by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books, Interviews
By Saket Suman,
New Delhi : At a time when demonising the Mughal empire has become fashionable in India and a negative perception of their rule comes a new book “Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire”, whose writer, Ira Mukhoty maintains that Hindustan was “never a plunderous foray” for the Mughals.
The ambition of the Mughals in India, according to Mukhoty, was to found an empire worthy of their glorious ancestors. The author, in an interview with IANS, highlighted that Babur, the prince of Ferghana, accepted that he would never beat the Uzbeks (in Kabul) and decided, instead, to try and found an empire in Hindustan.
“After winning the battle of Panipat, he then did everything in his power to keep his noblemen and his amirs in Agra and summoned their families, women and children, to Hindustan. Babur saw Hindustan as the land of hope, albeit a somewhat poor substitute for his glorious childhood cities. Hindustan would be the land in which he would forge his dream of empire, dreams nurtured by a desire for grand architecture, magnificent courtly culture and etiquette. It was never a place of plunder from which to take wealth and then return to his homeland as there was no other homeland for Babur to return to.
“But somehow we have conflated the histories of all the different Muslim rulers/invaders including the likes of Nadir Shah, the Delhi Sultans, and the Tughlaqs into one, amorphous, dangerous heap. I am interested in extricating the Mughals from this morass, to bring them to life as much as possible so people can see them for the living, dreaming, ambitious and talented family they were,” Mukhoty contended.
The author pointed to Babur’s “Baburnama,” Gulbadan’s “Humayun-nama” and Jahangir’s “Tuzuk i Jahangiri”, maintaining that these primary sources show us the real motivations, concerns, ambitions and griefs of the Mughals.
Mukhoty, who has previously authored highly acclaimed “Heroines: Powerful Indian Women of Myth and History”, has, in her new book, chronicled the lives of women who played a vital role in building the Mughal empire. In doing so, she brings forth an illuminating and gripping history of a little known aspect of “the most magnificent dynasty” that the world has ever known.
“When I set out to write this book, I had the same view of the Mughal women that I suppose a lot of lay people do — that they were essentially domesticated and exotic women, quite unchanged through 200 years of history. As I did my research, I was truly amazed at the way the physical space that these women occupied evolved over the course of this time. The early Mughal women were physically so mobile and adventurous, journeying in harsh and unpredictable conditions, that it completely challenged my preconceptions about a “harem” or a “zenana”. Over time they did become more sedentary, as Akbar built the high walls of Fatehpur Sikri, and yet the women refused to be constrained by these limitations and kept setting off on Hajj journeys, or on unexpected pleasure excursions,” she said.
The Mughal women, Mukhoty said, influenced politics, and art and architecture; commanded immense wealth — and often used this wealth to stake their own claims to a legacy.
“Influential women were a part of their Central Asian nomadic culture so it was never unusual for a woman to be ambitious or to wish to leave a legacy or influence politics. This ambition, this independence, this power that many of the women showed, were all startling discoveries for me,” noted Mukhoty, who was educated in Delhi and Cambridge.
She further recalled that at the onset, the idea of the “harem” made her “somewhat uncomfortable”, with “vague but tenuous notions of lascivious kings and nubile women” associated with the whole concept.
“This is a post-colonial construct, as the western travellers in the 18th and 19th centuries wrote with fervid imagination about the Mughal world they encountered in india but could not understand. As I looked a little deeper, I realised that the zenana was often like a traditional Indian joint family, just more so! With Babur and Humayun, it was quite a contained space but with Akbar onwards, the zenana became much larger. It was almost like a mini-city, in which every profession was carried out by women, from administration to military to entertainment. It was from within this space that the Mughal women operated and they found ways to exercise their influence despite the desire of later ‘padshahs’ to impose greater order,” she elaborated.
Mukhoty said that Indian history has not been written about in anywhere near the extent it deserves to be.
“If you think of any British monarch for example, Henri VIII or Queen Elizabeth I, there are countless books on them. Similarly for the French, there are reams of writing on Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. Indian history has so much to offer, but so much is still shrouded in mystery, or myth-making,” she contended.
Priced at Rs 699, “Daughters of the Sun” has been published by Aleph and comes with an elaborate Notes and References section.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Erik Solheim
By Vishal Gulati,
New Delhi : Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats and countries need better waste management to cope with the sheer quantity of plastic rubbish that is fouling the waters and environment, says United Nations Environment head Erik Solheim.
“Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats the planet is facing right now,” Solheim emphasised.
Sample these startling facts about plastic pollution: Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags. Fifty per cent of the plastic we use is single-use or disposable. Each year, at least eight million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans, the equivalent of a full garbage truck every minute.
In the last decade, the world produced more plastic than in the whole of last century.
