(Published in the Business Standard, 28 December 2010)
“Section 124-A, under which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizens. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has an affection(sic) for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence. But the section under which Mr Banker [a colleague in non-violence] and I are charged is one under which mere promotion of disaffection is a crime.”
These words, from Mahatma Gandhi’s closing statement during his trial for sedition in 1922, have been quoted widely in India this year, along with the resurrection of the antiquated laws of Raj India. There were cries of sedition when Arundhati Roy made some remarks on the alienation felt by Kashmiris; this week, the human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen was sentenced to life imprisonment for sedition by a Raipur court in a much-criticised judgement.
By 1909, fears of sedition had turned the British government in India into tireless readers. Sisir Kar’s history of books banned in Bengal under the Raj quotes from a typical circular of the time that urges officers to carefully examine all suspicious material, to “facilitate the immediate detection of seditious books”. As Gandhi was to note, the affection of the subject for the king, or the citizen for the state, could not be commanded—and it was markedly absent in those early years as the national movement gathered steam.
Bankimchandra’s Ananda Math had been in print for 18 years at this time, and as its author, Bankim was struggling between the demands of his job as a government official and the need to express his discontent with the Raj. Between the first and the eighth edition of Ananda Math, the novel that added Vande Mataram to the lexicon of revolution and that would inspire the next generation of revolutionaries, Bankim made continuous changes to the text, often excising or softening sentences that seemed over-critical of the British. In one of the more unusual applications of censorship, there were periods when Ananda Math itself was not banned—but the singing of Vande Mataram was proscribed, and the anthem treated as seditious.
By the time Sharatchandra’s Pather Dabi (1926) was published, featuring, as the Government of Bengal Yearbook commented, “The most powerful act of sedition in almost every page of the book,” disaffection was the spirit of the times. The long history of Pather Dabi, the confiscation of the novel, the exchange between Tagore and Sharatchandra on the impact and validity of criticizing those in power, points to the fact that it was impossible for the Raj to allow questioning of the state without also admitting the disaffection and disillusionment of the writers who questioned it. Tagore disappointed Sharatchandra by praising the tolerance of the British, and by implicitly refusing to endorse the younger author’s insistence that criticism was the only valid response to British rule.
Books like Ananda Math and Pather Dabi were only the most celebrated of their kind; in the attempt to check sedition, journals and books were often confiscated and plays were routinely proscribed or censored. Sisir Kar cites an unwittingly revealing letter from the Police Commissioner, allowing the production of Bankimchandra’s Chandrashekhar to continue if certain objectionable portions were expunged—on pages 10, 19, 20, 33, 36, 40, 41, 43, 51, 54, 55, 80, 120,121, 123, 124, 127, 133, 148 and 151, leaving one to wonder what was left of the play.
All of this, including the trials of the likes of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Aurobindo Ghose for sedition and conspiracy, were part and parcel of the paraphernalia of a state that was an occupying power, and that had to command the affection of the people who came under its rule. In an independent India, the question is whether the state should still feel paranoid enough to continue using a law where, as Gandhi puts it, “mere promotion of disaffection is a crime”.
The writings of Arundhati Roy, for instance, or the work of Dr Binayak Sen, would have placed them in the time of the British Raj among the ranks of the disaffected. Their willingness, and the willingness of other writers and activists, to question the workings of the state are definitely signs of disaffection. But in a healthy democracy, and a healthy state, the affection of its writers and citizens would be earned, not commanded, and criticism would be welcomed, not seen as threatening. We need to ask whether the same laws that were used against Bankimchandra, Sharatchandra, Tilak and Gandhi should be pressed into service in a country that prides itself on its many freedoms.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
A quiet rant on the Assange case, and a response to Kavita Krishnan
I have a lot of respect for Kavita Krishnan and her work in the field of women’s rights in India. Reading the first four paragraphs of her opinion piece in the Huffington Post on rape, I was in complete agreement with her. Krishnan confirmed my understanding of the way rape laws work in this country-—the conviction rate is low, reporting rapes is often a difficult, brutalizing process, and the understanding of consent is limited in the legal system. (Marital rape is not yet an offence, for instance; and a woman’s right to the integrity of her own body is not at all well defined in India, in either legal or cultural terms.)
It is in the final paragraph of Krishnan’s article where we part company. Here’s what she has to say:
The Assange case is complex, and has drawn intense scrutiny across the world. At present, allegations have been made by two Swedish women of sexual assault, sexual molestation and, under the nuanced provisions of Swedish law, an allegation of "less severe" rape; he has not yet been formally charged. The case is nuanced and it would be very wrong to assume his guilt. (I’m attaching some links that might be of interest below.) But this is why I disagree with Krishnan, and think that she has not paid enough attention to the details of the Assange case before offering her opinion on it.
1) She assumes that the allegations brought against Assange by the two Swedish women are part of a US-backed conspiracy; there has been little evidence of this so far. There are legitimate fears that the case will be misused, and legitimate questions about the workings of the legal system and the timing of the case, given Assange’s current situation, but news accounts do not support the idea that the two women are involved in any conspiracy theory. The allegations made by the two Swedish women should be treated as a separate matter, in the absence of any evidence to back the conspiracy theory.
2) It’s a fallacy to assume that because the worst and most violent instances of rape routinely go unchecked across the world—Somalia, South Africa, India and a score of other countries—it is an insult to those women to seek redressal for cases that involve apparently lesser degrees of rape and sexual assault.
The allegations against Assange wouldn’t hold up in any Indian court for a reason: the rape laws in this country are extremely unevolved. A woman’s consent or withdrawal of consent is not taken seriously, and the assumption most courts would make is that if a woman agrees to sleep with a man, she gets what she deserves, even if the man subsequently overrides her wishes or uses force.
The better argument would be not to envy or marvel at Sweden’s laws, but to work for more progressive laws in India. In terms of degree, there is a difference between a Dalit woman brutalized and raped by the men of her village, or a Somalian woman subjected to repeated, violent rape, and a woman who experiences a turning point when the man she’s in bed with uses unacceptable force or coercion. But can we be clear that both of these—first-degree and third-degree rape, so to speak--are unacceptable, instead of drawing false parallels?
