Arundhati Roy's take on the Anna Movement

Arundhati Roy is one of those journalists/writers/activists in India who have a high survival understanding in a field where a static absence means death. She keeps controversial topics close to her chest and very honestly (and unfeigningly) maintains the i-dont-care-what-you-think-of me facade. She often speaks against the wind so as to preserve her position at a distance from the rest of her lot and stay alive. Her style is that of over simplifying things that have more complex solutions and complicating the matters that may have easier resolutions. She frequently reminds me of some modern witch who likes to be called a psychic behind her eyes highlighted with kohl, and who likes it even more when people call her a little cranky.

She has been on my list of irritating good looking women ever since her over simplified version of the Indian Naxalite movement; then she graduated to a new level when she spoke the simple absurdities in/about Kashmir. And in between she has had random opinions on India’s nuclear policy post the Pokhran nuke test. The latest point where she opened her supple mouth to bring some misplaced venom out was at the anti corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. She is highly critical of not just the new bill but also of the man and the entire movement. Though not in clear words, she calls Anna a fake Gandhian.

It is difficult to understand what problems can an ‘intellectual’ have with this movement (other than the mentioned attempt at standing away from the rest of the bourgeoisie intellectuals) that is clearly in favour of fighting corruption. Here are a couple of things that according to my analysis are responsible for this.

1. Roy has always been very vocal about her abhorrence for Narendra Modi, and despite the 2002 stain on the Gujarat collar Anna Hazare praised Modi’s development model in Gujarat.

2. Anna Hazare has had an old association with the RSS.

3. Anna does not support the popular practice of caste based reservations, and not just talks but also has brought into practice the Gandhian model of self dependence based on equal distribution of work in his Ralegan Sidhi.

4. Anna’s movement and the ongoing campaign is being handled by people who are associated with NGOs that gather their funds from multinationals like Coca Cola and Lehman Brothers. She is clearly upset with Arvind Kejriwal and Sisodia's NGO ‘Kabir’ that has received a donation of $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last 3 years.

5. Arundhati Roy, at the bottom of everything else, is a leftist and pays her homage to Marx by opposing everything that has a stench of a robust Capitalism and a hint of decentralization.

She has always been wary of globalization and privatising government wings to corporations and NGOs. Her biggest concern is that such NGOs and corporations will be out of the Lokpal bill ambit and hence will be free to do corrupt practices themselves. But what she refuses to understand is that it will ultimately be the tax payers’ money that will run these NGOs and corporations and wherever that goes the periphery of the Lokpal jurisdiction will go.

But sadly, I do not expect any sense of rationality from her. Had she been in possession of the right senses she would have made far better use of her Booker Prize money than donate it in a movement to stop a Hydel Power Project in Gujarat.

Reservation politics

Watching a political debate on the movie Arakshan being banned in three states of the country spurned an uncomfortable anxiety in my heart and liver. The panellists included a movie maker, a film critic and two Dalit activists. The caste of the former two was not declared so I presume they did not belong to the political jackpot class of the ‘down-trodden’. As expected there was a lot of hue and cry on the issue and a lot of absurd things were said that make you laugh in disgust when you hear them but leave you worried at the state of mindsets that are only becoming more and more popular, after the funny moment is over.

One panellist even said that the Bollywood filmmakers should take a cue from their Hollywood counterparts who foraged their ghettos to bring forth black actors, directors and other crewmen for the sake of equal opportunity and representation, and do something like that for Dalits in India. I have no idea about who those ghetto-raised actors and directors are, and on what research he based his statement on, but I was really aggravated to hear such a stupid thing coming out from a representative of a class that is supposed to be suppressed and needs to be brought up at the same pedestal as the rest of us in the country. If the leader who guides them believes in such alienating gimmicks then they sure have a bleak future and there is no way they are going to be a part of an Indian population that does not need to wear a caste badge on the sleeve.

