Experience the Wagah

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Manto’s Toba Tek Singh is probably one of the most extraordinary pieces of satire ever written. Ripping into the utter mindlessness that was Partition, the story questions the very concept of sanity in a land where, it could be said, with very little exaggeration, everyone had gone mad. If you haven’t already, you can read the short story here in the original Urdu or a Devanagri transliteration or (only if you have to) an English translation. You can also listen to a reading of the story on YouTube [part I, part II]

After reading the story though, should you want to live the satire, and get a first-hand glimpse of the madness that powered Manto’s genius, all you have to do is get on a train and make your way to Amritsar. At a short distance from the city is the only land border crossing between two nations representing a fifth of the world’s population: Wagah. Of course, being a border crossing between two nuclear states is hard work and it’s unfair to expect it to work for long hours. In deference to this sentiment, every evening at five-thirty, the crossing is closed.

And what a closing it is.

The gates themselves are fairly unimpressive: made of iron and about as big as what you’d get outside any school. What’s to watch though us how they are shut. Watched over by avuncular portraits of Gandhi and Jinnah on either side, soldiers theatrically goose-step up and down the tarmac multiple times, stopping every five steps or so to stomp the ground after swinging their legs through an impossibly wide angle. If this reminds you of roosters in heat I suspect that was exactly what was intended. To leave no doubts as to the whole foul theme, both sides have massive rooster-style combs crowning their hats which quiver impressively as and when a soldier brings down his boot from shoulder height to stomp the ground.

Watched on by a crowd on either side of the border, all of this is preceded by an impromptu dance/bhangra performance (only on the Indian side though; the Pakistanis take their border crossings seriously) and the marching was interspersed with patriotic slogan shouting and cheering led by a man on a mic wearing, for some reason, a white sweatsuit. The day I’d gone, the Indian side was impossibly crowded and we so comprehensively outshouted the Pakistanis that I couldn’t even hear their slogans. In contrast to the overflowing Indian stands, the Pakistanis barely filled up theirs; a reflection of the ratios in population between the twins or a general indicator of the lack of enthusiasm of the Pakistanis in Pakistan maybe.

Leading up to the Indian side of the gate was an amateurishly built monument to the Punjabis killed during Partition which everyone roundly ignores or at, best uses, as a temporary bench to sit on after all that bhangra. With so many people visiting the place, a soft drinks stall there does brisk business (and suffers from an infuriating lack of change). There’s also a BSF souvenir shop which sells stuffed toys and Monte Carlo woollens at a whopping 40% discount (I liked a sweater but they didn’t have my size)—exactly the sort of stuff you’d like to buy at bristling border crossings.

A new Gandhi museum in Gujarat does a good job of showcasing Modi

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Arun Shourie, one of the Indian right’s most influential intellectuals, last week sharply criticised the Narendra Modi government for a host of things, including the prime minister’s monogrammed pinstriped suit. “You cannot take Gandhiji’s name and wear such a thing,” he said, referring to Modi’s expedient use of Gandhi’s name while doing the opposite of what the Mahatma would have prescribed.

There are many claimants to the award for Best Politician in a Faux Gandhian Role and, Modi is in exalted company here, starting right from Jawaharlal Nehru himself. But the suit incident highlighted by Shourie isn’t Modi’s best performance in that category. That would have to be Dandi Kutir, a massive memorial dedicated to the Mahatma in Gandhinagar in Gujarat, which opened to the public in January.

Gandhinagar is an unusual Indian town for two reasons: it has great infrastructure and (almost) no people. Towering above the sleepy town is a tan-coloured cone as tall as a high-rise. This is Dandi Kutir, built in the shape of a mound of salt to commemorate Gandhi’s salt satyagraha. I’m not sure why they decided to colour what was supposed to be a mound of salt, tan and not white, but then this was only the first of many incongruences on my visit to this museum.

Striking structure

Spread over 15 acres, the Dandi Kutir complex is a part of the Mahatma Mandir, an impressive business convention centre, initiated by the state government when Modi was the chief minister. Chromatic verisimilitude aside, the massive cone of the Dandi Kutir looks rather striking. It is ringed by a series of administrative offices and the best government-built loos I have ever had the pleasure of using – a definite mark of getting their priorities right.

After 10 minutes of walking around with a growing sense of admiration, my balloon was punctured a bit when I reached the gates of the museum and was told it was just about to go into a one-hour lunch break. “Actually, come back in an hour-and-a-half,” said the man at the counter. “It takes time for people to gather up and we only open after lunch, when we have a crowd of at least 15 visitors.”

No matter: guess it’s difficult to get rid of all sarkaariness at once.

Thankfully, they let me wait inside the air-conditioned cone. The museum was spread out across three vertical levels, connected by elevators and steel-and-glass catwalks which spanned from one end of the museum to the other. The cone’s apex had a skylight cut out and the strong summer sun shone in, lighting the interior up with natural light. It all looked impressively industrial and modern, so much so that it would have made the Mahatma turn in his grave should he have had one. The cornerstone of Gandhi’s economic philosophy rested on the rejection of Western-style industrialisation. For example, in Harijan in 1946, Gandhi wrote:

“I do not believe that industrialisation is necessary in any case for any country. It is much less so for India. Independent India can only discharge her duty towards a groaning world by adopting a simple but ennobled life by developing her thousands of cottages [as industries] and living at peace with the world.”