3) Krishnan should know better than to assume that Assange’s crime is “sexism”. The allegations made by the two Swedish women concern sexual molestation, sexual assault and "less severe" rape. These are not trivial, if true. And this case is not about an HIV test, sex by surprise, or a broken condom. It’s about consent, the overriding of that consent and the use of force in the process of the overriding of a woman’s consent. The allegations made by these two women deserve to be taken seriously. There’s a big difference between being "insensitive" to a woman’s fear of HIV, and the allegations of molestation and assault laid out in the Guardian report.
I am not an expert on either the law, or on rape victims, though I have written on rape and sexual assault in the course of writing for the gender beat. I’m following this case the way I’ve followed rape trials in India—just as an observer and as a woman who is interested in women’s rights.
But Kavita Krishnan is an expert, and she should know better than to prejudge two women, and to trivialize the allegations they have made against Assange. I understand and share her concerns for the harshness that Indian women face, on a daily basis, and I understand how dealing with the everyday brutality of rape and rape charges in this country can make anyone wonder why the Assange case matters at all.
Here’s the thing. To the two women involved in this case—women who have been vilified, who have had their names and addresses posted on the Internet, who have been blamed and dismissed, even before the case comes to court--it matters. The laws in their part of the world allow them to file a complaint against a man like Assange; the laws in my part of the world would leave an Indian woman in a similar situation with little or no prospect of redressal. I get that discussing the nuances of consensual sex versus non-consensual sex might seem like a luxury, when every week brings its raft of gang rapes, call-centre rapes, caste-conflict-inspired rapes, the casual rapes of sex workers, the routine rape of Dalit women or women in conflict zones to our attention.
But the right to give or withdraw one’s consent is not a small thing. The right to say 'no' to one's sexual partner, when you're uncomfortable, afraid, in pain, or fear rape, and to have that 'no' heard and accepted, is not a small thing. The right to be heard instead of being dismissed, or belittled, or vilified, is not a small thing. The right to consent should be the right of every woman, and every man; it shouldn’t be a luxury at all.
Here are some links that might be of interest:
1) The full allegations against Assange, from the Guardian:
The two Swedish women say that consensual sex with Assange turned, in separate incidents, into non-consensual sex. One woman alleges that he used force to hold her down, and then deliberately tore his condom when she insisted that he wear one. The other woman alleges that after several instances of consensual sex, where she insisted that Assange wear a condom, she woke up to find him having sex with her, not wearing a condom. He faces charges under Swedish law of sexual molestation and sexual assault. The allegations are yet to be proved, and Assange is yet to be charged.
2) Jessica Valenti on the laws in Sweden and the US on rape, and issues of consent:
3) From Kate Harding, an early piece contesting Naomi Wolf’s assessment of the Assange case:
and a more recent post on the rape myths coming up in the wake of the Assange case:
4) Caroline May on the rift between feminists and progressives on the activist left:
5) Jaclyn Friedman on What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape:
and: Friedman debates Naomi Wolf on Democracy Now:
6) Salil Tripathi: When No Means No
It is in the final paragraph of Krishnan’s article where we part company. Here’s what she has to say:
“Certainly, from the perspective of all those women in India who find the most brutal of rapists going free, protected by the police and the state, and their most serious charges of rape trivialized or even suppressed by force, the idea of a man being hunted down by Interpol on charges which are as complex and ambiguous as those in the Assange case is disturbing. From what I hear, Sweden's rape laws are nothing to quarrel with, and are in fact quite enviable for us in India, where even marital rape is yet to be deemed illegal. But for the US to fire at Assange from the shoulders of the two Swedish women indeed is an insult to the women struggling in vain for justice the world over. It is possible that Assange's casual flings with female fans may not be very democratic; he may be guilty of insensitivity to the concerns and rights of women (for instance their right to be free from HIV). But if sexism is a crime worthy of Interpol's attention, then Interpol should immediately arrest Silvio Berlusconi and Bill Clinton, just for starters!”
The Assange case is complex, and has drawn intense scrutiny across the world. At present, allegations have been made by two Swedish women of sexual assault, sexual molestation and, under the nuanced provisions of Swedish law, an allegation of "less severe" rape; he has not yet been formally charged. The case is nuanced and it would be very wrong to assume his guilt. (I’m attaching some links that might be of interest below.) But this is why I disagree with Krishnan, and think that she has not paid enough attention to the details of the Assange case before offering her opinion on it.
1) She assumes that the allegations brought against Assange by the two Swedish women are part of a US-backed conspiracy; there has been little evidence of this so far. There are legitimate fears that the case will be misused, and legitimate questions about the workings of the legal system and the timing of the case, given Assange’s current situation, but news accounts do not support the idea that the two women are involved in any conspiracy theory. The allegations made by the two Swedish women should be treated as a separate matter, in the absence of any evidence to back the conspiracy theory.
2) It’s a fallacy to assume that because the worst and most violent instances of rape routinely go unchecked across the world—Somalia, South Africa, India and a score of other countries—it is an insult to those women to seek redressal for cases that involve apparently lesser degrees of rape and sexual assault.
The allegations against Assange wouldn’t hold up in any Indian court for a reason: the rape laws in this country are extremely unevolved. A woman’s consent or withdrawal of consent is not taken seriously, and the assumption most courts would make is that if a woman agrees to sleep with a man, she gets what she deserves, even if the man subsequently overrides her wishes or uses force.
The better argument would be not to envy or marvel at Sweden’s laws, but to work for more progressive laws in India. In terms of degree, there is a difference between a Dalit woman brutalized and raped by the men of her village, or a Somalian woman subjected to repeated, violent rape, and a woman who experiences a turning point when the man she’s in bed with uses unacceptable force or coercion. But can we be clear that both of these—first-degree and third-degree rape, so to speak--are unacceptable, instead of drawing false parallels?
