The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Service as a legal right
State should deliver without litigation

Providing time-bound government services to harried citizens is a challenge that states are increasingly taking up. Madhya Pradesh was the first in the country to pass the Public Services Guarantee Act 2010. Bihar followed with the Right to Service Act. Global watchdog Transparency International has praised both states for their attempt to limit corruption. Delhi selected five departments last year to clear files in a stipulated time and now the law is ready. UP too has prepared the Janhit Guarantee Act. Punjab has issued an Ordinance, while in Haryana the deputy commissioners have been told to ensure that 15 services are delivered in the given time schedule.

On paper these are commendable moves. Corruption at lower levels is endemic. Government officials from top to bottom sit on files waiting for bribe. Therefore, empowerment of the citizen to seek any of the stipulated services as a legal right and hold the official concerned accountable if the same is denied comes as a pleasant surprise. But there will be problems – though not insurmountable. How many have the time and money to pursue their complaints about petty services with higher or appellate authorities? Officials will be flooded with complaints. Bihar has computerised administrative work and can monitor complaints of deficient services. Officers in charge of under-staffed offices or those not obliging politicians can be harassed with fines.

For the citizen’s sake, the state’s role needs to shrink – from being a “mai-baap” to a facilitator. The official and political mindset should change. Procedures have to be simplified. The citizen should not be treated as a suspect and told to file affidavits. But cheating or fraud, if any, should be sternly dealt with. Most public services can be offered online. Instead of blindly copying Madhya Pradesh’s law states should find less complicated ways to help citizens. Laws can help up to a point. There is no alternative to good governance.

M.F. Hussain’s deep mark
His exile was a blot on India

That legendary painter M F Hussain, who passed away in London on Thursday was unable to return to his own country for reasons of hounding by some diehard zealots, had stopped making news. Once in a while, it disturbed sensitive minds, but the issue had left the arena of public discourse.

Our secular credentials certainly got a knock when an artist of the repute of Hussain, who, ironically brought the Indian culture on canvas for the international community, was almost forced to leave the country, accused of ‘polluting’ the Indian culture. More surprising, with all the arrogance of being the largest democracy in the world, we could not offer safety to an artist touching 90! The government felt helpless, the artist community chose to maintain an inexplicable silence, while gallery owners had the excuse of securing their investment. And, there was no civil society to speak for the artist’s rights. So, the biggest investment any progressive society could make in its cultural growth, by letting its artists enjoy creative freedom, invited its own death.

What did Hussain do to earn an exile, and to die in exile? He was true to the only religion he knew; of being an artist. He was unconstrained in experiencing life and giving an expression to it. And, experience cannot be labelled by a religion. The world of art recognised his transcendence. He was the first Indian to have shown his works in foreign lands, he was the first whose works were auctioned by Christie’s. But, all this became insignificant before the militant brand of some Hindu fanatics who choose to remain ignorant about the tradition of artistic freedom enjoyed by poets like Kalidasa who wrote the highly erotic Kumar Sambhavam, and artisans who created Khajuraho and Konark. Hussain was simply following a cultural legacy he was born into. He was punished for doing it in a modern, democratic, secular state.

Thought for the Day

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt — Charles M. Schulz

Corrections and clarifications

In the first sentence of the report “Baba threatens armed rebellion” (Page 1, June 9), instead of the expression ‘cracked down’ there is a wrong usage ‘cracked downed’.

In the lead report on Page 9 of the issue of June 9 the first deck of the headline “Team to assess damage to apple crop” is confusing because the second deck says “Growers have suffered losses of Rs 248 crore”.

The headline “40 illegal Indians held in UK raids” (Page 19, June 9) is erroneous because the news is that these Indians were working illegally. To say that they are illegal is wrong.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

Raj Chengappa
Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLE

Mid-summer madness in Delhi
The Congress damages itself
by Inder Malhotra

Both sides must share the blame for the farce into which morphed the yoga guru, Baba Ramdev’s crusade against black money and corruption. But the ruling United Progressive Alliance – or, to be exact, the Congress, for none of its UPA allies was involved in either making or executing policy – has done itself a lot more damage than it has been able to inflict on the rather outlandish Baba, who runs a super de luxe yoga centre at Haridwar.

