Luis Aragones, who had been a loyal son of Atletico had died earlier in the week at the age of 75. In memory of his jersey number–8, fans paid him the ultimate tribute due to any footballer, something that he would never get in his playing time— complete silence for eight long minutes. And once the eighth minute struck, the whole stadium chanted his name in perfect unison. There was no sophistication, no complexity in the name chanting, no so-longs, no goodbyes, just a simple and repetitive drone of ‘Luis A-ra-go-nes. Luis A-ra-go-nes.’ Nothing could be as heartfelt, nothing more genuine as an expression of deep respect and love.

I remember Aragones as the unlikeliest of saviours of Spanish football. For the nineties and the noughties when football engulfed me as a passion, Spain were beautiful and frustrating; sublime and bizarre; entirely unpredictable, and not in a manner which evokes excitement as much as it evokes disgust. No one encapsulated this better than Raul, Spain’s evergreen boy wonder— immensely talented though entirely incapable of inspiring his country to national glory. Aragones, as an avuncular sexagenarian, was hardly the natural candidate to my mind to change this mentality. My abiding image of him is of an old man standing beside the team benches during Euro 2008 engulfed in deep thought. He gave me and every armchair footballer credibility, demonstrating that perhaps football was won and lost in the mind, and not on the pitch, reaffirming my peculiar love for a game that I was, and am, wholly ill-equipped to play.

It was Aragones’ deep thought that led to a beautifully simple, straightforward and ever-so-effective tactic that would revolutionise Spanish football— the ‘tiki-taka’. What we take for granted from Spain today, the intuitively attractive and never-ending sets of passes designed to tire the opposition out, was Spain’s ticket to Euro 2008 success. Four decades of under-achievement was wiped out by a brand of football, that was not just effective, but beautiful. I was privileged to watch it in person in Gdansk in 2012 when the same brand of football, and a new generation of Spanish players, defended their European title. While watching Spain’s opponents Croatia haplessly chasing shadows, I wondered where Aragones was and whether the balding, bespectacled thinker was having a quiet moment of immense pride in watching what he had created.

I never had occasion to remember Aragones since then till I stumbled upon the Atletico game today. As the stadium remained silent for eight minutes and broke it powerfully in the ninth, there was scarcely an eye that was dry. And sitting miles away in Delhi, I could feel the combination of sadness and pride celebrating a life fully lived, mourning the passing of a son, a saviour, a man, who lived his life, for Atletico, for Spain. I shed a tear for a man who I never met, who I never felt I knew. There was scarcely a connection between us but yet such was the powerful groundswell of emotions at the Vicente Calderon, that I was deeply moved simply by being witness to the power of a man to move a people by doing something that he loved— playing and teaching others to play football. I had remarked earlier this month to someone that complexity is a beautiful thing. There was neither any complexity about the love that those in the stadium felt for Aragones, nor about the football he played and taught others to play. Both were simple and uncomplicated. And despite it, or more likely because of it, it was one of the most touching and beautiful moments I have seen. Of a simple love expressing itself in a simple chant: ‘Luis A-ra-go-nes,’

Hasta siempre Luis. Hasta siempre fútbol.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/sport/hasta-siempre-luis-aragones/feed 0 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/a-tale-of-two-speeches http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/a-tale-of-two-speeches#comments Fri, 16 Aug 2013 16:43:23 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5500 I have spent every 15^th August that I can remember, waking up to the live telecast of the Prime Minister’s speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort in the morning and listening to patriotic Bollywood songs on loop throughout the day. This time there was a challenge to the regular routine— his widespread popularity and seemingly realistic prime ministerial ambitions meant that I was curious to listen to Narendra Modi, who was addressing an audience in Gujarat. Listening to Singh and Modi celebrate India’s glories, vent frustration at her failures, sound warnings to difficult neighbours, salute her martyrs and articulate their visions for her future, I was struck, despite the wide differences between the two, by the parallels that existed between each of their speeches and particular sentiments that certain Bollywood songs that I heard in the course of the day, were intended to arouse. The parallels do not lay any claims to objective truths, but instead are subjective mediums to convey my deep disappointment at both speeches and a ruing of the other parallels with Bollywood that could have emerged today but didn’t.

Singh’s address evoked no feeling whatsoever— the complete lack of inspiration is mirrored by my identical reactions to the hugely popular ‘Mere desh ki dharti’ from Upkar. The song is a simplistic representation of patriotism in a simplistic film that pits good brother against bad brother, noble, hard-working village India against the deceiving and traitorous urbane classes. Though sung evocatively, the song presents a romanticised, unbelievable and entirely imaginary account of rural India where everyone harvests crops rhythmically and has a permanent smile plastered on their faces. Cinematic license aside, the leitmotif of this song is an unabashed celebration of the nation, specifically the village, deliberately oblivious to its caste-ridden, faction-dominant, poverty-stricken nature. At the same time, its antara reads like a celebratory roll call of great Indians several of whom did not see eye-to-eye, a box-checking exercise to ensure that every audience member has a famous Indian to identify with and perhaps shed a tear for. In its conceptualisation and execution, the song is vapid, espousing support for a superficial and trite nationalism.

Singh’s speech was a similarly vacuous exercise. Its overriding theme was a celebration of his government’s achievement in the last decade and the Congress party’s since independence. All the tallest leaders were named, their virtues extolled, their shortcomings glossed over. Hearing his speech made me believe that all is, and has always been well in India and the little that is not will be made well through the oft-cited but seldom-found resolve, dedication and courage. Regarding the gargantuan problems that India faces today—corruption, debasement of public office, lack of respect for rights, abject poverty, there was only the briefest of token acknowledgements. Singh was like Manoj Kumar in ‘Mere desh ki dharti’ hoping to inspire the nation by mouthing trivialities. And unlike Kumar he didn’t even have either cinematic license to offer as an excuse or Mahendra Kapoor’s rich voice to spare him the blushes.

If Singh was banal, Modi was bluster. In my school-going days, the song ‘Suno gaur se duniyawalo… sabse aage hoge Hindustani’ from Dus was a massive rage. It captured the dominant mood of the nation at a time when the early fruits of liberalisation were beginning to manifest themselves—a country which was flexing its muscles on the world stage while recoiling to play victim at the slightest instigation. In its jingoism, the song was crass, urging flag-bearing Indians to repeat after the singers, an unfounded assertion of Indian superiority. Its constant frame of reference was the undefined other, who, so the song went, ought to be afraid of India and its growing might.

An analogous jingoism and crassness formed the two dominant themes of Modi’s speech. He unilaterally turned an annual Independence Day address into a slanging match with Singh, nit-picking deficiencies in the latter’s speech earlier in the day. Modi’s statements were undignified, repeatedly offering unsolicited advice to Singh on what his speech ought to have contained. In part they were also false, accusing Singh of pandering only to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in recounting great leaders of the past, when he had very pointedly praised Narasimha Rao, the Prime Minister whose name has seemingly been airbrushed by the Congress party from its own and India’s history. His jingoism was evident in his choice of location, which he said meant that his words could be heard in Pakistan before they could be heard in Delhi, a clear indication of the aggressive brand of nationalism feeding on antipathy towards the other that he wishes to propagate.  At the same time, he constantly harped on the need for fellow feeling, not because it was per se necessary for a nation, but so that the world knows of India’s strength. If Singh’s speech left me wholly uninspired about the future of India, Modi along with the regular raucous applause he drew, gave rise to grave concern about what such a future portends.

Caught between a vapid Scylla and a blustering Charybdis, I turned mid-morning to Bollywood for succour. Bollywood’s pool of patriotic songs ranges from the sublime to the mediocre, the heart-rending to the sloganeering— an eclectic mix of odes of love to the nation especially when threatened by external forces, tributes to martyrs in films made in the aftermath of, or commemorating war, jingoistic ditties when a war has been resoundingly won or the mood in the nation is upbeat, and contemporary reinterpretations of freedom struggle classics. But there is another rarely acknowledged brand of patriotic Bollywood song that does not celebrate the nation, but rues its traits, does not praise its collectivity but demonises it, does not hide its weakness but exposes it. Through a criticism of the nation and its dominant mores, it presents a competing version of nationalism, one that manifests itself not in a raucous celebration of India’s might or a vainglorious recounting of its history but rather in a deep anguish born out of an unsurpassed love for the motherland.