3) Krishnan should know better than to assume that Assange’s crime is “sexism”. The allegations made by the two Swedish women concern sexual molestation, sexual assault and "less severe" rape. These are not trivial, if true. And this case is not about an HIV test, sex by surprise, or a broken condom. It’s about consent, the overriding of that consent and the use of force in the process of the overriding of a woman’s consent. The allegations made by these two women deserve to be taken seriously. There’s a big difference between being "insensitive" to a woman’s fear of HIV, and the allegations of molestation and assault laid out in the Guardian report.
I am not an expert on either the law, or on rape victims, though I have written on rape and sexual assault in the course of writing for the gender beat. I’m following this case the way I’ve followed rape trials in India—just as an observer and as a woman who is interested in women’s rights.
But Kavita Krishnan is an expert, and she should know better than to prejudge two women, and to trivialize the allegations they have made against Assange. I understand and share her concerns for the harshness that Indian women face, on a daily basis, and I understand how dealing with the everyday brutality of rape and rape charges in this country can make anyone wonder why the Assange case matters at all.
Here’s the thing. To the two women involved in this case—women who have been vilified, who have had their names and addresses posted on the Internet, who have been blamed and dismissed, even before the case comes to court--it matters. The laws in their part of the world allow them to file a complaint against a man like Assange; the laws in my part of the world would leave an Indian woman in a similar situation with little or no prospect of redressal. I get that discussing the nuances of consensual sex versus non-consensual sex might seem like a luxury, when every week brings its raft of gang rapes, call-centre rapes, caste-conflict-inspired rapes, the casual rapes of sex workers, the routine rape of Dalit women or women in conflict zones to our attention.
But the right to give or withdraw one’s consent is not a small thing. The right to say 'no' to one's sexual partner, when you're uncomfortable, afraid, in pain, or fear rape, and to have that 'no' heard and accepted, is not a small thing. The right to be heard instead of being dismissed, or belittled, or vilified, is not a small thing. The right to consent should be the right of every woman, and every man; it shouldn’t be a luxury at all.
Here are some links that might be of interest:
1) The full allegations against Assange, from the Guardian:
The two Swedish women say that consensual sex with Assange turned, in separate incidents, into non-consensual sex. One woman alleges that he used force to hold her down, and then deliberately tore his condom when she insisted that he wear one. The other woman alleges that after several instances of consensual sex, where she insisted that Assange wear a condom, she woke up to find him having sex with her, not wearing a condom. He faces charges under Swedish law of sexual molestation and sexual assault. The allegations are yet to be proved, and Assange is yet to be charged.
2) Jessica Valenti on the laws in Sweden and the US on rape, and issues of consent:
3) From Kate Harding, an early piece contesting Naomi Wolf’s assessment of the Assange case:
and a more recent post on the rape myths coming up in the wake of the Assange case:
4) Caroline May on the rift between feminists and progressives on the activist left:
5) Jaclyn Friedman on What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape:
and: Friedman debates Naomi Wolf on Democracy Now:
6) Salil Tripathi: When No Means No
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
2010: The year's best non-fiction
From Delhi’s courtesans and merchants at the time of the Mutiny to the search for the perfect hilsa, Indian non-fiction had more variety on offer this year than in the previous five. Here are some of the highlights—an indicative rather than comprehensive list, for reasons of space—of 2010 in general non-fiction.
Business: The second-best thing about All The Devils Are Here (Portfolio/ Penguin, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera) and The Big Short (Allen Lane, Michael Lewis) is that these two business books read like well-written, fast-paced thrillers. The best thing about McLean’s history of the 2008 financial crisis and Short’s dissection of the “tiny handful of investors… for whom the trade became an obsession” is that they are snapshots of a time of greed and hubris. In comparison, Hamish McDonald’s long-anticipated Ambani and Sons (Roli Books) is big on gossip, comprehensive enough, but lacked the punch and the rigorous analysis that a Michael Lewis brings to the table. It reads like a rehash of McDonald’s earlier book, the controversial Polyester Prince.
History: Ramachandra Guha’s Makers of Modern India (Viking/ Penguin) drew crowds and intense debate, over those the historian chose to include in this collection of 19 profiles. Despite its many insights, it fell short of Guha’s best work—a milestone rather than a monumental work in his career. Mahmood Farooqui’s Besieged: Voices from Delhi, 1857 (Viking/ Penguin) was a welcome reminder of the missing oral histories and the untouched records in our libraries. A lasting addition to Mutiny scholarship, it could, however, have done with more commentary and analysis from Farooqui. Madhushree Mukherjee’s Churchill’s Secret War (Tranquebar) offered both in a trenchant criticism that directly linked Winston Churchill’s biases to the great famine of Bengal. And one of the more entertaining analyses of contemporary India was Santosh Desai’s collection of essays on the middle classes, Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India (HarperCollins).
Travel writing: Samanth Subramanian’s Following Fish (Penguin), winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book prize, was one of the discoveries of the year. Marrying a journalist’s eye to a writer’s turn of phrase, Subramanian made his travels up and down the Indian coast come alive, for foodies and travel junkies alike.
Sadanand Dhume’s gripping My Friend The Fanatic: Travels With A Radical Islamist (Tranquebar) is one of the more illuminating and thoughtful examinations of contemporary Islam available, which includes meetings with top Al-Qaeda chiefs and the inventor of an especially risqué dance called drilling. Balance this with Amitava Kumar’s rigorous but personal Evidence of Suspicion: A Writer’s Report on the War on Terror (Picador India), which moves between India and the US and is a brilliant study of how governments have internalized paranoia at the expense of the rights of their citizens.
The arts: Deepanjana Pal’s Life of Raja Ravi Varma (Random House) was one of the few approachable and entertaining artist’s biographies—as opposed to hagiographies—to be written in recent times. Pal’s bland and slightly workmanlike style is offset by her intimate understanding of the period and of art. With Penguin Studio’s monumental tribute to Dayanita Singh, it’s the photographs that do the talking as much as the perceptive essays by Sunil Khilnani and Aveek Sen—definitely a collector’s item, and an essential guide to the work of one of India’s most celebrated photographers. And well worth its Rs 6,000 price tag is the Khoj Book (HarperCollins), with well-curated profiles of 101 Indian artists, from one of India’s most experimental and freewheeling art galleries.
