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A significant catch
Women’s security |
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Shakespearean comedy
US-India ties hit a plateau
Proud to be a bureaucrat?
The marginal masculinity of a ghar jawai
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A significant catch
THE arrest of Abdul Karim 'Tunda' is a major feather in the cap of intelligence agencies and of the Delhi Police. One of India's top 20 wanted terrorists, he is considered to be the man behind over 40 bombings at various places in India. Tunda, the 70-year-old bombmaker, is affiliated to Lashkar-e-Toiba, and has been on the list of terrorists which India has demanded the Pakistani government hand over. He has eluded the net for long, but interrogation by the police of the high-level operative has already shown how Tunda was in touch with other terrorists like Hafiz Saeed, Maulana Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim. In the coming days, the police will, no doubt, be able to piece together a better picture of the activities and the interaction of the carpenter-turned-terrorist.
The Pakistani hand in the terror networks that have carried out their nefarious activities has been obvious. Tunda was carrying a Pakistani passport in the name of Abdul Quddus. He was based in Pakistan and was in touch with the various other terrorist organisations and operators there. Terrorists get refuge, indoctrination, active assistance and training in Pakistan from where they are targeted to attack India. Indeed, the recent flare-ups along the line of control are thought to be cover activities aimed at facilitating the infiltration of terrorists into Jammu and
Kashimir. The police and intelligence agencies will continue to pick the brains of what is being described as the biggest catch till now. Tunda is believed to have interacted with terrorists of various hues and persuasions, including Babbar Khalsa International. No doubt his arrest and subsequent interrogation will yield a rich load of information that will have to be verified and used. Even though Tunda was not considered a top terrorist operations person in the recent years, he is an ideologue and an orator who ran a well-knit network in Pakistan and Bangladesh. He has long been in the game and has much to answer for. Coordination between various stakeholders will go a long way in optimising the use of operationable intelligence.
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Women’s security
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Delhi-based non-partisan research and advocacy group has rated the entire country at D+ on its gender score board. On a scale of A to J (1 to 10) the ranking was done based on seven indicators: sex-ratio, health, education, political representation, crimes against women, employment and decision-making. The rating is based on official sources, reducing any doubt about the authenticity of the data used. For example, the group has rated the whole country at F on crimes against women, based on data available with the National Crime Records Bureau, which shows all states have registered a rise in crimes against women accompanied with falling conviction rates.
These are alarming indicators as state governments, especially in the North, are not tired of proclaiming their achievements on gender issues. But the reality behind the nice-sounding schemes could actually be grim. The northern states have done poorly on the sex-ratio front. Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana are among the worst, while states in the South like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have done well for women. Kerala also scores the highest on women's health and education front.
Education is the only front where almost all states have shown some improvement, but it is nullified by a high drop-out rate, which remains a worrisome factor. In a country that doesn't get tired of boasting of having given a woman Prime Minister and a President, female political participation in the entire country is lower than all of its South Asian neighbours. However, the proportion of women judges in High Courts varies - 3.1 per cent in Andhra Pradesh to 16.7 per cent in Rajasthan and Delhi. The states in the North-East and the South have done far better than the states in the North when it comes to women's security, health, education and decision-making. It is time Punjab, Haryana and J&K showed seriousness in dealing with gender-related issues.
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Shakespearean comedy
IT could have turned into one more Comedy of Errors but for the sloppy handwriting and misspelt words in the signature style of the creative genius of Shakespeare (1564-1616). The Spanish Tragedy, a play written by Thomas Kyd, around the same time the celebrated bard wrote Hamlet, had 325 additional lines of dubious origin. Scholars had scratched their heads for years to decipher the difference in the style and diction of this additional text. Finally, an English Professor, Douglas Bruster from the University of Texas, unravelled the mystery behind the misspelt words in the additional text. Words like 'spotless' and 'darkness' spelt with a single 's' and the peculiar use of past tense - as in 'wrapped' written as 'wrapt' and 'blessed' as 'blest' offered a cue where the text might have originated. It came from the pen of Shakespeare, whose spelling habits had been first identified by Bruster in the manuscript pages of a 16th century play Sir Thomas More.