Ironically, the leading lights of the Manmohan Singh government chose to wound themselves and the party to which they belong at a time when the maverick Baba’s fast and agitation were showing signs of losing steam. It is no exaggeration to say that the powers-that-be swung from one extreme stupidity to another in a short span of 72 hours and thus fell between two stools with a thud that has reverberated across the country.

If the unprecedented kowtowing to the Baba by a team of ministers, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, on his arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport was a sign of weakness and abdication of responsibility, the totally avoidable police action on Sunday midnight to evict from Ramlila Grounds those gathered in support of the Baba was brutal, to say the least. The Supreme Court’s suo motu notice to the Union Home Secretary, Delhi’s Chief Secretary and the Capital’s Commissioner of Police to explain what threat was anticipated from men, women and children, “sleeping peacefully”, speaks for itself.

A pertinent question that some are asking is: Why hasn’t the Delhi Police ever removed the agitating Gujars from Rajasthan who have periodically besieged the capital, stopped all traffic, burnt buses and indulged in an orgy of violence?

The National Human Rights Commission is also concerned, as it should be. The videos of police assaults on innocent people and the poor woman paralysed for life because of a spinal injury give the lie to the bland declaration of the Delhi Police that there was “no lathi charge and the people were treated with kid gloves”. Mercifully, the disgraceful episode is before the apex court and cannot be brushed under the carpet, as usual, by craven authorities.

With the passage of time, the Ramdev tragicomedy will also pass. But the bumbling government has ensured that some of its harmful consequences would continue to haunt it. Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi, for all the achievements he boasts of, can never live down his responsibility for the ghastly Gujarat riots in 2002. The Congress-led UPA, too, would have to pay a heavy price for its mid-summer madness in Delhi for a long time. It is, of course, absurd to compare this atrocity to Jallianwala Bagh or even the Emergency. But the action taken was draconian and utterly uncalled for.

One explanation for the government’s too-clever-by-half dual strategy is that by initially kneeling before the Baba and treating him like royalty, it hoped to draw a wedge between him and Anna Hazare. At one stage it seemed that the sly design was succeeding. But, by then, almost the entire country was furious with the “weak” government’s virtual “abdication”. That is when the government decided to embark on the midnight swoop to show that it was strong. Consequently, it has courted not just double whammy but a load of trouble. Just look at some pointers.

First, instead of being discredited, Baba Ramdev has become a hero, despite all the efforts of the government and its spin-doctors to denounce him as an “agent of the RSS”. Secondly, as it happened, during the last stages of the dismal drama in Delhi, the BJP was holding a conclave in Lucknow. There it was evident that the party was at sixes and sevens, devoid of any issue and more fragmented and dysfunctional than the ruling establishment in Delhi.

The unspeakable high-handedness at Ramlila Grounds and the Congress’ unfailing proclivity to convert every inconvenient problem into a no-holds-barred confrontation between itself and the Sangh Parivar has reunited and energised the saffron party. It is a different matter, however, that the BJP’s counter-attack on the Congress has been besmirched by Sushma Swaraj’s sudden urge to stage a most inappropriate dance at, of all places, the Mahatma’s samadhi at Rajghat. The Lok Sabha deserves a more serious leader of the Opposition.

On the other hand, the Congress and its leadership need to be told that the massive and mounting popular anger against egregious corruption cannot be averted or even abated by trying to “communalise corruption”. Those deeply committed to secularism are as fed up with this scourge as “communalists” or anyone else. Neither the vile abuse of the Baba by senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh nor the chorus of condemnation of “communal forces” would confuse the issue. On the contrary, Textile Minister Dayanidhi Maran’s alleged shenanigans, sensational in nature and now under investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), are likely to add fuel to the fire.