For Charles Correa fans, A Place in the Shade (Penguin India) is a quiet, thoughtful and inspiring collection of the maestro’s essays on architecture—again, essential reading for anyone interested in India’s cities and buildings. And on a lighter note, don’t miss Jai Arjun Singh’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (HarperCollins)—a cult film and books blogger on one of our funniest and most intriguing cult films.
Next week: the year's best biographies and memoirs, fromfrom the lives of bar dancers in Bombay to Mark Twain’s irreverent take on Samuel Clemens and the ultimate assessment of the man in the White House.
Business: The second-best thing about All The Devils Are Here (Portfolio/ Penguin, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera) and The Big Short (Allen Lane, Michael Lewis) is that these two business books read like well-written, fast-paced thrillers. The best thing about McLean’s history of the 2008 financial crisis and Short’s dissection of the “tiny handful of investors… for whom the trade became an obsession” is that they are snapshots of a time of greed and hubris. In comparison, Hamish McDonald’s long-anticipated Ambani and Sons (Roli Books) is big on gossip, comprehensive enough, but lacked the punch and the rigorous analysis that a Michael Lewis brings to the table. It reads like a rehash of McDonald’s earlier book, the controversial Polyester Prince.
History: Ramachandra Guha’s Makers of Modern India (Viking/ Penguin) drew crowds and intense debate, over those the historian chose to include in this collection of 19 profiles. Despite its many insights, it fell short of Guha’s best work—a milestone rather than a monumental work in his career. Mahmood Farooqui’s Besieged: Voices from Delhi, 1857 (Viking/ Penguin) was a welcome reminder of the missing oral histories and the untouched records in our libraries. A lasting addition to Mutiny scholarship, it could, however, have done with more commentary and analysis from Farooqui. Madhushree Mukherjee’s Churchill’s Secret War (Tranquebar) offered both in a trenchant criticism that directly linked Winston Churchill’s biases to the great famine of Bengal. And one of the more entertaining analyses of contemporary India was Santosh Desai’s collection of essays on the middle classes, Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India (HarperCollins).
Travel writing: Samanth Subramanian’s Following Fish (Penguin), winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book prize, was one of the discoveries of the year. Marrying a journalist’s eye to a writer’s turn of phrase, Subramanian made his travels up and down the Indian coast come alive, for foodies and travel junkies alike.
Sadanand Dhume’s gripping My Friend The Fanatic: Travels With A Radical Islamist (Tranquebar) is one of the more illuminating and thoughtful examinations of contemporary Islam available, which includes meetings with top Al-Qaeda chiefs and the inventor of an especially risqué dance called drilling. Balance this with Amitava Kumar’s rigorous but personal Evidence of Suspicion: A Writer’s Report on the War on Terror (Picador India), which moves between India and the US and is a brilliant study of how governments have internalized paranoia at the expense of the rights of their citizens.
The arts: Deepanjana Pal’s Life of Raja Ravi Varma (Random House) was one of the few approachable and entertaining artist’s biographies—as opposed to hagiographies—to be written in recent times. Pal’s bland and slightly workmanlike style is offset by her intimate understanding of the period and of art. With Penguin Studio’s monumental tribute to Dayanita Singh, it’s the photographs that do the talking as much as the perceptive essays by Sunil Khilnani and Aveek Sen—definitely a collector’s item, and an essential guide to the work of one of India’s most celebrated photographers. And well worth its Rs 6,000 price tag is the Khoj Book (HarperCollins), with well-curated profiles of 101 Indian artists, from one of India’s most experimental and freewheeling art galleries.
For Charles Correa fans, A Place in the Shade (Penguin India) is a quiet, thoughtful and inspiring collection of the maestro’s essays on architecture—again, essential reading for anyone interested in India’s cities and buildings. And on a lighter note, don’t miss Jai Arjun Singh’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (HarperCollins)—a cult film and books blogger on one of our funniest and most intriguing cult films.
Next week: the year's best biographies and memoirs, fromfrom the lives of bar dancers in Bombay to Mark Twain’s irreverent take on Samuel Clemens and the ultimate assessment of the man in the White House.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Getting Around Your City: A User's Guide For Women
(I wrote this for Jagori and Gauri Gill’s Transportraits, an exhibition on women and mobility in the city. It’s somewhere between a rant and a cross letter to the editor.
And two brilliant examples of what the exhibition had to offer:
Blank Noise's Step By Step Guide To Unapologetic Walking
Amruta Patil's Navigation, Safe Passage.)
Getting around your city: a user’s guide
1) Weapons: Chili-water in a spray bottle, a shard of glass, a paper cutter, a knife, stiletto heels, pepper spray in the special we’re-sensitive-to-women shade of pink, a razor blade, anything that can be used as a baton, a club, a stick. No whistles; most Indian women are aware that whistles, like cries for help, will attract no attention and will be ignored by passers-by, should you be in actual need of help. Most of the women who carry weapons, with the exception of a few who have trained themselves, some sex workers, and others in dangerous, precarious jobs, do not know how to use them. We carry them anyway; like good-luck charms or pictures of your favourite gods and goddesses, these are talismanic, meant to ward off evil.
2) A spare man: This might be a husband, a boyfriend, a brother, a father, a grandfather, any male child over a certain indefinable age (toddlers and babies do not work), a colleague, your doctor, or a random stranger you’re careful to match your steps with so that other men might think you’re with him. A spare man is more useful than a weapon, if harder to pack into your handbag, because he signals to other men that you are already someone’s property. The downside of carrying a spare man is that you may have to talk to him, or that he may start to believe that you are, indeed, his property, but as a charm to ward off other men, he is invaluable. One spare man, however, is of limited use against groups, gangs and mobs.
