Independent India: The discussion continues…

[Two other worth reads: John Elliot at CNN Money (India at 60: A Nehru Dream Comes True) and Rajdeep Sardesai at IBN Live (Needed: A Lesson in History)]

I heave a sigh of relief when I read things like these in the papers:

Nobel Laureate Mistaken for Street Vendor

She was wearing a Mayan dress, the traditional attire of indigenous people in central America, and the hotel’s response was also traditional: throw her out.

Staff at Cancun’s five-star Hotel Coral Beach appear to have assumed this was another street vendor or beggar, so without asking questions they ordered her to leave. Except, the woman was Rigoberta Menchu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, UNESCO goodwill ambassador, Guatemalan presidential candidate and figurehead for indigenous rights.

And our neighbors haven’t taken too kindly towards car owners. In the bid to improve the quality of air in the run up to the Beijing Olympics next year, the city has come up with a wonderful new idea to test if they can reduce the number of cars in the US. I have always felt glad that some bolt of lightning like this can not come and havoc my life, while I live in India. Sample this:

tjblog: Odds and Evens — 1.3m Cars to be Taken Off the Road

Finally, yesterday – at yet another press conference – officials announced that they have decided to implement an “odds and evens” system during the last four days of the “Good Luck Beijing” test events. The measure will remove 1.3 million cars from the road on each of these days. On August 17 and 19, only vehicles with odd-numbered number plates will be permitted to take the streets, and on August 18 and 20 only those with even-numbered plates. Drivers caught breaking the rules will be fined a rather measly 100 kuai. A blanket ban on all city and provincial government cars will also be implemented over the four-day period.

Drivers whose plates end in 0 will not be able to enter into deep philosophical arguments about the nature of zero with traffic police, as city authorities have already indicated that 0 is officially an even number.

I have always wondered about the subtle connection between mathematics and philosophy, but it was never so apparent in public life earlier!

Not to be outdone, cops at our capital were ready with a booklet instructing girls in the north-east to dress appropriately since here has been increase incidence of rape and eve-teasing. Since, the women from the north-east are victimized very frequently, they came up with a prescription for the victims instead of going against the criminals. I have always wondered how we tend to take the most convenient path in India. And the instructions are not very kind:

India Together: Be Safe, Don’t Exist

“When in rooms do as Roman does” (whatever that means). Under security tips: “Revealing dress to be avoided.” “Avoid lonely road/ bylane when dressed scantily”. And “dress according to sensitivity of the local population.”

I have only read excerpts from the booklet. For all its good intentions, it is clearly inappropriate and offensive to the sensibilities of women from Northeast India. Not only does it give gratuitous and useless advice to women but it also proceeds to tell everyone from northeast India how they should behave in Delhi. How else can one explain a sentence that reads: “Bamboo shoot, Akhuni and other smelly dishes should be prepared without creating ruckus in neighbourhood”. Smelly dishes creating a “ruckus”? This would be amusing if it were not culturally offensive.

Anyway, India can still claim to have made a lot of progress in the last 60 years. So much so that Amartya Sen makes an argument in his essay ‘India in the World, in the Hindu special supplement on I-Day (I can’t seem to find it online!) that India which earlier “never liked being confined to just minding its ‘own business’, seems now dedicated exclusively to that minding, pointedly excluding larger ideas and objectives. In fact, Indians seem to have become skeptical of the ‘vision thing’”. He makes an argument about why India should celebrate the success of its political democracy and have a stronger voice in world affairs. He grumbles that India has let go of the leadership position that Nehru had created for it during the non-aligned movement. His lament is that Indians now suffer from a ‘ethical near-vacuum in our global thinking as an inescapable result of the priorities of a market economy’. ‘The alleged skepticism in the ‘vision thing’ is really an alternative vision — one that Gandhi and Tagore, even Nehru, would have found a little difficult to comprehend’.

