Across the Aisle: Gujarat After 22 Years of BJP Rule
Talking about the Gujarat elections, P Chidambaram, in his column ‘Across the Isle’ in The Indian Express discusses the criteria based on which a voter chooses his leader. If he were a voter, he says he would bring to power that party which slashes prices of petrol and diesel, completes the Sardar Sarovar canal network, creates jobs and empathises with the poor and the middle class irrespective of religion or caste.
The debate that the BJP wants to stir is on Hindutva, Ayodhya, personal laws, cow protection, hyper-nationalism and the fault lines in society. The Prime Minister, in his speeches, will invariably pick one or more of these subjects and make a remark that will become the headline of the day. The media will start a raucous debate. Thankfully, so far, no party has walked into that trap. They have remained focused on development and on the issues of jobs and price rise. No one can predict the result of an election. Bihar went contrary to surveys, Uttar Pradesh went contrary to opinion polls. We can only hope that, for the sake of Gujarat and for the sake of better governance at the Centre in the next 16 months, the voters of Gujarat will remember that an election is the time to enforce accountability.
Fifth Column: Speak up, Prime Minister
Tavleen Singh in her column in The Indian Express questions why prime-time debates explored the nuances of Mani Shankar Aiyar‘s ‘neech’ comment but conveniently forgot the brutal and senseless murder of Afrazul. If the Prime Minister doesn’t stand up against his Alma Mater RSS’ actions, India is not far from being a Hindu version of the rogue nation Pakistan very soon, she says.
So who is to blame for these routine killings that have become part of the very fabric of India? There is no question that it is our leaders. The Prime Minister has spoken twice against hate crimes but only after Dalit youths started to become victims of the vigilantes his chief ministers have unleashed across the country. These chief ministers would not allow vigilantes to commit their barbaric, brutal crimes if they were not convinced that this kind of vigilantism pleases the Prime Minister. It is time for him to show that he abhors these hate crimes that have scarred the face of India.
Collective Honour and Individual Dignity
Individual honour can be mixed with collective honour if we are talking about a person winning the Nobel Prize or the Indian team winning in cricket, but not that which is tied to rigid practices that can can cause resentment, writes Rajeev Bhargava.
In his column in The Hindu, he highlights that it’s time we remove deep-rooted caste hierarchies, equating the marriage of an inter-caste couple to the honour of the entire community and see dignity as an individual quality, and not a collective one.
India is living through a deeply interesting but troublesome transition where older ideas of collective honour are vying with new articulations of individual dignity. In this clash between two forms of respect, inegalitarian forms of collective honour are more likely to be pushed out of our society as social and political democracy deepens. But since humans can neither live without communities nor live entrapped within them, both collective honour and individual dignity will be needed in future. And would it not be good to see flourish in our society a form of collective honour consistent with individual dignity?
Neech Kisam Ka Air Quality
Taking a dig at how Indians laughed at Sri Lankan cricketers puking due to the Delhi smog, G Sampath in his column in The Hindu says Delhiites have an advantage over everyone else in the world. If we are looking at a future where we might have to survive an apocalypse and start a colony on a new planet, it would be only Delhiites who would survive because of their immunity to toxic gases.
But I once had to visit Helsinki, where the air quality index (AQI) was a preposterous 10! With hardly any particulate matter, the air was so light and bereft of substance that my lungs didn’t even register it as air.I felt breathless and began to vomit right there in the airport. They had to take me to a local hospital and put me in a pressurised chamber connected to the chimney of a small petrochemical factory, set up especially for passengers from Delhi. Only after 56 minutes of inhaling factory fumes did I begin to feel normal.
Storm in a Chai Cup: When Gujarat Rooted for Padmavati
Shaobaa De in her column Politically Incorrect in the Times Of India, rakes up a satirical storm by weaving a conversation with Hindu-Padmavati extremists. The group of men question her allegiance with Khilji, Gujarati as the national language, beef and even Aurangzeb.