Sahir Ludhianvi’s ‘Jinhe naaz hai Hind par, woh kahaan hai’ from Pyaasa is, for me, the epitome of such anguished love. Though written in the 1950s, Sahir’s musings about the complete erosion of values, sheer disrespect for women and the pervasion of an unabashed immorality in a bazaar replete with brothels, have a striking resonance in India today. Akin to a gigantic cesspool of immorality, in contemporary India, the chief aspiration is material wealth, deal-making and corruption are favourite pastimes and values are an antiquated annoyance. In such a situation, nationalism can neither remain a trite appeal to solidarity against an external enemy nor can it simply re-invoke the glories of the past. Nationalism in such times of straitened values must answer Sahir’s call—those who are proud of India and what it stands for must themselves stand up against injustice and refuse to be part of the blind pursuit of wealth and fame. They must themselves realise the fundamental truth—the threat to India today arises not from without but from within.

It is disappointing, but unsurprising that neither Singh nor Modi adopted anything close to such a poignant understanding of nationalism, identifying instead with the superficialities Bollywood offers. Harking to the successes of the past and holding them out as promises for the future as Singh did is to remain deliberately blinkered to the miasma that engulfs India today. At the same time, Modi’s appeal to the baser urges of Indians, urging them to come together against the external other, provides a palliative only to the lazy, unthinking individual. Neither bluster nor banality can be an excuse for a steadfast refusal to confront the true enemy to Indianness, which lies not across the border, but in ourselves. Sahir realised this with his beautifully iconoclastic words in the heady days of post-independence India. But in the India of today his words have survived only as poetry to be heard once a year on 15^th August and then forgotten.

While this second-order question itself is an interesting one, it is beside the point. For me, the legal intern’s question was symptomatic of a film that, like a trainee lawyer whose mind is filled with half-baked thoughts, is fundamentally unsure of the questions that it is asking. This is not to suggest even for a moment that I wanted easy answers or resolutions at the end of the movie so that I could go back home feeling vindicated much like I did after watching Dabangg. Quite to the contrary, my expectation was more modest— the questions that the movie-makers wanted us to think about, the ones that its characters and the stories were attempting to develop through their own journeys and complexities, should have been clearly depicted and more powerfully etched. As it was, at the end of the movie, I was walking down the steps of the theatre towards the exit with a bewildering array of muddled thoughts which congealed into a serene nothingness as I stepped outside. It’s been a day since and twenty-fours have only concretised the extant nothingness, neither clarifying the deep philosophical questions that the movie is meant to be asking nor striking a delayed emotional chord through the three personal stories the movie tries to tell. And before you say that muddled thoughts are good and making me think about random questions such as the definition of celibacy is itself testament to the intellectual prowess of the movie, let me just say this— a bad argument doesn’t become a good one because it confuses you and makes you think why it doesn’t work.

Problematically, the philosophical premise of the film which lends it its title is the ship of Theseus paradox, is a category error (Henceforth, I use Ship of Theseus to refer to the movie and ship of Theseus to refer to the paradox). In philosophy, the ship of Theseus has been a long-standing paradox because the question of identity of the ship each of whose planks was removed and replaced by other planks, could be seen as contingent either on the continuity of form (the argument was that though its planks were removed, the new planks put together constitute the same ship because it had the same form) or the identity of original parts (this issue was made acute by Thomas Hobbes who put forward the situation that the old planks were put together to make another ship, which arguably was identical with the original ship of Theseus). Today, it is widely acknowledged that continuity of form is a sufficient and non-defeasible condition of identity. It is specifically non-defeasible in relation to the identity of parts condition.

Irrespective of the philosophical merits of the view (see here and here for more on this), the question of identity is an issue for the ship of Theseus because of complete disassembly and consequent replacement. This question of complete disassembly does not arise in the situation presented by Ship of Theseus at all. The closest we come to such disassembly is when we are told at the climax that it was a single brain dead hobbyist cave explorer, eight of whose body parts were now donated to others. But in this case there was no replacement of these parts because the donor was dead. On the contrary, where there was replacement, in the bodies of the three protagonists, there is no disassembly. For example, if you give your watch whose minute hand is broken for repair, and the minute hand is replaced by the repairer, because of the replacement of a minute hand, the watch does not lose its identity. Since it maintains the continuity of form it is still your watch. So if the ship of Theseus had only one plank changed with another it wouldn’t have been the paradox that it is today. On the contrary, if The Ship of Theseus, had a few planks changed, well…

What is most baffling is that irrespective of the questionable philosophical premise, the treatment of the actual changes that are caused by the organ donations in the lives of the protagonists is surprisingly slipshod. The first track of the blind photographer was pregnant with possibility about how vision changed her identity. But apart from a scene where she wilfully blindfolds herself to find inspiration and the final scene where she seems to have finally found some visual inspiration, this possibility is left largely unexplored, perhaps even sacrificed for the sake of an overly intricate character development. The third track, where such change in identity is dealt with head on as a kidney recipient makes a forced kidney recipient’s struggle for justice his own, loses steam, trying to grapple with too many incidental issues—the kidney racket in India, the familiar tale of the poor and their satisfaction with material well-being as opposed to real justice (perhaps unwittingly portrayed as a plaything of the rich) and the use of large amounts of money as a means to assuage guilt. Most bafflingly, the second track of the ascetic, beautifully shot, does not deal with the question of change and identity at all curiously stopping with the monk’s equally baffling volte face to suddenly agree to a liver transplant when the set up led you to believe that he was fasting unto death. Perhaps it’s best to leave questions of petty causality out when discussing a movie that deals with big philosophical tropes.

More than the movie which left me intellectually dissatisfied, the parroting of the movie’s supposedly path-breaking philosophical enquiries by large numbers of go-to movie reviewers, left me deeply doubtful of the quality and competence of the professional movie reviewing class in India. While certainly, I take no objection to the fact that personally they may have found the film tasteful, beautifully shot and worthy of compliment (though I’m very inclined to saying that they’re entitled to their opinions but they’re wrong), to call it ‘brimming with sharp and original interpretations of age-old philosophy (Mint), ‘a richly emotional, intellectual and sensory experience’ (CNN-IBN) and ‘one of the finest Indian films of recent times’ (NDTV), is inexplicable without casting substantial doubt about their own calibre. Perhaps I’m being too uncharitable and each of them may be right in some way- Ship of Theseus is brimming with original interpretations of age-old philosophy except that such interpretations are plainly flawed, which is why they are original; it is a richly emotional, intellectual and sensory experience, which made me feel emotionally indifferent, which in turn led to an intellectual enquiry (indifference is surely an emotion, or is it not?), which in turn led to a strong sensory urge without which my humble intellect cannot function: Hunger. (This in turn, led to another question as to whether hunger despite being not one of the five senses we’re taught can actually be a ‘sensory’ urge(?) and thus the virtuous cycle of emotion, intellect and sensory experience continued).  And finally, this actually may be one of the finest Indian films of recent times that the NDTV reviewer had seen, which is not testimony to how good Ship of Theseus is but just how bad the other movies he has the singular misfortune to watch and review are. That the universality of praise in these inexplicably over-the-top reviews had something to do with the fact that the film had won widespread international recognition and was cleverly marketed as an offbeat, low-budget film that you must praise if you want to be seen socially as a cultured, thinking reviewer is a hard conclusion to dismiss. As is the conclusion that the professional reviewer in India needs to develop balls, or at least some brains, though a combination of both would hopefully not be asking for too much.