“We’re throwing up to 13 million tonnes of plastic waste into the oceans each year, and in the next decade that could double . We’re turning the oceans into a plastic soup,” the UN Under-Secretary-General told IANS in an exclusive online interview.
“This has to stop, and right now, because it’s harming marine life and ending up in our own food and water supplies. If it’s not resolved, this is a problem that will come back to bite us. It’s also a problem that’s difficult to clean up.
“We’d like to see a mass mobilisation of people around the world and big clean-ups. These are important because no amount of clean-ups can solve this issue. We need upstream change, that means a change in the way we use plastic,” Solheim, who is coming to India, a host to UN Environment-led global event World Environment Day on June 5.
“Beat Plastic Pollution”, the theme for World Environment 2018, urges governments, industry and individuals to explore sustainable alternatives and reduce the production and excessive use of single-use plastic polluting oceans, damaging marine life and threatening human health.
“We need consumers to pause and examine their relationship with plastic. If we look at our daily lives, there is so much single-use and throwaway plastic that can easily be eliminated and replaced with sustainable alternatives. If enough people do this, it translates into colossal consumer power!” Solheim said.
For companies, he says: “Then we want industry to innovate, to find sustainable alternatives and embrace the idea of extended producer responsibility — by which a manufacturer takes responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their product.”
“I strongly believe that the companies that innovate now will be the winners of the future.”
“We also want governments to drive this change through legislation, and ensure we have strong enforcement. It’s about ensuring manufacturers have the necessary incentives in place to do the right thing.”
There’s no single, magic solution to enforce a ban on single-use pet bottles or straws. Every minute we buy one million plastic bottles globally, according to the UN Environment.
“It’s clear that we need better waste management to cope with the sheer quantity of plastic rubbish. But let’s not see this as just a litter problem. We need to stop wasteful practice and to do that bans on certain single-use plastic items are helpful,’ he said.
“Ultimately, though, we need changes in design. We need to see sustainable alternatives emerge on the market to replace so much of the wasteful plastic products that we use.”
Yes, India needs more Afroz Shah, not only for clean-up oceans but also for rivers and mountains.
“Afroz Shah is a great inspiration, not only for India but for the entire world. So yes, we do need more people like him! What is important is not just the quantity of litter that has been collected, but that a powerful message has been sent around the world and that this message has been heard!”
Shah, a young lawyer from Mumbai, and his volunteers have removed around 13 million kg of waste since 2015 in what the UN has called “the world’s largest beach cleanup project”.
Solheim is optimistic that India can act as a catalyst for curbing pollution.
“Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi recently said it would be a crime against future generations not to take action on climate change.
“India, therefore, carries a strong moral argument. In addition, India is among the nations that stand to suffer the biggest impact from climate change; so it’s important that it acts as a powerful voice for action on the global stage,” he said.
“India is also innovating, and that’s what I think will be its biggest act of leadership: showing climate action can also unlock incredible economic gains,” he added.
(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Shashi Tharoor
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered an “irreparable and irreversible reputational damage” in the last four years, says Congress leader and former foreign diplomat Shashi Tharoor.
In the state capital to attend an event of the Indian Professional Congress — an outfit of the grand old party aimed at reaching out to professionals, the two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram said a momentum was building against the Narendra Modi government and in 2019, the general elections results were sure to go against it.
On a warm Sunday afternoon, as Tharoor spoke to IANS — before the chargesheet in Sunanda Pushkar death case was filed on Monday, he claimed the Karnataka Assembly polls were going the Congress way.
But not attaching much importance to Karnataka, which he said was just a “way station”, the 62-year-old Congress leader said that elections in Gujarat, where Congress inched “astonishingly close” to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in many constituencies, showed that the tide was now turning against the saffron camp.
The former Union Minister, who currently is the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, also pointed out how defeats of the BJP in party strongholds like Gorakhpur and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh recently had rendered a body blow to the party’s dream to return to power in 2019.
“What the BJP government and Prime Minister Modi has done in the past four years in power?” he asked, slamming them on the twin issues of Goods and Service Tax (GST) and demonetisation.
“GST was a good idea, which implemented in haste and in bad taste, has affected the whole tax system,” he said while pointing out how even the best global economists had come down heavily on the GST, even calling it the most complex tax system.
“Only the ones eating out of their hands think otherwise,” said the erudite Congress Lok Sabha member, who is knowing for his quaint words and subtle expressions.
Sweating profusely due to the sweltering heat and humidity, when the diplomat-turned-politician was asked if this sweat was symbolic of the challenging task the Congress was facing to make a comeback in the state, Tharoor gave a big smile and ducked the question.
“Well there are ifs and buts here and there, but with growing resentment against the BJP-led government at the Centre and the Congress being the biggest opposition party, we are set to be the natural beneficiaries,” he said confidently.