The present state of the matter is so bizarre and so heavily ionized with political radicals that a casteless society in India is an impossible task. The caste system is being made more and more prominent by raising reservation ratios in colleges and institutions of merit. Every election campaign is considered incomplete without fondling the mammaries of caste. This practice is slowly but ruthlessly dividing the country into two portions of the reserved and the unreserved. Each of which has grudges against the other. The British were supposed to have devised and very efficiently brought into practice the system of divide and rule in India, and logically enough their successors have now become aware of the evil legacy.

I want to ask the ones who demand equal rights for the Dalits whether they will be able to remove words like ‘caste’ and ‘reservations’ from their electoral speeches! This is the only way to bring them at par with the rest of the country, by treating them exactly as the rest. And I promise, in less than a decade people will forget what ages have failed to wipe off from the Indian panorama.

"We dont need no education"

It’s not every day that we get to spend time with those who like to think on their own and have a perspective that’s out of the box. And when one happens to run into such company it is too irresistible to let the opportunity go. They also serve as mothballs to keep the vulgar idiots away, and are a boon for petty hosts tired of laughing at perverted jokes and anecdotes. I happened to have been stuck in a pair of stilettos that didn’t even fit me, one evening—a knight in distress, when this mixed crowd of dames and dandies paid a visit. After a couple of shots of some harmless spirit we found ourselves involved in a hot exchange of opinions.

I spoke my face red and my voice hoarse on the present state of the country, and how Mother India was writhing in the talons of the government; and how the Congress had proved time and again only too efficient in licking foreign arses (to manage what the blind, sentimental and non-budging Indians had continually been holding out to them—the reigns of the nation); and how the only other option the BJP, or shall I say the NDA promised a muddled up instability in the wake of the non-secular firmament (read bullshit)that they had to wake up to every single morning; and how the Left irritated the one who might just otherwise work, like blood sucking mosquitoes, and rendered smooth working impossible (why wouldn’t they demand what they wanted straight away at the beginning and save us all the drama, and the news channels their precious time slots for televised adaptations of the apocalypse prophesied by hermits and crooks?); and how the rest of the political fraternity attacked the national carcass like hyenas when the mighty lords had had their fill. And I realized that all it did was raise the pressure I my arteries and disturb the rhythm that once was lub and dub. The government continued anyway to dance on a pagan ditty from Mount Etna, dressed in bold nothingness with sticks in hands and the nation for the beast in the barbecue at the centre. A young kid with spectacles touched the kill to check whether it was time, and giggled. The rest of them giggled in unison and reverence as a tribute to the great grandfather of the kid who was once their leader. Maybe it was the initiation that was so painful. Once the rudiments were settled things would get better. I lighted up a candle, having lost my prescription for natural optimism.

Someone suggested a refill, and we were on the highway again. In order to calm myself down I took some deep breaths that really helped. I wondered if soon deep breathing exercises and the pranayam would be coupled with the non secular bhagwa party, as Baba Ramdev had been, who had been endorsing it for a long time. After all Anna Hazare’s austere stage couldn’t escape the stains of mud that flung from the quicksand that gobbled up Babaji. And while Anna had years of positive only results at Ralegan Siddhi and elsewhere, poor Indian Yoga had made a return from the west without a passport with a tag of Tantric Sexuality attached to its ear. The government could blame it all on the impish Hindutva goblins, and declare it anti national as it might hurt the secular sentiment of the Indian Preamble like our notorious national song. I took a few more deep breaths, not only because I needed them but also because my elders had taught me to be law abiding, and I might as well do it when it was still legal.

The crammed up living room began to lose its citizenry as the speakers fell silent and a part that formed the dumb congregation sniffed a possible escape door opening. Someone demanded to forget it and look elsewhere. Some of the rising inmates sat back down and I played the fall guy by saying, “Ya... OK!” as if it was me who was offered the chalice from Lethe. We spoke about contemporary literature in India for some time and soon drifted to the dangerous precinct in the neighbourhood that was freedom of speech and expression. It started in a light colour with Sardars getting annoyed on sardar jokes, but the burning of Rohinton Mistry’s Such A Long Journey by Shiv Sainiks and the disappointing decision of Mumbai University to withdraw the book from the course curriculum proved the Enfield greased cartridges that we took rounds to bite into and set the rest of the night on fire.