In a new India where people are more attracted to Twitter than literature, T-20 cricket than test matches and mindless Bollywood than serious cinema, with the Ship of Theseus Anand Gandhi boldly tries to reverse this trend. For this he must be widely applauded. He is undoubtedly a director of great potential, with a wonderful eye and a propensity to think deeply about things around him. Unfortunately in translating these skills to celluloid, he tries too hard to win our hearts with human stories while tickling our brains with purported philosophical paradoxes. In the process of attempting to win both heart and head, Gandhi gets stuck somewhere in between—like an unsavoury taste in the mouth.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/ship-of-theseus-2013/feed 21 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/economicsocialpolicy/burgeoning-delhi-rapes-some-reflections http://www.criticaltwenties.in/economicsocialpolicy/burgeoning-delhi-rapes-some-reflections#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 07:08:45 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5397 [Guest Post by Latika Vashist and Amit Bindal]

 I.                

The reason for writing this piece is the feeling of utter failure to comprehend the cultures of rape that engulf us. Even as the horrors of December 2012 Delhi gang rape continue to haunt public consciousness, the incident of the brutal rape of a five year old child has put our sense and sensibilities to an extraordinary challenge. How to evoke sensibilities and make sense of the images, narratives and news of the horrific rapes hurled on to us by newspapers, visual media and other allied sources, including judicial discourses, political statements and state interventions? How do we diagnose the foundations of our society that becomes instrumental in the production of such depravity and inhumanity that even a child is not spared from the acts of such horrific atrocity? So much so that the sadistic infliction of inexorable pain, with candles and plastic bottles inserted into the private parts, can become a form of decadent human expression?

Another facet of the sense of failure is the question to our own self? Do we write this paper today with such unease because of the gruesomeness of the incident or because the news is taken seriously and appeared on the first page of leading daily newspapers? We ask this as the atrocious rape encounters are spilled, though in smaller fonts, all over in the print as well as visual media after December 2012. Why did we need yet another horrific story to evoke a similar sense of failure of contemplation or the urge to write? Is it the post traumatic incident of institutional insensitivity and indifference, as the police not just attempted to hush up the matter (by offering the parents Rs. 2000) but also violently attacked a woman protesting against the police callousness? It seems that the sense of failure to think about the problem of rape, and for us, as legal academics, from a limited canon of law, prompts us to ask the reverse question framed in Nietzschen terms: how not to think about rape and cultures of rape.

The one thing that we certainly do not want to do in this discussion is to make specific policy recommendations as to how to interpret or change the law relating to rape. Perhaps, a trap too easy and too tempting to fall into especially for those trained in the discipline of law. This consequentialist, policy-oriented turn of the present legal scholarship can at times hamper the proper structural issues of decoding the culture of rape. We are certainly not opposed to policy recommendations in principle. As teachers of law we have had occasions in classrooms as well as in doctrinal scholarship to take that route. However, we need to question the frantic activity of policy recommendations and churning out changes in laws that blinds us to the sensibility that must inform us in the very framing of issues relating to rape, which reduces humanity to mere objects of consumption to be used and then thrown away.

  II.              

 “Two sex maniacs libidinously ravaged a tiny female tot like wild beasts and finished her off. Police after investigation found that the two respondents herein are those two fiends.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 – State of NCT v. Sunil

“The remnants of extensive mangling of the tender body of the child would reflect the possibility of more than one rapist subjecting the child to such beastly ravishment.”

                                                                                                      State of NCT v. Sunil

 “Accused Saleem who offered custard apple to the little girl when they reached the graveyard suddenly turned himself into a demon and made a forcible attempt to ravish her.”

                                                                                                            State of A.P. v. Sheikh Mazhar

“It seems that Manoj Kumar’s father had an inkling of the demon in his son.”

HT, Rapist’s father had disowned him from his property (20th April, 2013)

The discourse of rape emanating from cultures of rape remains entrenched in the dehumanization of the rapist. The TV images show the accused handcuffed, surrounded by cops with cameras desperate to catch a glimpse of what lies beneath the face covered accused. These projections stimulate the imagery of devils/ beasts concealed behind the mask. When the mask comes off- as it did for Ajmal Kasab, another “demon”- the responses are of astonishment at the visible humanness of the demon. The same flesh, same skin and an innocent young human face! Clearly that is not what demons look like. This is not what such “demons” should look like.  And thus starts the project of dehumanization of these visible humans.

The rapist (as a terrorist) is described and projected as a “wild beast”, “a demon”, “a fiend”. Such a description puts the rapist in a class of heinous monsters, a class far removed from the ordinary human beings. This is one way of telling ourselves (the civilized and responsible moral agents) that the doers of such grotesque crimes are not in any manner like ourselves, they are too distant from us. The distancing (through which we constitute our own humanity) can only happen if the representations and descriptions of the rapist are directed to evoke the emotion of disgust in the viewers/ readers. Since, as encapsulated by Martha Nussbaum, “(o)ur disgust creates the boundary: it says, this contamination is and must remain far from our bodies. We might even say…that we call disgust to our aid: by allowing ourselves to see evil people as disgusting, we conveniently distance them from ourselves” (Susan A. Bandies (ed.), The Passions of Law at p. 51).

Evoking disgust for the rapist by dehumanizing him produces an alienation of our human selves from him. It creates a distance between our humanity and his fiendishness and thus prevents us from engaging in a self-scrutiny, of recognizing in ourselves the capacity to be evil. The distancing prevents us from confronting the fact that we are capable of turning into the diabolic evil that we abhor. And thus, induces a forgetfulness of the everyday atrocities that we may be committing (covertly) when we indulge (unconsciously) in our own perversions. Disgust induced distancing from the rapist obliterates all discussions around the normalization of everyday violence of everyday lives that goes unnoticed because we fail to look within as we situate ourselves within an imagined humanity which the rapist lacks. Otherwise, how do we begin to understand the normalization of the apparatuses and structures which legitimize violence against women in the society? When the sexist representations of women- when they are cast into strict gender roles defined by dominant heteronormative structures- go unquestioned by most of us even if such representations constitute the everyday violence (not necessarily physical) of work places, public transport, markets and even the safe bounds of our homes. What can be made of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013 that completely ignored the recommendation of the Verma Committee Report exhorting for criminalization of marital rape? Is it not true that law reforms have failed to question the asymmetrical character of marriage reinforcing an object-like treatment of women and thus continue to legitimize violent structures in the private lives of women? How far then can the attempts at reforms and amendments of laws be taken seriously?

The rape discourse as a discourse of dehumanization of the rapist deepens the cultures of rape that produce emotions that oscillate between un-mindful retributive cries of anger to sheer apathy and indifference. The responses to violence against women in these cultures also swing between rhetorical law reforms that institutionalize retributive anger through aggravated punishments and death penalties, and an attitude of forgetfulness as we change the channel from NDTV news to NDTV Good Times, or for that matter shift our glance from the news of rape at the front page top column to the advertisements that promise us dream lives that we can buy with nothing but money. This point needs further explanation.

 III.            

Slavoj Zizek argues that the imaginary virtual reality, floating around through images of print and visual media, constitutes the reality of the contemporary society. It works so strongly and incessantly that the meanings of virtual reality surface as the reality of the virtual. And if that is so, then how does the reality of the virtual propagate the cultures of rape that we encounter?

Consider some images from the front page of a leading newspaper which reported the rape of 5 year old “Masoom”:

The five year old lies covered in a sheet as she is taken to AIIMS from Swami Dayanand Hospital where she underwent life-saving surgery. Three dolls on the stretcher accompany her as some helpers clear way for the stretcher. A box below lists the brutal horrific injuries that were inflicted on her: bite marks on cheeks, lips and chest, cuts on neck probably from blade like object, 200ml cracked plastic bottle of hair oil and three candles that were taken out of her vagina.

A passport size image of ACP BS Ahlawat slapping Beenu Singh who was protesting against police apathy and laxity.