Built on a budget of Rs 260 crore, there was not much in the space-age interiors of this museum built to commemorate Gandhi, which would remind one of a small-scale village industry.

Namo quiz

Some of this ideological confusion can perhaps be explained by the fact that the Dandi Kutir museum is only partially utilised for the commemoration of Gandhi. One portion of the structure is a meta-museum of sorts, which proceeds to explain how and why the Dandi Kutir was built, a fairly unique segment as far as museums go.

This bit, as it turns out, is dominated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A large LCD panel television has a video address by the prime minster on loop, telling us why and how he conceptualised this structure. Another backlit panel hails the museum as “a monumental tribute from one great visionary to another” while another congratulates “SHRI NARENDRA MODI, The Visionary Architect of Mahatma Mandir” even as Shri Narendra Modi smiles benignly from another panel, looking dapper in a beige Nehru Jacket.

It is this section which contained my favourite part of the entire museum: the “Namo Quiz”, a 60-question trivia quiz, hosted on a touchscreen console, entirely about the life of Narendra Modi. It was a tough quiz mind you and I, at least, didn’t do all that well. Some of the trickier questions are listed below for you to take a crack at:

1. “From which league (Sangh) Shri Narendra Modi took the training?” (Options: RSS, NSS, VSS, PSS).

2. “People know Shri Narendra Modi by which nick name?” (Options: Narema, Namo, Naren, Namohar).

3. “What kind of clothing Shri Narendra Modi likes to wear most?” (Options: Kurta-Chudidar, Pyjama, Pent-shirt, Jeans-T shirt, Zbba-Dhoti).

4. Separate questions on the names of his mother, father and, surprisingly, even his wife.

5. How many brothers and sisters, respectively, does Modi have?

6. “Which world famous magazine mentions Shri Narendra Modi as the most powerful man in the world?”

7. “Shri Narendra Modi strongly believes in _____.” (Options: Accommodation, Afford, Renunciation, Development).

8. “In childhood Shri Narendra Modi took which animal’s cub home adventurously?” (Options: Elephant, Camel, Crocodile, Horse).

9. “After the victory of 2014 Loksabha elections, what did his mother give him to eat?” (Options: Shira, Curd, Halva, Laps).

10. “What kind of exercise does Shri Narendra Modi does every morning? (Options: Jogging, Walking, Yoga, Running).

After this tough-yet-engaging quiz, the actual Gandhi museum paled somewhat in comparison. The museum also suffers from a fatal flaw, as far as museums go: there isn’t a single object or artefact on display.

Story of Gandhi

Instead, what it does do is tell the story of Gandhi using a mixture of animated short films, information panels and an audio guide, a rather simple task, which it does quite competently. It’s a direct telling of Gandhi’s life and sticks to much of the standard narrative that Indian school children have grown up with. Some of it is actually quite well done. For example, Gandhi’s travels across India, after he came back from South Africa, is shown via LCD panels fitted onto a mock third-class train compartment, which I thought was quite clever.

More of an amusement park than a museum, sure, but engagingly done nonetheless.

The one place the narrative becomes a bit odd is right at the end. And it’s an expected chink. The final audio segment relates how Nathuram Godse “tore through the crowd” and shot Bapu dead in a prayer meeting, but conspicuously stays away from the whys and wherefores of the act. No link is made between Partition and of Godse’s motivations, a belief that Gandhi was appeasing Muslims.

In fact, unlike the Namo Quiz, the audio narration of Gandhi’s assassination does not even care to ask: from which league (Sangh) Godse took the training?

And earlier piece on a touring the Nehru-Gandhi Museum, Anand Bhavan in Allahabad.

First published on Scroll.

Suggesting religious reasons for quakes isn't new. Mahatma Gandhi did that in 1934.

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First published on Scroll.

The devastating earthquake which hit Nepal on Saturday seems to have set off a process of unscientific inquiry among some associates of the Sangh Parivar. Most of their speculation has focussed on the causal factors which led to this violent displacement of the earth’s crust.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionary Sadhvi Prachi linked the earthquake to Rahul Gandhi visiting Kathmandu. Lest you dismiss her views out of hand, she backed this up with another data point: as it turns out, Rahul had also visited Uttarakhand before this and soon that state saw massive flooding.Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament Sakshi Maharaj extended this line of thought: Rahul Gandhi had caused this calamity because he ate beef and then went to Kedarnath  last week, without any sort of purification ceremony. Without such basic precautionary measures in place “the earthquake was bound to happen,” said Maharaj.

Sandeep Balakrishna, chief editor of a right wing website called India Facts, changed tack: ignoring Rahul, he went in for the always dependable religious-minorities-are-responsible angle. “Call me superstitious,” he tweeted, cleverly anticipating his critics, “but the Nepal earthquake happened because the missionaries are trying to destroy dharma”.

