For the Bandit Queen

The Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi,
is riding again tonight
In her khaki and denims, and bright red bandana,
she's spoiling once more for a fight
Her gang are all Mullahs and low-castes,
poor peasants in need of a meal
You high-caste Thakurs better lock up your doors,
or Didi's bullets will make you squeal

Come hither and listen while I retell a story,
the legend of the Bandit Queen
A reincarnation of the Goddess Shakti,
a beauty in every Hindu man's dreams
Her youth was a torment of rapings and beatings,
but her spirit rose up to rebel
Struck out at those men who'd suppress and deny her,
though underneath just an innocent girl

Born in a hamlet by the Yamuna River,
in a region called Uttar Pradesh
Her family were Mullahs, a lowly fisherman's caste,
so she'd always be poor and repressed
When barely eleven she was sold into marriage,
the price just a bike and a cow
Three-fold her age, he was brutal and he beat her,
but she never succumbed to his power

She finally broke free and trod a hard road,
through the mountains to be with her kin
But her family felt shame, couldn't welcome her back,
seemed that being at home was a sin
On the fringe of society, outcast and lonely,
drawn into a lawless furl
Looting and thieving, just barely surviving,
what a life for an innocent girl?

Abducted and taken with her lover Vikram,
by some Thakurs who stole in by night
They beat her and raped her, murdered her lover,
high-caste thugs think such things are their right
Violated, distraught, yet came through it stronger,
as ring-leader soon she was crowned
In the Cambal Ravines, the beautiful bandit,
was sung, notorious and renowned


One Saint Valentine's day, her gang hit Behmai,
planned as nought but a routine raid
But seeing there those who had beaten and raped her,
her revenge echoed way past Bombay
Twenty two high-castes were taken that evening,
dragged from their homes through the grime
Their pleads were not harkened, their screams went unanswered,
they all paid with their lives for that crime

What an outrage that raised, a huge posse assembled,
like Uttar Pradesh had never seen
Didi knew the terrain like the back of her hand,
so they never caught up with the queen
She grew weary of running, each day testing her cunning,
broke cover and brokered a deal
After years on the run, 'neath a poster of Gandhi,
she surrendered, but never did kneel

Banged-up in a black hole, for a decade or more,
never once charged with a crime
A sad destiny for a victim of high-caste,
to rot there and serve out her time
When at last they released her, boasted her infamy,
campaigned for the rights of the poor
With the votes of the Mullahs, the beautiful bandit,
set out to strike the heart of their core

Her message was simple, it struck many a-chord,
revealing the source of their pain
"Why is it my destiny to always be poor?
They're no different, the same blood in their veins
So lend your support, help me complete this triumph,
over gender, caste and poverty"
Once the ballots were counted, aghast stood the Thakurs,
as Didi was elected MP

Over five very long years, such a thorn in their side,
as she faced down their system of class
But you could tell by her anger, impatience and passion,
one day she'd catch up with her past
The Thakurs still held sweet revenge in their hearts,
for the dead men lost down that ravine
An ambush one morning, a bullet clean through her head,
put an end to the brave Bandit Queen

Phoolan Devi was a portrait of courage,
who denied and refuted her fate
Rose high, high above those beaters and rapers,
was the focus and curse of their hate
To her critics a murderer, a notorious bandit
and a puppet of corrupt demigods
To her followers a hero, an innocent, a legend,
who overcame such incredible odds

On the day she was mourned, all were out on the streets,
to grieve or just bid her adieu
Her low-caste supporters were all pushed aside,
by the New Delhi Star's TV crew
A strike was proclaimed for that saddest of days,
so many could witness that scene
The passing of a legend, the new Goddess Shakti,
the beautiful and bold Bandit Queen

Phoolan Devi, the beautiful bandit,
is riding in Cambal tonight
In her khaki and denims, and bright red bandana,
she's spoiling again for a fight
Her gang are all low-castes and peasants,
but still ruling the hills and ravines
Flying so high, you can hear them all singing,
The Ballad of the Bandit Queen

imagine

imagine falling into friendship
becoming best friends!
kindred spirits!

Then realising there's more.
There's love, and
its reciprocated.

Then imagine,
he's engaged!
And its unbreakable!

What would you do?

Imagine, you get pregnant.
He makes u
murder it!

Imagine, the joy shattering,
imagine the heart breaking,
for ever.

Imagine he wont leave her
but u cant leave him..
Imagine.

Imagine he goes on holiday
and comes back with her
just imagine!

Imagine he tells
all your friends, before
you have an inkling.

Imagine you can feel
the blood draining
out of your body.

Imagine he calls
you his wife but
goes home to her.

Imagine!!!
Can you imagine?
What my life is like?

The Great Indian Rape-Trick

Arundhati Roy on Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen


At the premiere screening of Bandit Queen in Delhi, Shekhar Kapur introduced the film with these words: "I had a choice between Truth and Aesthetics. I chose Truth, because Truth is Pure."

To insist that the film tells the Truth is of the utmost commercial (and critical) importance to him. Again and again, we are assured, in interviews, in reviews, and eventually in writing on the screen before the film begins. "This is a True Story."


If it weren't the "Truth", what would redeem it from being just a classy version of your run-of-the-mill Rape n' Retribution theme that our film industry churns out every now and then? What would save it from the familiar accusation that it doesn't show India in a Proper Light? Exactly Nothing.
It's the "Truth" that saves it. Every time. It dives about like Superman with a swiss knife - and snatches the film straight from the jaws of unsavoury ignominy. It has bought headlines. Blunted argument. Drowned criticism.


If you say you found the film distasteful, you're told - Well that's what truth is - distasteful. Manipulative? That's Life - manipulative.
Go on. Now you try.
Try...Exploitative. Or.. Gross. Try Gross.


It's a little like having a dialogue with the backs of trucks.
God is Love.
Life is Hard.
Truth is Pure.
Sound Horn.

Whether or not it is the Truth is no longer relevant. The point is that it will, ( if it hasn't already) - become the Truth.


Phoolan Devi the woman has ceased to be important. (Yes of course she exists. She has eyes, ears, limbs hair etc. Even an address now) But she is suffering from a case of Legenditis. She's only a version of herself. There are other versions of her that are jostling for attention. Particularly Shekhar Kapur's "Truthful" one, which we are currently being bludgeoned into believing.


"... it has the kind of story, which, if it were a piece of fiction, would be difficult to credit. In fact, it is the true story of Phoolan Devi, the Indian child bride..."
Derek Malcolm writes in The Guardian.
But is it? The True Story? How does one decide? Who decides?


Shekhar Kapur says that the film is based on Mala Sen's book - India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi. The book reconstructs the story, using interviews, newspaper reports, meetings with Phoolan Devi and extracts from Phoolan's written account, smuggled out of prison by her visitors, a few pages at a time.

Sometimes various versions of the same event - versions that totally conflict with each other i.e: Phoolan's version, a journalist's version, or an eye- witnesses version - are all presented to the reader in the book. What emerges is a complex, intelligent and human book. Full of ambiguity, full of concern, full curiosity about who this woman called Phoolan Devi really is.


Shekhar Kapur wasn't curious.

He has openly admitted that he didn`t feel that he needed to meet Phoolan. His producer Bobby Bedi supports this decision "Shekhar would have met her if he had felt a need to do so." (Sunday Observer August 20th [1994]).

It didn't matter to Shekhar Kapur who Phoolan Devi really was. What kind of person she was. She was a woman, wasn't she? She was raped wasn't she? So what did that make her? A Raped Woman! You've seen one, you've seen 'em all.
He was in business.
What the hell would he need to meet her for?


Did he not stop to think that there must have been something very special about her? That if this was the normal career graph if a low-caste village woman that was raped, our landscapes would be teeming with female gangsters?


If there is another biographer any where in the world who has not done a living subject the courtesy of meeting her even once - will you please stand up and say your name? And having done that, will you (and your work) kindly take a running jump?


What does Shekhar Kapur mean when he says the film is based on Mala Sen's book? How has he decided which version of which event is "True" ? On what basis has he made these choices?
There's a sort of loutish arrogance at work here. A dunce's courage. Unafraid of what it doesn't know.
What he has done is to rampage through the book picking up what suits him, ignoring and even altering what doesn't.


I am not suggesting that a film should include every fact that's in the book.
I am suggesting that if you take a long hard look at the choices he has made - at his inclusions, his omissions and his blatant alterations, a truly dreadful pattern emerges.
Phoolan Devi (in the film version), has been kept on a tight leash. Each time she strays towards the shadowy marshlands that lie between Victimhood and Brutishness, she has been reined in. Brought to heel.
It is of consummate importance to the Emotional Graph of the film, that you never, ever, stop pitying her. That she never threatens the Power Balance.
I would have thought that this was anathema to the whole point of the Phoolan Devi story. That it went way beyond the You-Rape-Me: I'll-Kill- You equation. That the whole point of it was that she got a little out of control. That the Brutalized became the Brute.
The film wants no part of this. Because of what it would do to the Emotional Graph. To understand this, you must try and put Rape into its correct perspective. The Rape of a nice Woman (saucy, headstrong, foul-mouthed perhaps, but basicaly moral, sexually moral) - is one thing. The rape of a nasty/perceived-to-be-immoral womall, is quite another. It wouldn't be quite so bad. You wouldn't feel quite so sorry. Perhaps you wouldn't feel sorry at all.

Any policeman will tell you that.
Whenever the police are accused of custodial rape, they immediately set to work. Not to prove that she wasn't raped. But to prove that she wasn't nice. To prove that she was a loose woman A prostitute. A divorcee. Or an Elopee - ie: She asked for it.
Same difference.


Bandit Queen -the film, does not make a case against Rape. It makes its case against the Rape of nice (read moral), women. (Never mind the rest of us that aren't "nice") .


[??The film is consistently??] it's on the lookout, like a worried hen - saving Phoolan Devi from herself. Meanwhile we, the audience, are herded along, like so much trusting cattle. We cannot argue, (because Truth is Pure. And you can't mess With that).


Every time the Director has been faced with something that could disrupt the simple, pre- fabricated calculations uf his cloying morality play, it has been tampered with and forced to fit.
I'm not accusing him of having planned this.
I believe that it comes from a vision that has been distorted by his own middle-class outrage, which he has then turned on his audience like a fire-fighter's hose.


According to Shekhar Kapur's film, every landmark - every decison, every turning-point in Phoolan Devi's life, starting with how she became a dacoit in the first place, has to do with having been raped, or avenging rape.
He has just blundered through her life like a Rape-diviner
You cannot but sense his horrified fascination at the havoc that a wee willie can wreak. It's a sort of reversed male self absorption.
Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in.


