by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Saket Suman,
Book: Looking for the Nation; Author: Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee; Publisher: Speaking Tiger; Pages: 202; Price: Rs 350
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, who earned his doctorate in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University and has been published widely in national and international media, was haunted by a ghost during his childhood. Several decades on, the political theorist has come out with a scholarly offering — backed by research and reading — as his act of resistance against the ghost.
The author grew up in a small town in Assam and one of his father’s friend, a retired railway employee, was a frequent visitor to their house. For reasons yet incomprehensible to the then young lad, this old man, and his politically sanctioned method, would cast a harrowing shadow on his upbringing.
To put things in perspective, the old man would customarily narrate stories about the violence of Partition, that erupted after India and Pakistan were separated at birth. But his stories “inevitably revolved around Muslims attacking hindu villages,” and the resistance strategies that Hindus evolved to ward off the attack.
“I remember one particular incident he narrated, where scores of bricks were stored on the terraces of Hindu households… When the Muslims attacked, the bricks were put to effective use. “We never wondered why he chose to tell a 14-year-old boy and his sister stories that would shake them to the bone,” he recalls in “Looking for the Nation: Towards Another Idea of India”.
Many years later, Bhattacharjee realised that the telling of such harrowing, sometimes skewed, stories were a part of “a deliberate plan”.
“The man, I learnt much later, belonged to a Hindu right-wing organisation. The stories he told us were part of his job. His job was propaganda. This was a politically sanctioned method to arouse and cement communal sentiments,” he reflects in the book.
But “his lies and fantasies” have caught on with the author’s present and he penned this book, “not looking for a desirable idea of the nation”, but in the quest for “the nation with irony, discovering everything that falls short of fraternity and justice”.
And how does he do it? Fortunately, Bhattacharjee’s offering breaks from the routine books that either blindly critique the functioning of Hindu right wing organisations, or are full of praise for them. His book is neither criticism, nor reflection, if anything, it is an earnest attempt at understanding how our country functions, not in accordance with what is laid down in the Constitution, but in practise in our day-to-day lives.
His arguments are broken down in six chapters, each tracing a particular trajectory that has gone in, or continues to shape, the elusive idea of India.
In the first chapter “The Surplus of Indian Nationalism”, his findings suggest that Indian nationalist thought is a product of the anti-colonial movement. In finding the root and evolution of Indian nationalism, he keenly studies the works of Nehru, Tagore, Gandhi, Ambedkar and others, who, through their participation in the freedom movement, gave voice to the sentiments of nationalism.
He explains that Nehru, in his writings, laid down the larger debate of nationalism, and its relation with modernity, culture, identity and history. Aurobindo, on the other hand, reflected on the nation as “a grand idea in the shadow of religious differences”. The chapter also suggests that Tagore engaged with Gandhi on the question of culture and universalism, while Ambedkar provided a critical perspective on the speculations by nationalist thinkers.
After having laid down the foundation of his research in the first chapter, Bhattacharjee strolls down the “territory without justice”. “…Since then (Independence), the stories of betrayal, hatred, and above all, the fetish for territory, haven’t come to an end”, he notes, before analysing the fate and predicament of the nation’s most “beleaguered people” — the refugees, the Dalits and the minorities.
In the next chapter, he looks at India’s Muslims, with the shadow of Partition behind them, and the future ahead. “The discourse of trust and mutual generosity were taken over by suspicion and hatred. Religion and history were treated as contested territories of difference,” he writes in charting what has “led to the sacrifice of ethical responsibility”.
The remaining chapters focus on “Untouchables”; the institutions of the country, where he finds that bodies are coerced through mechanisms of control; and “Thinking Against Power”, the last chapter of the book, throws light on the resistances against nationalism, caste and other embedded patriarchies.