A half page advertisement of workwear showing a happy couple, dressed in western attire, walking along exuding confidence and in complete equality. Skyscrapers and the modern city life set the background for this joyous and equal public space when men and women are equally successful, rich and safe. Provided they “Go Trendy. Strike Deal. Refresh. Get New Yorked”.

A real estate advertisement of a five bedroom luxury villa. It says: Opulence, Rs. 10.03 Cr. Onwards.

There are some issues that need to be examined here. Whether there exists a relationship, worthy of exploration, between the cultures of rape that thrust upon us an unwanted reality and the cultures of consumerism that we want to be immersed into in order to live our dreams? If yes, then how can that relationship be conceived? What does it say of our vision of progress? When images of reality and images of unreality confront each other what impact does it have on real lives? What is the relationship between the dominant images/ narratives of rape/ rapist with the other virtual images that we confront every day in our lives? What happens, as John Berger puts it, when images of reality confront the images of unreality? How can words that express anguish and agony of the feeble cries of a 5 year old victim be understood when they are juxtaposed with words and images that promise us lives of happiness and equality as we progress, as we prosper?

Juxtaposition of publicity images of products of globalization and their consumers (take for example, the images of workwear wardrobe bringing in happiness and equality in sexes at the workplace; mobile phones and cheap call rates bringing radiance into relationships; clean RO water assuring security from all fatal disease and so on) with the images of horror and agony stimulates a similar distancing as mentioned above. What happens in the images of unreality- the happiness, the dreams, the pleasures- is something that we think would happen to us (provided we gather enough money to acquire these possessions); while what happens in the images of everyday reality- rape, harassment, state apathy, perversions- is something that is far from us and cannot happen to us. Just as the rape discourse distances us from our own perversions (by producing a false distance between our humanity and rapist’s monstrousness), the culture of consumerism distances us from the reality that demands serious deliberation and well thought out political and social action. The publicity images that astound us create for us alternate lives where living in dreams and for dreams becomes our only life.

All the images mentioned above look real (virtual imaginary reality reflected in images cannot be convincing if they do not look as real, if not more, than the real images). But there is clearly a disconnect and an incoherence between the rape/ molestation image and the image of equality in workplace/ public sphere which figures prominently on the same page of the newspaper. While reality decries the position of women in society- as means to an end, as tools that can be used for one’s own interests, as bodies that can be violated because they lack bodily integrity- the virtual images make the reality of the former unrecognizable. The urgency of deliberative action to correct the injustices that surround us (that is evoked by Masoom’s tiny body covered in a white sheet), is diluted as we see our dreams depicted in advertisements that exhort us to consume more if we are to become more equal and more happy. Images of dreams are the required distraction for the sustenance and flourishing of the culture of consumerism that reduces everything to an object of consumption. While on the one hand they yield an ineffective response to violence (Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013 has been nothing but a knee-jerk reaction, presented as a quick fix solution to rape which has failed to foreground the larger issue of the relationship between sexism that is a part of everyday lives and rape), on the other hand, they cement the attitudes that look at women as objects to be used and consumed like other objects on sale.

What is then required is an urgent emphasis on the cultural patterns of objectification of women especially the ‘culture industry’ which thrives to reduce everything into a consumable commodity. This includes women as well as men. In doing so we inadvertently create paradigms where women and men are not organic individuals who think, love, have dignity and suffer alike but as body-parts to be displayed for market campaigns. Such crass market logic reduces human bodies as the only attribute of being human and that attribute being best used as a consumable commodity. This by no means suggests that one should take a fascist turn against the market forces but certainly makes one re-think the way we are socialized into behaviors and patterns that reduce human beings into human bodies and human bodies into marketable and consumable commodities.

The relationship between cultures of consumption and cultures of rape (that thrive on objectification of women) is direct. The culture of consumption is founded on the ideas of use (of products) and domination (one who has money has the power gets to consume more). The attitude this breeds is that all things are meant for usage and they can be acquired and controlled with money. Then, is it appropriate to ask: Whether Delhi has become the rape capital because it is one of the global cities basking in the glory of consumerism, where status of a person is determined by his/her wealth and ability to acquire and consume? Is it the attitude of consumerism (which also trickles down to those who cannot consume right now because of lack of money, but nevertheless have the desire to consume because consumption defines happiness) that has conceptualized all our relationships and our entire world view? Have women become the targets of this attitude when they are looked at, gazed and used as nothing but interchangeable bodies or as means to an end, rather than ends in themselves? The objectification of women is then not about sexual perversion only; it is about a culture that values money as the only end and turns everything else into an object for consumption.

(The authors are Assistant Professors at Jindal Global Law School of O.P. Jindal Global University)

[The cover photograph is in the public domain and is sourced from the US National Archives and Records Administration]

A bride-to be dressed in lehenga and fleets is sitting on a dharna outside a showroom in one of Delhi’s luxury malls. What may appear like a scene straight out of a movie might just be one approach to seek reprisal from a deceitful trader. For those of you who consider this rather extreme, reviewing and sharing experiences online would just prove to be equally effective at protecting consumers. Here is why we think ‘responsible consumerism’ warrants emphasis and is a necessary tool in safeguarding the rights of the Indian consumer.

Like any 20 something bride-to-be, I have been have scouring high and low for that most important of important dresses – my wedding dress.  However, a recent experience with an alleged premier designer has shed a light on practices that most likely go unchecked throughout our land. Now, whether you are a shopper on a mission like me or a casual shopper, you know that shopping doesn’t always go right. That suit you bought online looks completely different from the catalogue on its arrival. Your prepaid phone is short of a few hundred bucks for the ringtone service that you never ordered. That bottle of mineral water which cost more than its maximum retail price (MRP)  just because you happened to be hiking at a tourist spot. Or the refusal of the seller to refund the advance you paid to book a dress less than 36 hours earlier. The last scenario is unfortunately what I encountered with a supposed top designer duo based at DLF Emporio – a mall epitomizing luxury in the capital. Though the dress was merely ‘booked’  and not purchased, possessed, or altered, the designer refused to return the advance and only offered a credit note. The ordeal took an interesting turn when she sprinkled details of her familial ties – a brother in the Ministry and a cousin serving as the Assistant Commissioner of Police. But of course, we were “free to take any action”. Although both a wedding and a court case appear to be on the cards for me in the next few months, it got me thinking: do consumers know their rights in the marketplace? And while a lengthy court battle may be unavoidable, what else can we as consumers do to uphold the integrity of the market?

Every year, the 15th of March is observed as World Consumers Rights Day and it represents an opportunity for us to look back on our rights and more importantly our responsibilities as consumers. India’s relatively recent rise as a world economic power has had the fortunate side effect of a middle class that is larger and more prosperous than ever before. It is this middle class that is both the envy and target of multinational corporations around the world. Although we Indians continue to enjoy increasing variety and choice in the marketplace, knowledge of our rights and protections has not kept pace. ‘Consumer is sovereign’ is but a myth in the present scenario and ‘Jaago grahak jaago’ is certainly a need of the hour. India is aeons behind its western counterparts when it comes to the protection of consumer rights as well as responsible consumerism. As a result, although marketplace choices in India are vast, the dangers of unscrupulous practices are aplenty. Our legal institutions do provide safeguards against certain unfair practices. However, these laws can only serve their intended use if consumers are aware of their existence.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to highlight the details of consumer protections that Indians enjoy, it does bear reminding that many stem from the Consumer Protection Act (1986), such as the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency and purity of goods; the right to choice; and right to seek redressal against unfair trade practices. It is the responsibility of Indians as intelligent consumers to have at least some knowledge of these protections. However, a lack of desire is certainly understandable. Our judicial process unfortunately suffers from delays and administrative roadblocks at most times. It is not uncommon for consumers to shy away from the protection of the courts, citing a long and arduous legal battle. As a result, one has to wonder at times, how beneficial are such protections when the path to legal recourse is littered with obstacles?  A fair point indeed. While it is the responsibility of citizens to enact and demand change, such worthwhile progress will undoubtedly take time to occur. In the meantime, consumers can seize control of their marketplaces both by investing and putting more stock in sellers’ reputations.

