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Sunday,
January 19, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION: A DEBATE
Research must on origins of Punjabi |
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Web of corruption in J&K
Harihar Swarup
Advani to fine-tune reshuffle list
Humra Quraishi
BEYOND FITNESS
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MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION: A DEBATE SURPRISINGLY, even after 55 years of Independence, Punjab has not been able to devise a rational and stable policy on language teaching in schools. There are varied patterns prevalent in the State — (i) the so-called public schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) with English as the medium of instruction and Hindi and Punjabi languages playing second fiddle, (ii) private schools, some laying stress on Hindi and others on Punjabi, with English as a common denominator, depending upon community-based leanings and biases; and (iii) government schools shifting their stand every now and then. Also the differences in quantum and content of education being provided by various categories of schools depend on whether the school is affiliated to the Punjab State Education Board or the CBSE. Thus thereis no single clear-cut and definitive pattern of school education in the state. Before resorting to delineating the language policy for school education, one has to comprehend the basic tenets — (i) what is the child-students’ age-based mental and emotional capability to absorb the varied forms and phonetics of different languages; (ii) what are the language proficiency requirements in studying for higher courses and specialisations; (iii) where are the employment opportunities and avenues of gainful occupations and with what kinds of language proficiencies; and (iv) keeping in view the state language for official work, to what extent the knowledge of other languages is necessary or desirable for career advancement and work efficiency. There is no place for narrowmindedness or dogmatism on the language issue when it comes to the future of the youth coming out of educational institutions. There is also no point in blindly copying the systems prevalent elsewhere ignoring the basic fact that mother tongue must have its place of pride in the states carved out on linguistic basis. Within these parameters, it is necessary to analyse the stand of two opposing groups of educationists. One group advocates that the child-student must be initiated in his/her own mother tongue through four stages of learning the language for four to five years. It is only after the child grasps the nuances of one language, i.e., his mother tongue, that it would become easy for him to comprehend the variance in forms and phonetics of other languages. They quote reports of expert committees and the NCERT at lib. Moreover they assert that mother tongue must get the pride of place in a linguistic state. The other group of educationists looks at the issue from an angle of need-based education. They view the Punjabi youth in wider perspective who would be exploring the avenues of employment and opportunities in the wider world outside of Punjab, for which the knowledge of Hindi and English are a prerequisite. They hold the view that the child has the capacity to learn many languages at a time and the emphasis should be need-based as may be perceived by the parents. The public schools are catering to that need. Thus there is a schism in the thinking and approach of the two groups, which gets reflected in the shifting policies of the government, particularly for the government-run schools. On grounds of human ethos and rationality, every child has the birth right to uniform quality school education irrespective of the economic or social status of the parents. It is no fault of the child that he has happened to be born to the parents with low economic and social status. Therefore, it becomes the primary duty of the state to provide uniform, quality school education to all the children. Higher education can be left, at least partially, to the private colleges and universities. That is the real meaning of the concept of universal education. Unfortunately, the state has abdicated its responsibilities on this front. Consequently, there have developed vast differences in the school education being delivered by different shades of schools to different segments of society depending upon the parents' capacity to pay and their awareness about what they wish their children should achieve. In fact school education has become a virtual scandal in the state and for that matter in the country as a whole. The rich, mostly urban, educated, well placed and informed parents get their wards admitted to the hi-fi English medium public schools on the strength of hefty donations and exorbitant fees. With this, they get their wards enabled to successfully compete in the entrance tests for higher and technical/ professional education in colleges and universities, where the education costs are just nominal or very low. It is a simple principle of “pay more in schools and get higher education on disproportionately low cost”. These public schools are becoming richer day by day with palatial buildings, modern laboratories and other infrastructural facilities and are, thus, able to provide better and better quality of education from the point of view of accessing admissions to institutes of higher leaning and elite jobs in the market. The poor, mostly uneducated, specially in the rural areas, do not have access to such schooling facilities. As a result, they have no choice but to put their wards in government schools, where infrastructural facilities are lacking and there is little accountability on the part of the teachers. In fact, though the