The film opens with a pre-credit sequence of Phoolan Devi the child being married off to an older man who takes her away to his village where he rapes her, and she eventually runs away. We see her next as a young girl being sexually abused bv Thakur louts in her village . When she protests, she is publicly humiliated, externed from the village, and when she returns to the village, ends up in prison. Here too she is raped and beaten, and eventually released on bail. Soon after her release, she is carried away bv dacoits. She has in effect become a criminal who has jumped bail. And so has little choice but to embark on a life in the ravines.
He has the caste-business and the rape-business neatly intertwined to kick-start that "swift, dense, dramatic narrative" (Sunil Sethi, Pioneer August 14th [1994])

Mala's book tells a different story.
Phoolan Devi stages her first protest against injustice at the age of ten. Before she is married off. In fact it's the reason that she's married off so early. To keep her out of trouble.
She didn't need to be raped to protest. Some of us don't.
She had heard from her mother, the story of how her father's brusher Biharilal and his son Maiyadeen falsified the land records and drove her father and musher out of the family house, forcing them to live in a little hut on the outskirts of the village.
The angry little girl accompanied by a frightened older sister marches into her uncle's hora field where the two of them hang around with a combative air, munching hora nuts and plucking flowers (combatively). Their cousin Maiyadeen, a young man in his twenties, orders the children off his premises. Phoolan refuses to move. Instead this remarkable child taunts him, and questions his claim to the land. She was special.
She is beaten unconscious with a brick.


Phoolan Devi's first war, like almost every dacoit's first war, was fought for territory. It was the classic beginning of the journey into dacoitdom.
But does it have rape in it?
Nope.
Caste-violence?
Nope.
So is it worth including in the film?
Nope.

According to the book, her second protest too, has to do with territory. And it is this (not the sexual harassment bv the village louts, though that happens too), that lands Phoolan Devi in jail and enters her name in the police records.
Maiyadeen, the book says, was enraged because the property dispute (thanks to Phoolan's pleas to the village panchayat) had been re-opened and transferred to the Allahabad High Court.
As revenge he destroys Devideen's (Phoolan's father) crop, and is in the process of hacking down their Neem tree when Phoolan intervenes and throws a stone at him. She is attacked, trussed up, and handed to the police.
Soon after she's released on bail, she is kidnapped by dacoits. This too, according to Phoolan's version ( upto, this point, there is no other version), is engineered by Maiyadeen as a ruse to get her out of his hair.
Maiyadeen does not figure in the film.


Already some pretty big decisions have been made. What stays, what goes. What is high-lighted, what isn't.
Life is Rape. The rest is jus' details.


We then see Phoolan in the ravines, being repeatedly raped by Babu Singh Gujar, the Thakur leader of the gang she has been kidnapped by. Vikram Mallah, the second-in-command is disgusted by his behaviour and puts a bullet through him. According to the book the killing happens as a drunken Babu Gujar is threatening to assault Phoolan. In the film he's actually at it, lying on top of her, his naked bottoms jerking. As he breathes his last, Phoolan blinks the blood out of her eyes and looks long into the eyes of her redeemer. Just so that we get the point.

After this we are treated to a sequence of After-rape-romance. The touching bits about the first stirrings of sexual desire in a much-raped woman. The way it works in the film is If-you- touch-me-I'll-slap-you-but-I-really-do-want-to-touch-you.
It's choreographed like a dusty dance in which they rub against each other, but whenever he touches her she swats his hand away, but nevertheless quivers with desire. It is such a crude, obvious, doltish depiction of conflict in a woman who is attracted to a man, but associates sex with humiliation. It's not in the book, so I'm not sure whose version Shekhar has used. From the looks of it, probably Donald Duck's.

Vikram Mallah and Phoolan Devi become lovers. While the book and the film agree that he was her one true love, the book does not suggest that he was her only lover.


The film does. She has to be portrayed as a One Man Woman. Otherwise who's going to pity her? So it's virtue or bust. One lover (a distant cousin) is eliminated completely. The other (Man Singh), is portrayed as what used to be known in college as a Rakhi-brother.


From all accounts, Vikram Mallah seems to have been the midwife of Phoolan's birth into dacoitdom.
He supervises her first act of retribution against her husband Puttilal.
The film shows him bound and gagged, being beaten by Phoolan Devi with the butt of her gun, whimpering and crying with remembered rage.


At having been raped. In the Retribution bits, she is allowed a little latitude. Otherwise, (as we shall see) none at all.


But there's a sly omission here. According to the book, according to Phoolan Devi herself, there were two victims that day. Not one.
The second one was a woman. Vidya, Puttilal's second wife.
The film hasn't told us about a second experience Phoolan has with Puttilal. The time that Maiyadeen forced her to return to Puttilal. Phoolan arrived at her husband's house to find that he had taken a second wife. Vidya harassed and humiliated Phoolan and eventually forced Puttilal to send her away.
Her humiliation at Vidya's hands is more recent in Phoolan's memory.
Phoolan, in her written version says she wanted to kill them both and leave a note saying that this will be the fate of any man who takes two wives. Later she changed her mind and decided to leave them alive to tell the tale. She beat them both. And broke Puttilal's hands and legs.


But what nice woman would do that?
Beat up another woman?
How would you feel sorry for someone like that?


So, in the film, Vidya is dumped.

Phoolan's affair with Vikram Mallah ends tragically when he is shot.
She is captured bv his Thakur killers, gagged, bound, and transported to Behmai. The stage is set for what has come to be referred to as the "centerpiece" of the film. The gang-rape.
It is the scene by which the film is judged.
Not surprisingly, Phoolan herself is reticent about what happened. All she says is un logo ne mejhse bahut mazaak ki.
She mentions being beaten, humliliated and paraded from village to village. She mentions another woman dacoit Kusuma -- who disliked her, and taunted and abused her. (Of course there's no sign of her in the film. It would only serve to confuse the Woman-as-victim moral arithmetic.)

Since Phoolan isn't forthcoming, it is the vivid (vicarious) account in Esquire by an American, journalist, Jon Bradshaw that has been enlisted to structure this scene.

"... Phoolan screamed, striking out at him, but he was too strong. Holding her down, the stranger raped her. They came in one by one after that. Tall, silent Thakur men -- and raped her until Phoolan lost consciousness. For the next three weeks Phoolan was raped several times a night, and she submitted silently turning her face to the wall... she lost all sense of time... a loud voice summoned her outside. Sri Ram ordered Phoolan to fetch water from the well. When she refused, he ripped off her clothes and kicked her savagely...at last she limped to the well while her tormentors laughed and spat at her. The naked girl was dragged back to the hut and raped again."
Whatever Shekhar Kapur's other failings are, never let it be said that he wasn't a trier. He did his bit too. He (Pioneer Aug 14th, India Today August 21st [1994])locked himself up in a room - the door opening and closing as one man after another strode in - imagining himself being sodomized!!! After this feat of inter-sexual empathy, he arrives at some radical, definitive conclusions. " There is no pain in a gang-rape, no physical pain after a while," he assures us "It is about something as dirty as the abject humiliation of a human being and the complete domination of its soul."
Thanks baby. I would never have guessed.
It's hard to match the self-righteousness of a film-maker with a cause. Harder when the film- maker is a man and the cause is rape.
And when it's the gang-rape of a low-caste woman by high-caste men .. don't even try it. Go with the feeling.

We see a lot of Phoolan's face, in tight close-up, contorted into a grimace of fear and pain as she is raped and mauled and buggered. The overwhelming consensus in the press has been that the rape was brilliantly staged and chilling.


That it wasn't exploitative.
Now what does that mean? Should we be grateful to Shekhar Kapur for not showing us the condition of her breasts and genitals? Or theirs? That he leaves so much to our imagination?
That he gave us a tasteful rape?
But I thought the whole point of this wonderful film was its no-holds-barred brutality? So why stop now? Why the sudden coyness?
I'll tell you why. Because it's all about regulating the Rape-meter. Adjusting it enough to make us a little preen-at-the-gills. Skip dinner perhaps . But not miss work.
It's us, We-the-Audience, stuck in our voyeuristic middle-class lives who really make the decisions about how much or how little rape/violence we can take/will applaud, and therefore, are given.
It isn't about the story. (There are ways and ways of telling a story) It isn't about the Truth. (There are ways around that too. Right?) It isn't about what Really Happened. It's none of that high falutin' stuff.
It's good old Us. We make the decisions about how much we would like to see. And when the mixture's right, it thrills us,. And we purr with approbation.


It's a class thing. If the controls are turned up too high, the hordes will get excited and arrive. To watch the centrepiece. They might even whistle. They won't bother to cloak their eagerness in concern like we do.
This way, it's fine, It's just Us and our Imagination.
But hey, I have news for you - the hordes have heard and are on their way. They'll even pay to watch. It'll make money, the centrepiece. It's hot stuff


How does one grade film-rapes on a scale from Exploitative to Non-exploitative?
Does it depend on how much skin we see? Or is it a more complex formula that juggles exposed skin, genitalia, and bare breasts?
Exploitative I'd say, is when the whole point of the exercise is to stand on high moral ground, and inform us, (as if we didn't know), that rape is about abject humiliation.
And, as in the case of this film, when it exploits exploitation. Phoolan has said (Pioneer, August 15 [1994]) that she thinks they're no better shall the men who raped her. This producer/director duo.

And they've done it without dirtying their hands. What was that again? The complete domination of the soul? I guess you don't need hands to hold souls down.

After the centrepiece, the film rushes through to its conclusion.
Phoolan manages to escape from her captors and arrives at a cousin's house, where she recuperates and then eventually teams up with Man Singh who later becomes her lover, (though of course the film won't admit it).
On one foray into a village with her new gang, (one of the only times we see her indulging in some non-rape-related banditry), we see her wandering through a village in a daze, with flaring nostrils, while the men loot and plunder. She isn't even scared when the police arrive. Before she leaves she smashes a glass case, picks out a pair of silver anklets and gives it to a little girl.
Sweet.


When Phoolan and her gang, arrive in Behmai for the denouement, everybody flees indoors except for a baby that is for some reason, left by the well, The gang fans out and gathers the Thakurs who have been marked for death. Suddenly the colour seeps out of the film and everything becomes bleached and dream sequency. It all turns very conceptual. No brutal close-ups. No bestiality.
A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
The twenty-two men are shot The baby wallows around in rivers of blood. Then colour leaches back into the film.

And with that, according to the film, she's more or less through with her business. The film certainly, is more or less through with her. Because there's no more rape. No more retribution.


According to the book, it is really only after the Behmai massacre that Phoolan Devi grows to fit her legend. There's a price on her head, people are baying for her blood, the gang splinters. Many of them are shot by the police. Ministers and Chief-ministers are in a flap. The police are in a panic . Dacoits are being shot down in fake encounters and their bodies are publicly displayed like game. Phoolan is hunted like an animal. But ironically, it is now, for the first time that she is in control of her life. She becomes a leader of men. Man Singh becomes her lover, but on her terms. She makes decisions. She confounds the police. She evades every trap they set for her./ She plays daring little games with them. She undermines the credibility of the entire UP police force. And all this time, the police don't even know what she really looks like.
Even when the famous Malkhan Singh surrenders, Phoolan doesn't.