Unless incidents of unfair acts are made visible, our consumers’ society as a whole suffers. As George Akerlof noted in his Nobel prize winning treatise, economic marketplaces where unscrupulous merchants or ‘bad lemons’ are allowed to evade detection ultimately deteriorate. While this is certainly an extreme outcome, it highlights the responsibility we all share on World Consumers Rights Day to be aware of our statutory rights, and to spotlight merchants who deserve our ire. The reputation of merchants is ever the more important in a country where legal institutions are less than efficient. As one can surely imagine, the experiences that other consumers have had with a vendor can be particularly helpful in warning a future consumer or in encouraging that same consumer to visit the store. However, a merchant’s reputation is only as good as the information on which it is based. As a result, we as consumers have a responsibility to highlight and spread the word of practices – both good and bad. When a seller sells you a substandard good, or when it promises one item but delivers another, make it your responsibility to make that action visible to the marketplace as a whole. By the same measure, if a merchant consistently delivers a good on time as per specifications, or if he surpasses your expectations, shine a light. When consumers can assess the quality of a product or merchant through the prior experiences of others, it  will significantly diminish the ability of ‘bad lemons’ to hide in the market. Eventually, such merchants will exit the market and all consumers will benefit. Consumers in Western marketplaces enjoy several avenues through which they can share and collect information on merchants. Online reputation websites such as Yelp and the rating systems on Amazon.com allow consumers to share their experiences and have a significant effect on the financial fortunes of merchants – both in a positive and negative respect. Such websites are in their infancy stage here in India, but there is no reason why Yelp cannot be extended to the Indian context, as long as there are consumers who are willing to invest time and share their experiences. Furthermore, certifications from non-profit organizations such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB) carry significant weight and provide assurance to customers in the United States that a vendor is trustworthy. While the Better Business Bureau has a registered office in Kolkota, its presence and stature in India has a very long way to go to.

On this World Consumer Rights Day, let us remind ourselves of our rights as consumers to expect fair and transparent transactions. At the same time, we must accept responsibility as consumers. While legal recourse is our right as citizens, it is unfortunately not always the most expedient path. An attractive complement to legal action would be to attack the reputation of deceitful traders in an organized fashion. By sharing our experiences with the media and through online websites that aggregate consumer sentiment, we can ensure that unscrupulous sellers have an increasingly hard time surviving in a more transparent marketplace. Either way, if you are the victim of an unjust act, do yourself a favour and spread the word.

[Image Attribution: By Bob With from Fresno, United States (Consumer madness at Costco Uploaded by Gary Dee) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons]

The Indian welfare state is set for a reinvention, as subsidies of all kinds are in the process of being monetized.  Some commentators view this effort as a hastily thought-out big push in an election year.  Meanwhile, the Government’s selling point is that cash transfers will bypass the existing welfare machinery and deliver benefits straight to the people.  Aapka Paisa, Aapke Haath  (“Your money in your hands”) is the pithy campaign slogan that is meant to convince the people of the reform’s value.  Yet we need to analyze whether this sort of direct transfer of purchasing power is possible and, even if it is, whether the Indian state is capable of delivering cash to the people in a reliable way.

On the former issue, of the feasibility of transferring purchasing power through cash, economists have long touted the greater efficiency of cash in enabling poor households to purchase goods and services that they need.  Empirical studies of cash transfer programs support this claim.  Of course, switching to cash makes sense if the cash transfer bestows purchasing power on households that is equal to the value of the subsidy that the households receive currently.  In other words, a transfer of purchasing power in cash only works if it is equivalent to the current transfer of purchasing power in subsidies.  In a narrow technical sense, this would require that cash transfers be indexed to regional, and preferably, local measures of inflation for essential commodities.  This is administratively complex and may not even be feasible.  Given the lack of competition in rural agricultural markets, prices of food, kerosene and other essential commodities may increase with an influx of cash.   The cash transfer pilot for kerosene in Kokrasim in Alwar district provides a sobering example: the cash transferred was insufficient for families to purchase their monthly requirement of kerosene, as market price increased substantially.

The latter issue, of the Indian state’s capability to implement the cash transfer program, is of equal concern.  A series of challenges immediately come to mind when thinking about how the cash transfer will be implemented:

Identification and Targeting: The UIDAI has issued an estimated 280 million UID cards over the course of three years, meaning that 800 million more cards need to be issued before April 2014, when the cash transfer is set to cover the entire country.  Such a vast increase in the rate of issuing cards seems unlikely.  Furthermore, while the Government plans to target the transfer based on a census identifying socioeconomic status and caste, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh claims that this census will only be completed in July 2013, several months after the transfer is planned to be rolled out to 18 of 28 states (others suggest that this timeline may be wishful thinking).  Even after compiling this eligibility list, there is no guarantee that it will accurately identify the poor.  Many non-poor households have finagled their way onto BPL lists, for example, leaving the poor behind.  In 2009, a National Advisory Council panel estimated that only 39% of households deemed “poor” had received a BPL or Antyodaya card.

Financial Instruments and Bank Accounts: Financial access is a key element of the cash transfer, both because cash will be delivered directly to beneficiaries’ bank accounts and because beneficiaries need a way to access the cash in their accounts.  The status quo in India on both fronts is discouraging.  A recent World Bank study estimates bank account penetration across India at 35%, and is even lower for the poorest households.  Moreover, as many (particularly rural) poor households do not have access to bank branches or ATMs, it appears as though the Government will pursue a model whereby “banking correspondents” (essentially roving banking agents) will administer a system of micro-ATMs.  The problem is that banking correspondents only cover 70,000 villages at present, and will need to grow tenfold by the April 2014 countrywide rollout of the transfer.

Grievance Redressal: In the event that all of the aforementioned challenges are adequately addressed, there will undoubtedly be cases of non-payment, late payment, or inadequate payment to beneficiaries.  In these cases, it remains unclear how citizens will be able to file grievances and how these grievances will be redressed by the Government.  These same issues plague another of India’s massive social programs, MGNREGA.  Government reports and household surveys indicate that the lack of a grievance redressal mechanism in NREGA has allowed states to drag their feet on resolving complaints, perpetuated embezzlement of funds by public officials, and prevented money from reaching intended beneficiaries.  At present, there does not seem to be a strategy in place to avert these same problems in the cash transfer program.

Does the current implementation strategy of large scale “piloting” in 51 districts in 2013, and scaling up by 2014, help address the challenges? The answer, most clearly, is no.  Firstly, while the Government is technically “piloting” the cash transfer, the pilot is set to last only a few months, with no systematic and rigorous evaluation, and will likely be carried out in districts that have relatively high UID coverage and bank account penetration.  Consequently, the results of the pilot may not be that informative and, even if they are, will not be representative of how the program will work across India.  A better approach to piloting would be to conduct a proof of concept of the technical aspects of the transfer, followed by a larger pilot of the program in a representative sample of households with a concurrent evaluation.  (Such a strategy was suggested by Karthik Muralidharan, economics professor at Univeristy of California-San Diego, and others to the Government of Bihar in December 2011).

Second, rushing into a massive cash transfer program may complicate the Government’s ability to rectify problems on the fly, both politically and administratively.  The famous Brazilian cash transfer program, Bolsa Família, is often touted as the model for the cash transfer in India.  Lest history fall by the wayside, Bolsa Família grew out of a combination of other transfer programs that had started at the municipal and state levels and had been operating for several years prior to the launch of Bolsa Família.  These subnational cash transfer programs were then individually scaled up to the national level, and subsequently consolidated into Bolsa Família.  The Indian cash transfer program parallels the consolidation aspect of Brazil’s approach.  Nonetheless, the fact that cash transfers in Brazil started from the bottom and diffused upward and outward suggests that kinks in program administration could be smoothed out at smaller scales and the resultant successes could then be scaled up.  Of course, the evolution of Brazil’s cash transfer program is not the only path for implementation, but India’s top-down, rushed approach provides little space for weaknesses to be identified and rectified at the local level so that the most effective modalities of the program can be scaled nationally.