Echoing Gandhi

Naturally, this sort of talk led to outrage. The factors which cause earthquakes have been known to science for hundreds of years now and none of them involve the Gandhis, steaks or the Lord’s Prayer. However, the outragers should know that the people linking human actions and earthquakes have an illustrious predecessor, who did the same thing, eight decades back: the Father of the Nation, Mohandas Gandhi.

In 1934, Nepal and Bihar were hit by a devastating earthquake. Unlike 2015, Bihar was also severely affected, with even Patna facing widespread damage. In response to this, Gandhi, in a statement to the press, said that he believed that this natural disaster was “a divine chastisement for the great sin we have committed against those whom we describe as Harijans”.

God had punished Biharis, Gandhi said, because they practised untouchability against Dalits.

This irrational correlation set off a public debate between Gandhi and the man who had given him the title of “Mahatma", Rabindranath Tagore.

Tagore shot off a rebuttal on rationalist lines, with a request for it to be published in Gandhi’s journal, Harijan.  The letter expressed “painful surprise” at “this kind of unscientific view of things”. It was simply inaccurate, Gurudeb argued, to “associate ethical principles with cosmic phenomena”.

Thanking Gandhi for inducing a “a freedom from fear and feebleness in the minds of his countrymen”, Tagore nevertheless felt “profoundly hurt” when Gandhi’s words strengthened the “elements of unreason” which was the “fundamental source of all the blind powers that drive us against freedom and self-respect”.

Earthquakes and morals 

Gandhi published this letter but stuck to his guns. Expressing “profound regard” for the “Bard of Santiniketan”, the Mahatma wrote:

“Visitations like droughts, floods, earthquakes and the like, though they seem to have only physical origins are for me somehow connected with man’s morals. Therefore, I instinctively, felt that the earthquake was a visitation for the sin of untouchability. Of course, Sanatanists have a perfect right to say that it was due to my crime of preaching against untouchability. My belief is a call to repentance and self purification. I admit my utter ignorance of the working of the laws of nature. But even as I cannot help believing in God though I am unable to prove his existence to the sceptics, in like manner, I cannot prove the connection of the sin of untouchability with the Bihar visitation even though the connection is instinctively felt by me.”

Tagore did not reply to this and the debate ended here. The correspondence between these great figures of pre-independence India is extensive and very interesting, and the two would also clash on the idea of nationalism, on which, again, Tagore’s rationalist philosophy went up against Gandhi’s more emotional views.

Gandhi is, today, a symbol for India’s left wingers and liberals. India’s present-day conservatives do not like Gandhi all that much. Even though Sandeep Balakrishna and the Mahatma might share common ground over the role human religion has to play in causing an earthquake, Balakrishna’s website, India Facts has multiple articles shrilly critical of Gandhi with what are now standard right wing arguments: Gandhi attacked Hindu sentiments, disliked Hindu nationalists, denied political empowerment to Hindus and so on.

Gandhi, the conservative

This episode, though, gives us an interesting look at a Gandhi that almost everyone has forgotten today: Gandhi, the conservative.

Gandhi, says writer Mukul Kesavan, had a “willingness to deploy a 'Hindu' idiom in political discourse”. This is what he did for the earthquake, of course. To fight the social evil of untouchability, Gandhi bought in the idiom of theology. It wasn’t enough to educate people about it; Gandhi also said God himself was displeased with this practice, hence he killed twenty thousand people. Gandhi was, maybe, self-aware of his irrationality, but used this argument nonetheless given the potential good it could do. Gandhi wrote: “If my belief [of connecting the earthquake and untouchability] turns out ill-founded, it will still have done good to me and those who believe with me”.

This belief, that using the religious idiom was the best way to reach out to people, was the bedrock of Gandhi’s politics.  In Young India, 1925, Gandhi had this to say:

“For me, politics bereft of religion are absolute dirt, ever to be shunned. Politics concern nations and that which concerns the welfare of nations must be one of the concerns of a man who is religiously inclined, in other words, a seeker after God and Truth.”

Miracle worker

The bland literal translation of the word “Mahatma” in English as “great soul” does not really capture the force of the word as it’s used in Hindi. This use of a religious idiom by Gandhi meant that across many parts of India, he came to be seen as a true mahatma, a religious guru with occult powers. Historian Shahid Amin has culled some instances of these beliefs from the local Hindi press of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh during the Non-Cooperation Movement (1921-’22):

1. Sikandar Sahu said that he would believe in the Mahatmaji when the karah (boiling pan) full of cane-juice in his karkhana split into two. The karah split in two in the middle.
2. A pandit of Rampur village was repeatedly told by many to give up his habit of eating fish, but he did not listen to anybody. He said: “I shall eat fish, let's see what the Mahatmaji can do”. When he sat down to eat the fish, it was crawling with worms.
3. Pt Damodar Pandey, from district Basti, reported that a man in Dumariya near his village had called Gandhi names, as a result of which his eyelids had got stuck.
4. In Rustampur, a purse of a man containing Rs 90 had disappeared from his hut. When he took manauti (prayer) of Mahatmaji, he found it back in his hut, and the money was intact.