3) A watch: This will let you know when you are out at the wrong time. The wrong time is usually any time between dawn and the very late night hours that you are accosted, assailed, abused or attacked by a man or men. If you are out at that time, whether it was for your morning walk or you were coming back from a late business dinner or you were shutting down your pavement stall at five in the evening, it will, whatever the hour of the day, automatically be the wrong time, and you should have known better. (See “Clothes”, below.)
4) Clothes: Anything you are wearing at the time of an actual assault, or that invites comment from men, is not appropriate clothing by definition. If what you are wearing is a tank top, a spaghetti string blouse, a short skirt or jeans, you will make the cultural police in your city very happy, because they can point to the fact that your Western values are responsible for corrupting innocent, helpless men, and instigating them to attack, assault or rape you. If what you are wearing is a sari, a salwar kameez or a loose, all-encompassing sack, then it signifies that you deliberately went out on the streets aware of your potential to attract the wrong kind of male attention, and your clothes are a feeble attempt to cover up your wrong-doing. If you are wearing a burkha and this contributes to your sense of safety on the street, a ban can be organized in short order so that you can experience your fair share of assault and humiliation.
5) Transport: In most cities, the lighting at night has been carefully arranged to ensure that there will be no safe areas, especially around major transit points such as railway stations, metro stations and taxi stands. This is for your convenience. Most auto drivers will not offer safe transport, and many may also try to cheat you. This is so that you do not develop a false sense of security and comfort while negotiating the roads. Most taxis are safe, except for the ones that are not—if your corpse is not found in a drain before the end of your journey, you are in a safe taxi.
Most trains are safe, except for the ones that carry passengers who have no respect for women, which would leave you with the toy train to Darjeeling. The toy train is a very safe train, and you will enjoy Darjeeling greatly. Most buses are meant for the exclusive use of men, and while this will not be explicably stated, you will be made aware of the inconvenience you’re putting male passengers to at all times of your journey, during which they will lean on you, breathe on you, sing to you, fondle your breasts and attempt to molest and/or rape you. All other forms of transport, except for the footpaths, the roads and any stray rivers you may encounter, are absolutely safe for women.
6) Foreign women: All foreign women, including those from the North-Eastern states of India, should be aware of their moral looseness and willingness to be available to all men at all times. If you are a foreign woman and you are not aware of this, the men on the streets of your city of choice will be happy to remind you, several times an hour.
Please enjoy getting around your city. For your safety, we recommend that you travel as a man. If you must travel as a woman, we recommend that you stay indoors at all times. If you insist, after all this, on stepping out of your home, we do apologise for any inconvenience in the form of threats, harassment, rape, assault, violence, humiliation and murder that you almost certainly will encounter.
And two brilliant examples of what the exhibition had to offer:
Blank Noise's Step By Step Guide To Unapologetic Walking
Amruta Patil's Navigation, Safe Passage.)
Getting around your city: a user’s guide
1) Weapons: Chili-water in a spray bottle, a shard of glass, a paper cutter, a knife, stiletto heels, pepper spray in the special we’re-sensitive-to-women shade of pink, a razor blade, anything that can be used as a baton, a club, a stick. No whistles; most Indian women are aware that whistles, like cries for help, will attract no attention and will be ignored by passers-by, should you be in actual need of help. Most of the women who carry weapons, with the exception of a few who have trained themselves, some sex workers, and others in dangerous, precarious jobs, do not know how to use them. We carry them anyway; like good-luck charms or pictures of your favourite gods and goddesses, these are talismanic, meant to ward off evil.
2) A spare man: This might be a husband, a boyfriend, a brother, a father, a grandfather, any male child over a certain indefinable age (toddlers and babies do not work), a colleague, your doctor, or a random stranger you’re careful to match your steps with so that other men might think you’re with him. A spare man is more useful than a weapon, if harder to pack into your handbag, because he signals to other men that you are already someone’s property. The downside of carrying a spare man is that you may have to talk to him, or that he may start to believe that you are, indeed, his property, but as a charm to ward off other men, he is invaluable. One spare man, however, is of limited use against groups, gangs and mobs.
3) A watch: This will let you know when you are out at the wrong time. The wrong time is usually any time between dawn and the very late night hours that you are accosted, assailed, abused or attacked by a man or men. If you are out at that time, whether it was for your morning walk or you were coming back from a late business dinner or you were shutting down your pavement stall at five in the evening, it will, whatever the hour of the day, automatically be the wrong time, and you should have known better. (See “Clothes”, below.)
4) Clothes: Anything you are wearing at the time of an actual assault, or that invites comment from men, is not appropriate clothing by definition. If what you are wearing is a tank top, a spaghetti string blouse, a short skirt or jeans, you will make the cultural police in your city very happy, because they can point to the fact that your Western values are responsible for corrupting innocent, helpless men, and instigating them to attack, assault or rape you. If what you are wearing is a sari, a salwar kameez or a loose, all-encompassing sack, then it signifies that you deliberately went out on the streets aware of your potential to attract the wrong kind of male attention, and your clothes are a feeble attempt to cover up your wrong-doing. If you are wearing a burkha and this contributes to your sense of safety on the street, a ban can be organized in short order so that you can experience your fair share of assault and humiliation.
5) Transport: In most cities, the lighting at night has been carefully arranged to ensure that there will be no safe areas, especially around major transit points such as railway stations, metro stations and taxi stands. This is for your convenience. Most auto drivers will not offer safe transport, and many may also try to cheat you. This is so that you do not develop a false sense of security and comfort while negotiating the roads. Most taxis are safe, except for the ones that are not—if your corpse is not found in a drain before the end of your journey, you are in a safe taxi.
Most trains are safe, except for the ones that carry passengers who have no respect for women, which would leave you with the toy train to Darjeeling. The toy train is a very safe train, and you will enjoy Darjeeling greatly. Most buses are meant for the exclusive use of men, and while this will not be explicably stated, you will be made aware of the inconvenience you’re putting male passengers to at all times of your journey, during which they will lean on you, breathe on you, sing to you, fondle your breasts and attempt to molest and/or rape you. All other forms of transport, except for the footpaths, the roads and any stray rivers you may encounter, are absolutely safe for women.