The Government’s ambitions of establishing a cash transfer system at the proposed size and scope should not be taken lightly.  As the saying goes, however, the devil is in the details.  To this end, the Government has not adequately considered the unintended welfare consequences of switching to cash and the complexities of implementing such a system on the impossibly rushed timeline and with the administrative capability that currently exists.  The point is not that migrating to a cash transfer system is necessarily a bad idea.  Rather, doing so in a measured way, with structured pilot testing that produces feedback that can inform a gradual expansion, could increase the likelihood that the cash transfer improves the functioning of the welfare system and thus works in favor of poor households across India.  The Government’s approach thus far indicates that India may not be able to capture the benefits that an effective cash transfer system has to offer.

[Cover Image Attribution: By L. Shyamal (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons]

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/economicsocialpolicy/kitna-paisa-kiske-haath-how-much-money-in-whose-hands/feed 0 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/the-verma-committee-follow-up-a-fair-trial-for-the-accused http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/the-verma-committee-follow-up-a-fair-trial-for-the-accused#comments Sun, 03 Feb 2013 03:19:16 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5321 [Every time a crime that shocks the public conscience is committed, lawyers are quick to respond by taking a collective decision not to defend the accused. The unseemly public discourse in this context which began in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack was repeated during the debate pursuant to the arrest of the persons alleged to have gang-raped the 23 year old medical student in Delhi late last years.  Gautam Bhatia explores the implications of such decisions by lawyers and bar councils and how it reflects on the nature of our legal profession and country on the whole]

In the wake of the shocking Delhi gangrape, different organizations have chosen to respond to the incident in different ways. One, in particular, stands out: the Saket Bar Council’s [SBC] refusal to defend the accused. While taking nothing away from the magnitude of the event and the seriousness of the offence, I believe that the SBC’s decision is not only flawed in principle and an ethical mistake, but also sets an extremely dangerous precedent for the practice of law in India.

Let us examine the reasons put forward by the SBC. Its vice-president, Arun Rathee, stated that the accused “have committed a heinous crime”, and that “it would be immoral to defend the case.” Sanjay Kumar, a member of the SBC, added that SBC’s lawyers were staying away to ensure “speedy justice.” Four possible arguments can be constructed from these two statements. First, that the guilt of the accused is so blindingly obvious that no defence is called for; secondly, that it would be “immoral” for a lawyer to defend a person he believes to be guilty of a “heinous crime”; thirdly, that it would be immoral because it goes against the prevailing mood of the nation; and fourthly, the more speedily the case is disposed off, the more efficient it would be. All four arguments are extremely problematic.

To commence with the first two arguments: for better or for worse, the bedrock of Indian law is the common law, adversarial legal system. Numerous critics have pointed out the deficiencies of such a system – and there are many. Nevertheless, I believe it to be beyond cavil that those who voluntarily choose to join it do so on the condition of accepting it as a whole, flaws and all; and while they may consciously work towards its reform, it is pellucidly clear that they have a responsibility not to undermine it through their participation.

Now, the raison d’être of the adversarial system is this: the question of the guilt or innocence of the accused in a criminal case lies within the exclusive domain of the judge, who must decide the case on the basis of the evidence presented by the two opposed parties. Until the time that the judge pronounces his verdict, and the verdict is “guilty”, an accused is – and must be – presumed innocent. In particular, it is not the lawyer’s province to decide whether or not a potential client is guilty or innocent; his sole task is to represent his client, honestly and to the best of his ability, and leave decision-making to the judge. In contrast to the inquisitorial system of civil law countries, the survival of the adversarial system depends upon maintaining this distinction between the role of the judge and the role of the lawyer. Two corollaries follow: first, as Justice Katju recently pointed out, in the context of this very case – that every accused has a right to be defended; and secondly, it is unethical for a lawyer to ground his decision to accept or reject a brief on the ground of his personal determination of guilt or innocence. I do not argue, of course, that a lawyer is obligated to accept every brief that comes his way: a lack of expertise and a packed schedule are only two of many legitimate reasons to refuse a case. I do argue, however, that this reason is unethical because antithetical to the spirit of the adversarial system to which the lawyer, ex hypothesi, is morally committed.

The third reason ignores another ideal to which we, as a nation, are committed: that of the rule of law. As the history of the evolution of legal systems will demonstrate, the idea of government by law evolved out of an awareness that the opposite – government by men – is subject to arbitrariness, caprice and unfairness. Hence, one of the hallmarks of the rule of law is generality: laws are designed to be applied to situation-types, and not individual cases. Exceptions are rife, but the logic of their existence is internal to the law, not external. Public outcry or emotion, therefore, provides no ground to depart from one of the basic features of the adversarial system, that is, the irrelevance of subjective determinations of guilt to the right of the accused to have, and responsibility of the lawyer to provide, a defence.

The last argument is perhaps the weakest. An matter of principle – that is, the right of the accused to be defended – is ex hypothesi not subject to being overruled by considerations of efficiency. If efficiency was any kind of ground, then one could simply do away with the requirement of allowing both parties to be heard and to provide evidence. It would be even more efficient if the judge was permitted to decide a case based on his pre-hearing intuition. We do not accept that, however, because what we care about in law is arriving at the correct decision, not the most efficient decision. And the adversarial legal system presupposes, beyond argument, that the adversarial procedure is the best method of arriving at the truth.

 None of the arguments provided by the SBC, therefore, are sound. In addition, the ripple effect of such a move could have serious consequences. What is true today for those accused of a brutal gangrape-and-murder could be true tomorrow for particularly sadistic murders; the day after tomorrow, for child-abuse; and sometime in the future, for despised political speech that questions the territorial integrity of India, or that in some other way is deemed – by the SBC or an equivalent body, to be seditious, damaging or otherwise distasteful. The argument is simply: if lawyers decide whether or not to take a case on the basis of their personal judgment on its merits, our adversarial system cannot survive. One may not consider that a loss worth mourning; but that is a different matter entirely.

The SBC Resolution deserves to be strongly criticized, and in no uncertain terms. It is damaging for the rights of the accused, damaging for the legal profession, and above all else, damaging for the rule of law.

This is especially true since several of the recommendations the Committee makes are neither uncontroversial nor simply implemented. Radically overhauling the accountability mechanisms for the Delhi Police, the requirement of compulsory registration of all marriages, making the non-registration of a rape case by a police officer an offence, reining in Khap panchayats, advocating political party reform to weed out criminal elements in politics, appointing more judges to prevent delays in the judicial system are all significant systemic concerns whose implementation is a massive task. It is a task that governments in the past, when faced with analogously wide-ranging and comprehensive reform recommendations from committees and commissions, have deftly evaded. There is no reason to believe that the present government will, consciously or otherwise, be any different.

The lessons of history and the memory of the brave victim of the brutal Delhi gang-rape dictate that we, as citizens, must not allow the government to dither on these recommendations this time. We could not have asked for a better foundation than the Verma Committee Report, which, on first impression, provides the structural architecture necessary for a long and sustained struggle to make India respect its women. The struggle will neither be short nor easy. But it must be carried on with patience, dedication and perseverance. Because the primary reason governments have not implemented wise recommendations in the past is not because they have been recalcitrant, evil or lazy—It’s because we have been overpowered by a sense of drift.

To do our part in preventing such drift, at CriticalTwenties, we will be posting pieces at regular intervals on concrete legal, policy and societal changes that need to be taken. Drawing attention to such changes and constantly reminding ourselves of the underlying need to institute real equality is the need of the hour, currently, and will be for the foreseeable future, till the country reflects a semblance of real equality.

The Verma Committee has played its part. It’s now time for all of us to play ours.