This goes on for two whole years. When she finally does decide to surrender, it is after several meetings with a persuasive policeman called Rajendra Chaturvedi, the SP of Bhind, with whom she negotiates the terms of her surrender to the government of Madhya Pradesh.

Is the film interested in any of this?
Go on. Take a wild guess.


In the film, we see her and Man Singh on the run, tired, starved and out of bullets. Man Singh seems concerned, practical and stoical.
Phoolan is crying and asking for her mother!!!

The next thing we know is that we're at surrender. As she gives up her gun, she looks at Man Singh and he gives her an approving nod.
Good Girl! Clever girl!
God Clever Girl


Phoolan Devi spent three-and-a-half years in the ravines. She was wanted on 48 counts of major crime, 22 murder, the rest kidnaps-for-ransom and looting.
Even simple mathematics tells me that we've been told just half the story.
But the cool word for Half-truth is Greater-truth.
Other signs of circular logic are beginning to surface.
Such as: Life is Art

Art is not Real

How about changing the title of the film to: Phoolan Devi's Rape and Abject Humiliation: The True half-Truth?
How about sending it off to an underwater film festival with only one entry?

What responsibility does a biographer have to his subject? Particularly to a living subject?
None at all?
Does it not matter what she thinks or how this is going to affect her life?

Is he not even bound to shovv her the work before it is released for public consumption?


If the issues involved are culpable criminal offenses such as Murder and Rape - if some of them are still pending in a court of law -- legally, is he allowed to present conjecture, reasonable assumption and hearsay as the unalloyed "Truth?"


Shekhar Kapur has made an appeal to the Censor Board to allow the film through without a single cut. He has said that the Film, as a work of Art, is a whole, if it were censored it wouldn't be the same film.
What about the Life that he has fashioned his Art from?
He has a completelv different set of rules for that.


It's been several months since the film premiered at Cannes. Several weeks since the showings in Bombay and Delhi. Thousands of people have seen the film. It's being invited to festivals all over the world.
Phoolan Devi hasn't seen the film. She wasn't invited.
I met her yesterday. In the morning papers Bobby Bedi had dismissed Phoolan's statements to the press -- " Let Phoolan sit with me and point out inaccuracies in the film, I will counter her accusations effectively, " (Sunday Observer, August 21st [1994]). What is he going to do? Explain to her how it really happened?
But it's deeper than that. His story to the press is one thing. To Phoolan it's quite another. In front of me she rang him up and asked him when she could see the film. He would not give her a definite date.
What's going on?

Private screenings have been organised for powerful people. But not for her.
They hadn't bargained for this. She was supposed to be safely in jail. She wasn't supposed to matter. She isn't supposed to have an opinion.
"Right now", the Sunday Observer says, "Bobby Bedi is more concerned about the Indian Censor Board than a grumbling Phoolan Devi."

Legally, as things stand, in UP the charges against her haven't been dropped. (Mulayam Singh has tried, but an appeal against this is pending in the High Court).
There are several versions of what happened at Behmai. Phoolan denies that she was there. More importantly, two of the men who were shot at but didn't die say she wasn't there. Other eye- witnesses say she was. Nothing has been proved. Everything is conjecture.


By not showing her the film, but keeping her quiet until it's too late to protest (until it has been passed by the Censors and the show hits the road), what are they doing to Phoolan? By appearing to remain silent, is she concurring with the film version of the massacre at Behmai? Which states, unequivocally, that Phoolan was there. Will it appear as though she is admitting evidence against herself? Does she know that whether or not the film tells the Truth it is only a matter of time before it becomes the Truth. And that public sympathy for being shown as a rape-victim doesn't get you off the hook for murder?
Are they helping her to put her head in a noose?

On the one hand the concerned cowboys Messrs Bedi & Kapur are so eager to share with us the abject humiliation and the domination of Phoolan Devi's "soul", and o n the other they seem to be so totally uninterested in her.
In what she thinks of the film, or what their film will do to her life and future.

What is she to them? A concept? Or just a cunt?

One last terrifying thing. While she was still in jail, Phoolan was rushed to hospital bleeding heavily because of an ovarian cyst. Her womb was removed. When Mala Sen asked why this had been necessary, the prison doctor laughed and said " We don't want her breeding any more Phoolan Devi's."
The State removed a woman's uterus! Without asking her .Without her knowing.
It just reached into her and plucked out a part of her!
It decided to control who was allowed to breed and who wasn't.
Was this even mentioned in the film?
No. Not even in the rolling titles at the end
When it comes to getting bums on seats, hysterectomy just doesn't measure up to rape.

August 22nd, '94

The day they killed Phoolan Devi: 25 July 2001

By Dalem, niort@quaismodo.co.uk [By permission from the author]
["I wrote this. I don't know what you think .... It's written from the heart. 26 July 2001"]


In the afternoon of a sunny summer day -
because cruelty always comes in an unexpected manner, disguised in an illusory shape -
that afternoon i received an email just like any other email.
Its words were black and bloody.
Black like the horrible fate that pounces over us
when we least expect it.
Bloody like the body of a woman who lied dead on the ground
after the bullets of hate had killed her,
only one of too many women
silenced for their acts and words,
for their life of struggle and revolt.

"Phoolan Devi has been shot dead this afternoon", i read.
I choked on the tears before the horrible phrase.
It was not possible -
yet it was there in front of my eyes -
just some hours ago, that brave and strong woman,
who faced the most atrocious horrors and fears,
who fought bravely defying the oppressive caste system and the
cruelty towards women in India,
who for years had ruled the bandit gangs and imposed justice
across no matter what land she came across,
who protected the voiceless,
who fought for the rights of the low-caste, the exploited workers, the women,
had died.

They had gotten her, at last.
Even after having her beaten, raped, abused, insulted, humilated,
mistreated beyond belief and locked in jail,
she came alive and stronger than before,
and entered the Indian Parliament to defend
the rights of those which before had no rights at all.
She proved that by all means she was strong and brave,
that she was in fact
the incarnation of Goddess Durga as she claimed.
The Goddess of Flowers, as her name meant.

She had recently travelled to New York
to have a treatment for a tumour -
ironically, her life ended a different way.
Had she died of old or diseased,
she had been a landmark no less,
yet in some time she would be forgotten.
Ironically, her murder
immortalizes her into a heroine, a fighter, a justicer.
Her name will always be heard and pronounced
with a shiver of fear
or with a smile of gratitude.

Yet her killers have no faces -
where she fought in the bandit gangs,
defied local caste authorities
or surrendered herself,
she always showed her face,
proud of herself,
never having to hide behind a mask.
The masked assassins who took her life are
as pathetic as their masks - coward, weak men
who have to hide behind masks to desecrate the life of a Goddess.

From a small child of Uttar Pradesh,
who defied her own relatives because of land matters,
to a child bride sold for a cow and a bycicle,
who at the age of 12 abandoned her husband,
walking home across a land of hundreds of kilometers
after being repeatedly beaten and raped by the husband -
thus refusing to live the normal life of a wife in India,
that is - to living with her family as a repudiated wife,
to being charged with fraudulent accusations
and paying the price of one month in jail,
where each day was a sucession
of savage beatings and rapes -
the norm for imprisoned women in India.

In 1979 Phoolan was sold to a gang of bandits
who gave her no better treatment
until the day the gang leader was killed
by fellow bandit Vikram Mallah,
who admired Phoolan for her courage.
Vikram became the gang leader and
took Phoolan as his protégé and common-law wife.
He compared her to Goddess Durga,
respected her and helped her to recover her honour.
Along with Vikram she became leader of the gang,
hiding in the Chambal ravines
while not robbing villages
and at roadblocks, not without giving away part of the pillaged goods
to the lower-caste and thanking their Goddess Durga.

In 1980 Vikram Mallah was murdered by higher-caste gang rivals.
These same rivals kidnapped Phoolan and
took her to the village of Behmai,
keeping her locked in a hut for twenty-three days
where each day dozens of higher-caste inhabitants of the village
would come to beat her and rape her, one by one.
At the end of the twenty-third day she was taken from the hut, disfigured by despair,
paraded naked in front of the same men
who had abused her, and publically insulted and humiliated.
Later she was rescued by fellow bandit Man Singh
with whom she formed a new gang.

On Valentine's day, 1981, she returned to the village of Behmai
to reveal herself as Durga and claim justice.
In the same place where she was paraded naked and humiliated,
she gathered all the higher-caste men in Behmai -
the same who had repeatedly beaten and raped her
for twenty-three consecutive days -
and ordered her fellow gangsters to open fire on them,
not without beating some of the men first.
The Goddess of Flowers was revenged.

In 1983 she surrendered along with Man Singh and her gang
in a public ceremony in which she deposed her guns -
her farewell to arms.
She survived 11 years in jail.
After being released, in 1996,
was elected to Parliament in Uttar Pradesh.

Until today, she was continuing her strife
for justice on politics - but bullets spoke louder.

My heart freezes when i think that
this morning she was still alive -
this same morning she was breathing,
alive and well -
that a few hours ago her blood ran happy in her veins,
her heart beated like mine does,
that a few hours ago she was still alive,
under the same sun i was.
I freeze if I think that
they killed one of my heroines -
a person i longed to have the honour of meeting one day -
i will never talk to her,
i will never hear her voice,
i will never be able to hug that woman
whose history has helped me and
guided me through some of the most horrible moments of my life.
The masked assassins took her away from me
and from all the voiceless, lower-caste people
she was defending,
selfish me,
those miserable people who needed her priceless political help.

I can't help crying while i write this.
It is too unfair.
Who will continue her struggle?
How many of these women could do what she did?
How many women in the future
will not be silent about the injustices and be brave enough
to handle the guns and
do justice by their bare hands?
Who will be Phoolan's sucessors?
Maybe the day of tomorrow knows another woman,
maybe more than one,
who for a change
decides to raise her voice and make herself heard,
even if it is through suffering and tragic justice.

Phoolan Devi has been a hero for all of us women,
and for all the socially exploited,
those who never had a voice.
Those whose work is hard and unpaid and never done,
whose rights do not exist,
whose life is lived in complete misery and is expendable,
who are exploited like cattle by rich,
high-caste masters, must be grateful to her,
because she helped them in their long struggle
for basic social rights in her political carreer.
Those women who have been mistreated,
abused, raped, beaten,
must honour her,
because she survived the unimaginable horror
with a super-human courage -
i speak as an abuse and rape survivor myself
and she is a role-model to any of us,
for her courage to stand up,
claim her life and make justice.

The world has lost a heroine,
one of the bravest and strongest women of this century.
Yet, like those who are immolated in the fire of their beliefs,
silenced for their truth being too loud
- like Joan of Arc, Giordano Bruno, Savonarola -
she will be remembered,
the fire and rage of her strife for justice alive and burning,
in our memory of her
and into the future generations.

