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Making world a better place to live in
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Profile
Reflections
Kashmir Diary
Diversities — Delhi Letter
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Making world a better place to live in AN issue that is being hotly debated these days is the changing focus of culture and development. A host of parameters have entered into the debate as to what constitutes development — from the traditional growth-centric ideas of national and per capita income to the welfare-centric concept of access to public goods and investments in human resource development and to quality of life that includes societal harmony, stable polity and healthy individual psyche. Development has learned to look beyond the earlier theories. There is now a mature recognition that traditional societies could have both positive and negative facets of social values and individual psychologies, rooted in culture. An appropriate strategy of development has to identify them and encourage growth-positive elements and marginalise or eliminate growth-negative aspects. The goal is to strike a suitable balance between economic well-being and socio-cultural satisfaction. As many aspects of socio-political and religious externalities come under the general rubric of culture, these accretions and marginalities need to be peeled off to make the core aspects of culture clearer. This task of re-defining culture and development needs a national and universal focus. Human history throughout the centuries has established culture's seminal role in man's evolution. Events of the last decade in particular have reinforced that we have to look beyond the nation-state, political ideologies, religious faiths and economic theories to cultural traits that bind men in communities. New ways of looking at the sources of man's togetherness are essential. The battle for men's minds and their need to live in communities and groups has to find a cultural focus and cannot legitimately be maintained outside cultural identities. Such identity need not be fully equated with ethnic identity as the latter signifies only a particular manifestation of cultural identity. For quite sometime, studies of social change, political evolution, literary and cultural history have all emphasised the individual's growing sense of isolation. Theories of art and literature have also reflected this alienation of man — the loss of a sense of belongingness, moorings, community and togetherness. There has been talk of non-belongingness, angst, rootlessness even as there are forces of counter-alienation that emphasise the individual's relationship to groups, communities and society. Culture has an interface both with the economic goal of development, general welfare and quality of life and maintaining the individual's sense of belonging to the group. The World Decade for Cultural Development has emphasised the need to bring culture into the centre of development, to evolve suitable operational arrangements on how to achieve this goal in a multi-pronged, area- and culture-specific manner. A particular model of reconciling culture and development will not work. Each community with a distinctive culture has to find its own mechanism to reconcile culture and development. The erosion of traditional culture forms, however, has certain common characteristics. These spring from the interface of culture with economic growth due to technological change, new patterns of production, endless consumerism and global tourism. As these affect traditional cultural forms, a sense of balance between varying objectives is needed. For instance, while tourism brings in the much-needed foreign exchange for developing nations, it is also inevitable in the context of globalisation. Tourism development will help make the world a “global village”. But there could be irritants between the goals of promoting tourism and preserving traditional cultural patterns. Sometimes, with increased tourist inflow, the erosion of traditional values and forms of culture become so heavy that the local people will resent it. There is also the question of reconciling the carrying capacity of specific regions of different countries in terms of their economic and cultural resources with the inflow of tourists. When it crosses the limit, there could be avoidable problems in terms of cultural distortion and societal disharmony. Thus, each state has to find an optimal level of encouraging tourism without harming traditional cultural forms. This is also essential to promote ecological balance and sustainable development. The same consideration applies to rapid industrial and urban growth. Its impact on forms of culture and ecology is well known. Mass migration to cities can erode traditional value systems and culture. The Rio Summit discussed the North-South collaboration to protect the earth and for sustainable human development. We have also talked about development with a human face. It has to be the face of a happy and contented individual who has adequate share in the world's resources as also time to sit and enjoy these resources. A balance between work and leisure is essential as work is a crucial component of a healthy mind. The state cannot compensate the lack of job opportunities with welfare measures. Creative fulfillment through work and leisure and in reasonably small communities should, therefore, be the aim of urban planning and industrial growth. Alternatives in housing, education and health are key to human happiness. One may not predict a medical nemesis or a de-schooling society. But surely, patterns of education and health care require