Thirdly, the government’s attempts at dividing the civil society by bringing about a discord between Anna Hazare and the Baba has boomeranged. At first inclined to distance himself from the fasting Baba, Anna has reaffirmed support to the yoga guru. Moreover, dissatisfied with the government’s stand on some issues concerning the Lok Pal Bill, Anna is withdrawing from the joint drafting committee and going on a second fast. Denied access to Jantar Mantar by the Delhi Police he would do so at Rajghat. Does this mean that in the world’s largest democracy the fundamental right to assemble and protest peacefully can no longer be exercised without the consent of the government and its minions?

Finally, there is a mystery that needs to be solved. From the time the four-minister team drove to the airport to welcome the Baba and talk to him for two hours until after the shameful swoop on peaceful people, sundry Congress leaders went on proclaiming that the whole thing was a matter for the government and the “party had nothing to do with it”. But is it conceivable that Mr. Mukherjee would have travelled to the airport without Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s approval or knowledge? Furthermore, the police action took place several hours after a high-level meeting at her residence. Was the proposed operation never mentioned at it? As usual, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi hasn’t said a word. Only Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has justified the police swoop as “necessary”, even if “unfortunate”. Let’s await the Supreme Court’s verdict.n

MIDDLE

Off with their heads….
by S.V. Singh

The recent judgment of the Supreme Court in Vinayak Sen’s case reminded me of an identical incident in my career. In 1971 while working as SP Patiala I came to know that a young student doing his M.A in Punjabi University was in possession of leftist revolutionary literature. His room was a meeting point for the Naxalites.

Surveillance was kept and he was picked up for questioning. Some over-enthusiastic intelligence official quietly informed my DIG about the catch. The DIG office was a few steps away from my office. The DIG summoned me and said: “It is good you have got the Naxalite. Bump him off”. I was shocked to hear the order for the summary execution of the Naxalite from my DIG.

I tried to reason with him: “Sir, he is not a Naxalite who has taken part in any act of violence. He is only a budding leftist intellectual.” But the DIG was in no mood to listen. Though otherwise affectionate, he threatened me, “If you do not do what I have told you, it will go against you.” I found it entirely futile to argue with him. I took his leave, went to the Civil Line police station, Patiala, where the youngster was being questioned. I ensured that the SHO formally arrested him immediately. I was apprehensive that if I did not complete the formality of his arrest, my over-enthusiastic DIG might get him “encountered” by some other official.

The DIG later rose to head the state police, and so did I after some time. I had the good fortune to save quite a few such youngsters from unimaginative police actions.

Prof Harold Laski, a great political scientist of the last century, who influenced a number of budding Indian political activists then studying in the U.K, including Jawaharlal Nehru, once remarked: “There is something wrong with a person who is not a socialist till 40 years of his age. But if he continues to be so even after that age, there is again something wrong with him”.

These remarks of Professor Laski truly reflect the reason for the presence of a large number of budding left-oriented intellectuals in various reputed institutional of learning like J.N.U and various other reputed professional colleges in the country.

The state must take effective action to deal with Naxalites if they indulge in unlawful activities. But the state should also take several steps for social justice. It is not coincidental that Naxalism has spread in the most poorly governed states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand. It is the bounden duty of the state to ensure accelerated development in the rural areas and improved governance of these states. Only then will police action against Naxalism succeed..n

oped art

The Bhangra Imperialism
The rustic folk Bhangra is colonising the West, pop-singers in the UK are rubbing shoulders with the Manns. And, the highest ranking rapper like Jay Z, from the US, is singing English translation of popular Punjabi numbers.
Anjali Gera Roy

Bhangra, defined as British Asian dance music by music scholars in the West, is as British as chicken tikka masala today. But it looks back to a Panjabi harvest rite of the same name dating back to the time of Alexander’s invasion of India that continues to be performed at the annual festivals of lohri, baisakhi and all birth-related ceremonies in Punjab and in the Punjabi diasporas worldwide. No Panjabi wedding is complete without a round of Bhangra. Nor is any other celebration.

Bhangra is essentially the old circle dance with dancers moving around the dholi or the drummer in varying rhythms, exclaiming Balle Balle! Oh Balle Balle.