cream of the qualified teachers are employed by the government, they do not take their jobs seriously. Public schools employ their teachers from the left-outs. Yet, it is the accountability that makes them perform. This situation has lead to a serious divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” and society is polarising into the “ruling” and “ruled” classes. The rich are becoming richer and the poor the poorer. Doctors' children are becoming doctors, engineers' children engineers, administrators' children administrators. On the other hand, the children of the poor, labour class are helplessly becoming labourers and servers to the ruling classes. I feel it is the infrastructure facilities, the adequacy of committed teachers and accountability to the management and the sensitisation level of the management that matter. In the support of the first school of thought that the initiation to education should be in the mother tongue of the child, I studied up to eighth class with Urdu as the medium of instruction. But for one year after that I was fully soaked (drowned ) in English language. I and my classmates, who had undergone the same drowning in English were much better placed compared to the students who had been having just a bath in English for four to five periods a week for three to four years of their earlier schooling. But this choice is not available in our system. Yet, if such a system is created with Punjabi starting from pre- school classes and both Hindi and Punjabi from Ist standard and after fifth class the student is drowned for one year in English only with no other subject to pursue, it will give an optimal mix of the three languages for the students in the state. For the other school of thought, we have a ground experience of teaching all the three languages with equal emphasis right from the lower Kindergarten class in our village school. For two years the child is made to recognise the alphabets and simple word formation in the three languages along with counting of numbers only. From the fifth class we even divert one period from Punjabi to the English language, because the student at this stage has a clear advantage in Punjabi, being his or her mother tongue. But, the school has all the infrastructural facilities and adequate number of dedicated language teachers and accountability is the key word. Yet, the big question is whether the state has the will and the capacity to ensure adequate infrastructure and adequacy as well accountability of language teachers in government schools to handle English along with Punjabi and Hindi from Class One ? If not, there is no point in introducing English from Standard One and the state should follow the system of introducing Hindi and English not before Standard Four. The writer is an eminent economist. |
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Let it be English first TODAY the sun still doesn't set on the British Empire's language. Unrecognisable by the Queen perhaps, it is our own English modified by us to suit our poetic feelings and sentiments, our regional languages and pronunciations and work. Every politician has or wants his child in an English medium school, while keeping a door open for his votes by vigorously propagating the regional language while slily propelling his own progeny towards the “patrician” class. I would like to know which school Tejaswi Yadav of the Lara (Lalu-Rabri) cricket team attends in Delhi, while his father beats the dholak and speaks the common crude language of the masses. For mob or work prospect values, Indian Tom, Dick and Harry also want fluency in English. The poor get an unfair deal allround and for always, it seems. It is the government school that can give an equal opportunity for all by teaching English earlier and earlier over a period. The expensive private schools make and continue the divide between the rich and the poor. There should be no purse-made alphas to further the divide around us. All schools must work towards giving a working knowledge of English so that children get a fair chance to compete with others in the country or the world if need be. I can imagine the teething problems in getting English teachers. But English has changed — call it Hinglish or Punglish, if you like, but it works as “pidgin” Hindustani worked for the British rulers for 200 years. They have left a legacy of their language to be marred but used profitably by us. No doubt, the Indian has flourished abroad with this much start. With paucity of job and business opportunities, Indians need and want to go out, the Punjabi in particular. Think of the 80 illegal immigrants to Germany who miraculously escaped suffocation in their exclusive mode of travel, the canister or the two who froze against the fuselage of a plane to the UK (one of the last two survived). The vagaries of the English language are vast, so there is much weariness of the flesh and mind in mastering its grammar and spelling. “Subject” and “object” change their meaning by pronunciation and even jump to verb from noun. “Bear, bare, beer, bier, not, knot, naught” are only the simpler examples of reckless abandon in bamboozling the normal mind. Nevertheless, it is a global language with global prospects. The difficulties we envision will be taken care of by children's ability to learn a new language fast if it is spoken and used. My seven-year-old German pupil, within a year, was speaking accentless Hindustani in the play ground and topping the class where everything was done in English. My three-year-old grandson has, in less than a year, learnt Malayalam and speaks English and Hindustani. The only fear can be: “What will happen to our own languages and culture?” We will just have to be vigilant and keep them going side by side. There is every reason for me to