While I do agree with Sen that India should brandish its new position of importance in the world economy and take a moral leadership position, I also believe that we have made rapid progress in the times when we shut our minds to meddling in other people’s affairs and concentrated on cleaning our house instead. And if we try to stake claim to moral leadership, we might just be held in the same negative light as the United States, which has made its mission to cleanse the world of anything George Bush doesn’t like. I would rather that India continued in this path of self-discovery and introspection and improved the life of the billions that inhabit it, and when a situation does arise when it can add some value by saying a few words of wisdom to interested parties, to delve into its own experiences and tender advice. I would not be a very keen supporter of India peddling free advice to unwilling states. (Amartya Sen knows a lot more than me. I am just trying to interpret his words)

Sen also talks about India’s rapid progress in crime control, especially ‘in his humble Kolkata’, which often goes unnoticed. He cites numbers — the average incidence of homicide in the principle Indian cities is only 2.7 per 100,000 people with a measly 0.3 in Kolkata. The numbers in some international cities is devastatingly high eg., New York 5.0, Los Angeles 8.8, Mexico City 17.0 and Rio de Janerio at an astounding 34.9. This indicates the strength of the social fabric in India and Sen speculates that culture, mixed-neighborhoods, family life, and mainstreaming of economic discontent into politics (particularly in Kolkata) might be some of the reasons. I am with Sen on India having a much lower crime rates than many of these cities (having visited NY and LA and finding them rather unsafe). I have, however, two doubts:

• I would like to know what correlation homicide rates have on other violent crimes, such as crimes against women, stealing, burglary and dacoity. My humble surmise would be that India might have higher rates of smaller crimes primarily because going the whole hog and committing murder would still be a mental block, and also because weapons are not that easily available in India as in other places.
• Are these officially published numbers? I know of many instances when the police refuses to take down FIRs in India to keep its books clean, in fact a systematic suppression of crimes which explains the low crime rates in Uttar Pradesh. While I agree that the numbers can not be cooked in the case of homicide, this would be an important consideration while collating data related to petty crimes.

I was still happy reading Amartya Sen’s articles despite the fact that I might not find myself agreeing on a few counts. Jawaharlal Nehru had said:

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

And Sen’s article indicates that India is ready, now, more than ever to find utterance of its sounds in the global cacophony.

Technorati Tags: Independence, Amartya Sen, Delhi

Swadheenta Diwas

India completes 60 years of being independent, being a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic upholding the virtues of Justice, Equality and Fraternity. It is another question that we have made a mockery of each of those words by tailing the US, enabling reservations long after they were due, letting our country through infernal riots, rigging polls and undermining the Presidential office. While a full discussion is beyond the scope of this blog (and the knowledge of the author) and we might not have made as much progress as our enviable neighbors, I am still grateful that we are able to live a life and not die by the millions quite unlike our enviable neighbors.

However, one thing disturbs me. I had written last year about being insouciant about independence, the pop patriotism that pervades our country (is patriotism just another passing fad?), when every year newspapers come out with flashy supplements (with essays by nobel laureates, who else?) and leadership contests (and using Atlas as the hackneyed metaphor for holding the weight of the country?), news channels with deplorable documentaries (Aamir Khan recounting the making of Rang De Basanti?), thankfully I am not too much into FM or else I would have to bear to hear the troubled voice of a damsel in distress yearning for the glory of her country. Having supplements and documentaries is great, by why have them only twice a year. So very convenient. We spare two days in a year for our conscience, for remembering our heroes, for taking a break from Harry Potter and revisiting Bhagat Singh. Two days out of three hundred and sixty five. Undoubtedly, the rest of the time we are busy raising the roof (Chak De Phatte or should I say Chak De India?), banging desks in the Indian parliament, traveling around the world, buying and selling cars, and generally carrying on with life.