The use of the religious idiom, of presenting himself as a mahatma, meant that Gandhi could reach out to the many millions who would remain untouched if his message had been delivered using blander political language. In Gorakhpur, for example, a very many number of people came out against the Raj, not for any explicit political reasons, but because they simply believed that a mahatma had told them to do so and it was their religious duty.

Gandhi’s religious idiom today

Of course, Gandhi was no mindless Twitter troll. He knew what he was doing and, in what is often a complex idea to digest given our binaries today, his irrationality and use of religion wasn’t driven by narrow mindedness. He reached out to Muslims too, using a community-specific religious idiom: the preservation of the Muslim Caliph after World War I.

Gandhi was a great soul but, more than that, he was a great mind. He used these religious idioms for causes that many would today recognise as rational and “good”: Hindu-Muslim unity, fighting untouchability and anti-colonialism.

But, of course, as Gandhi himself postulated many times, the ends rarely justify the means. Once these religious idioms had been placed out there and popularised, there were open to be used by people with souls not nearly as great as Gandhi’s. The earthquake is a minor example, but two of the Mahatma's biggest religio-political symbols, Ram and cow protection, have been used to the hilt by religious conservatives in Independent India, for ends that many would consider distinctly unGandhian.

Kashmiri Pandit enclaves: Not the first time we've debated separate areas to keep an exiled minority safe

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A people are driven off the land they’ve called their home for centuries. The reason? They belong to a minority religion. A mania has gripped the land and they are chased off on pain of death. 

However, even after being driven off, they still desire to come back. The poison of religious hatred, though, still courses thought the veins of the land they once called home. 

A workaround is thought of: why not reserve separate enclaves for them, where they will feel safe? A gerrymandering of populations to create regions where a minority becomes a majority. An insurance plan just in case the religious mania raises its head again (many believe it never went away in the first place).

I am describing, of course, the ongoing controversy over whether Kashmiri Pandits should be settled back in Kashmir in exclusive enclaves or go back to their original homes in the middle of cities where they are a minority. But I am also narrating the plight of the Delhi Muslims in 1947-48, during which time an almost identical debate took place.

The Partition violence that happened in Delhi is not something that is discussed much in our mainstream histories and in the mass media. It was, however, horrific with almost the entire Muslim population of Delhi – then a largely Muslim city – being attacked and driven out to what is now Pakistan. Here is a poignant first person account of the violence by Vijay Rohtgi, a resident of Delhi at the time:

The partition of India brought many changes to Chandni Chowk. Sometime around 15 August  1947 all the Muslim owned shops were looted. I was too young to understand why. My father would not allow his children to be a part of the looters, and we never took anything home from these shops. Ahmad ka Mohalla was similarly looted. I remember seeing a large number of people walking away with large silver spittoons, utensils, bed head-boards and other silver articles from this street.  

We wondered what happened to the people living in this street. There was no attempt by the neighbourhood leaders or by the police to stop the looting. The residents were evacuated either by the Government or by their Muslim protectors in the middle of the night. Perhaps they went to Jama Masjid. We never knew where they went, but it was a source of intensive speculation in our community.

The Muslims of Delhi were replaced by refugees from West Pakistan, escaping horrible charnel houses of their own in places such as Lahore and Rawalpindi. Rohatgi describes the changes this exchange of populations bought about (thus creating modern Delhi):

The influx of refugees changed the local scene in old Delhi. Streets became crowded. Many schools started running two shifts with several sections of each class. New words were added to our vocabulary and newer foods were introduced to our diet. Thus, kulche-chole and bhatures, unknown to us earlier, became common street foods. Even the shape of our beloved jalebis changed from thin golden crisps to large yellow pieces. The aroma of desi ghee in our streets was overpowered by smells of garlic, onion and vinegar. Even the language changed incorporating phrases such as kee haal hai (how are you), tusi dasa (you tell me),and changa (good).

In 1948, however, many Muslims tried to return back to Delhi. To make these Muslims feel safe, Nehru, supported by Abul Kalam Azad wanted to reserve whole neighbourhood for Muslims within Delhi. This, they assumed – following the same line of logic that people are following with Kashmiri Pandits today – would ensure greater safety for this embattled minority.

But like today, many disagreed. For Pandits, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front is bitterly against the idea of separate Pandit enclaves. In 1948, the main opponent to separate Muslim neighbourhoods was Vallabhbhai Patel. Patel was not very keen for Muslims to be allowed back at all – he wanted any empty houses in Delhi to be allocated to Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Pakistan first – and even if they did get accommodation, it would be distributed across Delhi, with no guarantee that the house would be in a Muslim neighbourhood.

There are differences here with the Pandit analogy, of course. The proposal in Kashmir involves wholly separate cities, it seems. Nehru was, of course, only proposing separate neighbourhoods within the same city. But even that, it seems, was something Patel would not agree to.

In the end Patel had his way. No separate neighbourhoods were reserved for Muslims. One of many reasons why hardly any Muslims came back to Delhi. Pre-1947 Delhi now exists in Karachi, if it exists at all, that is.

