities are not increasing
according to the population.

– spoken like a true believer, refutes point #5 on farmer suicides, raises an important point of Kerala becoming an increasingly grey society, so some action must be taken.

This is fine however IMO any incentives should ideally come from the govt and help out the most distressed communities.

regards