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Thought for food A festival of daughters |
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Telangana mess and much else
A matter of trust and conscience
The unfinished tale of a novel
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Thought for food Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh coming out unequivocally in support of allowing genetically modified (GM) food crops in India flies in the face of the large body of opinion against it in the country. Of course, globally as well as in India there is also a major support for GM crops. The PM's statement is particularly bold as two of his previous environment ministers had opposed it and a Technical Expert Committee set up by the Supreme Court on the matter has recommended a moratorium against GM crop testing. The world over GM crops have caused a sharp divide, though slowly but steadily opinion is veering round in favour, including in Europe, even if rather grudgingly. The arguments on both sides are compelling. On the one hand is food security, especially in view of climate change. On the other is the fear of irreversible damage to plant systems and environment as well as human health. The fact, however, is that there is no credible evidence to suggest harm from GM food, which has been in use for more than two decades. Yet, there is also no conclusive proof of its safety. And that is what the expert committee in its report to the Supreme Court has pointed at. It does not say no to genetic modification per se, but asks why rush into it. With no meeting point between the two sides of the debate in India, it is hard to move in any direction. And the default outcome of such an impasse is a ‘no’. Till opinion matures either way, it is important neither side indulge in any extremism. The naysayers would do good not to condemn it as harming farmers, who are more than happy with Bt cotton. The supporters should listen to what the expert panel had to say: The country lacks a robust regulatory mechanism, or even the capacity to assess the impact of GM crops. If the Prime Minister does believe in them, he would do well to
initiate the setting up of a credible regulatory network first. People don’t take chances with their
food.
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A festival of daughters In
a culture where all festivals, rituals and celebrations are centred around males — sons, brothers and husband — women accept their social insignificance without complaining. The patriarchal world view inherited by women in North India justifies their confined world that revolves around their men and his family. Even when they visit their parental home, it is at the time of a family wedding or a death. Therefore, a congregation of about 600 married women in a small village of Punjab, Lobana — neither for a wedding nor a funeral — is not less than a little revolution for the heartland. These women came from far and wide to attend a fair “Dhiyaan da
mela” (festival of daughters) organised by women for women. This was perhaps the first event in their lives when they were in the focus — they were not there as someone’s wife, mother or daughter — they were there as themselves — as women. And they enjoyed this fraction of recognition, even though it had come rather late for many of them. In an oppressive patriarchy this little gesture would mean a lot to the self-esteem of a woman who does not recognise her individual needs. One cannot overlook the fact that most models of women's emancipation began with a very small step. Ela Bhatt’s SEWA (self employed women’s association) that has empowered over a million women began with apparently insignificant micro loans offered to women who started having their own dreams and later materialised them. In Punjab and the rest of North India, patriarchal values are so deeply engrained in families that women do not shy away from killing their own daughters. To counter this social reality, small events like these that highlight the significance of a woman's existence send a strong social message and should be recognised and encouraged without losing sight of their basic message that women play an equally important role in the making of this world. All great beginnings herald with the realisation of self-worth, and “Dhiyaan da
mela” seems to be one such beginning.
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A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted. — Helen Rowland
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A half-hearted excise reform
THE Government of Bombay has decided to raise from 14 to 16 the age of minors to whom the sale of liquor is prohibited. This is a reform for which the Bombay Government hardly deserves any thanks and it is the clear duty of temperance advocates to point out to the Government this impropriety of selling liquor to youngsters before they attain the legal age of discretion. In this respect the Government of the backward province of the Punjab has, thanks to the progressive instinct of Sir Michael O' Dwyer, much in advance of the Presidency form of Government. We have under the New Excise Act a statutory provision prohibiting the sale of liquor to minors up to the age of 18 years. It is inconceivable why Bombay should hesitate to raise the age limit when several thousands of youngsters among the industrial population are daily exposed to the temptation of drink. Indian titles badge
TITLE-holders and lovers of titles would be glad to have some information on the badge that is issued to persons on whom honours are bestowed by the Government. The Master of the Calcutta Mint writing in the course of his report for 1912-13 says that the general design of the badge is identical for the nine Indian titles of Diwan, Sirdar, Khan, Rai and Rao Bahadur and Khan, Rai Rao and Sardar Sahib. Naturally this affords a justifiable cause of grievance to persons who are promoted from grade to grade. The only difference at present is this. The first five are of silver gilt and the remainder of silver, differences being also made in the colour of the riband encircling the effigy of His Majesty. There should be a more conspicuous difference between the Diwan Bahadur Badge which is the highest title and the Rai Sahib Badge which is the lowest. Since the title-holders are to pay for the badges there is no reason why the Diwan Bahadur Badge should not be struck in gold.