The hybrid appeal

Bhangra’s origins are steeped in mystery. Some trace it back to the worship of the god Shiva during which inebriated worshippers would perform a wild dance around the deity. A dance genre called Bhangra is believed to date back to the 14th century. Some scholars view it as a pastoral dance and locate its origins in agricultural rhythms while others maintain that it originated in martial exercises of soldiers. But modern Bhangra was invented after the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 to refer to a mix of gender, region, sect based dance genres that may be found in the doaba or the deltas of Panjab’s five rivers. It is rumoured that the Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh, was invited to watch a dance performed by a team in the Panjabi Univeristy, Patiala, that borrowed movements from all these genres and was named Bhangra. The Maharaja was so impressed by the team, trained by the legendary dholi Bhanna Ram Sunami, that he nominated it to stage post-colonial Punjabi identity at the first Republic Day Parade in Delhi. Its subsequent performance in schools, colleges and state functions naturalised Bhangra, a dance genre marginalised to the more popular jhummar in undivided Punjab, as Punjabi dance. Modern Bhangra is primarily based on the sialkoti style though it has amalgamated movements from other genres such as jhummar, malwai giddha, luddi, julli, dhamal, pathania, gatka and dankara as well.

Until the eighties, Punjabi dance and song remained discrete with folksingers such as Asa Singh Mastana, Surinder Kaur, Kuldip Manak and other enjoying unprecedented popularity in Punjab while Bhangra was consecrated as Punjabi dance. The late seventies witnessed the birth of the singer dancer Gurdas Mann who modernized Punjabi folksong and added dance to it to invent a new genre that came to be known as Panjabipop or Bhangrapop. Bhangra’s reinvention in India intersected with its reinvention in Britain through its hybridisation with black musical sounds triggering a Bhangra revival both at home and in the diasporas. Within a decade, Daler Mehndi became the first non-film, regional singer to challenge Hindi film music’s hegemony and transformed Bhangra into national popular music. Bhangra’s Bollywood invasion was also ushered by Mehndi’s appearance in the Amitabh Bachchan comeback vehicle Mrityudata(1995). Bhangra’s reinvention in Punjab, however, is attributed to Malkit Singh whose borrowing of a pashtun ditty tootak toootak tootiyan made him an overnight sensation. Malkit Singh now shuttles between Ludhiana and Birmingham and has received the highest honours in Britian.

Dhol: the cool drum

In Britain, Apache Indian’s mixing of dhol beats with reggae spawned a new genre that was hailed by the British media as the voice of the Asian youth and soon became part of global youth culture. Around the same time, ‘Asia’s most popular DJ’, Bally Sagoo, began to remix traditional Bhangra songs to produce ‘cool’ versions that became very popular with Asian youth in Britain and subsequently in India. Within a few years, Bhangra could claim to be part of the British mainstream with Panjabi MC’s ‘Mundian ton bach ke’ jumping to the top of the charts in UK and to have invaded global popular culture by the new millennium with Jay Z’s rapping on the same song ( Beware of the Boys) that pushed it to among top 10 position in the US charts.

Bhangra today offers a galaxy of stars like Sukhbir, Jazzy B, Harbhajan Mann, Juggy D, Labh Janjua and so on who have no fixed address but they glide between Punjab and the Punjabi diasporas in the UK, Canada and Australia. Bhangra is produced, distributed and consumed in so many parts of the world today that it becomes impossible to tell where it comes from.

The Queen’s Bhangra…

British Bhangra has been hailed as the new Asian dance music marking British Asian presence on the popular cultural scene. But hybrid Bhangra genres, including the homegrown Bhangrapop or Panjabipop invented by Gurdas Mann and Daler Mehndi, have met with skepticism in India though Indian youth have taken to them in a big way. Bhangra mutants are dismissed for disregarding several felicity conditions of traditional Bhangra. They are seen as violating the rules of Bhangra performance by mixing movements and styles from ‘alien’ Western dance forms and failing to observe norms relating to what can be said, by whom and where. Purists consider their failure to retain gender space by allowing exposure of female body to the public gaze as the gravest offence. But beneath the allegations of new Bhangra hybrids’ ‘obscenity’ and ‘vulgarity’ one can hear a genuine concern about the sacrilege of Panjabi harvest rite through its contamination by commercial interest.