Thankfully, Shakespeare did not have to appear in the National Spelling Bee competitions, else he would have faced defeat from the natives of a British colony. The Bard of Avon thus could concentrate on playwriting, for plays in his times were staged, and not to be read. His spellings and tenses therefore offer much fodder to scholars who probably could never touch the height of his creative genius.
We must be thankful to Shakespeare for not joining the medical profession,for Time magazine claims 7,000 patients die annually due to doctors' illegible handwriting. The geographical coincidence of his place of birth saved him too. Thankfully again, he was not born in France, where graphology, the pseudo science of handwriting, was invented 122 years ago by Jean-Hyppolite Michon, and became one of the oddities that the French took to heart. Another Frenchman, Jules Crépieux-Jamin, developed such insights into it that corporates hire graphologists to know more about their employees. In France Shakespeare would have ended up writing Tragedy of Errors!
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I used to be indecisive but now I am not quite sure. —Tommy Cooper
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US-India ties hit a plateau
IT has now been confirmed that before going to New York to participate in the UN General Assembly deliberations in New York, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be visiting Washington in September for his second bilateral engagement with US President Barack Obama. Though New Delhi was very keen on the visit and the US President had extended an invitation to Manmohan Singh earlier this year, it's not entirely clear what a lame-duck Prime Minister is likely to achieve during this
visit. That US-India ties have hit a plateau has been evident from the lackluster engagements between the two sides in recent months.
It was the turn of US Vice President Joseph — a month after Secretary of State John Kerry's visit -- to India to reassure New Delhi how Washington remains keen on a robust partnership with India. Biden's four-day visit to India last month, first for a US Vice President in three decades, was aimed at laying the groundwork for the Indian Prime Minister's visit to the US in September. Though it was clear from the very beginning that Biden's trip will not result in any 'deliverables', it also remains a mystery as to what an Indian Prime Minister at the fag-end of his term and with hardly any political capital left will be able to do to galvanise this very important relationship with a perfunctory visit to the
US. These are difficult times for the US-India bilateral relationship which has been flagging for quite some time now and there is little likelihood of it gaining momentum anytime soon. The growing differences between the two today are not limited to one or two areas but are spread across most areas of bilateral concern. These include market access issues, the problems in implementing the US-India civil nuclear accord, the US immigration changes, changing US posture towards Afghanistan, defence cooperation and trade. Biden's visit was specifically focused on trying to give a push to economic ties, enhancing cooperation on defence issues, pushing India for a greater role in the Asia-Pacific and addressing climate change.
That the US is clearly concerned about Indian economic slowdown was reflected in Biden's comments. He exhorted New Delhi to try to take bilateral trade with the US to $500 billion by removing trade barriers and inconsistencies in the tax regime. He recommended more measures like recent relaxation in the FDI rules by underlining "caps in FDI, inconsistent tax system, barriers to market access, civil nuclear cooperation, bilateral investment treaty and policies protecting investment."
Investor confidence in the Indian economy, Asia's third largest, is at an all-time low with growth slowing down to its lowest level in a decade. Foreign direct investment slid about 21 per cent to $36.9 billion last fiscal year compared with 2011-12. The US is keen to see India remove investment caps in sectors like finance, retail and insurance. The US corporate sector has been up in arms in recent months about India's trade policies, complaining that American firms are being discriminated against and the US intellectual property rights are being undermined by India. Sporadic outbursts of reform measures from New Delhi have not been enough to restore investor confidence in India even as Indian policymakers are now busy trying to secure their votes for the next elections. Policy-making in India remains paralyzed and haphazard with Washington getting increasingly frustrated with the Indian government's lackadaisical public policy.