“Looking for the Nation”, however, may come across as too heavy for some readers, flooded as it is with analogies, reflections and studies of various thinkers and leaders. This book’s merit lies in its structure, and the author succeeds in telling what he set out to do, by dividing the book into six chapters, each focussing on one theme and leading, quite naturally, on to the next.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Syed Haider Raza, Amarnath Sehgal
By Siddhi Jain,
New Delhi : Amarnath Sehgal is best known for his sculpted marvels, Syed Haider Raza for his work with the brush. Little or nothing is known about their penmanship — particularly about the trauma of Partition.
As India enters the 72nd year of its independence, IANS, with special permission from curator Shruti Isaac, delves into the archives of Sehgal, who left behind an unpublished memoir. Raza’s memoir has been published but very little of it is known in India.
Born in Campbellpur, in what is not Pakistani Punjab, Sehgal (1922-2007) was witness to the tragedy of the Partition, an event he described as a “holocaust”.
“My nerves were shattered, having witnessed the holocaust, with millions killed and many more millions uprooted from their ancestral hearths and homes, on both sides of the border, to seek refuge, solace, security and peace, keeping their bodies and souls together,” he writes in “American Education: An Experience” sometime in the 1960s that dealt extensively with his three-year sojourn in the US from 1949.
Shifting to the Kullu Valley in the wake of Partition, Sehgal applied to study sculpture in the US coupled with the motive to “get out of India”, he writes in the memoir, explaining why the tragedy led to his search for a foreign land.
“I was sad, I had lost my sleep then. I wanted to be away from the environments, where there were cries which were unheard,” he writes.
“Such were days when I wanted to jump across to unknown frontiers to live in peace and express myself,” pens the sculptor, who developed a deep sensitivity towards human suffering, reflective in many of his works.
His 1958 bronze sculpture “Cries Unheard” stems from his tragic experiences and is housed in the permanent collection of Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA).
The 2008 Padma Bhushan awardee, who returned to India in 1951, also writes about a “strange pull” that spurred him to come back to India for the second time and work for the revival of folk arts in the country’s rural space.
“Having lived in America for three years, I had a chance to get the resident status. But the lure of my own country, my home, my mother, provided a strange pull, and motivated me to pack up and leave,” he writes.
The memoir now resides in Amarnath Sehgal Private Collection in Delhi, a space which was formerly the sculptor’s studio.
On his part, Raza describes Partition as “an extremely difficult time” for his family, then based in Mandla (in the modern day Madhya Pradesh) in “Itinerary” (2003), originally written in French during his more than five-decade-long sojourn in the European nation.
Raza (1922-2016) writes that his family was absolutely against the division of the country, and all was peaceful till tensions mounted following Partition.
“After the Partition, there were killings in the (adjacent) region of Damoh, and it became very difficult for my sister and her family. My older brother, Yusuf Raza, who worked as Editor of the Hindi journal ‘Vishwamitra’, was well informed on what was happening.”
He goes to write about his family members having to vacate their homes and migrate to Pakistan.
“As the tensions increased… they decided to leave their homes one night. The house was burnt; they found shelter elsewhere and finally arrived in Lahore in Pakistan,” he writes.
Interestingly, the painter’s family had to move to Mandla from Delhi after the First War of Independence in 1857 since “they knew (we) opposed British rule”.
The painter, who was awarded the Padma Shri in 1981, the Padma Bhushan in 2007 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2013, is known for harboring a deep connect with Mandla’s soil, and also recollected his staying back in India.
“Even though the Partition was a tragedy in my eyes, I decided to stay and I never regretted staying back. I am happy to have kept my name, my religion, my passport and to remain an Indian citizen even after 52 years in France,” Raza writes.
(Siddhi Jain can be contacted at siddhi.j@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Kolkata : BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday said the country’s partition could have been avoided had Congress not made the mistake of “censoring” national song “Vande Mataram” as part of its appeasement policy.
“Had the Congress not made the mistake of censoring the national song Vande Mataram to just stanzas instead of the whole song, we could have stopped India from getting divided,” Shah said here.
