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Safety is not an option Scourge of racism |
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Still unsafe as Mumbai in 2008?
Bond with Padma Bhushan
The import of being Khushwant Singh
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Safety is not an option The
total domestic car sales stood at 18.07 lakh units in 2013, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. However, some of the popular models have failed in independent crash tests conducted by the NCAP (New Car Assessment Programme), an organisation that regularly crash tests cars in Europe. The NCAP took entry-level cars from India and tested them according to two parameters, the UN's basic safety test and the Global NCAP test. Even as manufacturers have highlighted the fact that the cars conform to Indian standards, it is worrying that best-selling cars are not safe. Admittedly, all the cars chosen by the Global NCAP were entry-level versions. In India, they do not come with airbags; which is common in Europe. While it has been suggested that this placed them at a disadvantage, we would argue that it is the customers who have been short-changed by the lack of what is now a basic safety feature the world over. The manufacturers' plea that they conform to Indian standards may well be accurate. In that case, the executive must change the rules and make them conform to international norms. The exponential growth in the number of automobiles in India has come with an unfortunate increase in the number of fatalities that occur in road accidents. This is in direct contrast to Europe where in a given period, cars doubled and the number of vehicular deaths came down to half of what it was earlier. Surely, better driving habits and strict enforcement of the traffic laws had something to do with that, but what can't be ignored is the pressure on manufacturers to build cars that are safer. What is perturbing is that only two of the five cars tested maintained structural integrity in their driving cabin. The latest test report is a wake-up call for India. Our cars must be made safe, and ordering that only cars with airbags be sold henceforth is the first step towards ensuring better safety for drivers and passengers of cars.
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Scourge of racism In
a civilized society like ours racism exists but is hard to prove. The death of Nido
Taniam, a BBA student from Arunachal Pradesh in Delhi, should be treated as a symptom of the pervasive racial discrimination that people from the Northeast face, especially in metropolitan India. They are called
'chinkis' and profiled as foreigners. Instances of institutionalised racism keep surfacing from time to time. The University of Hyderabad chose to launch its 2011 "initiative" to curb drinking and drug use on the campus by working with students from the Northeast. In 2007, the Delhi Police came up with a booklet entitled "Security Tips for North East Students" asking women not to wear "revealing dresses." To treat people who do not look and behave like us as somewhat inferior-and of lower moral values -- is how racism is expressed in India. Even when it does not result in such tragic events like a murder or a rape, the young from the region face discrimination in their everyday life. Our school textbooks as well as books on history usually do not include the culture and people of the Northeast as part of India. It results in situations which can only be termed as tragic. Before the 4th BRICS summit, the Delhi High Court directed the local police not to harass people from the Northeast and Ladakh by demanding their visas. The case of Nido, who was targeted with a slur about the colour of his hair, is not an exception. The mysterious death of Loitam Richard in Bangalore, the murder of Ramchanphy Hongray in New Delhi and the suicide by Dana Sangma emphasise the need for efforts for better cultural assimilation. A project report on "North East Migration and Challenges in National Capital" has revealed that 78 per cent of the population from the Northeast experiences humiliation. It is time the process of cultural assimilation is made more effective.
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Thought for the Day
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. —
Bertolt Brecht
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THE WORKING OF THE PRESS ACT
THERE is one aspect of the operation of the Press Act which is liable to escape notice. This is the extent of odium which falls on the head of the administration as a result of the action taken by Government under the Act. Now, the tone of the Press does not generally change for the worse suddenly and unexpectedly: and it is nearly always the result of a policy which derives strength from the indifference of Government to grievances, real or fancied, publicly ventilated. The Press in this country is an exotic plant and requires indulgent treatment. Mere indifference, not to say contempt is not conducive to a healthy growth, and a feeling of indifference and contempt will only lead an estrangement of the sympathies. It often happens that estrangement is accomplished under one rule while the unpleasant duty of administering a corrective falls to the lot of another. For instance, it was Lord Curzon who set the Ganges on fire and it fell to the lot of Lord Minto to face the situation and take the odium of putting repressive measure in force. Similarly in the Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer has had no share in the creation of a situation which a section of the press finds uncomfortable. Yet it falls to his lot to set the law in motion. THE FEROZEPORE ARSENAL STRIKE
THE strike of the labourers and artificers at the Ferozepore arsenal originated in a novel kind of search ordered on the 26th January last. About the search itself there does not seem to be anything unusual, but it is the manner of the search that is resented. This is, of course, the immediate cause of the trouble, and the real complaint is in sufficiency of wages. On the 29th January the officers were able to persuade about 10 per cent of the men to go back to work. The bulk of the men are still out and go about in batches to prevent others from going to work. It is stated that workshops have been kept closed for want of
labour.