For his part, Biden went out of his way to assuage the concerns of the Indian corporate sector by suggesting that Washington plans to increase the number of temporary visas and green cards to highly skilled workers from India. The concerns, however, continue to persist because the US Senate has already cleared the much talked-about immigration Bill that will significantly restrict Indian IT companies in the US. If the House of Representatives ends up endorsing it, then the Obama Administration will have to do some heavy lifting to
mollify India. Meanwhile, the civil nuclear deal is floundering as the US companies remain wary of Indian laws on compensation claims in the event of a nuclear accident. India's nuclear liability law is aimed at ensuring that foreign companies operating in Indian nuclear sector assume nearly unlimited liability for accidents, a condition that all but precludes the participation of US firms. After all the political and diplomatic investment that Washington made in making the nuclear deal happen, there is a pervading sense in the US that the returns have not been at all
impressive. On climate change where the Obama Administration is focusing significantly, Biden pushed India to work with the US to reduce the flow of hydroflurocarbons and provide opportunities to the scientific establishment to work on green technology options. The US is already working with China on a joint effort to curb greenhouse gases.
Biden also tried to ease Indian concerns on Afghanistan by underlining that the Taliban would have to give up ties with Al Qaida and accept the Afghan constitution as part of the reconciliation process. New Delhi remains concerned about the impact of US withdrawal from Afghanistan for Indian security. The recent bombing outside the Indian consulate in Jalalabad merely highlights the challenges India faces in Afghanistan.
According to Biden, "there are no obvious places where Indian interests and American interests diverge worldwide, regionally or domestically." That may well be true but in the absence of a big idea to push the relationship forward strategically, the tactical issues where there are significant differences between Washington and New Delhi continue to shape the trajectory of the US-India bilateral ties.
The relationship stands at a serious inflection point. The two sides need to start thinking seriously about bringing it back on track. New Delhi, in particular, needs to acknowledge the importance of what Biden suggested when he said that "there is no contradiction between strategic autonomy and strategic partnership." In the name of 'strategic autonomy' New Delhi has become quite adept at scuttling its own rise. At this moment of significant geostrategic flux in the Indo-Pacific, India and the US need each other like no other time in the past. Biden's visit has underlined India's importance in US strategic calculus. It is now for India to decide what role it sees for the US in its foreign policy matrix and as a corollary what role it sees for itself in the rapidly changing global
order.
The writer is a Reader in
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Proud to be a bureaucrat? THE recent summary suspension of a Sub Divisional Magistrate, Ms Durga Shakti Nagpal, IAS, over her alleged error of judgement in demolishing an illegal boundary wall of a mosque in UP, which purportedly could have resulted in communal tension in the holy month of Ramazan, set me thinking.
I am not going over things like that she just did her duty and in pursuance of the Supreme Court's order that no religious structure was to be constructed on the government land, or that the real reason appeared to be that she went hammer and tongs against the sand mafia; or that the action was too harsh and the justification for the same too flimsy; that the young lady could not achieve what she was mandated to achieve etc. I wish to highlight something personal.
Long ago my son was to appear in a test for admission or admittance, whatever you wish to call it, in to the prestigious Lawrence School, Sanawar (HP). There were many other children along with their parents, the latter giving last-minute coaching to the former on all the subjects under the sun or even the moon and stars .
One gentleman, whose child was perhaps not a contestant, was heard saying that the parents were treating their children's school admission test as if it was the IAS exam. Anyhow, my son got selected and when he was to finish schooling, we embarked on a laborious process called discussing 'career options' for him.
Having seen very rough, tough, disturbed Army life, I was very keen that he joined college and appeared for the Civil Services Examination after his graduation. He would have none of it and was sold on joining the Army through the National Defence Academy.
I tried to dissuade him, highlighting an easy life, full of perks and enormous prestige, he would enjoy as an IAS officer. Like all parents, I thought that my son was super bright and could easily make it to the
IAS. He gave counter arguments that while the soldiers could talk about the 1971 victory, the scientists about Pokhran Test (1974) , what had the bureaucrats to boast about?
Since he was very good in academics, extracurricular activities, endowed with social graces (so I thought) and being a Sanawarian, I was sure that he had the potential to go very high in life.
I tried to win the argument by saying that the bureaucrats had enormous power over millions. He retorted that he did not want 'self-serving power' which could do no good to the public. Finally, he closed the discussion by saying, "I don't want to preside over the misery of millions".
Eventually, he joined the Army. My prediction of him going very high also came true as he commanded his (and my) Regiment in the highest battlefield in the entire world, the Siachen Glacier. How perceptive one can be at eighteen that one did not want to end up like a Durga without
Shakti!