HAIL THE BANDIT QUEEN!
HAIL THE GODDESS OF FLOWERS!
HAIL PHOOLAN DEVI!

Pvra Dalem

HDB's success over SIT

The PAP government faced a serious housing shortage when it assumed office in June 1959 because of the failure of the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) to solve the housing problem. The Housing and Development Board (HDB) was established by the PAP government in February 1960 to tackle the housing shortage. Explain why the HDB has succeeded in providing public housing for 84% of the population today when its predecessor, the SIT, had failed to do so. What have you learnt about public administration in Singapore from the HDB’s experience in public housing?


Introduction:

This essay will be organised in two parts; the first being a study of the HDB and their activities, which will then be compared to those of the SIT. The second part will focus on public administration in Singapore and its requirements, with relation to the HDB’s ‘experience’ in providing large-scale public housing.

Public administration in Singapore consists of three main components; the Singapore Civil Service, Statutory Boards and Government-Linked Companies. It must be noted here that the latter two organisations are not part of the structure of the Singapore Civil Service. Statutory boards are task specific and are set up under the supervision of a department of the civil service to tackle certain problems. Statutory boards were set up to complement the Civil Service and provide efficient service while sidestepping the constraints faced by the civil service, yet maintaining accountability.

In this essay, we will be examining one of Singapore most successful statutory boards, the Housing and Development board (HDB), which operates under the offices of the Ministry of National Development. We will also be comparing the HDB to its predecessor, the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), a statutory board set up during the period of British colonial rule in Singapore.


The SIT:
The Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) was set up in 1927 by the British colonial government in an attempt to arrest the growing congestion in many parts of Singapore. The main problem areas were in the city centre and Chinatown, spreading rapidly to the East Coast and thus clogging up Geylang road that linked the city to the East Coast. The main aims of the SIT were to reduce congestion, improve and upgrade the existing infrastructure of the country, and especially to widen roads - which were originally built for human and animal traffic, to allow motorcars to pass through .

In 1932 the SIT was given permission to build houses for squatters and other people with no proper housing. The SIT was handed this task as it was seen to have experience in this area due to the fact that it had been previously building houses. The main difficulties faced by the SIT were in relation to a lack of resources to build the houses as well as a lack of legislation that allowed them to carry out these plans, other factors like demographic and political changes also gave the HDB the opportunities it needed to succeed in the face of general disbelief in Singapore’s future. The SIT had been set up as a town planning authority ‘to provide for the improvement of the town and island of Singapore’ ; and was not granted the legal powers of a public housing authority although it was expected to fulfil the role. It was originally meant to provide housing only for those dislocated from their current homes due to SIT improvement schemes. However, due to the growing need for houses, between 1932 and 1941, the SIT was forced to start building some tenement-style housing for those who could not afford private housing; first in Lorong Limau and then Tiong Bahru.

To first cover internal factors leading to the failure of the SIT; the organisation was doing far more than it was meant to do and had to do so without adequate resources. Providing public housing was a top concern for the citizens but not for the colonial government who were more concerned with trade matters. In fact, the main aim for which the SIT was set up – to widen roads, proves how little the colonial government concerned itself with grassroots’ matters, widening roads and improving infrastructure would serve to improve communication links and quicken trade and ultimately improve their profits.

This thirst for profits extended to the structure of the SIT and other government bodies as well. The senior officials would collude with the junior officials (who were often local and fluent in the indigenous tongues) to accept bribes from local contractors and award contracts on that basis. Corruption within the SIT was rife; and this combined with the other internal factors mentioned above made the SIT the resounding failure that it turned out to be. The SIT was staffed by largely expatriates who were often not professionals in the field of public administration, housing or architecture; being employed solely due to their willingness to work in ‘the colonies’. Most of these officers had not been in Singapore for long and were thus unaware of the local situations and unable to adapt; thus being of little use to the needs of the grassroots.

Government expenditure on the SIT was minimal as it was a small concern for the colonial government. The economy of Singapore also contributed to the lacks faced by the SIT; Singapore’s economy was based on entrepôt trade and had significant shortages in terms of skilled labour and capital. As such, with no materials to build, and no one to do the building, the SIT faced major problems getting started on their projects.

External factors also added to their failure, these included the Singaporean demographics, population and politics during that time period. These external factors were beyond the control of the SIT, however, they were badly managed by the SIT, and we will see later, exploited by the HDB for its own success.

Singapore is a very small city-state and this allows for greater governmental control over the administration, and also few communication problems, thus allowing rapid government responsiveness. However, all of these three advantages of Singapore were not utilised by the SIT who were disorganised and rampant with corruption. The climate of Singapore and its natural immunity to natural disasters allows for the building of high-rise flats, but this factor was also ignored by the SIT who built flats up to only four or five stories high. However, the colonial government was not sincere in providing public housing in Singapore and thus cared naught for the structure of the SIT; the costs of building high-rise buildings were also high and thus not a feasible project for the SIT.

In addition to the list of problems faced by the SIT, the rapidly growing population also served to completely unbalance the SIT who seemed to be sinking rapidly. The many squatter settlements that had sprung up all over the island also posed a problem to the SIT as they refused to be evicted and re-housed. The lack of legislative powers to evict them rendered the SIT ineffective. Internally, the SIT already faced problems, these were further aggravated by the external problems they faced; in fact, the SIT was thrown off by the sheer magnitude of the job that had been thrust upon them.


The HDB:

The HDB was far better equipped than the SIT in that the new government had a significant vested interest in ensuring the success of the HDB and its plans. It was set up to avoid the mistakes made by the SIT and was to be awarded “considerably more funds, more legal powers and, above all more drive than its predecessor” . In 32.5 years, the SIT built only 23,264 units; in the 20 years immediately after its creation, the HDB built 372,000 units.

The SIT succeeded where the SIT failed for a number of reasons, these can again be categorised as internal and external reasons, but one common thread running through them was the determination of the new installed PAP party to live up to its election promise of providing adequate public housing for the citizens of Singapore. The PAP put its full political weight behind the HDB knowing that public housing was a volatile issue close to the hearts (and votes) of the people. It implemented a variety of laws that gave the HDB very significant legal leeway. The Land Acquisition Act of 1966 eradicated one of the major problems faced by the SIT. The HDB could now take over any plot of land for “for any residential, commercial or industrial purposes” .

The government’s policy of family planning which was implemented by the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board also helped boost the HDB’s amazing success rates by decreasing somewhat the annual rates of population growth and thus alleviating the HDB’s workload.

However, other than the legal rights given to the HDB by the PAP, internal factors also helped the HDB to succeed and raise it to the world-class level it stands at today.
Most importantly, the HDB was set up as the de-jure public housing authority in Singapore, unlike the SIT which had become the de-facto housing authority. The reason behind the creation of the HDB was the creation of ‘low-cost public housing for Singaporeans’ . The external factors did not change much during the handover of the public housing mandate from the SIT to the HDB. In terms of internal factors, the HDB used a great deal of innovation in setting about achieving the aims it had set for itself.

The HDB exploited Singapore’s natural advantages to a significant extent. It set about building high-rise flats, realising that the Singaporean topography favoured such forms of housing. Economically the HDB benefited from Singapore changing from an almost purely entrepôt economy to an entrepôt and manufacturing based economy. This allowed the government to allocate more funds to the HDB, nearly four times the amount spent by the SIT in 12 years was allocated to the HDB for a 15 month period. A most significant reason for the success of the HDB can thus be said to be the provision of adequate funding. This is however not to say that the HDB spent its budget liberally, in its first five year building program, the HDB exceeded its building aims by 3,399 units but spent SGD 2 million less than it had budgeted. This can go to show the commitment of the HDB to serving Singapore well.

The HDB also was pretty self-serving in itself. It’s building efforts contributed very largely to the building boom in the late 1960s and created between 15 to 20 thousand jobs from the 1960s to early 1970s. The provision of adequate funding meant that the HDB did not have to face the problems of the SIT with relation to a lack of capital and building and construction capacity. However, the HDB faced problems in that there was a shortage of skilled labour, building materials, and the increasing inflation meant that costs of building were increasing. The ingenuity with which the HDB overcame these problems proves that the HDB was going to be a huge success and it was. It employed foreign architects and also set up a training scheme in tandem with the Government Ministry it came under to train more qualified architects. Other than this scheme, there were also programs set up to train primary school leavers in the mechanics of the construction industry. Finally, the HDB made attempts to mechanize many of the processes required in building to overcome the shortage of labour and speed up construction. It also began to operate its own granite quarries, piling plants and brick manufacturing factory. These new initiatives ensured that the costs of building were significantly reduced and also somewhat less vulnerable to inflation and other external economic factors. Lastly, the HDB also maintained reserves of some essential building materials to overcome any possible shortages in the future.

Thus, it is apparent that the government loans that were open and offered to the HDB as well as its own initiatives were significant contributing factors to its success.

The changing population of Singapore was also a contributing factor to the success of the HDB. Not only was the population growing at an amazing rate, the sex ratio was also more balanced, this factor and the increase in proportion of Chinese and Malays, together show that Singapore was changing from a city-state where the majority of the population were transient workers to one where the population was settling down. It is precisely due to the ‘settling down’ of the population that the HDB managed to find people willing to first rent, and then buy the units they were building. These people were making an investment in the nation they were beginning to see as home. This is a major point in terms of Singapore’s nation building and how they HDB can serve to unite the majority of the nation. In 1960 a mere 23% lived in public housing, in just ten years it rose to 50% and today, the number stands around 84%. These 84% of people can be said to share common experiences and living standards, thus creating a standard in an otherwise heterogeneous nation.

In terms of the internal factors of the HDB which led to its success, the organisation of the SIT and HDB were significantly different. The HDB carried out recruitment with the aid of the Public Service Commission which fills the offices of the Singapore Civil Service. The system of recruitment is based purely on merit and it is clear from the study done by Jon Quah that the officers of the HDB were not just better trained than those of the SIT, they were far more familiar with the local context and its needs. The morale of the officers in the HDB was also significantly higher than that of the SIT officers, as demonstrated by the reduction in complaints registered against HDB officials , and the reduction in terms of corrupt behaviour among them . Lastly, the internal structure of the HDB was dynamic as opposed to the paternalistic structure of the SIT. This obviously acted as a motivation to its relatively young officials who felt happier working in such a dynamic environment.


Lessons learnt from the HDB on Public Administration in Singapore:

The HDB’s experience has made significant contributions to the study as well as the active practice of public administration in Singapore. Most significantly, I would say that the HDB has set a benchmark not only for statutory boards to follow, but also for all other government bodies.