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Still unsafe as Mumbai in 2008? It was indeed a sad commentary that this specific warning coming a few days before the actual attack, and even mentioning one of the prime targets in Mumbai was not acted upon both by the intelligence agencies and the police. Authors Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy have given interesting details of the Mumbai attack in their book, 'The Siege'. Pakistan's pervasive hostility and its resort to terrorism through Islamic Jihadi terrorist organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen are known to the major intelligence agencies. The failure to face the Mumbai attack in a well-prepared manner was due to the failure of the Navy, to begin with. The 10-member team, armed with AK-47 rifles, pistols, grenades, etc., came from Karachi through the sea route. Half way through, its members hijacked an Indian trawler on the Arabian sea and got an Indian navigator on the trawler to guide them to sail towards Mumbai. The attackers were connected by a satellite phone to a control room in Karachi. Once they sighted the coast of Mumbai, they killed the navigator. After landing on the deserted coast of Mumbai, they quietly walked into the city unchallenged. Then, the ruthless attack on the Taj Hotel began, while a few of them ran towards Chhatrapati Shivaji terminal. Can we come across another instance of a more defenceless city than Mumbai? First, consider the Navy's role. Surely, there should be a system of watching the high seas, even beyond the Arabian sea. These are the days of satellite watch on sailing vessels. Even otherwise, the Naval Yard of Mumbai should have deployed the radar system and scanned the high seas constantly beyond Mumbai. How was it that the jihadis travelling from Karachi towards Mumbai for four days remained unseen by the radars of the Navy? In fact, the Navy had the foremost responsibility of locating and alerting the agencies of the movements of suspicious vessels. By not fulfilling the foremost responsibility, the Naval unit of Colaba, Mumbai, should own a major part of the blame for the failure to meet the attack. M.K. Narayanan also noted that contrary to what many security and strategic analysts in the West profess, terrorism remained by all means a grave threat to the civilised world. The reality is global terrorism is expanding, especially in Asia. Since Lashkar-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen have given terrorism new dimensions, one should anticipate the intensity and number of future attacks. The possibility of possible suicide means also need to be factored into future calculations. A detailed scrutiny of the activities of Lashkar-e-Taiba based in Muridke in the Punjab province of Pakistan shows that several training camps are being held there. Its long-term objective is to inundate Jammu and Kashmir with jihadists for 'liberating the state'. LeT's agenda lists the restoration of Islamic rule in India. Abu Jundal, who was arrested by security agencies at the Nepal border and interrogated subsequently, disclosed, among other things, that LeT had trained jihadist in paragliding. Pakistan began to fund LeT in the early 1990s and the ISI is constantly guiding LeT's military structure with specific instructions of attacking India at suitable opportunities. LeT in co-ordination with Jaish-e-Mohammad attacked Indian Parliament in 2001. It was responsible for the blast in Varanasi in 1989 which resulted in the death of 37 people. They were also involved in the Doda massacre in April 2006 and the Mumbai train bombings the same year. Saudi Arabia remained the critical financial support base for al-Qaida, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa. With the withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan coming closer, militancy in the Kashmir Valley is likely to increase exponentially. In 2013, 63 militants and 61 security personnel were killed in Kashmir. The number may increase in the current and coming years. An analyst, Hasan Suroor, has said that one does not have to be a revolutionary poet like Faiz Ahmad Faiz to look at the events in the Muslim world and lament at being deceived by the promise of a false dawn. A study of events for the past three years shows that the old face of Islam projected by extremists is back with a vengeance. Islam is at war with itself at several levels involving moderates and extremists. The latest example of jihadis looking for fresh recruits was the instance of a couple of Imams, possibly brain-washed by the ISI, visiting the camps of Muslim refugees affected by the riots in Muzaffarnagar. Yasin Bhatkal of Indian Mujahideen, who is in judicial custody, has confessed that he had asked his Pakistan handler for a small nuclear bomb to detonate in India. The Pakistani jihadis may even try to prepare a 'dirty bomb'. It shows that they are not bothered about the terrible consequences to both India and Pakistan by resorting to a nuclear misadventure. At a lecture organised by the Ananta Aspen Centre in New Delhi on January 24, Prof. V.S. Subrahamanian, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, USA, analysing activities of Indian Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba, said that Islamic Jihadists were likely to carry out a series of attacks in India between January and May this year when the country would get ready for the Lok Sabha elections, Prof. Subrahmanian said the Centre and the States should be well prepared for any eventuality. Hopefully, the unfortunate performance of the Indian security agencies during the Mumbai attacks of 2008 would not be repeated.