Patel is a complex figure but nowhere does his reputation get more mauled than in his handling of the Delhi riots. In his book, Patel: A Life, Rajmohan Gandhi writes, "Taxed by Gandhi with a report that said he was “encouraging the idea of Muslims going away to Pakistan” Patel denied it indignantly. However, he told the Mahatma that Muslims not loyal to India should leave...". 

Rajmohan Gandhi then completes the narration of their conversation: "...and he [Patel] could not help adding that he suspected a majority of disloyalty". 

Maharashtra’s beef ban shows how politicians manipulate Hindu sentiments around cow slaughter

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First published on Scroll.in

Beef has been banned in Maharashtra. The Union government has given its assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill, almost two decades after the state assembly had passed it under the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in 1995.

Maharashtra had always banned the slaughter of cows but allowed the slaughter of bulls, bullocks and water buffalo. The new act will ban the slaughter of all cattle with the exception of water buffaloes. In fact, the very possession of beef – much like, say, cocaine – is now punishable with a prison sentence.

While this is a particularly harsh law, legal provisions for restricting or banning cow slaughter are rather common: 26 states in India have laws which either regulate or ban cow slaughter.

Livewire political topic

Clearly then, the cow is a livewire political topic. In his prime ministerial campaign, Narendra Modi used the emotive power of the cow to attack the United Progressive Alliance government. “It saddens me,” he wrote on his blog, “that present UPA Government led by Congress is promoting slaughtering of cows and exporting beef to bring ‘Pink Revolution’”.

Of course, the “beef” that India exports is mostly buffalo and not cow meat but Modi couldn’t be bothered with such pedantic nuances (ironically, beef exports have risen since Modi came to power). The cow here was just a dog whistle with which to attack the Congress’ supposed "minority-appeasement", exploiting the age-old communal stereotype of associating Muslims with beef consumption.

Later on, Maneka Gandhi, a minister in Modi’s cabinet, would dispense with even the dog whistle and, in a remarkable leap of logic, claim that the profits from the beef industry were directly funding terrorism. The Rajasthan Bharatiya Janata Party government went beyond just talk and set up a separate ministry dedicated to bovine affairs. Even the Congress is not really all that different: remember, most of the state laws against cow slaughter were passed by Congress governments.

Historical roots

The political relevance of the cow has deep historical roots, an obvious outcome of the animal’s importance in Hinduism since the medieval age. Babur is supposed to have advised his son and crown-prince Humayun to ensure that cow slaughter was banned in Mughal territories. Akbar continued this tradition with a firman in 1586. Cow slaughter was also banned in the Sikh and Maratha empires and Haider Ali of Mysore threatened to chop of anyone’s hands as punishment. During the Rebellion of 1857, in a surprising show of spine, the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar made cow slaughter a crime punishable by death in order to present a united Hindu-Muslim front while facing the British sieging Delhi.

However, cow protection as a political issue really came into its own during the colonial period as Indians started to develop a collective consciousness based on their religious identity. “Hindu” and “Muslim” now became political groups. In this period of churning, Dayanand Saraswati, the grandfather of Hindu nationalism and the founder of the Arya Samaj, decided to take up cow protection as a core part of his agenda. In 1881, Saraswati published a pamphlet, Gokarunanidhi denouncing cow slaughter as an attack on Hinduism. The political mobilisation of people in favour of the cause was achieved via the formation of cow protection societies which were particularly active in current-day UP, Bihar, Haryana and Punjab. The situation was worsened by a ruling of a court in Allahabad, which held that cows were not sacred and killing them for meat was legal. All this culminated in India’s first large-scale riot driven by the issue of cow protection on Bakri Eid day in 1893 in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh. So fierce was the violence that the British lost control of the area entirely for a few days.

After that, cow protection became a mainstream part of the Indian freedom movement. Gandhi took up the cause of cow protection but, characteristically, took great care to direct it against the British and not Muslims. The colonialists, Gandhi taunted, “cannot do without it [beef] for a single day”. In an essay in 1927, he advised untouchables to do away with “serious defects” such as uncleanliness, liquor, adultery and beef eating since “cow protection is the outward form of Hinduism”.

As a result, after Independence, cow protection found its way into the Constitution itself, as a Directive Principle of State Policy. Soon, states started to enact laws banning cow slaughter, overturning two centuries of colonial policy. Driven by religious passions, some of these laws were excessively harsh, even draconian. In Gujarat, the punishment for cow slaughter carries a seven-year jail sentence. Even more alarmingly, a number of states have laws that place the burden of proof on the accused. In the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi, among others, if you are arrested for cow slaughter, you are automatically held guilty until proven innocent, overturning a fundamental principle of criminal law. The law is more lenient if you happen to kill a human being, though: you are presumed innocent till you are proven you guilty.

Kafkaesque approach

Even more oddly, the only time the state or politicians get involved in the cattle value chain is at the time of slaughter. In Ahmedabad, where the police worked itself into a frenzy during Eid last year over cow slaughter – they even shot a man dead – the manufacture of cow leather takes place without incident. Like Maharashtra, Delhi also has strict provisions against all cow slaughter but posh restaurants in the city openly display what they call “beef” on their menus. Last year in Madhya Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party voted against a bill which sought to ban the sale of cow bones and fat. In a state where cow slaughter is banned, it takes a special Kafkaesque sense of the surreal to digest that trading in the animal’s body parts, however, is protected by law. And, of course, as the cherry on the cake: India’s favourite sport features a ball that is necessarily made out of the hide of the cow.