a new look as they are integrally linked to the preservation and transmission of traditional cultures and lifestyles. While illiteracy is the bane of many Third World countries, the West has discovered the problem of what Alan Bloom calls the “second illiteracy”. If students sit back, their eyes glued to the television and never read books, the cognitive and imaginative faculties of the mind may suffer a setback. Sex and violence, which information networks make accessible to everyone, can create avoidable trauma in the psyche of both adults and individuals and trigger organised crime and social imbalance. Counter-culture activities and economic affluence cannot ensure a happy community or a stable polity. Traditional lifestyles can. Man is not just a consumer and appeal to his greed through advertising has a limit. Gandhiji implied this when, in another context, he said that the world has enough for every man's need but not for every man's greed. Patterns of production and consumption have to be viewed along with the balance between market freedom and social equity. In the remaining years of the World Decade of Cultural Development, we should encourage micro studies in various sectors of development to find out optimal equations between the opposing forces of deprivation and empowerment, market and social equity, continuity and change and man as a player and a consumer. The model has to be one of development adjusting to culture and not the other way round. The UNESCO and the World Decade for Cultural Development have emphasised that we should not treat development as merely an efficient engine for progress but also as a strategy to make world a better and happier place to live in. Optimum technology, balanced economic growth and preservation of traditional culture forms are not merely talking points but essential concepts in a future world where men not only go beyond the drudgery of work but are also enabled to be happy and wedded to life. Economic well-being is only a part of ensuring such happiness for man. The other part is to ensure that he lives in the midst of a well-worked web of relationships that is intimate and harmonious and that he has the ability to fulfil himself as homo ludens, man the player and not man the consumer or waste-maker. This calls for a series of measures. First, all countries should realise that in a global village, they should pay attention to development as preserving and nurturing cultural patterns which ensure a stable psyche and a healthy community. Secondly, a healthy socio-economic order, economic planning and development should not militate against culture but adjust with it. In each area of development — health, education, housing, agriculture, industry and so on — this awareness has to find a central place. It should also inform the designing of development for various ethnic and encysted groups. And finally, traditional lifestyles are not necessarily anti-development. Development should not lead to endless migration to urban areas and unlimited consumerism that equates life with credit cards, rapid depletion of natural resources and endangers ecology. The writer, a recipient of Jnanpith Award, is former Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Culture |
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On Record
Excerpts: Q: How confident are you about the peace process that you have initiated to facilitate talks between the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the government? A: Well, at this point I can only say that I am preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. But the feedback from the Prime Minister has been very positive and he has shown commitment that no more bloodshed should happen in Assam and peace should return. These are still early days and the modalities are yet to be worked out. It is a very difficult path. Q: The ULFA leadership, particularly its Commander-in-Chief Paresh Baruah, continues to maintain that "sovereignty" of Assam should be part of the discussions. Don't you think this is an unrealistic demand? A: The demand for sovereignty may be unrealisitic. But some of the demands are definitely genuine. For 25 years they have been fighting for certain causes and these will surely figure once the talks begin. The government can definitely work on these — like granting more autonomy. It also needs to be remembered that they have given up their other two major demands — presence of a UN representative and talks in a third country. Q: The Assam Accord of the 1985, signed by the Central government with the leaders of All Assam Students' Union (AASU) did not achieve the desired results. During your discussions with the ULFA leadership, did any of the issues, such as cross-border migration of people crop up? A: These are all lessons to be learnt from history. My discussions with Paresh Baruah were primarily focussed on the ways and means to initiate a process of dialogue with the government. It needs to be realised that no discussions have taken place for 25 years. Nobody has seen them. One does not know whether Paresh Baruah is fair or dark, tall or short. Even I have not met him, although I have seen his photograph and he should have seen mine. Q: What message are you taking from the government for the ULFA leadership? A: There are certain clarifications which have been sought. For obvious reasons, I cannot spell these out. Q: You said your role is limited to bringing the ULFA leadership to the negotiating table and not beyond. Can you elaborate? A: If they want my help I am ready to offer. I want peace to return to Assam and fulfill the desire of all mothers of Assamese boys who have left their homes