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Telangana mess and much else For, after seeking four more weeks to discuss the draft Bill referred to it by the President under the prescribed procedure, the state assembly has summarily rejected it. Ironically, the Congress party rules Andhra and its inconsequential chief minister, Kiran Kumar Reddy, has led the defiance of the party’s “high command”. Under the Constitution Parliament can still pass the legislation for Telangana’s creation but there are three massive roadblocks to the desired goal. First, the Andhra assembly has not just rejected the Bill “in its present form” but also suggested no fewer than 9,000 amendments to it. The documents spelling these out, reportedly weighing 300 kilograms, have already been sent to the Union Home Ministry for forwarding to the President. Even if the Head of State, on the advice of the Council of Ministers, is inclined to brush aside the assembly’s demands, he would surely need time to give reasons for his decision, and that would require some time. The Congress-led government cannot hasten this process, and in any case Parliament has some other urgent tasks before it. It has to pass the vote-on-account not only for the general budget but also for the railway budget. Moreover, Rahul Gandhi has commanded the government to push through a bunch of six Bills relating to corruption. Secondly, and more importantly, the passage of the Telangana Bill through both Houses of Parliament is dependent on the support of the BJP, especially in the Rajya Sabha, where the Congress is in minority. Since the saffron party is also committed to the formation of Telangana, its support to the Bill was expected to be automatic. But BJP leaders have made it clear that they cannot bail out the government because its Bill disregards the interests of Seemandhra, the region that is bitterly opposed to the “bifurcation” of their state. Indeed, the BJP leaders are taunting the Congress by underscoring that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had formed three new states — Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand — without any controversy because it had first evolved a consensus among all concerned. Thirdly, Congress MPs from Andhra had in the recent past disrupted Parliament all too often to drive home their opposition to the formation of Telangana, and their colleagues from the Telangana region had responded equally angrily. This time around they have threatened to table a motion of no-confidence in their own government and press it to vote. In short, the Congress has done a better job of embarrassing itself than a dozen hostile forces could have done jointly. The perplexing question is: How have Congressmen of Seemandhra become so rebellious when sycophancy of, and unquestioning obedience to, the dynasty is the party’s hallmark? Evidently, deep parochial and personal interests take precedence over loyalty to the dynastic leadership. Remarkably, it is not only now that the Congress has bungled and blundered about the Telangana issue. The malaise is old. For years it did nothing to honour its commitment to form a separate Telangana state. Then on a cold December night in 2009, after a meeting of the Congress Core Committee the then Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, announced that the government had conceded the demand for a state of Telangana and the process for doing so would begin immediately. This was a consequence of the indefinite fast by the Telangana Raksha Samithi's chairman, K Chandrashekhar Rao, generally called KCR. The very next day the rest of Andhra protested vigorously, and the government turned tail. To save face it then appointed the Justice Sri Krishna Committee, but to no avail. Why then did the Congress high command bite the bullet last year and embarked on separating Telangana from the rest of Andhra, inviting huge protests from Seemandhra and a firm refusal from Telangana leaders to share Hyderabad city with the rest of Andhra as a joint capital, which is what the Union government wants for a period of ten years? The best way to answer the question is tersely to go over Congress’ flip-flops since Andhra’s creation in the 1950s. The truth is that this state was a Congress bastion right from the beginning. It voted for Indira Gandhi even in the 1977 election when she was at her nadir. After she was back in power and Rajiv Gandhi had joined as her heir apparent, he chose to give a terrible tongue-lashing to the state’s harmless but inefficient chief minister, T. Anjiah, elevated to that post by the Prime Minister herself. An enormously popular film star N. T. Ramarao (NTR) seized the opportunity to form a party, Telugu Desam, to “restore Andhra’s self-respect”. Dismissal of his government in August 1984 boomeranged. He had to be sworn in again. Eventually, his son-in-law, Chandrababu Naidu, succeeded him and ruled for many years. Only in 2004 did the Congress recover Andhra as its stronghold. The man responsible for this achievement was a hands-on and autonomous state leader, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, better known as YSR. In 2009 he did even better than the previous time. In that year Andhra sent the largest Congress contingent to the Lok Sabha, 33 MPs out of the state's total of 42. Unfortunately, a few months later YSR died in a helicopter accident. His son, Jaganmohan Reddy, wanted to inherit his father's job, again in the best Congress tradition. But the Central leadership refused to countenance this. The young man revolted, formed a party named after his father, and attracted a large following among Congressmen. The government's decision to prosecute him for owning assets beyond his ostensible sources of income and to keep him in prison for 16 months without bail added to his, his sister's and his mother's popularity. It was then that some mini-Machiavellis of the Congress thought that Seemandhra having been lost, some votes must be salvaged by forming a separate state of Telangana. However, as things stand today, it seems most unlikely that Telangana can be formed before the parliamentary elections. In that case, the Congress could lose heavily in both the regions. This would be a classic example of self-destruction.