He was delivering the first Bankim Chandra Chattapadhyay Memorial Lecture organised by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation on the occasion of the Bengali writer’s birthday.
“Historians blame the Khilafat movement or the Muslim League’s two-nation theory for India’s partition. But I am sure that the appeasement politics that Congress introduced by censoring Vande Mataram as a national anthem led to the country’s partition in the long run,” he said.
Some intellectuals of Bengal, including fiction writer Buddhadeb Guha, Bankim Chandra’s biographer Amitrasudan Bhattacharya, professor Purabi Roy and state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Dilip Ghosh, were present at the event in a city auditorium.
Shah hailed Chattapadhyay, the author of Vande Mataram, as someone who ushered in the renaissance of India’s cultural ethos and described Vande Mataram as a manifestation of the country’s century-old tradition of nationalism.
“Vande Mataram is a manifestation of our century-old tradition of nationalism. India is not a geo-political nation, it is a geo-cultural nation. The definition of India’s nationalism is not narrow,” said Shah, who is on a two-day tour of Bengal.
“Vande Mataram was never related to a particular religion or religious belief. The song does not criticise or ridicule any community. It attempts to connect the nation with its people and manifests the tradition and culture of the region where it was produced. So bringing religion into Vande Mataram was a big mistake,” he pointed out.
However, the BJP President claimed that with the saffron outfit’s ascendency to power, the situation in the country has changed.
Referring to Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who served as the Minister for Industry and Supply under the Jawaharlal Nehru government before quitting the Congress, Shah said Mookherjee decided to form Jana Sangh as he found the policies of Independent India to be heavily influenced by western culture.
He knew that leaving the Congress would eradicate his chance to win another election for a long time as the Congress, at that point, was heavily banking upon its contribution to India’s freedom movement and no other political party had any chance to come to power.
“But still he formed Jana Sangh because he found that the new policies formed under the Congress regime was heavily influenced by western culture and lacked the fragrance of India’s culture and heritage. They did not have any connect with the country’s culture, tradition or fundamental ideas,” Shah said.
“No matter how much we may grow, we can’t abandon our roots. If any society loses its connection with the root, it would certainly fail,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
(IANS Books This Weekend)
New Delhi : See how two women discover the best and the worst about India’s surrogacy industry; discover another meaning of life from the story of a woman who one day comes face-to-face with a treasure that lay buried in her heart for very long; learn that you have to disappoint those closest to you in order to forge your own path; and flick through a new work on the horrific Partition of India, which became a defining moment in Asian history.
These are the writings that IANS bookshelf has to offer this weekend.
1. Book: A House For Happy Mothers; Author: Amulya Malladi; Publisher: Lake Union; Pages: 301; Price: Rs 399
In trendy Silicon Valley, Priya has everything she needs — a loving husband, a career, and a home — but the one thing she wants most is the child she’s unable to have. In a Southern Indian village, Asha doesn’t have much raising two children in a tiny hut, she and her husband can barely keep a tin roof over their heads, but she wants a better education for her gifted son.
Pressured by her family, Asha reluctantly checks into the Happy Mothers House: A baby farm where she can rent her only asset — her womb — to a childless couple overseas. To the dismay of friends and family, Priya places her faith in a woman she’s never met to make her dreams of motherhood come true.
Together, the two women discover the best and the worst that India’s rising surrogacy industry has to offer, bridging continents and cultures to bring a new life into the world and renewed hope to each other.
2. Book: The Indigo Sun; Author: Rupa Bhullar; Publisher: Rupa: Pages: 284; Price: Rs 295
“The Indigo Sun” is an enchanting tale set in the desert of Rajasthan where Maya, a young NRI woman, is led on a transformative journey by a young boy, Ananda, a mystic gypsy woman named Leela, and Veer, a well-respected, socially-driven entrepreneur from London. Together, they embark on a colourful odyssey encompassing culture, heritage, simplicity and celebration of life.