The special status of the cow in current-day Hindu culture and religion cannot be disputed. Given the large number of people who are affected by it, it is almost inevitable that a democratic state would take cognisance of the issue in some form or the other. However, it is also paradoxical that the state targets cow protection somewhat patchily, attacking only the act of slaughter when it is quite obvious that steak houses, tanneries or cricket ball manufacturers are as much to blame ‒ after all these industries, by definition, necessitate the killing of the cow.

This contradictory approach to the issue of cow protection shows that it is treated more as a political rather than religious matter. Cow protection sentiments are exploited by the state and politicians to mobilise people and catch votes, targeting poor Muslims and Dalits by accusing them of cow slaughter. Of course, since other factors are clean ignored (as a result of economic considerations), these laws do nothing to actually improve the lot of cattle in the country.

Gandhi Jayanti Special: Rafi Sings the Life of the Mahatma

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In 1948, some time after Gandhi was assassinated by an RSS worker named Nathuram Godse, the composers Husnlal-Bhagatram teamed up lyricist Rajinder Krishan to write a song as a tribute to the Mahatma.

Called Bapu Ki Amar Kahani, it spanned a rather substantial 12 minutes and narrates in surprisingly detail the life of Mohanlal Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. As a surprise bonus, it's sung by none other than the man himself: Mohammad Rafi.

Listen to it on Gandhi Jayanti to get a quick, lyrical recap on the life of the Father of the Nation.

Part I:



Part II:



Part III:



Part IV:

Har Har Mahatma

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Some enthusiastic supporters are using slogan "Har Har Modi…" I respect their enthusiasm but request not to use this slogan in the future.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 23, 2014

As this tweet shows, the popularity of Modi is reaching heavenly proportions. Fans of the man have edited the popular Shiv bhakti chant, “Har Har Mahadev” to reflect their support for Modi, a fact that left the Gujarat CM a bit embarrassed.

To be fair to his supports, though, over-enthusiastic hero worship in India of political leaders is not uncommon nor is deification unprecedented. Dr Ambedkar had warned about this particular Indian trait in his famous Grammarof Anarchy speech delivered to the Constituent Assembly, on 25th November 1949:

“The second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not "to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their institutions". There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish Patriot Daniel O'Connel, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

This was, at the time, largely interpreted to be a warning against the sort of deification Gandhi had been an object of. As is well known, Ambedkar did not take too kindly to Gandhi and his role in perpetuating the institution of caste. The fact that Gandhi was deified in India must have made Ambedkar’s role all the more difficult. The quasi-religious status of Gandhi can be attested to by his honorific of Mahatma. It literally means “great soul”, of course, but is a title used in Hinduism for sages and saints (The Buddha, for example is also a Mahatma). Interestingly, much like Modi, Gandhi was uncomfortable with this deification. In the absence of Twitter, this is what Gandhi wrote in his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth:

“My experiments in the political field are now known, not only to India, but to a certain extent to the ‘civilized’ world. For me, they have not much value; and the title of ‘Mahatma’ that they have won for me has, therefore, even less. Often the title has deeply pained me; and there is not a moment I can recall when it may be said to have tickled me.”

Bhagat Singh’s Last Petition

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Yesterday was Comrade Bhagat Singh’s death anniversary, an apt time to point you to his last petition written to the governor of Punjab before he was executed.

Bhagat Singh’s trial had created a furore. So much so that the British Government had to promulgate an ordinance which dispensed with the need for a defence counsel, defence witnesses and even the presence of the accused during the trial. To quote that brave crusader, Shri Rahul Gandhi, on another ordinance, this rendered the trial to be “complete nonsense” and little more than a farce. It was recently described by the Supreme Court as “contrary to the fundamental doctrine of criminal jurisprudence" because there was no opportunity for the accused to even defend themselves.

In spite of this obvious injustice (the technical term for it is, I believe, a British sense of fair play), Singh refused to ask for any sort of clemency or concession. In fact, the tone of his final letter—this is after he had been sentenced to death—is a cocky mixture of defiance and sarcasm. He mocks the British Government by actually requesting to be shot dead as behoves a man who has been held guilty of waging war against the government. The last line in his petition reads:

“We request and hope that you will very kindly order the military department to send its detachment to perform our execution.

Notice the “kindly order”. I mean, wow. This man is on death row and he’s not above requesting for a kind order to shoot him dead.

The only time bitterness creeps in is when he’s discussing the activities of the Congress. Gandhi, who was in discussions with the British at the time (which would eventually lead to what would be called the Gandhi-Irwin Pact), comes in for criticism for doing nothing to help “even the homeless, friendless and penniless of female workers who are alleged to be belonging to the vanguard and whom the leaders consider to be enemies of their utopian non-violent cult (ouch!)  which has already become a thing of the past”.