It has demonstrated in action, the importance of statutory boards, especially in the Singaporean context. In a one-party dominant state, which is immensely multi-racial, it is easy to blame nepotism and other biases for all problems. However, the meritocracy practiced by the HDB in the recruitment of members and in the completely impartial allocation of flats, makes it apparent that the corrupt practices often used by the SIT officials is a thing of the past. The SIT experience has set out the fatal mistakes for any board in Singapore, the mistakes to avoid. The HDB did so successfully. It also demonstrated that the splitting up of work between one or more statutory boards is much more efficient than loading one board with numerous different duties. The SIT had too many things on its plate, this and the lacks in terms of funding and support it suffered from ended up in its dissolution. The HDB concentrated on public housing and in fact some of its duties (urban renewal) were passed on to the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 1974 to allow the HDB greater work specialisation. Even when the HDB was given an extra goal in 1966, that of land reclamation, the coffers of the HDB were increased, as were its other resources. In fact, the success of the HDB has justified statutory boards in themselves. Many sceptics have commented that statutory boards are just an extension of the Civil Service, however the resounding success of the HDB has not just silenced them but stood as a world example in sharing the work of nation building and not loading it all on the Civil Service.

The essentiality of government support in terms of funding, legislation and sheer moral support is also an important lesson learnt from the HDB experience. The SIT failed as drastically as it did largely due to the lack of political support it had from the British government. It is clear from the HDB experience that only when the government and the important government bodies share the same priorities that these aims will be actualised. It is for the benefit of the government to support these bodies as the realisation of campaign and election promises serves the best interests of the party in that it not only legitimises them as a party but also as a ruling government. It was essential for the PAP to maintain their election promise of 1959 and they pushed for adequate public housing, which then became a never-ending process of improvement. This is the main reason for the success of the HDB and Singapore’s public administration, they are never satisfied, and there is always a new level to reach. This is one of the reasons for the PAP government being in power for most of Singapore’s lifespan, post colonial-government.

Other than these factors, the removal of corruption from government systems not just increases the legitimacy of the government but also allows policies to be carried out efficiently and improves rapidly the state of the nation.


Conclusion:
As Such, we can see that the HDB succeeded where the SIT failed for a number of reasons, both internal and external. Strong governmental support is essential for any statutory board and plays the most significant role in the success or failure of the organisation. The internal factors such as recruitment processes and morale also boost the success rate of the organisation.

Singapore has learnt a number of lessons with regards to Public Administration from the HDB experience; these include the importance of government support, the need to cut graft and have impartial systems and the need to only load upon government bodies as much work as they can handle given their resources. If all these lessons are implemented, Singaporean organisations will surpass any expectations and legitimise their setting-up in the first place.


Bibliography:
Hasan, Riaz. Families in flats : a study of low income families in public housing
Singapore: Singapore University Press , c1977.

Housing and Development Board. First decade in public housing, 1960-69.
Singapore: Housing & Development Board, 1970.

Practice of people's participation : seven Asian experiences in housing the poor.
Bangkok : Human Settlements Division, Asian Institute of Technology, 1980.

Quah, Jon S.T. “Statutory Boards.” In Quah, Chan and Seah (eds.), Government and Politics in Singapore, Chapter 6

Quah, Jon S.T. “Public Housing.” In Quah, Chan and Seah (eds.), Government and Politics in Singapore, Chapter 10

Quah, Jon S. T. (Jon Siew Tien), Singapore's experience in public housing: some lessons for other new states. Singapore : Dept. of Political Science, University of Singapore, 1975

Siew, William. Public housing and community development : the Singapore experience. Singapore : MIMAR, 1983.

Urban Planning in Singapore from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. Updated on 6th August, 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning_in_Singapore (accessed on 31/8/05)

Scenography and the Theatre: Analyse the contributions of the set designer in regard to a number of specific local productions to monitor the current

Introduction:

Since the post Independence days of Singapore English language theatre, set design has taken a considerable evolution. The set designer’s contribution to the set has become increasingly crucial to the play, a stark contrast to plays staged in the past such as Robert Yeo’s Are You There Singapore trilogy or Goh Poh Seng’s Elder Brother, where the set seemed merely functional to providing a reference to the location and setting. Today’s set designs are more complex and dynamic, and are so crucial to the play, that they are almost becoming an art in itself. Today’s set designs appear to be catalytic in determining whether or not the play is a success or failure.

A set design’s success is measured usually by its aesthetics as essential to establish an overall visual appeal. But most importantly, it may be significant in adding yet another layer into the play’s meaning.


Facades
The Physicists – Luna-id

Luna-id’s recent set of The Physicists by designer Sebastian Zeng showcases in the first act, a claustrophobic hall of an asylum for the mad. As the play progress we are drawn into the mysterious murder story. This mystery at first seems like another “whodunit”, but with the set walls being so close to the downstage, we feel as if a more insidious, somewhat scheming truth lies behind the walls, hidden under the facade of a predictable murder story. The Scratcher’s sudden silent movement to the centre stage after a long period of being in the corner of stage, almost forgotten, is intense. But more essentially, he pushes down the vertical walls of the set, symbolically gesturing an ending of one part of the story, to reveal another. And the set crashes, thundering onto the stage floor, with perfectly timed lighting, to reveal for a split second, the sinister prison, a deeper level into which the story beyond the interlude, would soon unfold. More than just indicating the location of the sanatorium interiors, the set takes an actantial role and functions as the “move” in the formalistic concepts of dramatic plot construction.

Set designs, once just playing a supporting role in theatre productions, with the bulk of the action coming from acting itself has evolved significantly over time. With the increasing use of factors such as multimedia and other technological advances, the set has increased in the value it adds to the play.

In Act One of The Physicists, we realise while the peculiar design of the set walls on one hand, served as symmetrical multiple doors into the inner sanctums of the asylum, on the other hand with its collapse, in Act two they innovatively transform into perfectly symmetrical prison cells for the patients: Mobius, Newton and Einstein. The lack of space in Act I had been kept as reserved for greater dynamic movements as the story increases in complexity after the interlude, and to accommodate the marching in of the asylum guards; giant titan monstrosities for uniformed women. Suddenly we see the supposed ‘assailants’ themselves becoming the victims of the madness of the prison asylum. The set not only topples the façade, it also topples our original identification of the characters, by means of inverting the identities of the ‘victim’ and the ‘victimiser’. The set design on The Physicists clearly set new standards for scenographers to follow, and it is an indication of a maturing Singapore’s theatre scene.

Dangerous Liaisons - Toy Factory

To continue with the theme of multimedia use in set design, the next example is Toy Factory’s recent production of Dangerous Liaisons. Dangerous Liaisons is adapted by Christopher Hampton from a novel by Choderlos de Laclos – Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The novel was originally written in the form of letters but later transformed into a dramatic plot by Christopher Hampton as well. Dangerous Liaisons can be categorized under comedy of manner, whereby the play itself portrays and satirizes the facades that exist in the society and thus also poking fun at the standards set in society. The setting of Christopher Hampton’s play reflects a society where reputable aristocrats are associated with high social, moral and also economic standards. Such simplistic and rigid standards thus imply that status quo of society can be easily breached. Thus, the main protagonists of the play – Merteuil and Valmont are aristocrats who seemingly fulfill the criteria set by society. However, as libertines, (a person who is unrestrained by conventions and morality) both are thus supposed to be in absolute self-control at all times which allow them to play a gallant, insidious game, however without breaching the conditions of society and also to appear acceptable by society. Thus this game of scandalous behaviours and affairs is made rationalized as normal and acceptable as society-at-large is also doing so. Thus the idea of how successful one is as a libertine depends heavily on how well one can conceal, and also the degree of value and respect that society places on one as a respectable individual. Hence to summarise the underlying themes, it should be noted that facades and deceptions are hence more serious and sharp, which emphasizes on the highbrow and witty quality of the play.

In relation to Toy Factory’s production of Dangerous Liaisons, an attempt will be made to analyse how and what aspects of the play, the set design highlights or inadvertently disregards.

The opening of the play with a white, translucent screen with 3 garden swings behind it, hints slightly that there is a façade. The use of the mobile garden swings and metal slides paints a playground scenario. Contrary to the playground in Roman Tham and the three bears – Everything but the Brain, the use of colours in Dangerous Liaisons for the set is less colourful which still portrays the image of a playground, but for adults. In Dangerous Liaisons, the set design actually draws attention to an interesting point that, the white translucent screen is used to separate the audience who are supposed to be implicated in this play, representing the society. And behind this seemingly thin and easily broken façade, lies the playing grounds for the libertines. The opening thus sets up the atmosphere that what is seen on stage may not be what it actually is at surface level.

It is highly similar to The Singapore Repertory Theatre’s Immaculate Misconception, which also ingeniously used giant blinds that worked like scrims, in allowing for the screening of the e-mail conversations between the lovers Tam and Turner. The blinds here, is essential in two levels: first, to accentuate the romantic long distance relationship between the Tam and Turner. Secondly, in providing the audience a chance to witness the actual procedures of the mechanical reproduction in which Tam performs in her lab. In being able to see the images of the sperm being inserted into the ovary, the animations and other images, Immaculate Misconception’s set design now becomes a medium for which the play is able to extend itself into a deeper level in story telling.

This play provides a very interesting comparison to The Physicists, which also utilizes an image of a façade; whereby the brilliant set design manages to convince and bring across the fact that the front office is a façade to cover the sinister claustrophobic sanatorium when the wall collapses later in the play. The collapse of the wall creates a symbolic suggestion that probably the safety net of society can be easily broken. And as it breaks, ‘the collapse’ revealing the truth that have been hidden safely from the eyes of the audiences, who are the society at large, that the supposed ‘assailants’ are in fact the victims. Such a sudden change in identities thus causes the audiences to interrogate the standards and conventions set by society, in the play as well as their perceptions of our modern-day society. As the set design of The Physicists successfully brings out the underlying themes and also allows audiences to engage and interrogate, the set of Dangerous Liaisons on the other hand fails to create such an impact. The collapse of the wall in The Physicists worked by itself as an act to successfully create the lasting impact on the idea of the façade, whereas the set of Dangerous Liaisons required the actors/actresses to support and fully realize its potential, which unfortunately did not achieve its desired effect, thus undermining the effect of the excellent idea behind the set design.

Other than the façade, Dangerous Liaisons also has other fascinating factors in its commendable set design, which as mentioned earlier is let down by the lack of effective acting. The use of the metal slides, where the actors/characters enter, may imply that one may enter this game but not be able to get out of it, creating the sense that everyone has no choice but to be implicated, including the audience. The garden swing operates only when a person applies force to it; or 2 persons sitting opposite each other apply alternating force. On a deeper level, it can be illustrated as the swing represents the game, whereby it requires 2 to kick-start the game, and thus setting the pace of the game. And in the first few scenes of Toy Factory’s play, it becomes established that the 2 main players or masterminds of the game is Merteuil and Valmont. And the use of the swing allows Merteuil (acted by veteran actress Tan Kheng Hua) to climb atop of it on several occasions, though with difficulty technically, to show and assert her overall dominance. The mobility of the swings and slides may hint how the game progresses or changes but generally, as an audience, one can’t really see any significance except that it is to facilitate scene changes.