be able to enjoy the Mahabharat, its delicacy of feeling and richness of thought and language. There is no reason to ever belittle our own history, dance, drama, and music. English in school should not mean metallic jazz and pop as cultural fare instead of Bhangra and Bharatnatyam. Our great works of art should not cease to be our pride or inspiration. Nothing should take away our own entity and creativity. We need to make a bigger statement on our nationalism and patriotism whatever language we use. The reference books and information from computers is a wealth which will not be easy in our own languages or in the near future. There is no time for delayed decisions and inconclusive debates, while our children lose out. Everyone must have a chance to sink or swim in the effect for a better existence. It should not be the privilege of a few. I am convinced after a lifetime that the Indians will never have one common language from among their own rich languages. I also know whatever they propound and, however cynical it may sound, they are, and will be, united on one thing — the English language. Let Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh steer the ship of education. He can only take his state forward — not backwards with his English from Class I. The writer, a former Principal of Vivek School, Chandigarh, is a noted educationist. |
Research must on origins of Punjabi THE International Punjabi Writers’ Conference this year was a damp squib. There was no delegate from Pakistan's side of Punjab. Surprisingly, though External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha has propounded the idea of a South Asian Union, the Indian High Commission in Islamabad denied visas to many Pakistani writers invited to the conference — Fakhar Zaman, Sugraa Sudaaf, Kanwar Mushtaq, Iqbal Farid, Hiyaat Ahmed and others. From the Indian side, Surjit Patar, Prof Pritam Singh, Prof Swarn Singh, Kartar Singh Duggal, Manjit Tiwana, Veena Varma, S. S. Noor, and others attended. Dr Gurbhagat Singh and Dr Swaraj Singh came from the USA. Urdu scholar, Dr Gopi Chand Narang, was also present. The prime theme was “The contemporary world scenario and Punjabi writers”. The event was topped by a kavi darbaar. Much has been said on Punjabi, the way in which its language and literature are responding to globalisation and its cultural fall-out. However, some detailed debate should have been organised wherever Punjabi is written and spoken. Some time ago, Pakistani Punjabi writer Ejaz Akram suggested that Punjabi should also be written in more than one script — Gurmukhi, Shahmukhi (Persian script) and perhaps Roman-mukhi — to make Punjabi more accessible and easy to learn for more Punjabi people including the youth overseas. Akram said as Punjabi is not a state-sponsored language anywhere, it need not be homogenised. It can be spoken in different dialects and written in different scripts, he said. Punjabi was originally written in a slightly modified Persian script. The first known Punjabi poet is said to have been the mystic Sheikh Farid-ud-din Masud, of the 11th-12th century, better known to us as Baba Farid, whose slokas or dohras are included in the Granth Sahib. (The Punjabi-Persian alphabet, known to us as Shahmukhi, was adopted practically unchanged for Urdu in the 18th century). The Gurmukhi script, said to have been taken in good measure from Sharda used in Kashmir, came around the 16th century. Both Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi have been in use simultaneously. And in both the scripts, the alphabet was subordinated to Punjabi phonetics. There is a need to adopt the Roman script. No adoption of English or European alphabet please. We have to subordinate Roman script letters to Punjabi phonetics, as Ejaz Akram has said, to make it Roman-mukhi. This is important because too frequently, as in the Indian armed forces, where the Roman script is official and in wide use for writing Hindi, the Hindi language is being written in Roman according to the English alphabet, thus subordinating Hindi phonetics to the phonetics of the English language. The conference should have examined the origin of the Punjabi language. The poetry of Baba Farid has a kind of sophistication that argues the existence of a solid poetic tradition. Interestingly, Punjabi, known as Manjhi, high or central Punjabi, is perhaps the only language in India, and South Asia, which is multi-tonal. That is, the change of tone in a word may change the word's meaning. The multi-tones were noted by, among others, T. Grahame Bailey in his introduction to an English-Punjabi dictionary that he compiled in the early part of the twentieth century: “Punjabi is a tone language like Chinese...There are four tones: (i)Level tone found in about 75 per cent of the words. It might also be described as absence of tone. (ii) High-falling. The syllable is begun about six or seven semi-tones above the lowest note that the speaker can reach, and falls about two semi-tones. If no pause follows, the fall is in the following syllable. (iii) Low-rising. The syllable is begun about a tone above the lowest note that the speaker can reach, and rises one or two semi-tones. If no pause follows, the rise is in the following syllable. (iv) A combination of low-rising and high-falling, the former always coming first...” Ujjal Singh Bahri, in his Punjabi Primer compiled for those who might want to learn Punjabi, does refer to Punjabi’s multi-tonal character, even if only in passing: “One of the most important features of the sound pattern of the Punjabi language is the existence of what are technically called 'tones'. These tones are phonetic realisations of pitch and duration...