Then came the ghosts of M F Hussain and Tasleema Nasreen and the students of the Fine Arts College of Baroda and Lucknow. History started yelling aloud from the top of the Kabah, and the pre Layla-al-qadr pagan daughters of Allah became the mouthpieces of Swedish caricatures. We turned into mediums and the spirits made us speak like Saraswati in Kumbhakaran’s tongue. Episodes glided before our eyes from texts of history and politics. The stream of our consciousness was on rampage. How the ancient tradition of India made us proud despite Thapars and Majumdars! The peaceful co-existence of 6 theistic and 3 atheistic schools of philosophy without the spilling of a drop of blood was hard to imagine. There was jeering and sneering at the Brahmanas; the writers of the Vedas were even called Donkeys by Charvak the sceptic, but at end of the day there was a tap on the heart and an unsaid word ‘respect’ in the eye. Today a handful of religions, all ahl-al kitab with clear distinction of duties, find it difficult to nod their heads in harmony. Independent acts of mischief are linked with a resilient religion in order to maintain the status quo at the Parliament.

We were still wondering what the discussion was all about in the beginning that had led us to feeling so aggravated and sick. Someone strummed on the guitar and we stepped out of that hypnotized state. The simple rhythm of the cheap acoustic box made us smile. These were the first set of smiles in the entire evening. The melody was simple and eased the pleats that had formed in our hearts. There was no piece of knowledge to counter it, no argument to object to it. I let out a sigh that had been in my ribs as a nascent breath of fire since forever. This was beautiful. We don’t need no education, I mumbled and the guitar picked my words and played the Pink Floyd number. We don’t need no thoughts control. For the first time the lyrics made more sense to me than ever before. The singing went on for an hour before we fell asleep like babies.

An Osama dead...

As kids we read the story of a shepherd boy who was a habitual false alarm raiser. He announced the attack of the wolf on his sheep for fun, and almost lost credibility, so much so as to lose his cattle when the real attack took place. A modern event in correspondence with this legend has been the killing of Osama bin Laden. I expected just another gimmick when a Nisheeth informed me –half in jest—that he had killed bin Laden. I naturally reacted with a, “yeah right… is it another Facebook application that you’re entertaining yourself with?” but his rebuke on my ignorance led me to the television and I discovered that his news was half correct. Osama had been killed, though not by Nisheeth but by American soldiers.

I surfed all the news channels to read the BREAKING NEWS flash that it was a hoax and America had once again been tricked, but none came. By the evening Indian news channels (esp. Times Now) surfaced similar suspicions as mine about the dead man really being an Osama and not just a dummy to please Obama. The body had been quickly disposed off in the sea and no direct telecast seemed apt like it had been in the case of Saddam Hussain. And all information about the dead man’s identity and his DNA samples lie with the U.S., so we are supposed to believe them, i.e. until the ‘real’ Osama comes up with yet another video cursing and middle fingering America.

Anyway, the whole world seems to be rejoicing the fall of the Al-Qaida chief. But was killing of Osama really worth all the blood spilling around the world? Everyone knows the answer and there is no point stating the obvious. Let us stick to the lighter part of the story. Our esteemed royal man (outside the royal Gandhi family, of course) Digvijay Singh pugnaciously condemned the way Osama was thrown into the brine. He is of the opinion that even the fiercest of the terrorists deserve a decent last ceremony; an Islamic burial. Had only America declared its intentions before quickly committing the blasphemy (of giving Osama a Jal Samadhi and not killing him, for the latter is a complete no-no in the Indian political context; we would have rather begged Pakistan to give Osama to us and let him spend the rest of his life in our prestigious jails), I assume Digvijay would have volunteered to accept Osama’s body and give him the truly deserved Islamic burial on our soil, somewhere in U.P. where there’s a need for serious Congress (re)fixation. This was the least he could do as the General Secretary of an All India Congress Committee that is chronically embarrassed by the man’s radical illustrations of experienced-in-naivety vocabulary.