“She’s sounding dangerous. This is a trick to mislead the voters. Let us ask her a few more basic questions and make her recite the national anthem backwards.” I protested mildly and said, “I will settle for chhaas, since you don’t want to serve me tea. Or even milk. Cow’s milk will do, though I prefer buffalo.” One of the men flexed his muscles. “Next you will ask for beef! Madam, this is Gujarat. G-U-J-A-R-A-T. Understood? We aren’t like the rest of India. We don’t tolerate people like you who come and poke their noses everywhere. See, even a cyclone is afraid of our leader. Ockhi ran away!”
In an Absence, a Gone Presence - Around Spaces Shashi Kapoor Will Never Ever Return To
Upala Sen in her column in the Telegraph talks of how the demise of Shashi Kapoor has left a dent in the minds of generations of Indians so much so that every picture, story, anecdote of him shown on TV channels has attentive viewers. Paying a visit to the Fairlawn hotel, she says the humility of the verandah, newspaper cuttings and the polite condolences conveyed by other guests, brings to life the simplicity of the man who is said to have lived, loved and been the happiest in that humble abode.
Could I explore the place? He nodded. And I began my ascent into the echelons of memory.Winter evenings in Calcutta have a wispy, unreal feel. Stoke nostalgia, aid flashback. The stairway is adorned with framed photographs of the proprietors, famous guests, cuttings of newspaper articles - Le Temps Du Monde, Freie Presse - the bits about the hotel highlighted, certificates... The wooden stairs creak, from the weight of all that memory I am accumulating with each step up, or so I like to think. There is a bill from 1958 made out to a Mrs C. Sen of Room 19. The charge for board and lodging for eight days is Rs 160.
Gained in Translation: On Padmavati, a Kannaki Cue
Drawing a comparison between the most controversial Padmavati to Kannagi, based on one of the oldest Tamil folklores, Vasanthi talks in her column in The Indian Express on how the both are very similar. They’ve been brought to life from a myth and equated to the honour of a caste and a symbol of female sexual purity. She asks Tamil women to give a piece of advice to their Rajasthan sisters to beware of myths as they are just old feudal traps to catch us.
Hear what they say: “When some one (sexually) assaults you, dear lady, you have no option except death.” Don’t yell before the cameras that your honour has been assaulted because somebody put your mythic queen on the wide screen, with swaying skirts to the Ghoomar song; in fact, he was glorifying your myth, for heaven’s sake. She was no Kali, the destroyer of evil, though. Padmavati did not die fighting; Kannaki was in fact better, an ordinary woman who argued her case in the king’s court and killed him with her words of righteous wrath. Padmavati gave up without a fight and entered jauhar, dragging the entire harem with her. It was suicide; an act of despair.
The Problem with Aadhaar Cards Is the Way They Are Being Pushed by the State
Mark Tully talks in his column in the Hindustan Times on how Aadhaar cards seem to be devastating for many poor people. He doesn’t crtitcize the scheme completely, but just the zeal with which it is being pushed by the central government where having a card and fingertips which are not worn down is compulsory.
When I met him in Ranchi a week or so ago he shared with me some recent research showing that compulsory biometric authentication was excluding marginalised people from security nets they were entitled too. This was particularly true of the rations they should receive from the PDS, the Public Distribution System. He showed me a series of videoed incidents in which people who had been refused rations because biometric machines failed to read their fingerprints, machines did not work because the Internet was down, or there was no electricity. In one incident the PDS recognition machine was hanging from a Jamun tree in the hope that it might receive a signal there.
The Secrets About Fatehpur Sikri
Recalling visits to Fatehpur Sikhri, the author in a column in The Hindu talks of how walking through the majestic red Mughal buildings was different when imaginative guides spun myths and when the book Fathpur Sikri Revisited guided her. Myths were debunked, carvings told stories and Akbar’s life a as ruler and a lover was brought to life.
Since I had learnt so much by then, the fact that the free-standing square Chahar Khana (known as Diwan-e-Khas) in this courtyard was actually just symbolic and meant to emphasise Akbar as a universal ruler sitting in the round column head didn’t surprise me. I like the idea of Akbar “presiding like a god like Vishnu (seated on a lotus seat) or like the sun, domineering over all regions.”
More from The Quint:
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)