(The) sounds of the Punjabi language are quite different from other Indian languages”. Amazingly, no serious research has been done on the origin of Punjabi language, and on why it is multi-tonal. Grahame Bailey has referred to a resemblance to Chinese. Could the origins of multi-tonal Punjabi lie in the history of Kushan rule, in the first and second century AD, in the territory known as Punjab, with their capital at Purushpura, now Peshawar? The Kushans were part of the Yueh-chi group of tribes somewhere in central China. Some of these moved westward to Central Asia, from where they came down to Afghanistan and Punjab. Much of eastern Afghanistan and almost entire Punjab remained the hub of their empire even when they went further afield. This territory is said to have been the hub also when their empire shrank. There is scope for serious research in the subject. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s decision to make Punjabi the second language in her State is welcome. But she needs to use her good offices in providing the language with an additional Roman script and encouraging research on its origin. |
Web of corruption in J&K SOME weeks before the elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, a government-employed doctor told me his chief reason for wanting to see the Farooq Abdullah government defeated was corruption. “It has crossed all bounds”, said he earnestly, pointing to a recent scandal in his own department. A hundred-odd brooms had been dispatched as equipment for his village primary health centre the previous year, he said, paid for at a rate three times higher than the one at Srinagar's wholesale markets. They just lay in a store room, for the centre had no need for so many brooms. Clearly, those in charge of making purchases for the department had made a killing, supplying thousands of brooms to health centers across the state. Now that kind of scam might seem like par for the course for many citizens of south Asia. After all, billions of rupees were spent to purchase cattle fodder by a government department in Bihar not so long ago. The difference is that Kashmiris seem to resent corruption more keenly than most other south Asians. While corruption rarely becomes a major electoral issue in most parts of the subcontinent, it has often been a major issue for determining voting patterns here. The irony of course is that corruption is endemic in Kashmir — and has been for as long as anyone can remember. Older Kashmiris remember how, even under the tight controls of Dogra rule, marriage proposals for petty government employees were accompanied by information about how much the proposed groom's “upar ki aamdani (extra income)” was. There was talk of corruption around the distribution of forest felling leases to relatives of Sheikh Abdullah even during his first stint in power, before 1953, and corruption became a most potent political point against the most dynamic and efficient Kashmiri leader of recent times, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed. No doubt the issue could be so effectively raked up because his political antagonists ran various governments which did not escape the anger of accusing fingers either. The legend is still to be heard of 30,000 egg yolks from the government hatchery having been mixed with paint to add sheen to the outer walls of the bungalow of one of those successors. Such charges have not only been levelled against Kashmir's top leaders. Corruption is virtually a way of life. It crops up at every step, not only in government offices but in personal interactions too. I had an amazing experience a couple of years ago. A leading fruit merchant had been telling me of the corrupt practices through which Kashmiri merchants were exploited at Delhi's wholesale fruit market. When I asked him for more facts and figures so that I could write about it, he beamed and asked me how much he would be paid for the information. At first I thought he was joking but then realised that he was miffed with me for refusing to strike a deal. He seemed to think I had been wasting his time and did not seem to see any contradiction between his wanting to be paid so that I could highlight injustices of which he was a victim. His motto obviously was that no opportunity to make some money was to be lost. There is a strange contradiction between the fervent moral outrage that most Kashmiris express about the scourge of corruption and the widespread indulgence in it, often by those who bemoan the trend among the rest of society. Perhaps this forked attitude explains what a military intelligence man once told me. Contractors elsewhere deliver in a slovenly way even after taking a cut for themselves. In Kashmir, he claimed, the cut is extremely generous but, even if only a tenth of the sanctioned amount is actually spent on the work, it is delivered with exquisite grace and hospitality. The concerned officer may be treated to a lavish meal, and gifts for his family when the work is delivered, punctually. It is almost an art. erhaps these are the hallmarks of an evolved ancient civilisation that has, in decay, lost its moral moorings but not the trappings of civilised form. These also have to do with the extent to which the practice of Islam in the valley has moved away from fundamentals to focus heavily on the intercession of pirs and other saints for favours from the Almighty. There is, after all, an element of bribery in promising to present a brocade sheet for the grave of a saint if one gets a lucrative job or admission to a prized institution or a son. Religion being the fountainhead of morality and standards of behaviour in any society, corrupted religious practices may well lead to distorted perspectives on social conduct. In Kashmir, these factors have created a situation in which personal morals have been blunted but the awareness of a general social malaise remains bitterly sharp.