6) Foreign women: All foreign women, including those from the North-Eastern states of India, should be aware of their moral looseness and willingness to be available to all men at all times. If you are a foreign woman and you are not aware of this, the men on the streets of your city of choice will be happy to remind you, several times an hour.
Please enjoy getting around your city. For your safety, we recommend that you travel as a man. If you must travel as a woman, we recommend that you stay indoors at all times. If you insist, after all this, on stepping out of your home, we do apologise for any inconvenience in the form of threats, harassment, rape, assault, violence, humiliation and murder that you almost certainly will encounter.
Book review: Beautiful Thing, Sonia Faleiro
(Published in the Business Standard, November 2010.)
Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars
Sonia Faleiro
Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton,
Rs 450, 216 pages
In Maximum City, Suketu Mehta’s 2005 blockbuster about Bombay, he writes about his relationship with a bar dancer who grew to confide all of the details of her life to him, from the nature of her clients to her habit of cutting herself when in extreme emotion. “What is sex after such vast intimate knowledge?” Mehta wrote, in a particularly revelatory line.
From Truman Capote to John Berendt to Suketu Mehta and Sonia Faleiro, part of the lure of non-fiction is, inevitably, just this: the vast intimate knowledge of another human being that no other form or act can offer. That knowledge, for the best non-fiction writers, is usually pressed into service of something that goes far beyond the ordinary voyeurism of the journalist; at its best, it can be an attempt to understand the rich, confusing business of life itself.
As Maximum City made its explosive impact in 2005, another young writer was finding her voice, and her subject, in the world of Bombay’s dance bars. Sonia Faleiro would spend the next five years immersed in the seedy but subtly empowering atmosphere of the bars in Mira Road, listening to the conversations of dalals and bar girls, clients (chamar chors and Bada Dons), hijras and brothel owners.
“My story is the best you will ever hear. The best, understand? Now come close. Closer! Okay, ready?”
Beautiful Thing sets the pace right from the epigraph, and from its first, searing chapter. Here is Leela, the bar dancer whose life Faleiro faithfully shadowed for years, wearing her client’s boxer shorts as she admires herself in the mirror, young, beautiful, confident, an “alone girl” who demands gifts of money, clothes, jewellery and oddly, vegetables, from the clients who are dazzled by her courtesan’s turn at the bar. “Our often one-sided relationship may be characterized thus: I called Leela. She ‘missed-called’ me,” writes Faleiro, setting the boundaries early on. Her interest in the lives of the bar girls, from Leela to the unbelievably beautiful queen of nakhra, Priya, will always be one-sided, unreciprocated.
Leela, when the story opens, is at the top of her profession, and her profession is at the top of the complex hierarchy that governs sex workers in Bombay. There are destitute prostitutes, the bottom-feeders; brothel girls, a step above; call girls and massage parlour girls; and right at the top, in the glittering tinsel light of the bars, the bar dancers. Leela’s story is not a simple one, and to tell it, Faleiro turns herself into the proverbial camera, the invisible, omniscient writer whose only job is to record what happens.
“When you look at my life, don’t look at it beside yours. Look at it beside the life of my mother and her mother and my sisters-in-law who have to take permission to walk down the road…,” Leela tells her. “But you’ve seen me with men? If I don’t want to talk I say, “Get lost oye!” And they do. And if I want a gift or feel like “non-wedge”, I just have to tell them and they give me what I want, no questions. ..I make money and money gives me something my mother never had. Azaadi. Freedom.”
Leela’s story is as harsh and brutal as the story of hundreds of other women in India. Faleiro chronicles their lives through hers; the casual rapes by family members or the police, the limited possibilities of finding respectable, paying work in Bombay’s brutally crowded, busy streets. In 2005, the dance bars offered a kind of halfway house for women who didn’t have to do “galat kaam” unless they were so inclined, and who weren’t subjected to the darker cruelties of being trafficked into the sex trade. Working in the dance bars gave them respectability—many, as in Leela’s case, received an anxious, obsessive love and respect from the families who depended on their earnings. They had, too, a kind of freedom—the freedom to pick and choose their clients, to flirt, to fight over a particularly fancy “Kushtomer”, and the freedom to spend their money as they saw fit.
As with John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Faleiro’s Beautiful Thing reads like great fiction—from Masti, the stunningly confident hijra, to Priya, the narcissist in love with her own impossible beauty, to Apsara, Leela’s grasping, selfish mother, the cast of characters here are unforgettable. And Faleiro does a brilliant job of blending reportage with the moving, saddening story she has to tell—in a fit of misplaced politicking and morality, the Bombay government closed down the dance bars, condemning most of these women to the indignities, dangers and insecurities of “dhanda”. Her perspective, always respectful to the subjects of her story, allows this to be a story of and about Bombay’s women—a massive, and refreshing, change from the masculine world of the gangs we’ve been offered by previous Bombay chroniclers.
Beautiful Thing is marred slightly by Faleiro’s obsession with accents—by the fourth repetition of “bootiful” and the third of “kushtomer”, the reader might wish that she had exercised less Kiplingesque fidelity. Nor should one expect objectivity; Faleiro makes it quite clear that her sympathies lie with the women in this trade, and her fascination with their independence can cloud her judgment. But these are minor quibbles.
Because the truth is that Beautiful Thing is one of the books we’ve been waiting for in contemporary India—a non-fiction debut of astonishing integrity and sensitivity, where Faleiro tells a story that is beguiling, incredibly funny in parts, and absolutely heart-breaking. This is without question a brilliant, unforgettable book by a writer who is one of the best of her generation. Beautiful Thing is one of the best books of the year; and is one of the most gripping and honest books written about Bombay in a very long while.