And we fail to see instances which need to be curbed. I am not sure if the media will report this tomorrow but my cousin was telling me that a bunch of hooligans landed in her school (DPS in Yelahanka, Bangalore) today and started throwing stones on the school building because they were having independence celebrations. Apparently, their complaint was that it was Pakistan’s independence day and not our own. Some school authorities as well as children suffered injuries. While I do not wish to get into a discussion if having a flag hoisting on 14-Aug is sacrilege to the nation or not, what I can’t quite understand is what chain of logic can lead people to throw stones at children. Silly me, we are an independent nation after all and people can, of course, throw stones in the air wherever they like.

As Spidey said, “with great power comes great responsibility”. With freedom comes the responsibility of thought that we exercise our freedom in a sane and sensible fashion, not by printing out advertisement supported extra supplements or stoning school buildings (or even getting stoned?). It took an arachnid to talk to some sense.

Finally, for lack of anything else to say, I am going to end with the lines of Bismil Azimabadi which were made famous by Ram Prasad Bismil during the freedom struggle (and subsequently and more famously sung in Rang De Basanti). If we just perhaps spare the noble thought our freedom fighters had, and what their country meant for them:

सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है
देखना है ज़ोर कितना बाज़ुए कातिल में है

…

है लिये हथियार दुशमन ताक में बैठा उधर,
और हम तैय्यार हैं सीना लिये अपना इधर.
खून से खेलेंगे होली गर वतन मुश्किल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

हाथ जिन में हो जुनून कटते नही तलवार से,
सर जो उठ जाते हैं वो झुकते नहीं ललकार से.
और भड़केगा जो शोला-सा हमारे दिल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

हम तो घर से निकले ही थे बाँधकर सर पे कफ़न,
जान हथेली पर लिये लो बढ चले हैं ये कदम.
जिन्दगी तो अपनी मेहमान मौत की महफ़िल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

More pop-patriotism. I myself am culpable because I thought of writing this post only on the occasion of the 60th year of India’s Independence. Ok, I lied about ending earlier. Just to feel a little better, I will also quote a poem by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio titled ‘To India – My Native Land’:

To India – My Native land
My country! In thy day of glory past
A beauteous halo circled round thy brow,
And worshipped as a deity thou wast.
Where is that glory, where that reverence now?
Thy eagle pinion is chained down at last,
And groveling in the lowly dust art thou:
Thy minstrel hath no wreath to weave for thee
Save the sad story of thy misery!
Well – let me dive into the depths of time,
And bring from out the ages that have rolled
A few small fragments of those wrecks sublime,
Which human eyes may never more behold;
And let the guerdon of my labour be
My fallen country! One kind wish from thee!

[Thanks StubbornFanatic for putting it online]

Nehru and Edwina: What’s going on?

Her daughter claims that the relationship between the two was completely platonic:

I was with them most of the time. We called it a gooseberry. It was very awkward for them, you know, if I was around the whole time. I would say yes, anyway Nehru was a very honourable man who liked my father. There was a great affection between the two. It was nearly always in my father’s houses either in England or in India that they were together, and I think he would have never dishonoured his friends, you know.

How awkward? Having the daughter like kabab mein haddi between two lovers! Well, I am flummoxed. Then, why did he have to write her tons of letters, perhaps so many that she didn’t need a mattress:

In her will we found she had left the whole collection of letters to my father and they were an enormous number — there were suitcases full of these letters. He asked me to read them. He said he was ninety nine percent sure there was nothing that would wound him or worry him or diminish him in any way. But there was just that one per cent of doubt fluttering in his heart…

And then, I get even more confused when I look at this picture:

Just what was our first Prime Minister trying to do? If he looked at this photograph, would he feel embarrassed, or perhaps start an exposition about how to humour firang ladies. Just look at him there — I feel ashamed!

Oh, coming back to letters — I wonder how many letters Nehru wrote. There were a sackful he wrote to Indira. Dunno how much it helped her during the great darkness. Maybe she used to go back to reading some of those letters at night when she had problems sleeping — they had really proved to be an excellent soporific when I had read them in my childhood.

[I got inspired by this entry in IBN blogs -- those blogs look like a good collection!]