In Roman Tham and the three bears – Everything but the Brain, though the set is less mobile with spatial constraints, i.e. the ladder and the swing, it still allows very fluid movements of the actors/actresses.On the overall of the few plays discussed, it reveals that spatial configurations and organizations have become increasingly flexible. I.e. Ma:Moment, avant-garde practices.

In Dangerous Liaisons, the use of roller blades for messengers, together with phallic (penis-shaped) torches appear to be extremely out of place and hilarious (based on audiences responses) And also, the use of the fake poodle, the attempted subtle advertising for Moët & Chandon when Emilie makes her entrance, the use of the seashell-like bed, added on to the comedic effect rather than to underline the main themes of the play proper. As based on Hampton’s play, the duplicity, the facades of the society is only established in the opening scene of Toy Factory’s production, which without further emphasis as the play progresses would be gradually left out of sight. The unaccounted use of roller blades and phallic torches have counteracted on what was discussed and established previously, which have inadvertently reduced the degree of seriousness that should be taken into account.

The set design, excluding unaccounted use of certain props, overall attempted to hold the play as a playground for the respectable aristocrats, and to show how one plays the game. However, the acting of several actors/actresses did not fully bring out the idea of the façades, the deceptive nature of this playground. Instead of showing how the characters can conceal, deceive and play the game (against the setting of a playground) of upholding a respectable and moral reputation yet live a scandalous life under the conditions of society, what was brought out was that the characters were literally having fun. Meaning to suggest, the stage picture showed no signs of any underlying game, everything was upfront, no hypocrisy, no deception. Overall it is a matter of subjectivity, but the acting overall did not bring out the once established idea of façade of the play, nor did it attempt to further emphasize and bring out the main themes. In short, it failed to complement the set design which by itself is an interesting concept that allows space (i.e. the acting) to realize its potential of holding and emphasizing the main themes.

The play was staged at the Victoria Theatre using the proscenium arch. The use of the proscenium arch, especially when the opening scene implicates the audiences as the society at large, works very well with the set design to imply that the society (the audiences) is watching the characters/actors, waiting for the characters/actors to breach the conditions of society. Which apparently, as mentioned above, there was nothing to be breached since everything was upfront.

Technologically, the set used for Toy Factory’s Dangerous Liaisons was kept simple and mobile. There is minimum use of the multimedia, probably to account for the fact that the play was set before the French revolution. And also, as discussed, the set design required the actors/actresses to realize its full potential, rather than to work on its own to fully bring out the main themes. Set designs indeed play essential roles, either by its own as in The Physicists, or it is dependent on other theatrical aspects to determine the extent of the production’s success.

Technology: Multimedia (esp. Video)
Ma:moment - Theatreworks’, Ang Tau Mui – Wild Rice,

The advent of technology is a distinct trend in Singapore’s English language theatre scene. An increasing number of productions have seen the need to incorporate visual complements of video and multimedia into their productions. The set designs today are made to accommodate the use of these new media. Theatreworks’ Ma:moment uses a large and encompassing muslin scrim to facilitate the repeated screenings of scenes from a black and white Chinese film, 'Mother's Grief', in which Bai Yan (described in the programme as "the Greta Garbo of Hong Kong cinema") experiences anguish and finally dies for the sake of her daughter. One medium, we are invited to see, can comment on another – here the film is used to great effect to show the changes in Mei Ling's feelings about life and motherhood.

In 2002, Wild Rice’s production of Ang Tau Mui sees a large flat panel functioning as part of the set, used to screen images of Hong Kong movie queen Lin Dai. These images work to show the obsession of Ang Tau Mui towards her idol. Casey Lim's videography provides a well-integrated backdrop to the action, particularly in a scene where Ang Tau Mui dances with a backwall projection of Lin Dai.

In Between Chinas – Action Theatre

In In Between Chinas stage setting is minimalistic with only a few wooden blocks. Simplicity of the set may have been designed so as not to distract the audiences from the screen behind. On the screen in the background mentioned, there is a collage of images including that of King George “Old Georgie”, scenery of the park and Roman Tham. This use of multimedia has been identified as a trend that has been going on for the past few recent years. Use of images on screens has presumably been for the purpose of explaining and presenting to the audience certain elements which are not only integral to the plot of the play, but more often than not, also carry some sort of message pertaining to a certain issue or underlying theme of the production, which the playwright or director wants to bring out.

The use of lights is relatively simple, where it starts out dark and progressively turns brighter. There is use of both diagetic and non-diagetic sounds. When the old man is practicing Taiji, soft ambient music plays. A young American born Chinese then enters and the music stops. Later, a Roman Tham song is played by the old man on a radio.

Sandakan Threnody - Theatreworks

Sandakan Threnody is a powerful cross-cultural multi-media collaboration, which features aspects of dance, action, text and video. Focusing on feelings of tragedy during the Second World War, the play succeeds in terms of capturing mood and atmosphere largely due to the minimalist set which serves the theme of production striking effectiveness. The minimalistic set, designed by Justin Hill, comprises largely of a dark “monolithic stage left ” which acts as a screen on which footages of war are shown. The most interesting component of Hill’s set however, is the large metal plate hanging from the ceiling, slanting toward the monolith. This plate reflects images from both the video footage as well as stage action and manages to very efficiently capture the coldness of war and its oppressive nature. Deep upstage, there is a sole table and chair, behind which a performer sat for large parts of the play, reading out news updates. The flat tone of voice she used coupled with the gooseneck lamp on the table worked together to create a gloomy atmosphere. The generally very dark stage and lack of excessive props was exactly what was required to remove the audience from their comfortable surroundings and thrust them into the atmosphere of war and the gloom and misery that comes along with it.

Through most of Sandakan Threnody, there is always some video clip being screened. From seldom seen war clips to clips of soldiers marching on and on and even photographs of soldiers who perished in the war, the set seems to go beyond the physical set itself, to encompass the scene of the war and in a way, bring that into the theatre.

The incorporation of video screening and multimedia has also now dramatically fused differences between the theatre and the cinema. Once, this distinction used to be clear and well defined in that cinema was always hermetically sealed in terms of the relationship between the audience and the actors, whereas theatre was able to let both entities engage themselves together directly. This is virtually unprecedented in Singapore’s theatre history, and technology now gives the play a broader and highly dynamic ability to express itself.

However, there are disadvantages as well to this evolution of set design in the current theatre scene. One can say that in Sandakan Threnody, the focus is on the on-screen action more than the dance sequences. With the video clips and the narration taking over most of the attention of the audience.



Creating an alternative world:
Lovers’ Words – Fun Stage

The Fun Stage’s production of Lovers’ Words revolved around a world in which homosexuality is the norm, and heterosexuals are forced to meet for furtive encounters in seedy nightclubs, while the gay world pours scorn upon them as deviants and subjects them, when caught, to extensive psychological re-conditioning to get them off the straight and narrow path.

Lovers’ Words uses a set consisting of nets covering the entire theatre, including the audience seating area. In this play, once the audience enters the theatre, the set begins to play a major role in setting the scene. Immediately, the audience feels a certain degree of restraint because he is blocked in because of the nets. The audience feeling trapped within the play causes them to inevitably become part of the play. At the end of the play, the audience will feel that they are going through the same societal influences as the actors and they are no observers. The set plays a major part to bring forward this message to the audience by making them inextricably a part of the play.

The set is also aesthetically driven to represent a futuristic or non-existence society, which is very apt for the content of the play since the entire world is homosexual in the play's context. The set more than fulfils its role in forging this created world, creating its own version of reality and drawing the audience into it.



Ma:moment – Theatreworks

The stage configuration of Ma: moment is ‘Thrust’. The stage is split into three individual platforms and arranged such that each audience side gets their own “portion” of the stage. Each of the three portions of the stage is backed by a screen. When the actors play to one particular side, they are more often than not, distant to the two other sides. Their forms can only be seen vaguely and with the low levels of lighting, the audience can only tell what is going on by listening to the dialogue.

The use of lighting in the production can be grouped into four main threads: Red lights, low level orangey lights (resembling the levels of light given off by a naked light bulb), light coming from multimedia screen.(During the screening of the Hong Kong melodrama) and total darkness.

The perimeters of the stage are completely surrounded by translucent white material. The actors can still be seen clearly close up, but effectively, their forms are hazy and obscured The feeling of distance and ethereal otherworldliness is thus projected. Long, rectangular pieces of thin white material(possibly cotton) are hung from above the stage and are spaced uniformly throughout the areas within the stage. The pieces of material sway in the breeze and when actors drift around the pieces of cloth, there is again, a dream like, ethereal quality which suggests a state of fantasy and dreams. It is also symbolic of the afterlife which is a significant contribution to the plot, as the main character, Precious Pig, dies and returns as a Hungry Ghost.

Each portion of the stage is backed by a screen on which scenes from a Hong Kong melodrama (“Mother’s Grief”) would be projected. The scenes in the film are used as a plot device. However, the abstractness of the entire production seems to hint that there are deeper underlying meanings to the use of the film. It could be that the scenes from the film are just the fantasies of the main character. After all, films are not real. People watch films to immerse themselves in it and live out their dreams and fantasies. The use of the film, then, is a representation of the character’s desires and dreams to be a mother.

For the most part, there are no miscellaneous sounds provided by the sound crew. Most of the sound effects are produced by the actors themselves. For instance, during the scene when Precious Pig tells the Char Siew boy to offer her more Char Siew during the Hungry Ghost Festivals after her death, another actor runs around throwing Hell bank notes in the air while incessantly mimicking the high pitched sound of a bell, reminiscent of the bells at Chinese funeral rites. At the end of the play, the actors walk off stage in a slow procession to an old Chinese song famous in the 60s.

Props are kept to a minimum. There is a dressing table full of cosmetics and an accounts book on one portion of the stage, representing the period of time in Precious Pig’s life when she had been a Mamasan. Then, there is also a funeral alter with candles and Hell bank notes, representing the afterlife. Hell bank notes scattered all over the place. One particular interesting prop is a piece of yellow cloth which is either wrapped around Precious Pig like a decorative scarf, used as a sign of an offering of love and protection to her daughter, a sign of the connective aspects of sexual intercourse and ultimately, balled up and stuffed under the actor’s shirt to mimic pregnancy – which is in itself another detail that contributes very strongly to the overall theme of the production. What is most interesting about the use of the cloth to mimic pregnancy, is that the role of the Precious Pig, returned from the dead as a Hungry Ghost, is momentarily taken on by a slim, male actor with ghoulish makeup. The waif-like physique of the male actor further emphasizes the aspect of starvation of Precious Pig as a hungry ghost; Precious Pig is “pregnant”. It shows that her starvation is not so much of a want for food as it is a longing for a child. This is ironic, since physically, Precious Pig looks as if she is carrying life in her womb, but this is a phantom pregnancy, as death is a state in which life is absent. The physical manifestation of the signs of pregnancy, both in death and in the form of a male actor, contributes to the idea of the starvation of the maternal instinct.