[We welcome posts on the issue of concrete legal, policy and societal changes in this context by any interested individual or group. Do send an email with the post as an attachment to criticaltwenties@gmail.com]

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/the-verma-committee-follow-up-the-challenge-ahead/feed 0 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/philosophyreligionculture/a-gandhi-for-our-time http://www.criticaltwenties.in/philosophyreligionculture/a-gandhi-for-our-time#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2013 23:59:51 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5263                     14^th January 2013

Dr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi

The Ex-‘Figurehead’ of Bengal

Subject: Reflections on a Lecture

Dear Dr. Gandhi,

As a lawyer, I find it difficult to write or think without an argument. My years of education and training have instilled in me the need to think about an argument, buttress it with sufficient justifications, avoid inconsistencies and make the most persuasive case possible. Oftentimes, this instilled, yet essentially unfamiliar way of thinking, gives way to a deeper, more spontaneous sense of feeling. After all, I am Bengali, and the overpowering of emotion, irrational and blind, is second nature. It creeps in unobtrusively into legal answer scripts where protoplasmic globules that slithered around strongly and purposively to evolve into more advanced life forms are used to provide perspective to a question of separate legal personality of corporations, in lectures where Hugo’s ‘Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come’ is used to explain the challenge to parliamentary sovereignty in England. But never has it shed its pusillanimous and apologetic self to dominate my thinking so totally, as it did this afternoon when I read the full transcript of your Kamala Lecture delivered at the Calcutta University a few days back. Hence this letter to you, at a time, when my legal education is chafing at my ill-thought out and wayward indiscretion.

Writing this is painful for a number of reasons. Personally painful because the demons of education in my head are advising caution, careful thought and rational editing at the end of each sentence. Intellectually painful because I am completely bewildered by how a lecture that talks about so much pain can be so equally pleasurable. And most deeply painful as a Bengali, because the Bengal that pains you so is simply descending into an abyss of pain, suffering and hopelessness unredeemed by its usual richness of creative outpourings, substituted instead by a growing hubris of a cultural superiority that once was and perhaps is, but shall remain only as a figment of our collective imaginations of a glorious past where pain, despite being torturous, could still be poetic, a window into life complete with all its frailties. Hubris rarely makes for creativity; observing pain keenly does. Which makes it ironic that when there is so much pain around, infant deaths, economic backwardness, displacement of livelihoods, forced migration, large-scale unemployment, rampant mediocrity, unfulfilled hopes and dreams, we are becoming progressively and creatively blind to it. But your lecture gives Bengal hope. Of pain that is used creatively, that is overcome with a flourish of a poet’s pen, a director’s insights or a musician’s fingers. Of a cultural renaissance in India, with Bengal leading from the front.

To call you the poet of Bengal’s pain would be apt. Although left to yourself, your humility would not allow such a description, how else could I describe a lecture that encompasses the pain associated in disparate elements such as the sacrifice in Gandhiji’s human shortcomings, of the poignancy of a father donating his entire savings for the lighting decoration of his only daughter’s marriage so that an itinerant kabuliwala who his daughter couldn’t even recognise could be reunited with his own daughter, the overwhelming sense of Harihar’s loss when Durga dies, and the pain endemic and eventually triumphed in most of Tagore’s songs? But such a title would also do you a great disservice. Because you are so much more. Your lecture cannot be pigeonholed into the narrow confines of alliterative epithets. For it is not just pain that you talk about. For me, what you talk about is life in Bengal and of Bengalis. Of Nirad Babu and Guru Dutt, of epistolary communications to the Governor and your visits to the districts, and of Gandhiji’s letter to Bidhan Babu that laid the most wonderful background colour to the melange that followed, coloured by your paroxysms of pain. To attempt to summarise it or describe it would be foolhardy. So, as tribute, it is My Bengal that I write to you about, disagreeing with you, like a good Bengali, about a place and a people whom I love so dearly that it often and very easily transforms into despair, anger and hate. Perhaps this is the “risk of love” that is concomitant with my being Bengali.

Once, when I was about 7, I was returning from Barddhaman, where my father was posted, on the Santiniketan Express. As we were passing the lush green fields of Janai Road, 20-odd kilometres away from Howrah, a couple seated next to me were talking loudly and pejoratively of Bengal’s under-development. I distinctly remember them saying how in Mumbai the city began at least 50 kilometres from the city centre whereas in Calcutta we were less than 20 kilometres away and it was still “cows and fields”. Bengal is hopelessly backward, the husband said. I went home and cried that night for a reason that was as inexplicable to my parents then as it is to me now.

Today my Bengal is a place I can’t dream of returning to live in. I see it as a melting pot of mediocrity, overrun with lumpen elements that pride themselves on their boorishness and a civilised minority cocooned in their upper middle class Ballygunge and Alipore homes complaining, criticising and doing nothing. The green fields of Janai Road are still as green as before. And I still see them as beautiful. But they are not my abiding image of Bengal any more.

Bengal speaks to me today, not through its depressing contents, but rather more powerfully through its absences. Of people like myself, who, despite professing their love for the state and its people are too cowardly to return, preferring the more comfortable life that Delhi, Mumbai or London promises. Of software engineers who left in an exodus in the nineties lured by the dream of a new India in the steel-and-glass cities of south Indian suburbia. Of the millions of Bengali domestic help in Delhi and Bombay driven to these cities by utter desperation; the goldsmiths in Gujarat, the daily wage labourers in construction sites in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Indian cities, cooks and chefs in roadside joints in faraway lands- the list, just in my personal experience, is seemingly endless. In my Bengal, the loud silences that emanate from these absences, speak louder than anything else. Much like the ghostly silence as one passes the skeleton of the Tata Nano factory on the Durgapur Expressway.

This is why your dominant association of Bengal with pain strikes a chord. But the eloquence with which the chord is struck is so pleasurable that pain almost becomes a virtue and masochism creeps in through the interstices of uncertain feeling. I feel proud that I come from the land of Tagore, Ravi Shankar, Bibhutibhushan, Saratchandra, which has had such a tremendous impact on great men, and I use the combination advisedly, like you and both your grandfathers. To be reminded of Bengal’s influence in nourishing such greatness, so delightfully as you have done, was indeed a joy. As is your wonderful thesis that it was predominantly pain that was the genesis of their timeless masterpieces.

But pain, Dr. Gandhi, is all things considered, not a virtue. Pain may provide fuel for the creative juices of talented Bengalis, but for the voiceless majority, most pain is a burden that must be borne because someone somewhere failed to prevent it. The deaths of innocent infants, the paucity of farmer support programmes, the failed promises of industrialisation, are active testaments of the same pain. Unfortunately for them, there is no ‘jibono jokhon sukae jae’ to follow, nor is there a moving sitar dhun. Bengal does bear its pain with fortitude, Dr. Gandhi and it can certainly teach India how to do that. But when that pain is not a consequence of our mortality or human nature, but primarily the product of flawed governmental policies, of years of failed governance, unfulfilled promises, corrupt and high-handed administrations, of lazy officials who refuse to work, of indisciplined students more willing to create a ruckus than study, of a party which wrecked the education system and industry for its petty political gains, of another which attempts to beat the first at its own game, then I cannot, no matter how much beauty it can lead to, acquiesce in romanticising it. It must be condemned and sought to be prevented at any cost.

This does not mean for a moment that I question your assessment of Bengal. So beautiful is your grasp of my people, so erudite is your rendition, so commanding your sweep and breadth of knowledge, that my piddly rational argument stands no chance against it. And since I can feel the rational side of me is now taking over, I’ll stop because I know it’s pointless. Your thing of beauty must and will remain a joy forever.

Aapnar bedona aamar monke notun chetona diyechhe Dr. Gandhi, kichhui diyi-ni, shudhu niyechhi prochoor aapnar theke. Oshesh dhonnobad.