And, of course, let me highlight parts of the letter in which Bhagat Singh strives to point out the fact that his vision for India is that of a ”Socialist Republic” since it’s amazing and bewildering how comrade Bhagat Singh of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association has become a right-wing hero, of all things:

“Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the Indian toiling masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites. They may be purely British Capitalist or mixed British and Indian or even purely Indian. They may be carrying on their insidious exploitation through mixed or even on purely Indian bureaucratic apparatus. All these things make no difference...But that war shall be incessantly waged without taking into consideration the petty (illegible) and the meaningless ethical ideologies. It shall be waged ever with new vigour, greater audacity and unflinching determination till the Socialist Republic is established and the present social order is completely replaced by a new social order, based on social prosperity and thus every sort of exploitation is put an end to and the humanity is ushered into the era of genuine and permanent peace. ”

In case this is not strong enough, please also note that Bhagat Singh sent this telegram to the Third International while in prison:

“On Lenin Day we send hearty greetings to all who are doing something for carrying forward the ideas of the great Lenin. We wish success to the great experiment Russia is carrying out. We join our voice to that of the international working class movement. The proletariat will win. Capitalism will be defeated. Death to Imperialism. ”

Of course, the fact that there is an organisation called the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena which takes up solidly Leninist causes such as protesting against the shortening of the duration of the Amarnath Yatra would have surely warmed the cockles of Singh’s heart were he alive. As will the fact that Narendra “Hindu Nationalist” Modi invokes his memory without having the faintest idea of what he died for.

This corruption of Bhagat Singh’s ideals does not stop at Socialism but extends even into his personal faith (or the lack of it). Singh was an avowed atheist and his pamphlet Why I am an Atheist, written a few months before he was murdered, is a crisp read which ends with a guarantee that he will remain a non-believer till the day he dies.

“One of my friends asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “When your last days come, you will begin to believe.” I said, “No, dear sir, Never shall it happen. I consider it to be an act of degradation and demoralisation. For such petty selfish motives, I shall never pray.”

By all accounts, he lived up to his promise. And ever since he seriously entered politics he had given up even the external vestiges of his original Sikh faith. He didn’t wear a turban or sport facial hair. Yet, so many stylised drawings of Singh today have him both wearing a dastaar as well with a beard. It’s like modern India is uncomfortable with the idea of an irreligious man, so it’s trying so hard to make Singh into something he was not; a rather unfortunate state of affairs. You might not agree with Bhagat Singh’s irreligiosity, his Socialism or any of his the other ideals that he died for, but given the extreme bravery and sacrifice that he displayed, the least you can do is to not distort his life.

First published on NewsYaps

A Journey Down Nehru-Gandhi Memory Lane

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I visit Allahabad and, with it, take a tour of the Nehrus’ ancestral house, Anand Bhawan, which has now been turned into a museum to the first family of Indian politics.

To say that the Gandhi’s are not popular on the Internet would be stating the obvious. Rahul Gandhi is probably the most ridiculed person on Twitter and every few days or so, the pappu tag starts trending as Modi supporters up the ante. His mother doesn’t get off too easily either.  I see material constantly popping up on my Facebook feed which purports to prove that Sonia Gandhi is not an Indian Citizen (or has became one illegally), that she lied about her Cambridge education (a line of attack that is also used on her son), she had KGB links, she has links to Quattrocchi and even posts which, in typical Indian fashion, make fun of the fact that she once held a job as a waitress—a    recent status by stand-up “comic” Rivaldo is: “Rupee crosses 64! Well that's what happens when an Economist takes orders from a Waitress!”

Of course, as the full page ads on Rajiv Gandhi’s birth anniversary show, social media does not elect our rulers. Whether the twitterati like it or not, the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty is a curiously popular political force in the country.

Keeping all of this in mind, on a recent trip to Allahabad, I decided to pop into the Nehru-Gandhi's ancestral residence, Anand Bhawan, just to see where all of this began.

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My adventure, though, started even before I arrived in the city. Air India uses an ancient ATR 42 propeller aircraft to cover the Delhi-Allahabad route. The plane was literally falling apart: a few of the overhead storage boxes didn’t shut and the seat I got didn’t have the pocket in front for storing books or phones or what have you. While I didn’t complain too much, another lady had a proper row over cockroaches on the flight, one of which, rather dramatically, scurried onto her food while she was eating. Shrug.

Allahabad airport is probably the smallest airport there is and just about as big as your average office. It achieves this by doing away with needless luxuries such as, er... conveyer belts. Charmingly, your luggage is brought to you by attendants on carts. An insipid sign in front of the only office proclaims, “Hindi hain hum, watan hain Hindostan Hamara” proudly declaring that the verse is by “Sir Mohammed Iqbal”. Indian transporters, it seems, have a particular fascination for this line—I’ve seen it painted on railway carriages as well.

The journey from the airport to the hotel was just as eventful, conducted as it was in an auto with an extremely odd mix of religion and sappy romance. The vehicle was plastered with golden 786’s, a large painting of the Buraq, the mythological flying horse of Islam as well as the word aashique bookended with a pair of large, pink bulbous hearts.