Overall, the set design contributes in many ways to the play, but there is another important aspect that gives the play a whole new level of depth. The character, Precious Pig, had lived all her life in Chinatown and had even been a Mamasan in one of the many brothels in olden day Chinatown. The production was presented at Sago street, where the infamous Death houses were in the olden days. "…these are where the sick go ostensibly for treatment but where chances of recovery are almost nil. "

Sago Street was also where funeral cloths, paper models of houses and Hell bank notes were sold. The play had its run during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival and the song that was played at the end of the play has now been “stereotyped” as a sort of theme song for female ghosts. This setting within a setting has no doubt, been designed to play on the cultural knowledge of the audience who, at the very least, would have some awareness of the history of Chinatown, and who would certainly be aware of the Hungry Ghost festival during which the play is being shown. This setting within a setting adds a new dimension of self-reflexivity and background knowledge that will make this play a very much more interesting experience if the audience is able to appreciate these elements.

Everything but the Brain - Action Theatre

Everything but the Brain is set in a playground/children’s playroom fashion with ladders, a structure made out of brightly coloured bricks, reminiscent of the main structure in playgrounds. Everything is brightly coloured. The set appears to put emphasis on Elaine’s childhood memories, and it is as though, although she is now 36 years old, her memories still revolve around her past. This is further portrayed with the 3 bears chorus, who cannot be seen by the other characters, except Elaine herself and the audience. Throughout the play, Elaine and the 3 bears addresses the audiences, which gives the audience a sense of connectivity, and thus drawing us into her childhood days and also understanding her occasional child-like qualities. Thus, the audiences will understand and see the set as appropriate and it underlines the whole notion about Elaine who has been reliving her past, and also how she fights against time as her father is dying.

Fairly natural lighting used throughout most of the play, except occasional changes to emphasize on either Elaine’s emotions or thoughts. However, there was a scene when Elaine was flirting with the doctor and the passion was played out in a surreal sexual situation with red lighting. The use of this red lighting only once in the entire play could possibly be an allusion to Elaine’s only romance in 20 over years that she has stayed single. Flashbacks are indicated by a sudden slight muting of the lights.

Here, we have identified another trend in using sounds. There seems to be an increasing fondness for having the actors themselves produce sound effects. In this case, even the non-diagetic music seems to be produced by the actors themselves. Note that in the death scene in which Elaine’s father is led away by the Death figure, Brendan Fernandez sings, “I might have had a wicked childhood….” The use of the gong by the bears is intrusive and shocking. And when they do the countdown and announce how many minutes are left till Elaine’s father’s death, it provides a sense of urgency and even though the audience are informed from the very start that Elaine’s father will die, it is still disturbing to have the gong punctuate and mark the countdown. Although the use of the gong and the consistent countdown to the death of Elaine’s father as well as end of the play may be intrusive and shocking, it serves to remind the audience that although we are drawn into her narration and life story, we are nonetheless watching a play. It serves to rouse the audience from our state of passivity and instead to be aware and to interrogate.

The use of costumes is naturalistic other than for the 3 bears, who wears the same clown costumes and have their noses blacked and whiskers drawn on. This is not just for pure humour but also to distinguish them from the other characters. In other words, to show that the three bears exist only in Elaine’s world and her childhood in particular.

One Flea Spare – Luna-id

In another Luna-id production, One Flea Spare, a tale set in 17th century England, in the midst of a plague that gradually thwarts social stratification and class. At once upon the audience entering the theatre, they are immediately drawn into the play’s trapped atmosphere, where brave members of the audiences are made to sit elevated and surrounding the main stage space, extending the nature of entrapment within the story - a situation in which the Snelgraves experiences as a result of the extension of their quarantine period and home exile. The set is plain in space but vastly in a muted brown; a colour with the idea to evoke gloom and dullness. The shaped corpses hung on the stage ceiling wrapped in bags of burlap, are creepy and looms over a prevalent sense of death, decay, and decadence. Decomposition is suggestive by means of the hung bodies to cause unease with the audience, who were almost forcibly made to share with the play’s overarching plague epidemic. This establishes the mise-on-scene and it articulates the situation for the play in which the characters find themselves in a cramped situation surrounded by death from all sides; and they try to keep them at bay by scrubbing the floor and walls with vinegar. The set in One Flea Spare is therefore particularly effective in providing the atmospheric elements to the overall appeal of the play.


Fireface – Toy Factory

Another play whose set is exemplary in enhancing the play’s atmosphere is Toy Factory’s Fireface. Central to the set design is a black tree that looks as if it has been singed to the core, whose roots are in fact ingeniously disguised electrical cables. The set has been referred to by theatre critics as “the obverse of the archetypal tree of life, and therefore another reminder of antithetical forces jockeying for precedence, this gothic stump bears sinuous veins of orange light glow eerily like molten lava during the climatic transitions.” The tree appears to extend the play’s theatrical pacing, particularly by means of employing the precise lighting choreography of Lim Yu Beng, with synchronised cues in such a close array; they serve to signify a point of tension or contention, and enable the play to keep its dramatic actions at an optimal pitch.

Conclusion:

It is largely through plays like Lovers’ Words and Everything but the Brain that we can say that despite the influx of multimedia and videos being featured in current theatre productions, it is not a case where such features are mandatory and concern the success or failure of the play. Set design should be seen as a combination of theatrical aspects rather than concentrating only on what is on stage. Lighting, sounds, costumes, props, actors and other semiotic signs and systems should also be taken into consideration when we talk about a set design. The major functions of lighting for example, have also shifted from purely functional, as a source of illumination, to expressing various moods and indicating time and space. Analysis of various plays has provided insights of how semiotic signs or systems either work in hand with the set design or inadvertently fail the performance. They give additional layers of signs; change the hierarchy of these extraneous signs that varies the purpose and impact that the set design may have upon the play as well as the audiences. It would also mean that the importance of the set design as well as how well it is able to portray its purposes, its relation to the play and possibly the audiences ultimately acts as a catalyst to aid in the success or failure of the play.

As consistently reiterated in this discussion, the importance and purpose of the set design has progressed from merely operating on the functional level by means of providing locale to also higher levels such as actantial, sociometric, atmospheric and symbolic which adds on allegorical meanings to the play. As the set designs become increasing inter-woven with the dramatic text and performance text, they participate as one of the key aspects to determine the extent of success of the play/s.

From the discussion of the selected plays, a general trend is noticed in the Singapore English Language theatre. Plays have taken a significant move away from conservative use of the set – i.e. mainly functionalistic, naturalistic and the fixed use of spatial organization to more innovative, artistic, abstract and Brechtian. Audiences are required to question and critically analyse the mise-en-scene and other theatrical aspects as compared to being passively “spoon-fed” with information. It should not be said that set designs have entirely moved away from the conservative. Rather, there is presently more flexibility and versatility to allow the set to fully realise the potential of the play and participate in the determination of the success of the play. Viewing the trend in a less theoretical perspective, set designs have increasingly incorporated the use of technology to emphasize and support the themes of the plays. Set designs have taken a gradual but significant step away from a limited purpose to a more global and worldly incorporation and confluence of disciplines and ideas.

WAS JINNAH’S TRANSFORMATION FUELED BY PERSONAL MOTIVES OR AN AIM FOR A GREATER GOOD?

INTRODUCTION AND STAND:
Richard Attenborough’s Academy Award winning film, “Gandhi” that was “shot through a romantic Raj haze, ensured that millions of people came away with the impression that Jinnah created Pakistan because he was jealous of Gandhi and a villain at heart” .

Mohamed Ali Jinnah, a man who believes that he and his typewriter created Pakistan . A man of extremes, who detested being stereotyped as a ‘Mohammedan’, he created a ‘Muslim homeland’, which he declared a secular state.

The greatest mystery surrounding Jinnah however are the reasons fuelling his sudden transformation from the austere westernised gentleman he was when he began his political career to the Sherwani-decked Muslim politician who declared Pakistan independent. This essay will examine the ‘faults’ of Jinnah, the lack of a successor, autocratic rule and other factors which seem to suggest his self interest and juxtapose these factors with his denial of the prime ministership of an independent India as well as his aim to eventually establish a Pakistan with a modern, democratic constitution as opposed to the continuation of autocratic rule he started with. Although we can never know the real motivations of Jinnah, we can hypothesize, as does this essay, that Jinnah was motivated by his self-interests as opposed to the magnanimous politician of the people that some make him out to be.


DID HE ALWAYS ACT IN PAKISTAN’S BEST INTERESTS?
Jinnah ruled early Pakistan in an autocratic fashion and had groomed no clear successor, the knowledge that he knew of his impending death, paints him as a man who was too self-obsessed to prepare for a Pakistan after his death. Yet pragmatism comes into play here and one has to recognize that at that stage in Pakistan’s life, autocracy and a ‘supreme leader’ were absolutely essential to counter the many problems she was beset with, economically, politically and socially



SUCCESSION:
Benazir Bhutto once commented that Pakistan’s problems could be attributed to the Quaid-E-Azam
"Because Jinnah's death a year after Independence left the entire concept of Pakistan and Jinnah's dream unfinished. It left the nation leaderless and the constitution was made an orphan. The nation had never really recovered from that loss" .
According to her, the man who created Pakistan could also be said to be responsible for its ‘sorry state’ today due to his lack of foresight.

Jinnah knew from June 1946 that he was suffering from fatal tuberculosis and could be taken sick and die anytime. Yet, in his typical obstinate manner, Jinnah continued as always and refused to take measures to prepare for Pakistan’s survival after him. At no point did Jinnah appoint a successor or even hint to his “second-in-command” – Liaqat Ali Khan that his death was impending; such that measures could have been put into place to arrange for a smooth transition of power and to prevent a loss of ideals or principles which were the backbone of the new nation.

On the side of pragmatism, it must be admitted, “people seldom speak with one voice. In time of trouble there is a need to rally around a forceful and confident leader. ” Jinnah knew what he had to do once the gauntlet for Pakistan had been thrown down, come what may, to maintain the name of the Muslim League he had to follow through on the Lahore resolution, especially after the Cabinet Mission plan flopped. As such, he chose to be the rallying point for Pakistan. Perhaps he believed that if power was shared, the masses that vested their trust in him would be split too, and the unity he had worked so hard to achieve would be lost. Jinnah believed strongly in the dictum of ‘ignorance being bliss’ and in some situations he chose to ‘remain ignorant so that knowledge might not inhibit him from the course he wished to pursue’ . He did not wish news of his illness to prevent any party from doing what they would have done in any other case.