The purpose that Osama’s killing really serves is a political maelstrom in Pakistan (sometimes I really feel sad for our clinically removed pustule that opted for the vish in the churning of the Indian Ocean in the name of partition). It brought a bucketful of good news for India. First of all, it gave the Indian media some masala to cover in the lull after the Lokpal bill controversy. Columnists, who were beginning to work on their autobiographies in all the spare time, got the required nudging to beat the dust off their decade old diaries and books for interesting facts about Al-Qaida, world terrorism et al. The political leaders of the Opposition parties received go-aheads to pester the government to do things that obviously even they wouldn’t do if in power—talking about terrorism with Pakistan in just the right tone.

As far as seemingly direct implications are concerned, I don’t think the killing of Osama (even if it’s true) makes any difference other than a symbolic one. I don’t expect the Al-Qaida to have sat idle all this while and nursed their leader for gout and hernia and all the ailments that pundits claimed he was suffering from. With or without him they are more alive than before.

Nostalgia

Thousands of kilometers away from the hills that have always been my home, today the non-chalant clouds in the sky reminded me of Almora. Phone calls and news on the T.V. continually update me of the pangs of pleasure and cold that my hills go through. I can well imagine trees swishing behind their poky blades, as men and women walk around draped in shawls over thick woolens; a laconic air of cheerfulness about the ruddy cheeks of children in schools, with folded hands pressed together with an animated effort fighting faded blazers; solipsistic yogis in ochre coloured garbs, with hair flowing down their ochre caps– protected by cool winds behind their impressive beards, reading on the stairs of the Kasar Devi hill or listening to an exciting commentary of a cricket match running close to their ears out of a dull plastic radio. How routine it was only a few years back! Travelers would come and go and inform me that it was heaven on earth– hamin asto.

I am a traveler, a vagabond now going from one railway station to another– living in cities with big names, bigger histories and biggest financial standings. Emasculated by the boredom of avarice these new homes fail to give me a motherly embrace, not even a foster mother’s caress. People here tell me with great confidence that I have come from a land that’s the closest to heaven on earth, and why? They look happy here under the scorching sun, then why do they expect me to be sad and try to make me realize that I ought to be at home, not in an alien place!

Most of the time I give them unyielding replies– a mere this or a fad that– to make them stop their stupid nauseating comments in a fumbling version of my tongue. But today I am reminded of home. All their bewilderments and awe at an abseil to an infernal land from the paradise at my own will makes so much sense to me.

I would have been preparing for the evening with an iron stove stuffed with dried pieces of carefully chopped wood– saggad, a Kumaoni word drawing parallels with the plenary gatherings of the Canterbury Tales. Families and friends would gather around for the flame. Women would knit, men would make jokes, and I would displace a burning loner of a coal in the saggad to the centre with a pair of tongs where it gets some air and helps the wood burn, with an eye half closed because of the rising smoke. A kid would request to throw some sweet potatoes inside. After an hour everyone would be served a little portion of the baked sweet potatoes. A community is rejuvenated– love is shared in the sweetness of the baked potato.

But it is all a dream. There are no families gathering for the sake of the warmth of the burning log. There are no kids requesting any trifles anymore. The distance from Almora gives me moments like these when I can reminisce, make up stories like these that have never happened with me like Lamb’s imaginary children. My dreams give me the strength to play the music as it pleases my soul, to make people do as marionettes tied on my fingers, to create the neverland that I have heard of in the stories of my elders. And it gives me confidence to feel pride when people say my land is a paradise with lives so simple.

And look, the clouds are gliding away in the sky. They are traveling like me to some other version of me to help him remember what he must. They are dry clouds that do not rain. But they always shower enough on me that I let my head and my limbs out of my carapace to catch as much as I can to drench myself thoroughly. Come again, clouds! You remind me of home!