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The marginal masculinity of a ghar jawai Across the globe, the figure of the househusband is a virtual stand-up comic act, nowhere more explicit than in cartoon strips where he appears with brooms and aprons implying a virtual surrender of masculinity. The term 'househusband' immediately connotes a marginal man and a socially disqualified masculinity. In Punjab, and indeed in north India in general, shame and degraded masculinity has less to do with doing domestic work and a whole lot more to do with living in the 'wrong' home, the wife's house. Living as ghar jawai or ghar jamai is a source of intense shame, not just for the man but also for his family, because shame travels beyond the individual, and contaminates a whole set of wider kin. It's the relationship of dependence upon the wife's father that is the chief source of shame, because the dependence tips patriarchy on its head, and alters the sovereign status of the bridegroom in his wife's home into a man hanging on the financial coat tails of his father-in-law.
By moving into his wife's home, a man imitates his own sister's marital journey to the home of her in-laws where she is the social inferior despite the fact that she is considered a member of her husband's home, socially, morally and legally. Replicating the journey of his sister as bride, the ghar jawai is effeminised through matrimonial movement, and loses the culturally approved role of the dominant man of his own home. In Punjabi, the derogatory proverb Sohre ghar jawai kutta/ Bhen ghar bhai kutta (a cur in his father-in-law's home! a cur in his sister's marital home!) refers to just such an unacceptable movement by men to the homes of their fathers-in-law. Ghar jawai in popular culture
Like western cartoons of the househusband, popular Indian cinema has a comic take on the ghar jawai, but presents the issue of becoming a ghar jawai as a dilemma to be explored and resolved. Homi Master's 1925 classic 'Ghar Jamai', a comedy of manners, focused on an out of work man who sought a 'position' as a ghar jamai in the home of a rich spinster. The film made no attempt to create an empathetic character but played on the idea of misplaced masculinity. It proved so popular that within a decade of its silent era release the director remade the film with sound. Subsequent Bollywood movies went a step further than Homi Master, and tried to pry open the issue of degraded husbands with a more compassionate eye. A 1992 film, also called ‘Ghar Jamai,’ starred the popular Bombay cinema star Mithun Chakraborty, had all the elements of Bombay cinema casting, with actor Prem Chopra playing yet another of his villainous roles, and lyrics by the popular music director brothers, 'Anand Milind'. Unlike its early predecessor, director Arun Bhatt created Mithun Chakraborty as an impoverished but morally upright man, and a reluctant ghar jamai. It's at the insistence of his millionaire father-in-law, who cannot bear to see his daughter live in a lower middle class home, that the protagonist moves into his wife's home and takes over his father-in-law's business, getting rid of corrupt employees and improving the family business. The story is driven by a mistrustful mother-in-law and a wicked accountant, whom Anil, the ghar jamai must overcome. The ghar jamai triumphs over his degraded status to become the hero of this family drama. A lesser known, but similar themed Bengali ‘Gharjamai,’ directed by Anup Sengupta in 2008, also had the ghar jamai riding to rescue the heroine and save the family business. Economic gain and masculine shame In 2007, the hugely successful and very expensively produced ‘Namaste London’ starred established cinema actors Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif and Rishi Kapoor, added a twist to the issue of the
ghar jawai- Akshay Kumar became a transnational, migrant ghar
jawai, invited by his father-in-law (played by Rishi Kapoor) to 'teach' his pretty but westernised daughter, Katrina Kaif, who grew up in London, how to be Indian. Needless to say, the film accomplished its purpose of ridding the girl of her westernised ways, but not before the imported husband had to bear the shame of leaving his own family behind. In all the films, economics is never far from the surface, though the 'intention' in becoming a
ghar jawai is always positioned as a dilemma both for the individual man and for viewers. The play off between economic gain and masculine shame is the narrative driver for all the cinematic
ghar jawais. Independent of Bollywood drama, almost all other evidence suggests that economic compulsion is the reason for the move and living with shame is offset by monetary gain, if not directly for the
ghar jawai, then at least for his children. In Punjab and north India the primary reason for a man to move to his wife's father's home is inheritance of property, not the performance of house work. The primary purpose of the institution of the
ghar jawai is to ensure the transfer of property and not leave it untended. In customary law, the primary heir to property is the
ghar jawai's son, who acquires fuller and more complete rights in his grandfather's property, while a
ghar jawai may benefit only tangentially. Rightly speaking and properly translated the
ghar jawai is a live-in son-in-law, not a house husband. The primary relationship is between son-in-law and father-in-law, and the father-in-law is the key male figure against whom the
ghar jawai's position is measured. Excessively lewd insults make no bones about the inappropriate dependence and subordination of the son-in-law vis-a-vis the wife's father. The
ghar jawai ensnared by economic constraint is the antithesis of the man of honour, a person tainted by need and the stigma of shame.