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Bond with Padma Bhushan It was late and Bond is early to bed, I tried calling him up next morning around 10 (he is also a late riser), as he gets up at 5 am to write and then slinks back into the cosy bed for another nap. His landline phone (he doesn't keep a mobile) is also as free-willed as its master. For the next two days, either his phone was constantly engaged or just in winter hibernation. Finally, I got to speak to him only recently. After my excited felicitations, I was curious to know as to when he came to know about it, as we had just talked a few days ago! Surprisingly, he too, in fact, learned of it through TV! As typical of him, he doesn't make much of honours or titles bestowed, and remains his usual unassuming, modest self; preferring to rather make light of the spotlight. I asked him jocularly as to how one was to address him now... couldn't be the good ol' Mr Bond! Perhaps, 'Hon'ble Padma Bhushan Bond Sahib' would be more befitting as is the practice with some such awardees. I know of one such local worthy, who feels bloated when the Padma honour is prefixed to his name in all communications! Bond suggested, "Perhaps you could now name me 'Padma' or 'Bhushan' instead of Ruskin. It's not that he makes light of such prestigious national honours or their value; but prefers not to wear them on his sleeve. When he was awarded an honorary doctorate by a university some years ago, I joked that he would now have to address him as Dr Bond. "Good! I will get a long gown at the convocation, and it will keep me warm in winters". Having been an avid reader and admirer of Ruskin Bond's writings for over decades and having passed on that love to my children, who perhaps will do it to their children in turn, there is no better bard of the hills of Mussoorie than him. His writings with their deceptive simplicity, dew-fresh mountain innocence, brings out the heart of the hill people. His stories of their everyday lives flow like hill streams, or a little girl's laughter. Or sing songs of love and longing of the mountain mist. He chronicles the happenings at the wayside hillside "chai" shop with as much ease as mysteries of benign ghosts that inhabit the dark deodhar forests or cemeteries. Occasionally, eccentric uncles, truant schoolboys and drunken postmen bring some delightful mischief to those nostalgic vignettes. In spite of generations of Bond fans — young and old-the news clip announcing the award, quaintly classified him as a 'children's author'. Perhaps, some people never grow up enough to know real literature.
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The import of being Khushwant Singh
Khushwant
Singh quotes Bhasa, the renowned Sanskrit playwright celebrating the euphoric diversity of life. Bhasa’s poem reflects Singh’s own philosophy of the world. Singh reconstructs a world of teeming men and women, of fertile imagination laced with alluring factual incidents for his avaricious readers. Hence, we are taken through inclusive and rich narratives, where human beings indulge in the company of flowers, trees, birds and insects and negotiate with their circumstances to unravel their selves. It would be a huge task for any reader to write about him as his life and literary output resist the parameters of the established literary cannon. We smile when the narrator is called ‘a joker’. We cannot but believe him when he admits that he is ‘a voyeur, a gossip’, ‘never been discreet and also very opinionated.’ In his distinctive style, Khushwant Singh amuses us as‘a darkie with a bandage round his head and a beard around his round chin’, ‘drinking scotch’ and being in the company of accomplished women.We chuckle to see him flailing his arms when pursued by bees ‘attacking my face, neck, arms. I unwrap my turban, wrap my face and arms in its folds, and crouch on the ground.’ We giggle when he mimics Indians speaking English language , ‘to start with, there was the Director, who, like other South Indians, pronounced ‘eight’ as “yate”, an ‘egg’ as a “yugg”’, then he instructs his private secretary to get Mr M. M. Amir, Member of Parliament, on the phone. “I want Yum Yum Yumeer,Yumpee”. We grin when he tells us that “the Bengalis had their own execrable accent: they added as airy ‘h’ whenever they could after a ‘b’ or a ‘w’ or an ‘s’. A ‘virgin’ sounded like some exotic tropical plant, the “vharjeen”, and “will” as “wheel”.’ We laugh aloud when we hear Mrs Sen’s‘quaint Bengali accent’ when she asks her husband, ‘Do you want to shit inshide or outshide? The deener ees on the table’. And yet, Khushwant Singh believes “English works like magic in independent India.” Who else but he alone can amuse us in his story Posthumous when he ‘decides to die just for the fun of it’, as he is agog with curiosity to observe his own enigmatic ‘posthumous glory’. But the tepid response of the people and the press let him down in the story.The caricatures drawn in his writings match the sardonic glint in his eyes. The widely read illustrious, writer, novelist, columnist, journalist as narrator in his short stories and novels represents multiple identities. In fiction Khushwant Singh’s world is urban and elite. He draws characters from his own treasure of personal experiences and understanding, and his piercing gaze looks underneath the thin veneer of self-righteousness, morality and hypocrisy. His spirit is undiminished; his characters all too human with their follies, virtues and failings. It comes ‘from the heart based on what I have seen with my own eyes’, he says. Singh’s works show his deep engagement with history, poetry, religion and politics. At times, self-indulgent, there is a joyous