and living in ULFA camps. I want to reduce the influx of students from Assam to Delhi and other places who are actually pumping out of the state more than Rs 50 crore annually in the process. As of now, however, I am only trying to bring both sides to the negotiating table and have drafted the appeal in close consultation with my close friend Prof Manoranjan Mohanty. Q: When are you coming back to the government? Have you spoken to Paresh Baruah after meeting the Prime Minister? A: I really do not know when I would be the meeting the Prime Minister again. Yes, I have spoken to Paresh Baruah shortly after my meeting with the Prime Minister. In fact, I received a call from him here in Delhi and he further reiterated that “sovereignty” should be the core issue. Q: During your talks with the ULFA leadership, did they at any point of time indicate that international pressure was building around them? A: Absolutely not. I asked him (Baruah): Are you really free? Will you be able to come? He understood my tone. He said: You call me anywhere, after the letter of commitment, I will come. Even if it is Guwahati, I will come. He understood me, I suppose, though I did not reveal anything to him. Q: When did you first come in contact with Paresh Baruah? A: I came in contact with Paresh Baruah after I received the Jnanpith Award in 2001. I received a telephone call from him one evening at my Guwahati residence congratulating me on my
achievement. |
Profile
And he is rarest of the breed in the sense that his first-ever novel “Sniffing Papa, translated in French and christened La Chambre des parfunds (Chamber of perfume) bagged France's prestigious literary award. The work was adjudged the best foreign debut novel of 2004. The best comment, possibly, came from Laurence Leamer, America's greatest biographer and best selling author: “Badhwar has taken the expatriate experience, reinvented it, and turned a Third World novel into a whole world novel. It is very brave… wise…”. The book started as a short story, actually a series of short stories, that were feudal with the protagonist, an old man, having died and been cremated. The family enters his room and cannot fathom that he is no more. It is the grandmother who tells them that if they observe silence, they can smell his soul. “What did you remember when you first smelt”? The title of the book came to Badhwar's mind like a flash: “Sniffing Papa”. In a late evening chat, Badhwar, a long-time friend of this columnist, candidly admitted: “Once I started, it was a test for me…what I could remember about my life as a series of events”. He said rather mysteriously, “as a journalist, I discovered that as a writer now, I could see a world that had vanished and I told myself I would be 'non-judgmental' about the world”. Evidently, as he himself says, he did not want to produce an amalgam of Malgudi Days or Munshi Prem Chand or Bharti Mukherjee”. He then began to create the characters and then flesh them out. Once a composite Papa figure was put on the scene, he turned out to be a bundle of contradictions — a snob, a humanitarian, an aristocrat and yet a man of villagers, an atheist yet married to someone avowedly religiously. “I thought I would flesh him out and then tackle his children”, says Badhwar and adds, “this is a period novel—Raipur and its puja room, its shikari, the children (all westernised) — and they have their own characteristics, a privileged tribe of Anglicised 'mongrels' in a tribal homeland called India”. And, from where did he discover Raipur, which is the present capital of Chhattisgarh state? Badhwar says it is not the same Raipur, once a flourishing town of undivided Madhya Pradesh. The name came to him instinctively; it sounds so Indian. His imaginary Raipur is located somewhere in Uttar Pradesh. Badhwar is working on his second novel and its title may be “Survival”; the theme being something about survival in the depths of poverty and degradation. It is certainly not about glorifying misery, but about humanising these faces. Combining his skills as a journalist and as a writer, he seeks to demonstrate how human spirit overcomes all odds. Characters, still in the conceptual stage, include a Muslim widow with nine children, a dowry victim and the struggle of widows of Vrindavan and Varanasi for survival. How is that these women survive and still smile? From where they get their strength, he asks with anguish writ large on his face. “I am trying to put an spiritual content in it”, he says. It will take about two years to complete the novel. Born in Ujhani, a dust-laden market town of north India, Badhwar completed his education in Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College and then moved to the US in 1968 and graduated from New York's Columbia School of Journalism. He then joined syndicated columnist Jack Anderson's staff as a senior investigative reporter and feature writer. He also functioned as chief correspondent for the TV programme “Jack Anderson Confidential”. Badhwar returned to India in 1986 and became Executive Editor of “India
Today”. |
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Reflections WHILE being in New York, I watched the Presidential elections with a great deal of curiosity and 'comparative' interest. Particularly also when alongside, for some period of time, in India we were having Assembly elections. I could watch the US and the Indian processes on the CNN and Zee TV channels and the NDTV on the internet. Let me share with my readers as I saw. We know by now who the winner was. But I am not on the question of who won or lost but the processes of this whole circus/scenario as it was spread over the past many months.