On Monday, the Delhi Police filed charges against Tharoor in the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar, naming him as one of the accused. The charges were filed in the court of metropolitan magistrate under Indian Penal Code sections related to cruelty against a woman and abetment to suicide. Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel room in New Delhi on January 17, 2014.
In his interview he charged the Modi dispensation of rechristening the names of many schemes and welfare programmes of the Congress-led UPA governments and rolling them out as their own.
Asked to comment on whether Congress President Rahul Gandhi when pitted against Prime Minister Modi had a certain disadvantage, Tharoor was quick in his defense of the Gandhi scion, saying: “India has a parliamentary system and not a presidential one, which though has its own merits, does not fit in the Indian context.”
The Congress had its own brand of politics, while the BJP pursued the politics of one man, he said.
Asked whether it was not the “one family” brand of politics that prevailed in the Congress, he rebutted, saying that Rahul Gandhi, soon after his ascendancy. had made it clear that in Congress, every worker and leader mattered.
Coming to his favorite topic of international relations and foreign policy, the dapper Congress leader surprisingly had a back-handed pat for Modi.
“I must compliment the Prime Minister for his tireless efforts, boundless energy and personal time that he has put in the foreign policy and traveling, but sadly things have not moved beyond this.”
Sadly, he said, the foreign policy was being treated in an “episodical manner” by the NDA government, something which had given mistrust and a sense of insecurity in and around the immediate neighbourhood.
Asked how the transition from the United Nations to the hurly burly of politics in India had been when he was fielded as a Congress candidate in Kerala in 2009 and his face lighted up with a smile: “Initially it was pretty tough and I had very many stab wounds in the back and front… But that kind of has stabilized now,” he said.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Sachin Pilot
By Prashant Sood and Sidhartha Dutta,
New Delhi : From a historical low in 2013, the Congress has bounced back in Rajasthan with support from all communities and will oust the BJP in the assembly polls later this year, says state Congress chief Sachin Pilot, who also feels that the BJP is finding it difficult to find a state unit chief as no one wants to be a scapegoat after the assembly elections later this year.
Pilot, 40, says that caste is not the pivot around which everything works in an election and young people were now looking beyond caste while voting.
Pilot said it had been almost four weeks since the state BJP president Ashok Parnami “was made to resign”.
“And for four weeks they have not found a person to do the job because nobody wants to be a scapegoat. They know in 5-6 months, they will lose the election. For four weeks, the BJP, the party with a difference and so-called largest party in the world, is unable to find somebody who is willing to do the job of a state president. This shows the reality of the government of Rajasthan and BJP itself,” Pilot told IANS in an interview.
Taking a dig at Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, he said she had visited the national capital not to seek development funds “but to lobby for (appointment of) a state president.
“So there is obvious infighting (in BJP). There is a lack of coordination between the state and central governments, and people are suffering because of that,” he said.
Pilot said Raje has lost control over governance and there is “unemployment, agrarian distress, farmers’ suicides, atrocities against tribals and Dalits and scams relating to land and mining”.
Asked about former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s remarks, apparently aimed at him, that younger leaders should stay in the queue and those who break the line risked a premature end to their political career, Pilot referred to Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s speech at the party’s plenary in March where he had talked of breaking down walls.
“I don’t think Gehlotji was trying to attack anybody. But I do remember that speech Mr Rahul Gandhi made, where he committed himself to breaking down the walls in politics and in the Congress party. So, when the Congress president is breaking down the walls, where is the question of any line and queues?” he asked.
Asked about Gehlot’s other remark that a PCC chief should not be automatically considered as chief ministerial choice, Pilot said the party has been fighting elections under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi and will do so in Rajasthan also.
“The aim and objective for all of us is to secure a mandate for the Congress and who will get what position is not a matter of concern for me or others. We are fighting as a team,” he said.
Asked about Gehlot’s appointment as a party general secretary and his remarks that he had not been separated from Rajasthan politics, Pilot said: “Even if Ashok Gehlotji wants himself to be away from Rajasthan, as party president I won’t allow him to be away from Rajasthan.”
On ticket distribution, Pilot, who was appointed state Congress chief after the party’s debacle in the 2013 assembly polls, said winnability and consensus will be the criteria and “people who have worked in the last four years to rebuild the party, their efforts will be rewarded”.
“We are focusing on booths. The fake voters that the BJP had included, we are taking them out. And we are taking the battle to the polling stations. At the right time we will declare the candidates,” he said.
Asked about the reasons for the party’s debacle in the assembly polls, he said a factor was the party not being able to translate the good work done into political dividends.
“It requires some sort of communication strategy, some sort of self-marketing, which perhaps we didn’t do well. But we lost (due) to many other reasons.”