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A matter of trust and conscience The Nawab of a small state in Punjab owned a beautiful cottage near one of the quaint railway stations on the Kalka- Shimla line. The family spent six months every year in this cottage and built up a strong and beautiful relationship with the station master and his family. There was total trust and faith between the two families. When partition took place, it was natural, and, perhaps, inevitable, that the Nawab should leave the cottage in the care of the station master. It was understood that when the situation normalised, he would come back and reclaim his property. The Nawab returned after 20 years to find that not only had the station master taken possession of the cottage, but had also, with the connivance of the revenue authorities, obtained legal ownership. He returned to Pakistan a broken hearted man. On the outskirts of the city of Lyallpur lived Kharaiti Ram, who ran a small kiryana shop. His neighbour, one Mohammad Rasool, also ran a kiryana shop. Over the years, the business rivals became bitter enemies. They did everything they could to harm each other and there was, of course, no question of any trust between them. At the time of partition, Kharaiti had to leave suddenly and urgently. The only person he met before his departure was Rasool. He asked him to look after his property and handed him the keys. But he came away with the certainty that Rasool would take possession of his house and his shop even before he had left the limits of Lyallpur. Kharaiti never returned to Lyallpur, there was nothing for him to return to. But his son, like so many second-generation refugees, felt compelled to go back. You can imagine his surprise when Rasool, forgetting the long years of hatred and acrimony, not only welcomed him with open arms but also handed over the keys to both his father's properties. The son couldn't help but voice his father’s apprehensions. Rasool smiled. “Yes, we hated each other, but how could I have faced my Maker on judgement day if I had violated your father’s trust?” The son sold both the properties and returned to India, a richer man, in more ways than one. Trust is not merely a matter of long years of correctly placed faith. Often you lose it where you are sure of it and you find it where you least expect to find it. It depends on how strong the conscience of the trustee is at the moment when this trust is put to the test -- and this is not always borne out by how strong it has been in the past.
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The unfinished tale of a novel
Author
of two English novels “The Namesake” and “The Lowland” and two short story collections “Interpreter of Maladies” and “Unaccustomed Earth,” Jhumpa Lahiri who bagged a Pulitzer and is a contender for The Booker this year, is writing her next book in Italian. This may baffle her fans. But the genre of fiction writing is losing all that was familiar to enter a world of unfamiliarity, even in its format. Call it globalisation or a compulsion of the demographics — dominated by youth — writers are forced to reinvent not only their plots but writing itself. Everything else is in a fluid state. Jhumpa likes to call her next book ‘a linguistic biography’ about her growing relationship with a new language which lacks global proportions of English. Her move from the realm of familiarity to the unfamiliar was triggered by the shock she received when she migrated to Italy a few years back. She found the best-selling novels published in Italy are in English. India is not different and the same can be said of many other cultures with a rich literary background. Despite the fact that the global currency of English made her a household name, she finds the “commercial currency of English distressing.” She builds a case in favour of local languages, “No matter how many malls you visit, how many global brands you may wear, your language remains your limiting part and it should be respected. Because it’s a powerful restriction. One must respect the power of a specific language that comes with a specific culture.” Call it her act of literary balance, Jhumpa has stopped reading anything in English and feels thankful to publishers and writers who offer meaningful literature in languages other than English.