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Nadira: more Naipaul
than Naipaul himself Naipaul and Nadira met for the first time in late 1995 at a dinner party in Lahore; she fell for the author and bluntly asked him: “Can I kiss you”? She did not wait for a response and promptly proceeded to plant a kiss on the famous writer’s cheek. A dumbfounded Naipaul’s response was: “I think, we should sit down”. He was at that time researching for his book — “Beyond Belief”. Ailing Patricia passed away in February, 1996 and Naipaul and Nadira tied the nuptials knot. A Pakistani journalist of many years’ standing, Nadira, a divorcee, wrote columns on what she called “oppression of my people, particularly women by clerics and the feudal of our one-legged democracy”. Little is known about her first marriage but she was a social activist when living in Pakistan. She campaigned, along with well-known social activist, Asma Jehangir, against the Nawaz Sharif Government’s blasphemous laws and questioned Islamabad’s human right record. She had also described the Taliban as “vermin”. She was, in turn, attacked by “Mullas” as westernised, being sympathetic to Hindus and mocked for not being well versed in the “Urdu” language”. A Pakistani columnist was so provoked by Naipual’s views on Gujarat carnage and earlier his defense of demolition of the “Babri Masjid” that he asked Nadira to divorce the Nobel Laureate if she was still looking for a reason to leave him. But, said the columnist, “she is more Naipaul than Naipaul”. Sir Vidiya has written two books on the growing world of Islamic fundamentalists and the latest — “Beyond Belief”— dedicated to his wife. His views in the two books came under sharp attack from Muslim leaders and clerics but Nadira forcefully came to defense of Naipaul: “My husband is against the tyranny imposed by the fanatical, imperial Arabic version of Islam. Islam needs to be brought into the modern world”. She says: “My husband sees ground reality and can put it, unlike me, into an historical context which makes it bearable for many Muslims like me who passionately believe in freedom and dignity of an individual as promised by the Prophet”. Challenging the critics, she asks them if they know how Islam was being used in “tyrannies like Pakistan”. Have they faced raging ‘Islamic’ clerics in their strongholds, she asks the critics, and tells them, the Holy Prophet did not promote this acute form of barbarism. Have they visited Pakistani jails and heard the shrieks of women being beaten for a ‘confession’ by the police ? Nadira tells her and her husband’s censors: “I am also a Muslim woman who has written for ten years against the oppression of my people, particularly women by clerics and the feudal of our sporadic, one legged democracy. I am not a woman who trashes my country to please outsiders”. Reflecting her husband’s views, Nadira says the democratic way is not part of the Islamic tradition. Islam began with a strong ruler who combined both the roles; spiritual as well as political. Obviously, making a distinction between Islam and terrorism, she says quite significantly: “ If you wish to eradicate terrorism you can’t have an ally who is, in a way, the paymaster of these movements and you can’t have another ally who provides the foot soldiers”. Known for “hard talk”, Nadira hit the headlines at the much hyped “Pravasi Bharatiya Divas” function when she bluntly asked the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. L.K.Advani if he wanted Muslims to carry Ram and Sita in their hearts to be considered Indians. Mr. Advani’s response did mollify her but she trained her guns at Tarun Vijay, editor of “Panchajanya” for calling her a “ non-resident Pakistan”. Returning the invective hurled at her, Nadira called Tarun “a typewriter gorilla” and said: “Mr Advani has done a great service to his party by giving a reassuring answer; why is Tarun Vijay complaining”? Nadira was heard in rapt attention at the NRI conclave and she promised to always speak up. |
Advani to fine-tune reshuffle list
PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee intends to expand the Union Cabinet and has entrusted the task of preparing the list to Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani. The DPM is taking inputs from many party colleagues but prominently from BJP President M Venkaiah Naidu. While names of allies from the National Democratic Alliance are more or less finalised, Advani is scrutinising the present colleagues in the council of ministers very thoroughly as he is trying to kill two birds with one stone. He needs manpower for his aggressive cultural nationalism agenda and also has to ensure that the Prime Minister has able hands. So it seems he has decided that General Secretary Rajnath Singh be shifted from the party to the Cabinet. Advani also wants Coal Minister Uma Bharti to take on Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in the Assembly polls later this year. But the fiery sanyasin, whose aggression matches with that of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, does not want to quit the ministerial comforts and security. The same is said to be true of BJP Rajasthan President Vasundhara Raje. Another aspirant for the Ministerial berth is BJP spokesman and General Secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi who was promised by Vajpayee that he would be inducted in the next cabinet reshuffle. But Naqvi may have to wait for another expansion as Advani does not feel the need of another Minister from the minority ranks in the government as he or even Civil Aviation Minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain are not going to ensure votes for the party. Cong