Pilot noted that he was a MP at 26, a Union minister at 31 and made chief of the Rajasthan Congress at 35. “The party has given me so much; now it’s time for me to give back to the party,” he said.
On a query on the caste matrix, he said: “As far as caste communities are concerned, they will vote on issues and the Congress is the only party that has the capacity and the intent to carry all communities together, all castes together,” he added.
The Congress had been reduced to 21 seats in the 200-seat Assembly in the 2013 elections but won four of six assembly by-polls and the two parliamentary by-elections to Ajmer and Alwar earlier this year. The party led in all the 16 segments of two parliamentary seats.
Pilot said no ruling party in Rajasthan has lost a parliamentary by-election in the last 40 years and it showed the depth of anger against BJP across all communities and regions.
(Prashant Sood can be contacted at prashant.s@ians.in and Sidhartha Dutta at sidhartha.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Kamal Nath
By Prashant Sood and Sidhartha Dutta,
New Delhi : Newly-appointed Congress President in Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath says that it is not a practice in his party to declare a chief ministerial candidate in a poll-bound state and Rahul Gandhi will do so in the state, if the need is felt.
He also says that the people in Madhya Pradesh are angry with the “thuggery” of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government and the Congress is much better organised to defeat it in the assembly polls to be held later this year.
“Well, there is no doubt the time is short. But I am confident that we will be able to strengthen the party at the village level. This is a contest against the BJP’s organisational strength and their money power,” he said in an interview with IANS.
Kamal Nath, 71, who is MP from Chhindwara and has been elected to the Lok Sabha nine times, said that the decision about changes in the state unit should have been made “much earlier” in view of the coming elections but he was not going to look back and think why the decision was not made.
The former union minister, who was appointed Madhya Pradesh Congress chief on April 26, said he has no faction, has good relations with all leaders and does not have to strive to bring about factional unity.
Kamal Nath appeared to be keeping open the option of contestng the Assembly polls. “I have been fighting for 40 years. I am the longest serving MP.” Asked if party leader Jyotiraditya Scindia will contest, he said, “I don’t know”.
Asked about the party not declaring a chief ministerial candidate and if the appointment of Scindia as head of the Campaign Committee was a balancing act, he said: “Madhya Pradesh is a complex state and no one face can win you the election. You need several faces. And that’s what has been done.”
Asked if he would have liked the party to have declared a CM candidate, he said that the strategy varies from state to state.
“It is sometimes necessary, sometimes not necessary. Who did BJP have as a chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh? Who did they have their CM candidate in Uttarakhand. They never had a chief ministerial candidate. So, it depends,” he said.
On his earlier views in an interview that party should define in every state who the leader is, Kamal Nath said: “If a need is felt, the Congress President will declare one.”
Kamal Nath said his priorities as PCC chief will be to strengthen the party at the village level. “Election has become very localised. This we must understand.”
“Every section of society in MP is in distress, farmers, the youth, traders, the labourers, women. Never in the history of politics, has there been a situation where every section of society is against you. The people of Madhya Pradesh are simple and docile. They sometimes will accept being disappointed, but will not accept being thugged. The voters are feeling that they have been thugged,” he added.
Asked about the strategy to defeat the BJP with about seven months left for the polls, he said: “We have a strategy to strengthen the party at the grassroots level. There is a micro strategy which obviously is to be kept within our party.”
The Congress has lost the last three assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh to the BJP.
Kamal Nath alleged that all promises of BJP government have fallen flat.
“We are better organised this time and all the announcements and promises made by the BJP have fallen flat on their face. On the ground there is nothing. When every section of society is against them, then what is there,” he said.
“Organisationally we are better organised. Do you think we have been battling for this election for the last one year. It’s not that. We started much earlier maybe under a different PCC leadership. But everybody is working,” he added.
Answering a query about former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh and his role, he said: “Everybody is close with me, remember that. Make no mistake. Digvijay Singh has large organisational knowledge of the state. And he will need to be active. He has already announced that he is not for any post or position.”
Asked if wide acceptability was a reason for his appointment as PCC chief, Kamal Nath said, “Whatever the reason that Rahul Gandhi will tell you but the fact is this that I am one person who has very good relations with everybody. So for me it is not a challenge to bring unity to the party. I am fortunate that there is no need for me to do it. There already is unity.”
Kamal Nath said his contest is against the incumbent Chief Minister unless Prime Minister Narendra Modi turns it into one against him.
Asked if there were internal differences in the party with Scindia feeling that he has lost out, Kamal Nath said he did not think so.
He said Scindia was in Bhopal during a road show to mark fresh appointments in the state and they met every few days.
(Prashant Sood can be contacted at prashant.s@ians.in and Sidhartha Dutta at sidhartha.d@ians.in)
—IANS