Comparison with situation back home leaves me with the following questions. Where are the families of our Indian candidates by and large? And when they or some of them are there how are they viewed? What kind of role do they play? Where are the spouses in particular? And do the voters know who they are voting for? And on which all issues? What is the measurability and the accountability? Do we have the kind of money donations to fully exploit the technologies? What about the knowledge of the candidates? Their willingness to debate and challenge? The TVs following it by a Fact Sheet check. By this I mean anything the candidate said was checked out on facts and declared true or false. The Indian electoral systems have come a long way. Past two of the Election Commissioners have been honoured with the prestigious Magsaysay Award, equivalent to Asian Nobel Prize for the integrity with which they conducted the processes. Yet, in many ways, it has still a long way to go in this circus of reality. Particularly, the voters really knowing who they are voting for. And the overall knowledge and administrative skills of the persons seeking their votes. Also is the issue of levels of accountability at various stages, of this huge circus. And not to forget the family. Most of all needed are candidates with a record of impeccable integrity having administrative skills, without pending prosecutions. (Based on evidence or
not). |
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Kashmir Diary Mirwaiz Umar Farooq will be the centre of attention over the coming week. Strategists in both India and Pakistan will be keenly watching his moves. Although eight senior separatist leaders of Kashmir are to have lunch with Pakistan Prime Minister Sartaj Aziz next Wednesday, Umar has been cast in the key role as leader. That is quite a turning point, for it indicates that Pakistan has finally given up on Ali Shah Geelani, who championed Pakistan's cause in Kashmir for the past 14 years. Pakistan has arranged a sinecure for him as Patron-in-chief of a reunited Hurriyat but Umar is the horse Pakistan now backs in the hope that he will obtain for them some face-saving result, albeit far short of the Kashmir valley's merger with Pakistan. The change in backing follows Umar's meeting with President Pervez Musharraf in Holland a couple of months ago. Umar already had detailed discussions in Saudi Arabia with a group headed by the ISI chief and those meetings were evidently so positive from the Pakistani viewpoint that Umar was persuaded to go to Holland from England, where he was already heading to meet his sister. In the process, Pakistan has switched from insisting that, to them, “Geelani is Hurriyat” (I quote Pakistan's Information Minister) to working overtime for reunification of the Hurriyat, which had split in the summer of 2003. They have evidently realised that, although Geelani was utterly loyal to the Pakistani cause, he did not enthuse the common Kashmiri people. No doubt, they had not earlier realised how deeply suspicious the Kashmiris are of the relatively fundamentalist Islam that Geelani's hard line faction of the Jamaat-e-Islami espouses. Now Pakistan has been deeply suspicious of Umar for several years. His statements have been moderate and Hurriyat did virtually nothing during 1993-98 when he continued as the conglomerate's founder chairman. Indeed, he was the strongest, albeit low-key, supporter of Abdul Ghani Lone when the latter took a radical line in late 1999, equating Pakistan with India with regard to the Kashmiris' attitude to each. And a few weeks before Lone was assassinated on May 21, 2002, it was Umar who had asked that Lone be included in discussions that the then ISI chief wanted to hold with Umar in Dubai. The operation to wean over Umar over the past few months has been no less lethal than the one through which Lone was neutralised. Militants shot at Umar, who has surely not forgotten his father's assassination in 1990. Then, the Islamia school, which the Mirwaiz family has run for decades, was burnt to cinders. And to make sure the message was unmistakable, Umar's uncle and close associate, Maulvi Mushtaq, was assassinated. So, of course, Pakistan will now hope that the young Mirwaiz will toe its line. His first test will come when he leads not just the reunited Hurriyat executive but also such leaders as Shabir Shah, who have been invited together to lunch with the Pakistan Prime Minister in New Delhi on November 