The BS Column: Silenced in Burma
(Published in the Business Standard, November 12, 2010)
At the height of Stalin’s rule, Mikhail Bulgakov was learning an aspect of the craft of writing that is rarely taught in creative writing courses today: the art of outwitting the censor. This practice, well-known to all writers who live under dictatorships, could lead to bizarre leaps of creativity.
In his 1925 Heart of a Dog, for instance, Bulgakov created the tale of a scientist who transplants human organs into the body of a dog called Sharik, who then becomes more and more human as the book unfolds. The donor of the organs is a drunk called Chugunkin; this was considered bold nomenclature on Bulgakov’s part, because Chugunkin translates as “iron”, which was seen as a reference to Stalin (“man of steel”).
In a similar vein, consider one of the most famous literary controversies in contemporary China. In 1978, the poet Bei Dao wrote a poem that contained these lines: “Life. The sun rises too.” Chinese officials spent a great deal of time analyzing and dissecting these lines—were they a reference to the “red sun” of Mao Tsetsung? If so, Bei Dao was being deeply critical of Mao; if not, it was just another innocuous poet’s metaphor. The journal founded by Bei Dao, Jintian, was shut down in 1980, when Beijing decided it had had enough of dealing with potentially subversive lyricism.
Just a few months before Dawa Aung San Suu Kyi was released from her 15-year term of house arrest in Myanmar, where the regime has held ‘The Lady’ in effective imprisonment, there was a small, sad but heartening news story in the Burmese press. In July, an unnamed 14-year-old boy was arrested in Rangoon for hawking copies of Suu Kyi’s Freedom From Fear, which is banned in Burma. He was also selling a book by pro-democracy dissident Win Tin, who was imprisoned for 19 years and wrote about his experiences in, “What’s that? Human hell?” which was promptly banned on its release.
The boy’s fate is unknown; but the reports of his arrest pointed to the fact that the military dictatorship in Myanmar has been unable to suppress the appetite in the country for the writings of Suu Kyi, Win Tin and other writers, like Pascal Khoo-Thwe.
Khoo-Thwe and Aung San Suu Kyi have never veiled their writings. Khoo-Thwe’s Land of Green Ghosts is, like so many other works of Burmese literature, not available within Myanmar. His account of the history of Burma was a straightforward narrative, uncensored and open. Suu Kyi’s hard-hitting and mesmerizing Letters From Burma were written for a Japanese newspaper, and has been in print since its 1998 publication in the West. Along with Freedom From Fear, it is one of the most celebrated and revered “missing” books in Myanmar, and despite the efforts of the military junta, samizdat copies continue to circulate.
The history of her father, General Aung San, and his writings, have been more fraught. In the 1990s, references to Aung San began to be edited out of the country’s textbooks: the second weapon of dictatorships and military regimes, after censorship, is erasure. Editing textbooks is a classic way of manipulating history—do it for two generations, and you have succeeded in changing a country’s memory of its own past.
Among the list of guidelines handed down to Burmese printers and publishers in 1975—guidelines that continue to dictate what may and may not be published—is this blanket provision: “Any incorrect ideas or opinions which do not accord with the times.” Put that together with the prohibition on publishing “anything detrimental to the Burmese Socialist Program”, and that leaves very little in the way of “acceptable” writing.
In this climate, censorship becomes a theatre of the absurd. Travelling in Burma, Emma Larkin writes in Secret Histories of the wry joke about George Orwell’s “Burmese books”. Intellectuals and scholars jest that Orwell didn’t write one novel about the country but three—Burmese Days, Animal Farm and 1984.
Give censors a free hand, and as in Stalin’s time, the absurdities begin to take on a bizarre life of their own. One of the more famous cases of censorship cited concerns an anthology of short stories published in the 1990s. This was a volume of stories put together in tribute to the writer MoMo (Inya), who had died in 1990. On the cover was an image of MoMo’s head, embossed on a gold medallion. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Though none of the stories in the anthology in MoMo’s honour concerned Aung San, the publishers were directed to cover up the image of the medallion. The regime feared that readers would be reminded of Aung San’s Nobel win—and so the book was finally published, with a strip of gold paper pasted over the features of the writer it honoured.
At the height of Stalin’s rule, Mikhail Bulgakov was learning an aspect of the craft of writing that is rarely taught in creative writing courses today: the art of outwitting the censor. This practice, well-known to all writers who live under dictatorships, could lead to bizarre leaps of creativity.
In his 1925 Heart of a Dog, for instance, Bulgakov created the tale of a scientist who transplants human organs into the body of a dog called Sharik, who then becomes more and more human as the book unfolds. The donor of the organs is a drunk called Chugunkin; this was considered bold nomenclature on Bulgakov’s part, because Chugunkin translates as “iron”, which was seen as a reference to Stalin (“man of steel”).
In a similar vein, consider one of the most famous literary controversies in contemporary China. In 1978, the poet Bei Dao wrote a poem that contained these lines: “Life. The sun rises too.” Chinese officials spent a great deal of time analyzing and dissecting these lines—were they a reference to the “red sun” of Mao Tsetsung? If so, Bei Dao was being deeply critical of Mao; if not, it was just another innocuous poet’s metaphor. The journal founded by Bei Dao, Jintian, was shut down in 1980, when Beijing decided it had had enough of dealing with potentially subversive lyricism.
Just a few months before Dawa Aung San Suu Kyi was released from her 15-year term of house arrest in Myanmar, where the regime has held ‘The Lady’ in effective imprisonment, there was a small, sad but heartening news story in the Burmese press. In July, an unnamed 14-year-old boy was arrested in Rangoon for hawking copies of Suu Kyi’s Freedom From Fear, which is banned in Burma. He was also selling a book by pro-democracy dissident Win Tin, who was imprisoned for 19 years and wrote about his experiences in, “What’s that? Human hell?” which was promptly banned on its release.
The boy’s fate is unknown; but the reports of his arrest pointed to the fact that the military dictatorship in Myanmar has been unable to suppress the appetite in the country for the writings of Suu Kyi, Win Tin and other writers, like Pascal Khoo-Thwe.