discomfort No party is as much discomforted by the contentious SYL issue as the Congress is. The party’s Punjab and Haryana units have opposite stands on the construction of the canal. In Haryana, the two groups of the party are apparently in a game of one-upmanship on the issue with the group opposed to PCC chief Bhajan Lal not joining the party’s programme of giving memorandum to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the issue. The Congress high command has maintained a studied silence. No central leader accompanied Bhajan Lal to meet the Prime Minister on the issue of SYL. The high command did not ask its government in Punjab to comply with the Supreme Court orders on canal construction. Nor has it appealed to the Centre to get the canal completed through its agencies as directed by the apex court. It has also not endorsed the Punjab government’s stand to review the distribution of waters between Punjab and Haryana. Though the central BJP leadership is also not speaking on the issue, the silence of Congress leadership speaks for itself. Had it been any other issue on which Supreme Court directives were not followed, the Congress would have cried hoarse. Indian
diaspora An NRI, who participated in the first Pravasi Bhartiya Divas conference, remarked that it was not the Non-Resident Indians who were being wooed but only Dollar Earning Indians. An official, who has been the part of the government’s evolving policy towards the Indian Diaspora, observed on conditions of anonymity that the NRIs should actually be called BSBB: Bharat Be Bhage Bharatiyas (those who fled away from India). Saddam
Hussein If the trade-off is between a wily jackal and a ferocious lion, sometimes the latter appears to be more benign. Kuwait’s Ambassador to India, Abdullah Ahmed Al-Murad, spoke something like this when asked this week about his views on Pakistan and North Korea. In an obvious reference to Iraq’s leader Saddam
Hussein, he remarked: “When a wild boar or a wily jackal is knocking at your door you are not bothered if a ferocious lion or a mighty elephant is lurking somewhere in distance.” In the times when multi-crore rupee multi-starrer films are failing to jingle the cash registers, a magic show has created records. Renowned magician Shankar’s magic show, organised by “Aadharshila”, has been running to packed houses in the capital for the last ten weeks. But Aadharshila President Pradeep Sardana was politely told by the authorities that everything good thing has to come to an end. Sardana was told to pack up a week before the Republic Day. The reason: the venue of the magic show, Gandhi Memorial Hall near ITO, is on the R-Day parade route. And given the security situation, the authorities cannot take any chances and seal all buildings on either side of the parade route days in advance. Contributed by Satish Misra, Girja Shankar Kaura, T.V.Lakshminarayan, Prashant Sood and Rajeev Sharma.
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When some NRIs met non-Hindutva netas FIRST that spillover from the politically orchestrated Pravasis meet. Coincidentally or not really so this week, every second function held here rotated around the NRIs — whether it was Tavlin Singh's tabla at the Bristol hotel or poetic outpourings from our poet in Germany, Rajvinder Singh at the Max Mueller Bhavan. But then, both seem to have made it clear that they had nothing to do with that hyped meet, complete with a colouring of a certain saffronised political strain (call it stain, if you may)…Not really surprising for just a day back whilst I was interacting with some well known politicians and industrialists they pointed out the who's who of the industry who were not invited or deliberately kept away from any interaction with the NRIs. Their list is long but to highlight the names of some of the absentees — Ambani brothers, Ratan Tata, Nusli Wadia... Another interesting aspect was that several NRIs from the Gulf and Middle Eastern countries were keen to meet the self-proclaimed saviors of the minorities — Mulayam Singh Yadav, Amar Singh and some of the key Left functionaries. Since they had not been invited to address the gathering (how could they be when the likes of Narendra Modi had to fill up the speakers’ slot, what with one of the key organisers during an interview session had rather too casually mentioned how well he knows Narendra Modi). Seeing an expression of shock on my face since I'm bad at camouflages and facades, he quickly added: “Even I didn't like the way he treated the Chief Election Commissioner, otherwise what wrong has he done!”) so several delegates made it a point to meet them on their own. As one of them quipped rather too blatantly, “When one has spent so much on the ticket and stay, spend a little on taxi and meet the non-Hindutva politicians of this city, of this country...”