Yours sincerely,

Arghya Sengupta

[For the full lecture see here; for cover image attribution see here]

In a film industry where conformity to a tried and tested formula has long been a recipe for success, Vishal Bhardwaj dared to defy the odds. With a penchant for doing things differently, be it situating Othello in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh or weaving seven short stories into a single script, Vishal today has carved a unique niche for himself as a cerebral film-maker who has achieved both critical and commercial success. In a free-wheeling interview to CriticalTwenties, Vishal, amongst other things, talks about his last offering Saat Khoon Maaf, why he loves the movies of Quentin Tarantino, the current state of Bollywood and movie-going audiences in India and how a certain someone got him into music composition and the movies in the first place.

What was it about Susanna’s Seven Husbands that made you want to make it into a movie?

The dark side of the story…the dark humour. I find dark humour very fascinating- it instigates something in you- it scares you, disturbs you but is funny at the same time.  When Ruskin Bond gave me the story, I immediately found the title very fascinating- why would someone have seven husbands?  On reading it, I was deeply intrigued by the character of Susanna, killing her husbands, not out of hate but out of love. It was a powerful story which I tried to tell in a way that I believed would capture its dark comedic aspects.

In Saat Khoon Maaf, it was apparent that Susanna’s husbands, who were responsible for moving the plot, were essentially evil characters. Even in some of your other films, a central role is played by an evil character- say, Langda Tyagi in Omkara. Is there anything particular about evil characters which fascinates you?

I strongly believe that we all have evil within us. It’s just that we don’t bring that evil into action every time; we get evil thoughts at some points of time, and sometimes we act on them and sometimes we don’t. It’s interesting to see when man is moved to his evil side and for what reasons. Through portraying these characters, I try to understand human beings. And the reason for portraying the husbands in Saat Khoon Maaf as having shades of evil is so that the audience could swallow their murders a little easily; as six murders of perfectly reasonable people may have been hard to handle in the space of one movie that was not a murder mystery!

Any particular story in Saat Khoon Maaf was your personal favourite?

Annu Kapoor’s track as Keemat Lal, the police officer turned fifth husband. He starts off as a lecherous police officer, sexually blackmailing Susanna and allowing her to remain scot free despite having murdered her husband if she does him sexual favours. But, then there is a remarkable transition and he genuinely falls in love with her. And that’s where their paths collide since she was never in love with him and never wanted to be with him. I was very taken in by this transition that occurred in Keemat Lal’s character. And of course the way Annu Kapoor played the role was masterful. He is a tremendously talented yet under-utilised actor and it was wonderful seeing this performance from him.

Let’s talk a little bit about your leading ladies. Nimmi in Maqbool and Susanna in SKM- if you had to marry one of them who would it be?

(Laughs).. I wouldn’t marry either!

But if you had to…

Well, in that case I’ll convert to Islam and marry both so that one can take care of the other!

Having said that, I don’t think there is much in common between them as they are very different people; what Nimmi was doing in Maqbool was for greed and lust; Susanna was doing it for love, she loved her husbands so much that she killed them; besides I changed the basic characterisation of Macbeth, by making Nimmi the wife of the King and Maqbool’s mistress which showed that the intentions that motivated her actions were not born out of love.

Moving on, you’re a man who wears many hats- writer, singer, director, music director. Which do you enjoy doing most?

Music gives me a sense of peace; it’s so personal and so satisfying once you compose a song; the peace it gives is unparalleled. The highs come from writing; and the sense of power comes from directing; you have created a character and you personify the character on set and then you edit it; if you don’t like one or two extra scenes or even if the character says one or two extra words you can cut them out; this ability to edit I think is immensely powerful. Besides the fact that people feel emotionally moved by a story you tell is a great feeling as a director.

So what was it like in Ishqiya, which was the first film that you wrote the script for but was directed by Abhishek Chaubey?

Abhishek has been with me since my first film; it was like giving a break to a younger brother; I definitely disagreed with some of the performances; that is fair because the film is the medium of the director; the writer may write a scene but the director must interpret it in his own way; but Ishqiya is very similar to what I would have done but certainly there are some differences and that is how it should be.

As a director, who have been your influences and whose movies you enjoy watching?

Kieslowski, the Polish-filmmaker inspires me greatly, though I have yet to make a film of the tone that he made. Quentin Tarantino too- he works on the basic themes of love and revenge, executes it in a classy manner yet plays perfectly to the masses. He is, I think, extremely juicy as a filmmaker. Also Takeshi Kitano, who has an extremely unique style. In contemporary Bollywood, there are very few filmmakers who excite me. Of the few there is Anurag Kashyap and Sudhir Mishra. In the commercial space there is Raju Hirani, who makes movies for the masses and does it in an extremely witty and engaging fashion.

When you do see a movie, do you see it through your own eyes or are you constantly thinking as a director, on what could have been differently, what was the background thinking that went into a scene etc?

I try to watch lots of movies and it’s a very funny feeling I get when I watch them. The success of the film-maker lies in the fact that he/ she makes you forget your own craft; that’s where a good film starts- if I forget I am a director, technician or whatever else I am and get absorbed in the story that’s the mark of a good film; if the film does not hold then I start thinking as a director, on how I would have done things differently.

So when you start thinking about a movie, whether an original screenplay or an adaptation, do you start with the basic plot or essaying the characters and weave a plot around it?

For me, the most important aspect of a movie is the conflict. For a good movie, there must be a powerful conflict and it must be resolved in a nice manner. If a movie manages to do this, I think it will be successful. And by conflict, I do not necessarily mean a fight or misunderstanding or a traditional antagonism between people; the conflict could even be a disease or something of that nature; every movie has an inherent conflict and it is the nature of that conflict and its resolution or lack thereof that I think determines its success and failure.

And are finances a consideration in choosing a project?

Two things. First thing, as a filmmaker, I am not opposed to stars. I think the gulf between stars and actors is decreasing as stars also good actors nowadays. Second thing, I think various kinds of audiences exist nowadays, so if I want to make an experimental movie I have to think about the audiences very carefully and not be entirely absorbed by my own idea. This is something that I need to work on and I must adjust the expectations I have of the film accordingly.

Is this what you always wanted to do- get into the movies?

I always had a basic lust to be a famous man. Now fame does not come through education. So it has to be through movies or sport. So movies were an obvious choice (smiles)…

And music- we heard you started out in college to impress your wife?

Yes, my wife was an excellent singer then as she is now. We were in college together. I was not a good composer then and so I decided to take up music composition seriously to see if I could make an impression.

Given that you’re happily married today, clearly your music left its mark?

(Laughs)… You can say that.

Do you see any significant changes in Bollywood from the time you started?

Yes, lots of changes. All the developments in the last 10 years are inter-related. Earlier, the conditions of theatres were terrible, people who had money didn’t go to theatres, now with multiplexes the crowds are coming in. At the same time, with cable and satellite television, people have been exposed to all kinds of world cinema; their sensitivities have changed and there is much greater scope for experimentation. The Censor Board is getting mature, the kinds of films they have been passing shows a change in sensibilities. We are of course far away from the ideal scenario of self-censorship since education levels in the country are still poor, but we are headed in the right direction. Perhaps one important change which needs to be made is with more scientific ratings for movies; we need 12+, 15+ and even XXX ratings to come in; the Censor Board says they have been working on it, I hope it gets implemented as it is needed as audiences and their levels of maturity are changing.

So do you have your next project lined up?

Well, I am toying with two or three ideas; one of them could be an adaptation but I have not made up my mind yet. Especially after the reception Saat Khoon Maaf got both from audiences and critics, I am taking it very easy (laughs)…

And is there a chance of a return to Shakespeare anytime soon?

Yes, Shakespeare I have to do, but not so soon; I would definitely like to complete a trilogy of tragedies following on from Maqbool and Omkara with Hamlet, King Lear or Richard III. But first I would like to get out of Shakespeare. And you will hopefully see me return to it sometime in the future.

[With inputs, research and questions by Mukul Sharma; Originally posted on May 12, 2011]