Khoo-Thwe and Aung San Suu Kyi have never veiled their writings. Khoo-Thwe’s Land of Green Ghosts is, like so many other works of Burmese literature, not available within Myanmar. His account of the history of Burma was a straightforward narrative, uncensored and open. Suu Kyi’s hard-hitting and mesmerizing Letters From Burma were written for a Japanese newspaper, and has been in print since its 1998 publication in the West. Along with Freedom From Fear, it is one of the most celebrated and revered “missing” books in Myanmar, and despite the efforts of the military junta, samizdat copies continue to circulate.
The history of her father, General Aung San, and his writings, have been more fraught. In the 1990s, references to Aung San began to be edited out of the country’s textbooks: the second weapon of dictatorships and military regimes, after censorship, is erasure. Editing textbooks is a classic way of manipulating history—do it for two generations, and you have succeeded in changing a country’s memory of its own past.
Among the list of guidelines handed down to Burmese printers and publishers in 1975—guidelines that continue to dictate what may and may not be published—is this blanket provision: “Any incorrect ideas or opinions which do not accord with the times.” Put that together with the prohibition on publishing “anything detrimental to the Burmese Socialist Program”, and that leaves very little in the way of “acceptable” writing.
In this climate, censorship becomes a theatre of the absurd. Travelling in Burma, Emma Larkin writes in Secret Histories of the wry joke about George Orwell’s “Burmese books”. Intellectuals and scholars jest that Orwell didn’t write one novel about the country but three—Burmese Days, Animal Farm and 1984.
Give censors a free hand, and as in Stalin’s time, the absurdities begin to take on a bizarre life of their own. One of the more famous cases of censorship cited concerns an anthology of short stories published in the 1990s. This was a volume of stories put together in tribute to the writer MoMo (Inya), who had died in 1990. On the cover was an image of MoMo’s head, embossed on a gold medallion. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Though none of the stories in the anthology in MoMo’s honour concerned Aung San, the publishers were directed to cover up the image of the medallion. The regime feared that readers would be reminded of Aung San’s Nobel win—and so the book was finally published, with a strip of gold paper pasted over the features of the writer it honoured.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
The BS Column: P Lal and Writers Workshop
(Published in the Business Standard, 9 November 2010)
In the homes of Indian writers of a certain generation, there’ll always be the Writers Workshop shelf, given over to hand-bound books, the cloth borders taken from Orissa saris, the title often hand-calligraphed. You don’t find them in bookstores that often these days, but there was a time when Writers Workshop represented, in effect, the sum total of the aspirations of Indians writing in English.
Professor P Lal, the man behind Writers Workshop, and perhaps the last of the dying breed of “gentleman publishers”, died this weekend at the age of 81 in Calcutta, where he had lived and worked most of his life. In the fifty years since he had started Writers Workshop, Indian publishing had changed beyond recognition. There were now a multitude of publishing houses, literary festivals, book launches—all the infrastructure that was missing when he and a group of friends began Writers Workshop.
“The reason I went into publishing is simple – nobody was around, in 1958, to publish me. So I published myself. Half a dozen others – friends – also found this expedient attractive. So we formed a group, a nice consanguineous côterie. We wrote prefaces to each other’s books, pointing out excellences, and performed similar familial kindnesses in other ways as well. We believed, with Helen Gardner, that criticism should flash the torch, not wield the sceptre,” he wrote of its beginnings.
The “half-a-dozen others” included Sasthibrata Chakravarthi and Anita Desai—but from the start, WW would aim to encourage those who were not destined to become famous, opening its doors to major and minor talent. AK Ramanujan, Vikram Seth, Jayanta Mahapatra, Kamala Das, Agha Shahid Ali, Keki Daruwalla, Mani Nair, the enigmatic Lawrence Bantleman and a score of Indian poets would find their first moorings within the elegant covers so carefully crafted by P Lal’s endeavour—but so would hundreds of other now-forgotten writers.
On a personal note, I might add that one of their youngest members was my sister, who had written a precocious short story at the age of 12, and who for years was made welcome at their meetings. Chai would be ordered—“and a coke for Baby”—and while she never took up writing, she remembers the warmth and acceptance P Lal and his circle handed out to everyone who happened to stray within its borders.
As Indian publishing came of age, the importance and necessity of Writers Workshop began to diminish. The space that P Lal and his friends had created in 1958 was crucial—both in terms of establishing a publishing house for writers, and setting down the importance of Indian writing in English. One of the first controversies that erupted was the attack on Indian poetry in English by Buddhadev Bose, and then by Bose’s son-in-law, Jyotirmaya Datta. The latter wrote an essay, “Caged Chaffinches and Polyglot Poets”, that P Lal responded to—with his usual spirited but gentle liveliness—and in many ways, these attacks offered a meeting point for those who were just beginning to write in English, using it as an Indian, not an alien, language.
P Lal was also a writer, poet and academic, but he will perhaps be best remembered for his magisterial translation of the Mahabharata—perhaps the most complete rendering of the epic available. It was typical of him that he would hold a weekly reading, every Sunday, open to all, from 1999 onwards, in honour of the grand oral tradition of the epic. So many of us, writers and readers in Calcutta, attended those sessions, discovering a community and a fellowship long before there was the season of book launches.
The impact of Writers Workshop cannot be measured by its 3,000-odd titles, or by the influence it once wielded as a publishing house. It was, like Clearinghouse in Bombay, a literary movement, fuelled by the agile mind and precise labours of P Lal. In my copies of the books produced by Writers Workshop, there was always this, in calligraphy: “Layout and lettering by P Lal with a Sheaffer calligraphy pen. Embossed, hand-stitched, hand-pasted and hand-boundby Tulamiah Mohiuddin with handloom sari cloth woven and designed in India, to provide visual beauty and the intimate texture of book-feel.”
Few publishers today, however brilliant their lists of authors, have that kind of passion, P Lal’s celebration of “book-feel”, and his insistence that literature was a large, rambling house, its rooms broad enough to accommodate all, however modest or stellar their individual talents.
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