Beating Bollywood

But new Bhangra mutants, both the desi hybrids of Gurdas Mann and Daler Mehndi and vilayeti hybrids of Bally Sagoo and Panjabi MC, have invaded the nation’s popular cultural vocabulary challenging Bollywood’s hegemony in the Indian popular cultural space. Bhangra is no longer confined to Panjab or Panjabis but can be heard as far as Thiruvananthapuram where Daler Mehndi is reported to have sold a million copies. From the nightclubs of Delhi and Bangalore to the lanes of Mumbai and Goa, Indian youth of all classes, castes and regions might be seen dancing to the beats of Panjabi music. Bhangra’s popularity, in fact, made Bollywood capitulate to ‘low’ Panjabi tastes and make Bhangra a part of its song and dance sequence. In fact, Bhangra’s Bollywood turn nationalised it completely. Its performance at Bollywood wedding and ‘family gathering’ scenes made Indian groups, other than Panjabis, incorporate it in their traditional celebratory rites.

In fact, the space cleared by Bhangra mutants in the Indian popular cultural space has made room for other Panjabi genres such as jugni and heer but also other folk traditions such as Rajasthani and Gujarati. The national youth icon of the new millennium was a young Sikh called Rabbi Shergill who has set a twelfth century sufi poet Bulle Shah’s verses to music. Thus, Bhangra’s popularity appears to have ushered a regional and folk music revival on the Indian subcontinent. Folk is not decried as rustic but has become part of the new ‘cool’ that embraces a wide sonic range from rap to techno. Rustic Panjabi artists now enjoy a large following among urban youth, even the Westernized segment, to a limited extent. Panjabi harvest rite’s ejection into the popular cultural space has brought it unimaginable visibility and popularity. But the price it has had to pay is to submit to the laws of popular cultural commerce. Bhangra is so deeply immersed in the field of commerce that it cannot function outside the market.

Folk is chic

Does the harvest rite lose out to the popular dance? Does its centrality to youth communities disengage Bhangra from its original ‘folk’? All evidence points to the contrary. Purists might rage at the promiscuous mixing of genders, genres and languages. But Panjabis of all genders, age, class, castes and professions continue to dance Bhangra at every opportunity. Bhangra of all varieties, pure, hybrid, traditional, modern, live, recorded, is now played at Panjabi gatherings. Rural Bhangra professionals can be playing along side anglicised DJs at the same family event. Panjabi matrons would as easily join the rustic dancers and musicians in singing a traditional boli as waddling across to the improvised dance floor to dance to Panjabi MC’s mundian ton bach ke raheen. Bhangra moves at these occasions range from the ‘purest’ gatka or ‘snake dance’ to imitations of salsa and macarena. Who cares where Bhangra comes from and mixed with what foreign elements? What matters is performance of the rite! Bhangra, of any kind, is still the spontaneous expression of joy to mark an auspicious occasion! The carnivalesque bingeing of eating, drinking, and dancing and the license to indulge witnessed during Bhangra performance makes its role in the Panjabi sacred suspect. But Bhanga performed at live ceremonies is stamped with the same auspiciousness that marks other fertility rites. As harvest dance, Bhangra permits the play of the profane within the sacred, in tune with the reproduction of life that is often mistaken for licentiousness and degeneracy.

(The writer is a professor of social sciences at IIT Kharagpur)

Mundian to bach ke raheen or Beware of the Boys

The song by Punjabi MC was originally released in the U K on 1998 album Legalised. Partially fueled by Internet downloads, it charted again in 2003. In Germany, it sold over 100,000 in the first two days alone, and debuted at #2 in the Germany charts and reached #1 in the Italy charts. The week of its release in the UK, it debuted at #5 on the top 40 charts; it was also the first bhangra song to reach the UK top 10.

The Ja y Z remix also hit #33 on the Billborad Charts in the US and #10 in Canada. Total sales of Mundian To Bach Ke are estimated between 1 million and 10 million units.

Malkit has been awarded the prestigious MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) by the British Queen for his services to bhangra music. In 2010, the story of how bhangra arrived and developed in the UK was told in the stage musical Britain’s Got Bhangra, produced by Rifco Arts.