Transnational pragmatism Why then, I might ask, would a family send their loved and valued son to become a
ghar jawai? Why would a son agree to go? Wherever it is acknowledged (and very often it is not acknowledged at all) the move into degraded masculinity of a
ghar jawai is cast in the idiom of sacrifice, an obligation and a duty of the son to renounce rights in his father's property and (at least in rural north India) prevent fragmentation of landholdings. The movement is cast as duty that sons must exhibit toward their families, justified by a string of details about why this move was necessary. Incongruously, though the move is reviled, resorting to the conversion of a son to
ghar jawai because of economic necessity is a perfectly comprehensible move well understood by a wider audience of social arbiters. People may subscribe to the ideology of shame in which the
ghar jawai is caught but also represent the move as the inevitability of 'fate' occasioned by dire circumstance. It's hard to condemn economic disintegration after all, for it could happen to anyone. But even more than cultural tolerance is the fact that the stigma of shame is not static and weakens over time. This, above all, is the culturally unstated but understood fact of life. Dwindling shame and its counterpart, retrospective forgiveness is particularly apparent among migrant communities. Sending a son away as a transnational
ghar jawai to secure legal citizenship is considered preferable to the risks of illegal migrations. During my research in Southall in the UK, I was told of "unclejis" who came to live in their wives' homes. A resident of Cranford, A. Singh, told me that his father had been brought by his mother's brother - his mama — who had himself arrived in the 1940s as a
ghar jawai. While A. Singh's father could not recoup his own loss of status as a man imported by his mother's brother for labour and marriage, A. Singh went back to his father's village and bought agricultural land and a city house in Jalandhar. The buying of land and property restored him and his father's family to the status of substantial landowners and in the eyes of the village community, to the valued status of NRI jimindars. The loss of a landed status had forced the father to become an 'imported spouse', a transnational
ghar jawai moving into the family networks of his mother's brother. But one generation down the line, the stigma of degradation had been smoothened out at the time of the interview. When I interviewed him, A. Singh was a successful businessman in Southall, and employed members of his village family kin to tend his agricultural land. "They're happy; I'm happy" he told me pragmatically. Two generations later, the import of husbands was seen as a 'good' move by A. Singh, and a great way to legally migrate and achieve success.
Reclaiming patriarchal space Despite successfully overcoming the stigma of shame, interviews with this family of two generations of
ghar jawais only confirmed to me the underlying pressure of economics as the compelling circumstance to migrate as
ghar jawai. The move was a way of preventing the fragmentation of precious agrarian land and it was seen as the duty of sons to take a step into a status of shame 'for the sake of the family'. By the time I did my research, many former
ghar jawais had set up independent households and were instrumental in enabling subsequent migrations of members of their family to Southall. The combination of an earlier personhood as
ghar jawai and later identity as "benefactor", were simultaneous in the life histories of these men. The fact that these transnational
ghar jawais became a 'route' or conduit for the migration of kin and village folk purged some part of the shame. So even though gender ideologies captured in proverbs and lewd abuse assigns the
ghar jawai to the sphere of shame, time and migration enable a form of collective forgetfulness that allows the shame to weaken. The biography of the
ghar jawai shows us that his life history is not a frozen chronicle but moves from valued son, to socially excluded figure, and then toward a respected position because he can create a 'home' for migrant brothers. A social flaw may not be entirely forgotten, but it can fade into forgiveness.
The writer is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi. She is the author of “Militant and Migrant: The Politics and Social History of Punjab” and has been Co-Chair, U.N. Expert Group on the Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality.
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