Language as homeland As more and more authors — products of global migration — grapple with their quest for a true identity, their creative dilemmas find reflection in their linguistic choices. Writers like her, who cannot use their first language for creative expression nor could claim their second language as their own need a switch-over between languages. “I am a writer without a 100 per cent language I could call my own. I was born Bengali but never lived in India, I write in English because I was educated in English. Without language I am nobody, I never had a homeland — in addition, language is a part of that.” If languages are homelands, the small homelands are driven by global aspirations. Jonathan Franzen, American author of “Freedom” and “The Corrections”, both considered masterpieces of American fiction with their capacious but intricately ordered narrative offers a different take on the English-inspired global writing. “People living in Maldives do not wish to migrate to UK or US, but they write in English because writing in Maldivian will limit their readership to a small island, writing in English will take them to the world.” It is true of other languages too, which, in the absence of a robust translation activity, do not get to see the literary limelight they deserve.
Starbucks novel If the hegemony of English entails a move towards a monoculture, capitalism steals quality from our reading habits, replacing it by a globally acceptable minimum denomination in literature. English, as second language was used initially by the exiled writers like Milan Kundera, who needed a strong language to be heard, but the global novel, as it has come to be known today may not be an ideal, it is growing all the same. Starbucks Coffee may be a part of the global culture, it may taste same anywhere in the world, but can a writer’s craft become global? Could there be a perfect recipe for that? The only creative challenge to counter the growing appeal of English and corporatisation of publishing industry lies in a robust translation activity. Chinese author Xiaolu Guo, film maker and writer of “A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers”, translated into 26 languages, puts down this option, “Translation is industrialised by big publishers, they choose which books need to be translated. A writer takes five years in writing a book but a translator is commissioned by a big publisher to produce translation in three to five months. What do you expect? Sometimes the so-called mainstream novel turns out to be worse than journalistic writing.” Xiaolu is also confident the next century will be the century of Chinese, as the global language. This may not be her fantasy, Jim- Al Khalili, Iraqi born British physicist and author talked about Baghdad’s House of Wisdom and Arabic being the global language at one time, in the 7th and 8th centuries, when all the research in science had to get published in Arabic to get recognition. Languages gain and lose volume with the cycle of time. Another option is, with the overrated American novel and everything that gets published in English getting a wider, easily available readership , the alternative literature has to grow powerful (not in size alone) to make a point and eventually create a level-playing field. The silver lining is drawn by the writers like Maaza Mengiste, an Ethiopian writer who is researching works from 200 different Ethiopian languages and making them available through translations. She said, “Global combines elements from the world, therefore diversity should enter but it should not be allowed to grow vertically, nor should it be allowed to be static.“ Despite the fact that most writers writing in English come from metropolises and cater to a certain kind of readership, the diversity of literary voices should not die. Jim Crace, author of “Harvest” rightly articulated the right choice, “You can sing only in your own voice.” This is also proved by this year’s Nobel recipient Alice Munro, who continues to write about the small town Canadian life with great insight and intensity.