Furthermore, he believed in his ‘brethren’ following this dictum as well. Of the masses whose blood was spilled to attain the dream of Pakistan, most of them knew not where it was going to be, or what the essence of Pakistan was. Jinnah delivered his speeches in English and as depicted in the documentary “Partition of Blood”, we see that although the masses did not understand English and the meaning of Jinnah’s words, they nonetheless agreed with him and believed he was right and acting in their best interests .
AUTOCRACY:
When the time came, Jinnah opted to become the Governor General of Pakistan instead of Prime Minister because, under the Constitution, Governor General could give instructions to the Prime Minister, “in Pakistan, I will be Governor-General and the Prime Minister will do what I tell him to do”. In doing so, he cared little that he greatly insulted Lord Mountbatten who had been offered the Governor-Generalship of India and coveted that of Pakistan as well.

After becoming Governor General, Jinnah not only appointed the Prime Minister but also chose and appointed all the members of the Cabinet. He was the President of Muslim League, and did not relinquish party presidency even after becoming the Governor General. Thus, Jinnah accumulated all state power in him; as the leader of the party, head of the administration and the State - a virtual dictator. He even assumed authority to take care of the government's Kashmir and Frontier Departments. As a Governor General, he could influence the Legislative Assembly to endorse these additional powers. He even presided over Cabinet meetings, a move unprecedented in any parliamentary democracy, which is what Jinnah claimed Pakistan was. He often, without the knowledge of the Prime Minister, instructed the Provincial Governors, Ministers and Departmental Secretaries; resulting in increasing tension between Prime Minister Liaqat Khan and him. The tensions escalated to a stage where Liaqat Ali Khan resigned from his post, although Jinnah refused to accept the resignation, further increasing the tension level. Parliamentary norms were not applicable to Jinnah. In fact, the way Jinnah ran the administration, though briefly, established a precedent in Pakistan to concentrate all power and key positions in a single person; the tendency that later gave birth to military autocracy in Pakistan .

However, it must again in the name of pragmatism be admitted that given the unstable political climate of Pakistan at that time and his administrative, diplomatic and political abilities, Jinnah was undoubtedly the best candidate for all the above-mentioned positions. A fact that he knew and exploited, if only for the larger good; given his frail health, the responsibilities he took on must have been very taxing, nonetheless, it seems that Jinnah was driven by a superhuman strength and took it all in his stride.


SELF-INTEREST:
Jinnah was in every conceivable manner a contradiction. In the words of Collins and Lapierre:
“A more improbable leader of India’s Moslem masses could hardly be imagined. He drank, ate pork, religiously shaved his beard every morning and just as religiously avoided the mosque each Friday. God and the Koran had no place in Jinnah’s vision of the world”
Yet, it is impossible to deny that the founding father of Pakistan was a religious man; he was just ahead of his time. Jinnah’s practice of Islam has a contemporary ring to it, in western terms, “a modern Moses” The reasons for his rapid conversion from a constitutional, whiskey-swigging man to Quaid–E–Azam of the Moslems, can be explained in many ways, including the changing of the old guard following the death of politicians such as Gokhale and Dadabhai Naoroji who identified with Jinnah’s concepts of a united India achieved through constitutionalist methods. Gandhi and Nehru both contributed to this change and ironically to the idea of Pakistan gaining full steam. Gandhi, by becoming increasingly religiousin his politics with cow-protection acts and anti constitutionalist with his mass politics, which in Jinnah’s opinion caused ‘mass hysteria’. Nehru, by proving to India’s Muslims after the 1937 elections that he could not cater to the needs and wants of the Muslim community.

However, other, more personal factors were also at play here. The Islamic concept of 40 being the age where a man begins to take responsibility for his actions was strong in causing changes to Jinnah’s personality and politics. When Jinnah left India and politics and went to England to practice law after the death of his wife, he was already 59, perhaps it was at this belated stage that he realised that since Hindu-Muslim unity seemed an impossibility, the next best thing would be to create a separate Muslim homeland and by engineering it, he would gain favour in the eyes of God.

Of course, non-religious factors, like Nehru spurning him and his much-lauded 14 points as “preposterous” and advising Congress to “ignore Mr. Jinnah” also could have played a very major role in Jinnah wanting to assert himself and the power of the Muslims in general; making sure he could not be ignored.


FLIPSIDE: ALL FOR THE PEOPLE
“I have done my job, when the field marshal leads his army into victory, it is for the civil authority to take over” is what he said upon the declaration of Pakistan. Jinnah saw himself as a military leader leading his troops to victory, their prize being Pakistan. The mere title of Akbar S. Ahmed’s “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin” is very telling. In his book Akbar compares Jinnah to Saladin , both of them uniting the Muslim masses and leading them to a common goal, while exhorting peace and minimum violence.

If indeed self-aggrandizement was most significant motivation Jinnah faced, then Gandhi’s offer to make him the first prime minister of an independent India would have been a dream come true, a Muslim leader at the head of an independent India, it would have been the greatest coup for Jinnah . However, Jinnah rejected the offer for the sake of his people.
It would appear from his speeches that Jinnah did indeed care about the largely subaltern masses he was leading. He has been known to mention at various junctures his concern for minorities and has gone so far as to declare the protection of Hindus in Pakistan ‘a sacred undertaking’ on the part of Pakistanis. He repeatedly mentions in his speeches credos like “universal brotherhood” , to “eschew violence of thought, word and action” and “subordinate personal interest to the welfare of others” .


CONCLUSION:
This essay aimed to examine the reasons behind the transformation of Jinnah from intensely secular, to quite the other extreme, and whether these reasons were largely personal or grassroots-centered.

It is easy to paint Jinnah as a man chasing after self-aggrandizement if one does not look at the lack of alternatives he was faced with at that time. To set up the incorruptible government he hoped to, he had to take on the majority of the responsibilities. His conversion that is often discussed was less of a personal choice than that of a politician who had to adapt to serve the needs of his people. He not only rejected the prestigious prime ministership of India but also knighthood under the British Empire and even Islamic Maulana-ship; preferring to remain ‘plain Mr. Jinnah’ .

It is often said that Jinnah came back from England a changed man, but even upon his return he tried to persevere for Hindu-Muslim unity, it was not until the elections of 1937 when Nehru and Gandhi tried to ignore the Muslims from politics altogether that Jinnah realized the plight the Muslims he was leading were facing and felt the need to do something .

On the other hand, it is equally simple to classify Jinnah as a man who worked for his people to the point where he completely neglected the state of his own health and “gave his life for Pakistan”.

The truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes. Jinnah was indeed a man who was worldly enough to enjoy and even crave the limelight and pomp that being a successful politician brought. However, he was driven by the liberal ideas he had picked up during his time in the West and from his daily consumption of newspapers from around the world. These were the very ideas that influenced him so deeply that they infused him with an almost superhuman strength, allowing him to survive him last 3 years on little more than willpower.

The perfect politician does not exist. At some point, power corrupts, with this notion in mind, we can analyse M. A. Jinnah as a man who was driven by the beautiful ideals of protecting the people who implicitly trusted him and for whom he wanted to set up a democratic, liberal society. However, he could not live in a fool’s paradise and had to, at times, make decisions and policies that went against his democratic beliefs. He demanded from his sister Fatima, whom she thought would take charge of all Pakistan’s problems when she asked him to rest for the sake of his health. Jinnah saw himself as the only hope for Pakistan, and in this way can be said to be self-obsessed, however this obsession sprung from his determination to deliver to his people the best he possibly could.

















Bibliography:

1. Ahmed, Akbar S, “Jinnah and the Making of Pakistan”, History Today, Sept. 1994

2. Ahmed, Akbar S, “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity : The Search for Saladin” New York : Routledge, 1997

3. Allana, G, “Quaid-E-Azam Jinnah” Lahore: Ferozons Ltd, 1967

4. Beg, Aziz, “Jinnah and His Times : A Biography” Islamabad: Babur & Amer Publications, 1986

5. Burke, S.M (ed), Jinnah, speeches and statements 1947-1948, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001

6. Burke, S. M., “Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. : His Personality & His Politics” Karachi: Oxford University Press

7. Collins, Larry & Lapierre, Dominique, “Freedom at Midnight: London : HarperCollins, 1997

8. Enver, E. H, “The Modern Moses - A brief biography of M.A.Jinnah” Karachi Jinnah Memorial Institute, 1990.
9. Hasan, Mushirul, “The Partition Omnibus” New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002

10. Inder Singh, Anita, “The Origins of The Partition of India, 1936 – 1947” Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987

11. Jalal, Ayesha, :The sole spokesman : Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the demand for Pakistan” Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1985

12. Khan, Hamid, “Constitutional and political history of Pakistan” Karachi : Oxford University Press, 2001.

13. Khurshid, K.H, “Memories of Jinnah” Karachi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990

14. Malik, Muhammad Aslam, “The Making of The Pakistan Resolution” Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001

15. Moon, Penderel, Divide and quit London : Chatto & Windus, 1961

16. Moore, R.J, “Jinnah and The Pakistan Demand”, Modern Asian Studies, 17,4, 1983

17. Naim, C.M [et al.], “ Iqbal, Jinnah and Pakistan: the vision and reality” Lahore: Vanguard Books Ltd, 1985.

18. Pirzada, Syed Sharifuddin, “Gandhi and Quaid-E-Azam Jinnah” Karachi: East and West Publishing Company, 1983

19. Robinson, Francis, “The Muslims and Partition”, History Today, Sept. 1997
20. Saiyid, Matlubul Hasan, “Mohammad Ali Jinnah: A Political Study” Lahore: Sh. M. Ashraf, 1963

21. Sayeed, Khalid B., “Pakistan, the Formative Phase” Karachi: Pakistan Publishing House, 1960

22. Seervai, H. M, “Partition of India: Legend and Reality” Bombay, N. M. Tripathi, 1989


23. Talbot, Ian A, “Jinnah and the Making of Pakistan”, History Today, May 1982

24. Wolpert, Stanley A, “Jinnah of Pakistan”, New York : Oxford University Press, 1984
Internet Resources:

1. Farzana Versey, “Mohammed Ali Jinnah Haazir Ho”, September 10, 2004, http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00004061&channel=gulberg&start=0&end=9&chapter=1&page=1
(Accessed on 12th March, 2005)

2. M B Naqvi : The News, Karachi, Pakistan, December 11, 2002 – “Why Jinnah's Pakistan Ended”
http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/soc.culture.bangladesh/msg02747.html
(Accessed on 12th March, 2005)

3. Mubarak Ali, “Jinnah: Making a myth”, October 2000 http://sacw.insaf.net/i_aii/MakingJinnah_a_myth.html
(Accessed on 15th March, 2005)

4. Dr. Rashad Khalifa, “Authorized English translation of the Quran, The crucial age of 40”
http://www.submission.org/suras/app32.html
(Accessed on 15th March, 2005)



Film Resources:

1. Partition of India [videorecording]: legacy of blood. Cafe Productions; producer, Sophia Swire; director, Christopher Mitchell. Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities, c1997.