In a distant land and surrounded by strangers, Maya’s past, present and future come together as do her body, mind and soul. She discovers another meaning of life, forms incredible bonds, meets the man of her dreams, and finally comes face-to-face with her truth — a treasure that lay buried in her heart all along.
She is finally home.
3. Book: The Arrangement; Author: Sonya Ali; Publisher: Hachette: Pages: 345; Price: Rs 399
Twenty-nine year-old Raina is still unmarried and battling her family’s expectations for her future — they think that by now she should have been married in a dream Indian wedding. The pressure reaches new heights when her grandmother, Nani, decides to play matchmaker in order to find her the perfect arranged marriage.
Eager not to disappoint her family, Raina goes along with the plan but when the love of her life returns — ex-boyfriend Dev — she’s forced to confront her true feelings. As she tries to free herself from the cultural pressures she faces, Raina realises that sometimes you have to disappoint those closest to you in order to forge your own path.
4. Book: Shedding the Past, Embracing the Future; Author: Arun Bhatnagar; Publisher: Konark: Pages: 264; Price: Rs 650
This book is among the latest writings on the horrific saga of Partition which became a defining moment in Asian history. Its repercussions and after-effects are in evidence even today. With the blame-game for tragedies such as the Partition and the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, the Kashmir and Tibet questions, the China policy, the economic scenario, the social and ethnic challenges, communal strife and gender violence having gone on and on, an attempt is made to suggest answers. Issues pertaining to governance and administration and of foreign policy are addressed at some length.
In several ways, the seeds of the troubles and difficulties that have confronted the new India were sown in August 1947 itself.
The run-up to independence also witnessed the growth of the Hindutva movement through the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS and, at a later date, the birth of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS). The BJP of today, with Narendra Modi at the helm, is an outcome thereof. This comprehensive and lucidly-written book traces and analyses the journey of the emergence of independent India and the roots of many of the basic issues and problems. Time to study the past and learn from experiences and mistakes.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Saeed Naqvi,
This is a true story. I am revisiting it with a purpose: So that it collides head on with the nation’s 70th anniversary celebrations. Absolute, undiluted joy on this occasion would require total amnesia of that which accompanied independence: Partition. With some of us, these celebrations will always be tempered with Keats’ great dictum:
“Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veil’d melancholy has her sovran shrine”
Yes, that story, spread over India, Pakistan and the US. Before I share the story with you, let me first spell out the dramatis personae to simplify the narrative.
When the feudal order was breaking down, my family in Mustafabad near Rae Bareli produced two ideological streams. My father came from a line of staid Congressmen. His elder brother, Wasi Naqvi, was the first Congress MLA from Rae Bareli. My earliest memory of political activity in these 70 years is of Feroz Gandhi weaving his parliamentary seat around my uncle’s assembly constituency. This was the seat Indira Gandhi inherited, then Rajiv Gandhi and so on.
My mother’s family was more literary and, after the intellectual fashion of those days, of a more leftist bent. Her only brother Saiyid Mohammad Mehdi, our dearest “Mamujan”, caught the eye of P.C. Joshi, General Secretary of the CPI, who was then stitching together Indian Peoples Theatre and the Progressive Writers Association. Joshi whisked Mamujan away to Mumbai to share a commune with Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Krishen Chander and a host of others.
Mamujan’s younger daughter, Shireen, with a degree from JNU, could not ignore her mother’s entreaties and married a cousin, Abbas, a gentleman to boot, settled in Dubai but, alas, of Pakistani parentage. The conditions for the marriage were clear: They would live in a neutral country, not in Pakistan. Shireen obstinately held on to her Indian passport.
Like her father, Shireen is a reader (a book in two days) and taught in a school. Abbas stuck to investment banking.