celebration of life, and a quest to snatch incredulous bliss from the beauty of every moment.They open the world of imagination, mystery and nature. His works invoke the historical and contemporary. In a highly imaginative way, he deftly organises facts which carry psychological meanings. The readers tend to empathise with an impassioned man of contemporary India who communicates to them the details of everything that he believes in. He says, “I cannot cheat my readers.” An agnostic, Singh became conscious of his Sikh identity in 1984. And yet, Singh seeks meanings in the religious texts of Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity and delights in poetic sensibilities of great poets, as reflected in his A History of the Sikhs, and in Free thinkers Prayer book, his political commentaries, treatises on religion, translations of Sikh religious texts and Urdu poetry. In short stories, he is quite often the narrator and also a participant in the plot. “I/we’ negotiate with situations or incidents or actively participate in events to reveal the complexity of the characters. Interspersed with wit, his writings unfold the world of people, identities and contemporary issues. An admirer of Somerset Maugham, Singh’s range of themes is vast, uncomplicated and captivating. His characters unravel the complexity and irony of human existence. Singh’s engagement with history is particularly fascinating. Written in 1956 his novel Train to Pakistan through the metaphor of ‘train’focuses on the complex theme of the Partition in a small hamlet, where the daily life in a small sleepy village Mano Majra is shaped by the coming and going of trains.The reader can visualise the trains running and their sound in‘panoramic succession’. The representation of Partition becomes real in this world Singh’s passion for Delhi is expressed via a ‘sense of belonging’. It is Delhi, ‘my city’, the ‘beloved city’ which allures him but also repels him. “I return to Delhi as I return to my mistress Bhagmati when I have had my fill of whoring in foreign lands”. He claims to be Delhi’s ‘lover’ despite the ferocity, violence and insensitivity in the city. He knows each and every nook and corner of the city, and he creatively engages with the stories of ‘poets and princes, saints and sultans, temptresses and traitors, emperors and eunuchs.’ The city bares itself through the autobiographical narratives and the prolific consciousness of invaders, dervishes, untouchables, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, the British men and women. Singh immortalises the city through an all-embracing narrative. Singh’s novel, Delhi, traverses the city through time and space. The narrator reveals historical and cultural dramas that underpin the subtleties of human characters within the city. The artistic fervor lies in a dramatic interplay of facts and sensuousness. The multi-layered novel does not follow any linear chronological order, but weaves its plot through its multidimensional historical, cultural and literary themes. Singh unfolds the city’s history, culture, politics, identities, human virtues and follies that continue to shape Delhi and its citizens. In Singh’s reading of Delhi, Edward Lutyens and the British ‘builders’ are lauded, in contrast to malevolent ‘invaders’ who ravaged the city.The city ‘which I helped to build and which Lutyens designed for two centuries became ruined in twenty years’, is Singh’s powerful present-day lament. Further, “If given the choice of being born in any period of Indian history I liked, I would re-live my days as a builder-contractor under the British Raj.” The narrator in Delhi assumes multiple identities to interweave diverse cultural and historical stories. Hence Delhi becomes a site for various conflicting discourses spanning over centuries to narrate stories of men and women, folklores of religion and culture. Entwined with religion and politics, the narrative juxtaposes past and present events; the birds, animals and monuments eloquently tell their own parables. Previous histories are embedded in the present. Singh tells us about his father who came from Hadaliand became a ‘reliable contractor’. Singh offers a moving account of ‘what brought us to Delhi in the last week of August 1947?’ The present state of Delhi disturbs him as he regrets that Indians ‘have no sense of the past or future.’ He rejoices about the seasons in Delhi, from January to December, which bring out ‘joyous celebrations of nature’ when chrysanthemums, marigolds, roses, mulberry, peepal, kusam, palash and jacaranda bound.He informs us that Lutyens had ordered trees to be planted along the proposed route’ but Lady Willingdon ‘ruined Lutyens vision of a broad tree-lined boulevard from the Vice-Regal palace upto the Purana Qila.’ Khushwant Singh writes ‘in February the winter chill loosens its grip, the sky is a clear blue, it is cool and soothing. And the signs of spring are in the air.’ It is ‘Delhi’s floral month. All parks and roundabouts are, as the cliché goes, a riot of colour.’ As spring is about to arrive in Delhi, on February 2 Khushwant Singh completed 99 years. The unlimited power of his pen — be it in his columns, fiction and non-fiction — entertains, educates and shocks us. Singh’s magical ingenuity and linguistic lucidity, his wonderful play of words, his bitter-sweet remarks continue to surprise us. His tone is optimistic, vibrant. Human beings, animals, birds, nature — all constitute his idea of the universe, which is heterogeneous, open, revelatory, sanguine and enchanting.
Fact file
— The writer teaches at Institute of Law & Management Studies, Gurgaon
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Khushwant
Speaking
While