24. The statements he makes before and after will be carefully watched on both sides. Indian authorities were very unhappy with a statement he made a few days ago, which sounded as if allowing the Hurriyat leaders to visit Pakistan was a pre-condition to their agreeing to talk to the Government of India. Umar is a smart enough politician to have amended that statement, clarifying soon after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Srinagar that going to Pakistan was not a condition. Instead, he stated that the Hurriyat leaders would respond if the Government formally invited them for talks with the Prime Minister. Now, of course, that is unlikely. So is the likelihood of their being allowed to visit Pakistan. Yet, Pakistan will not brook anything less than that Umar ensure that Pakistan is included in what it calls a triangular dialogue process between India, Pakistan and those whom it projects as “the representatives of the Kashmiri people.” Umar will have to do some deft tightrope walking if he is to emerge unscathed — or even use this opportunity to emerge as a political leader of stature. Not only will he have to watch out for his safety, he will have to work fast in the face of the growing popularity of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's
party. |
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Diversities — Delhi Letter THERE has been so much happening that I have been going round in circles. Trade Fair? No, who's interested in buying and selling and counter-selling, complete with bargaining? Focus on CK? No, Calvin Klein is no buddy of mine. But then, that's what American's leading style man is labeled who'd come calling. To have a dekho at what our nimble fingers are capable of crafting. Along with CK, our very own Rajeev Sethi also resurfaced. For almost three decades, Sethi had been focusing on the lesser known rural artisans, snake charmers, folk dancers, nautanki and tamasha wallahs etc. Getting passionate about them when this focusing hadn't been fashionable, he remained unmoving from this area of interest. And he'd taken CK around and showed him varied aspects of the Indian cultural spheres. This weekend, legal expert Abhishek Singhvi hosted a dinner in honour of Pakistan's advocate Mehmood Mandivala, who gets installed here (in India) as President, SAARCLAW. Also in town is Pakistan's leading academic and physicist, Parvez Hoodbhoy. He has been giving talks at IIT, JNU and DU. Three contemporary writers from Australia are on a literary tour to New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. They read passages from their books at a session at the Oberoi hotel. I found a definite intensity in what Peter Goldsworthy read out. He is a well-known physician and also Australia's leading writer. His novels have sold more than a quarter of a million copies in Australia and have been translated into several European and Asian languages. He has been short-listed for the 2004 Miles Franklin Award. The passage which he'd read out from one of his bestsellers “Three Dog Night” (Penguin India) begins thus: “Is it possible to be too much in love?” Read through to find the answer. While you read and find answer(s) to the love factor, we move on. Eid greetings,
all over Lately, some obvious changes can be seen on the roads of New Delhi. One must have seen the road-names painted in Urdu along with English and Hindi. After all, Urdu had been the connecting language of the masses. Last week, I spotted huge posters and banners on some prominent intersections of the city, carrying messages wishing the citizens ‘Eid Mubarak’. Shall we say, a nice gesture? Sonia Gandhi's
gesture On Friday, to mark the birth anniversary of the late Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released the book, “Two Alone, Two Together: Letters Between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru 1922-1964”. Edited by United Progressive
Alliance Chairman Sonia Gandhi and published by Penguin Books, the book contains letters/correspondence between the father and daughter stretched over 40
years. |
You will surely see Him when you surrender your ego and not before. — The Upanishads The Supreme Truth is immortal and indestructible. It has remained the same since the beginning of time. One who does not know this, is merely deluding himself. One who feels that all that exists is the present, is making a grave mistake. — The Bhagvad Gita |
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