Just as when I got back home after attending the book release function of Shyam Bhatia's book on Afghanistan —“Contemporary Afghanistan: A Political Dictionary” (Har Anand), attention was drawn to the scheduled discussion on another book on “Afghanistan — The Anatomy Of A Conflict In Afghanistan and 9/11” by Rifaat Hussain and others (Roli). Haven't read either, so I would concentrate on the function and whatever I could manage to talk with Shyam Bhatia...Reaching late for the function, overcoming distractions in the form of the who's who present, I asked Bhatia what drove him to write this book on the trouble-torn Afghanistan. And the innocence with which he quipped this bare fact was touching”. I first visited Afghanistan in ‘79 and then in 2001. Its then I realized that in this span of 22 years, most people I had met and known during my first trip were nowhere to be found…they were either missing or dead or just disappeared”. Probably this factor itself came as a blow to him and paved the way for this book to be written. He says: “I began writing it just then, during those three months that I 'd spent in Afghanistan…at night I would take to scribbling or if the generator was on then I could use the computer otherwise the power situation made even that impossible…”
The Kashmir Times bureau chief in New Delhi, Iftikhar Gilani, is a free person today after staying in the jail for seven months. His pleas have been heard and he got released. But what about the hundreds of our countrymen who were thrown behind bars and languishing without a proper trial? Isn't it time that concerned citizens of each city and town are allowed to visit jails who are run on the taxpayer's money? When citizens can visit hospitals, schools and other institutions, why not jails? I must add that whilst in Srinagar, I made it a point to talk to the chief of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) whose primary job is to visit jails and detention centres. During the course of an interview, he said that even to visit these jails and detention centres was a traumatic experience. He added that the educated imprisoned find it hard to accept the reality of being jailed, with many of them stressing that they are innocent but implicated.
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BEYOND FITNESS PRETTY much everyone knows that if you want to emulate Madonna's lean physique or Geri Halliwell's 100 per cent fat-free stomach, yoga is the discipline for you. Increasingly, however, certain forms are also being used to treat mental conditions such as depression, anxiety and negativity. Dr Helena Waters describes herself as a broker between orthodox and complementary medicine. She was a practising psychiatrist for ten years, but eventually left that field feeling that she was no longer suited to it. “In retrospect:, she says, “It was a bit of a sticking plaster approach”. Dr Waters is now a keen proponent of the use of yoga to treat all forms of illness. “Most health problems probably start at a mental and emotional level but we don't realise it until they become physical — then we have to deal with them.” One form of yoga, Dru Yoga, has been developed with this in mind by the Life Foundation, a spiritual community with centres worldwide. Dru Yoga is particularly gentle and based on continuous flowing movements. Close attention is paid to the heart and spine. But the most striking aspect of Dru Yoga is its use of visualisation. These mean that even people who are physically unable to make the movements can follow and benefit from the class. Bija Bennett, author of “Emotional Yoga” believes that the emotions and our health are intimately connected. “Emotions are physical and act as a bridge between body and mind. If we alter the awareness of our emotions we automatically alter our physical state. So managing our emotions is now considered a form of disease prevention”. Bennett points out that yoga has always been a holistic discipline that deals with body, mind and spirit simultaneously. Yoga is not just physical training, it's not even primarily about exercise. Yoga is an ancient practical system for accessing, healing and integrating the body and mind. It goes beyond fitness.
Courtesy: Guardian |
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NADIRA Khanum Alvi came in the life of Sir V.S. Naipaul when he entered the evening of his life and this Pakistani woman brought in the Nobel Laureate’s monotonous routine a new energy and cheer. And, it is believed, with his Nobel Prize, Nadira “curates a literary treasure; she is the keeper of his greatness, often standing for him as his voice, his spokesperson”. Nadira is 20 years younger to the Naipaul and when they entered into wedlock, he was 69 and she 49. Naipaul’s 41-year-long married life came to a tragic end with the passing away of his first wife Patricia Hale in February, 1996. Within a month, the literary genius married this Pakistani journalist.