Their eldest daughter Mariam studied cinema in Canada, fell in love with a Haitian filmmaker and settled in Canada. She was confident that her Indian passport, on which she had travelled to India numerous times, would be part of the record even if she acquired her husband’s nationality.
She had goofed. She had not taken into account the dark shadow that would always hover over her head: Her father’s Pakistani nationality. That fact scratches out her Indianness. This is just a minor consequence of what the leaders of India, Pakistan and Great Britain accomplished 70 years ago. But Shireen had to prepare for worse.
When she was in the family way again, her husband had taken a transfer to the Cayman Islands. For Shireen this was a Godsend in a most unexpected way. In the ninth month of her pregnancy, she would cross over to Florida for greater gynaecological care. This is precisely what Shireen did. So, not only was little Rabab born in a world class hospital, she was doubly blessed on another score. She was born with a priceless document: The American passport. So far so good, until God revealed his enigmatic side: Rabab was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, immobile, comprehensively challenged, condemned to move only on a wheelchair.
Shireen and Rabab were able to travel to Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, and Mustafabad once or twice a year until collapse of the global economy in 2008 affected Shireen’s mobility. Frequent travel between Dubai and Delhi became too expensive.
When sorrows come they come in battalions. At 30, Rabab is a big, heavy girl. With tears in her eyes, her Bangladeshi nanny told Shireen that Rabab was too heavy for her to change her clothes, bathe, seat on a wheelchair and be put to bed.
Shireen and Abbas began to share these chores until the next installment of bad news. Shireen was diagnosed with leukemia.
She now faces an existential choice. Her support structure — sister, uncles, cousins, nieces are all in India. She already has an apartment next door to our daughters, her adoring nieces.
Shireen, of course, has an Indian passport and can come and go as she pleases. The problem is with Rabab’s long term visa because it is impossible to cart her back and forth, pointlessly, on a short term visa which, incidentally, is not assured either. One would have thought she can sail in with her American passport. But that is not the case. Her father’s nationality trumps all other considerations. Look, she is on a wheel chair. Doesn’t matter. She is comprehensively challenged. That does not qualify her for an Indian visa. The system is telling an invalid child that her father is her curse.
Lest you begin to chastise the present government for Rabab’s woes, do pause for a moment. The BJP regime came in day before yesterday. Stringent, sometimes inexplicable, laws were put in place by successive Congress governments.
The document that Mariam was handed by the Indian High Commission in Ottawa (when she applied for OCI card some years ago) takes one’s breath away: “As per the MHA’s OCI ruling, no person who, or either of whose parents or grandparents or great grandparents is or has been a citizen of Pakistan, Bangladesh at any time or such other country as the Central government may, by notification in the official gazette, specify, shall be eligible for registration as an overseas citizen of India cardholder. In view of the existing OCI rules, you are not entitled for grant of OCI card facility because one of your parents is of Pakistani origin.” That Mariam was born in India and, before her marriage, travelled extensively on an Indian passport is of no consequence.
I realise more than most people that these are abnormal times. In fact my career as a foreign correspondent would have been impossible without unstinted help, on a personal basis, from friends in the foreign office and in other parts of government. Additionally, visas for friends and relatives, on both sides of the border, were there for the asking. My friends were a strand in the vast mosaic that kept the nation’s sanity. Thanks to them, visiting relatives from Pakistan envied us for the friends we had. “Bhaiyya, can we buy land here?” It all seems so distant in time.
My mother, an eternal optimist, a great favourite of Shireen and Abbas, indeed our entire universe, died three years ago, firm in her belief that sooner or later mists will lift and peace will descend. She would recite the following couplet with wistfulness in the eyes:
“Bada maza us milap mein hai,
Jo sulah ho jaae, jung ho kar?
(There is great pleasure in that harmony
Which descends after a big quarrel.)
Would my mother have been able to sustain that optimism given the state of play on this, our 70th birthday?
(Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com )
—IANS