Allahabad is precisely the sort of place for which Indian English had to coin the word “mofussil”. Dusty, congested roads, crumbling buildings and a refreshing lack of drainage; yep, Allahabad fits the Hindi-heartland-small-town template to the hilt. In all of this dust, heat and general North Indian small town-ness, though, rise the magnificent Indo-Saracenic spires of Allahabad University. I’ve grown up in Calcutta and lived in Bombay, so when I say that this was the most amazing specimen of the architecture I’ve seen, you know it’s a big deal.  An extremely tall gothic tower next to a huge Islamicate dome flecked with the remains of blue glazed tiles, the grandeur of (the now decrepit) Allahabad University harks back to a past somewhat rosier past than the present for this city.

It was 1877 and Allahabad was sort of a boomtown. The British had just set up a new province, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (which corresponds to modern UP) and, with it, made Allahabad its capital.  To practise in this new capital, and its new high court, arrived Nandlal Nehru, elder brother of Motilal Nehru. Academically brilliant, Motilal also set up a roaring practise as a barrister in due course of time.  In 1900, to show off his new found wealth, Motilal bought a veritable mansion in the European quarter of the city and named it Anand Bhavan. Both his son and his granddaughter grew up in this house. In the next half century or so, this house remained the hub of Indian politics given that both Motilal and his son were major Congress politicians. Fittingly, given her role in cementing the role of dynasty in Indian politics, Indira Gandhi turned Anand Bhawan into a museum to the memory of the Nehru-Gandhi’s.

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Anand Bhawan is an oasis of peace in an otherwise noisy city. Primly manicured lawns house the large blue and white mansion. The structure is surrounded by a verandah which once, no doubt, had khaas curtains to cool the Nehrus in the oppressive North Indian summer. Two storeys high, Anand Bhavan is topped off with a large chhatri on the terrace—a perfect spot for lounging about during the evening, I would think.

The main house has had its rooms frozen in time, and apart from the opulence, there really isn’t much to see. Nehru might or might not have been an extraordinary man, but his bedroom is rather ordinary, populated as it is with a bed (!), books and other such mundanities of daily life. The museum also takes great care to mark out parts of the house where “Gandhiji spent his evenings”, the exact spot where Feroze and Indira got married or the platform on which Nehru’s ashes were kept. It’s a testament to the Indian capacity for hero-worship that this sort of material actually makes up a whole museum. Of course, there was more to come.

The outhouse is more of a conventional museum, mostly populated with photos. A particular gem was a display of “Jawaharlal Nehru in different moods” which shows the man, as promised, in different moods: seriously walking out to bat, laughing at a joke, serenely staring into the distance and so on. There’s also a genealogical chart of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has serious potential to embarrass. Did you, for example know that Rahul has a distant aunt who is called ‘Meenu’? Or an uncle called “Chunmun”? Or that a certain Nehru-Gandhi’s first name is “Lolita”?

The museum, like every other, also has its own souvenir shop where you can buy a range of metal key-chains embossed with the faces of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. Because that’s what you need to be cool: an Indira Gandhi keychain.

The only thing that actually caught my attention in the souvenir shop was a reproduction of the wedding card of Indira’s and Feroze’s wedding. It started off with an invitation in both Hindi as well as Urdu and then, interestingly, went on to describe the Hindu wedding ceremonies in great detail. Nehru, it might be noted, was against the marriage of Indira to Feroze, a Parsi born in Bombay. Personally, his objection had nothing to do with Feroze’s religion but was more to do with the fact that Feroze was, not to put too fine a point on it, a loser. He did not have a university degree, was unemployed and had no source of steady income. That said, however, Nehru was aware of the political objections such an inter-religious match could generate, given his role as India’s leading politician. Indeed, when news leaked out of the impending marriage, the backlash was furious. Many years later, Indira recalled how it seemed that “the whole country was against it” at the time. To counter this, Nehru had to issue a public statement, clarifying his stand in favour of the marriage. And to strengthen his protégé’s hand, so did Gandhi, explicitly supporting the marriage. To further lessen the fallout, the ceremony was kept unambiguously Hindu although, at the time, British Indian law did not recognize a marriage between two people of different faiths (even today, it’s extremely difficult). The wedding card it seemed, acted as an advertisement, broadcasting the Hindu-ness of the wedding. As luck would have it, many years later, this would come in handy as Maneka Gandhi challenged her mother-in-law’s status as a Hindu in court in a dispute over Sanjay Gandhi’s property. Since she had married a Parsi, Maneka argued, Indira was not a Hindu anymore. As proof of her being a Hindu, Indira’s explicitly Vedic wedding was presented as clinching evidence.

Photo montages of Nehru which much like Filmfare would carry of your reigning superstar, key chains with faces of Indira and Rajiv and genealogical charts of the whole Family, Anand Bhavan isn’t in the slightest bit apologetic about praising, what is after all only a family, to the skies. In some ways, that’s not surprising; Indians are hardly subtle when it comes to hero-worship. But it did leave me with a vague sense of unease, even foreboding, as the museum reminds us of the rather solid position dynasty has in politics and just how much power it had—and still has—over  India.

First published on NewsYaps