What’s the plot Linguistic dilemmas apart, the consumer called reader spoilt for choices demands variety, excitement and engagement — all at once. Over exposure with the world and much dependence on science and technology has taken away the romance the writer could lull the reader with in the past. Then, the popularity of audio books will demand that books be written in a way that they sound well. Authors like Jim Crace wonder, how would one expect the regional accent of characters to be transcribed accurately in audio books? Will audio book producers take care of such nuances? These are concerns, not of the future, writers need to address now. Call it the unprecedented success of Harry Potter series, more and more writers are going back to the myths to reinvent the fantastic, magical world of the kings, gods and demons. A world that can defy the reasoning of science. History is a massive pool and a number of research-based books have done better than the traditional fiction. Maya Jasanoff, a historian with a keen interest in the British Empire, uses real life stories of ordinary people to relive history in her book “Liberty’s Exiles.” 2014 happens to be the 100th anniversary of the Word War-I and the market is flooded with well-researched books on the lesser known narratives of the war. Lara Feigel’s book “The Love Charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War” tells the stories of crime writers in WWI, instead of the war crimes. Nicholas Shakespeare is writing a book on his aunt, “Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France,” a story of World War II as lived by his aunt Priscilla. Travel — the mother of all writing — is undergoing a complete shift too. Gone are the days of the male voyager, who travelled far to vanquish the enemy and returned a transformed man. The journeys of the “Ulysses” or “The Old Man and the sea” are taken over by restless women who take up long, solitary journeys, not to vanquish an outside enemy but to fight the fears within. Cheryl Strayed wrote “Wild : From Lost to Found” and “Torch” based on her daring trek on the Pacific Crest Trail, for which she trekked 1100 miles. Robyn Davidson, who came to be known as the camel woman wrote, ”Tracks” after her 1700 mile trek through the desert of the Australian outback. After demons and angels and the myths, gods are explored by writers as an interesting subject. Long queues were seen for the book signing of Reza Aslan’s New York Times Bestseller book on Christ, as a politician, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”, and the author was christened as a superhero by Dalrymple. Aslan is planning to explore the birth of the concept of god in the country that created a million gods, India, for his next book. With a deluge of writing genres, that includes a new genre of ‘writers writing on writers’, crime writers created an association at JLF to help each other, not with crime, but to find agents, publishers etc. on crime writing. The Crime Writers’ Association of South Asia has planned a weekend festival of crime writing in Delhi, to be held in September. Sooner, one could expect genre specific literature festivals after seeing 60 photocopies of the Jaipur Literature Festival across country.
Synergies of the glocal Call it the power of the global bulge, languages spoken within limited geographical regions and publishers with limited resources who work tediously to discover fresh literary voices are feeling the crunch. The anxiety of smaller publications is compounded by mergers between the global publishers. Post-merger new Penguin Random House, a 2.6 billion pound powerhouse for example, will control a quarter of the world publishing, and this has many in the industry, from writers and agents to the smaller publishers, worried. Then, they have the copyright to many classics, which naturally puts them in an advantageous position. Controlling a global network of marketing, like Hollywood films, big publishers are able to publish and push a book globally— at times also with translations in other languages. The changed scenario has baffled even the beneficiaries. “When my first book was published, it was published in the US, then in the UK, it took a year before it came to Asia. “The Lowland” my latest novel was published simultaneously across continents,” says Jhumpa. Xialou adds, ”Even Korean and Chinese films look like Hollywood films.” Big brothers decide what should be seen and read, globally. But smaller voices too are getting heard, in the gaps overlooked, by getting shrill and by creating fresh spaces.
Rejection slips and self-publishing A delegate at the inaugural edition of “Jaipur BookMark”— a platform created for publishing professionals from India and around the world, which was running parallel to JLF, informed, a complex network of lobbying goes behind the awards, which is controlled by big time agents and powerful publishers. A prestigious award catapults the book into the best-selling category. Though, what defines a best- seller remains under a cloud and the number that could put a book into that coveted category varies. Pre-agent specialists are mushrooming to help prune the book before it lands with an agent and self-publishing is growing as the new success mantra. Amish Tripathi talked of the uncountable rejection slips he received for “The Immortals of Meluha” and decided to go to the readers directly. It went on to sell 40,000 copies. Anand Neelkanthan’s “Asura Tale of the Vanquished”, nominated for DSC Prize, published by Leadstar, a small publishing house from Mumbai became a surprise bestseller. Both writers are picked by Random House now. Scores of ventures in self publishing like Zorba, Pothi, Cinnamon Teal and Notion Press are offering range of services — from editing to copyright registration — for a fee to aspiring writers. Publishers offered suggestions on how global and independent publishing houses can continue to co-exist in the growing Indian market, by taking advantage of collaborations and technology to reach a large segment.
Author speak
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WHAT an awful mess
the Congress leadership has made of the emotive issue of Telangana as a separate state! And to make matters worse, it is difficult to imagine how, during the short winter session of Parliament, the current Lok Sabha's last, it can extricate itself from the morass it had landed in. The government's earlier expectation to push the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill through regardless of what the state assembly says about it no longer seems realistic.
The
