Sententiousness

A new side to New York!

2007-09-24T14:20:00.000+08:00

WANT to make your next trip to New York unforgettable? It’s this simple: Elope.

Although it is not an idea likely to please parents who want to see decades of labor come to fruition as their child walks down the aisle, an extralong weekend in New York is perfect for getting hitched, thanks to the bargain-basement services of the Office of the City Clerk.

New York requires a 24-hour waiting (sobering-up?) period between getting a marriage license and marrying. So you can snag your license on Friday afternoon ($35) and marry on Monday morning ($25), leaving a weekend in between to frolic around the city.

Here’s the formula: X (amount you would have spent on wedding had you not eloped*) - $60 = Y (amount you can spend in New York over the weekend).

[* Presupposes access to said amount.]

The idea comes not from the devious imagination of a bachelor columnist, but from friends of a friend.

Two weekends ago, Ken Steen and Katja Heitkaemper arrived in New York from Berlin, frustrated in their efforts to pull off a formal wedding in Germany.

“This is about us,” Mr. Steen, a 36-year-old disc jockey and music producer, recalled thinking. “We should enjoy this. Let’s go somewhere we can take a memory home.”

They flew in their best man and maid of honor and their toddler, Anton, but didn’t tell their families.

Here’s how they did it.

THE MARRIAGE Marriage Central in Manhattan is in the Municipal Building (1 Centre Street, second floor). The details can be found online at www.nycmarriagebureau.com, but people still manage to mess it up.

For the license part on Friday, both of you must get there well before 3:45 p.m., when the office closes. And you need identification, and a $35 money order. (When you forget your money order, you can go the photo lab at the Duane Reade pharmacy two blocks down Chambers Street at Broadway.)

Gay couples can’t apply for a marriage license, although they can register a domestic partnership for $36. There is no apparent reason it costs a dollar more.

When Mr. Steen and Ms. Heitkaemper arrived on Monday around lunchtime, the officiant was nowhere to be seen, and at least a dozen couples were left waiting. A spokesman for the city clerk said that the wait was unusual and that there was no official break for lunch.

This time, you need a $25 money order and two witnesses, preferably ones who will not object when asked if anyone knows any reason you two should not be married. (They need IDs, too, a requirement Mr. Steen’s best man was able to get out of.)

Don’t expect romance. Or a sermon. The group was in and out of the chapel in less than two minutes. “You need more time at the counter in the airport,” Ms. Heitkaemper said.

THE RINGS Even if you’re from a diamond-engagement-ring-shunning culture like Germany’s — “We only know about that from American TV series,” Mr. Steen said — you’ll still need wedding bands. And a walk down 47th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, the Diamond District, will provide you with dozens of options. Mr. Steen and Ms. Heitkaemper found what they were looking for at Prince Jewelry, one of the sellers at 20 West 47th.

THE FUN The choices of what to do during your weekend are, of course, endless. You could go the romantic route, and plan the weekend around a trip to see “La Traviata” (on two consecutive Saturdays in November at the Metropolitan Opera). Or take in Cirque du Soleil’s latest production, “Wintuk,” at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden from Nov. 1 to Jan. 6.

Our German visitors opted for some shopping, including picking up a belt with a silver star for $17 on Canal Street (which Mr. Steen wore to the wedding with an all-black outfit). But a potentially highly useful prenuptial trip is a visit to the Museum of Sex (233 Fifth Avenue, www.museumofsex.com). One exhibition, “Kink,” catalogs in visual and tactile detail an astonishing number of fetishes and behaviors you (perhaps) never imagined.

THE HOTEL Where to stay? It’s up to your budget, but a Sunday night at the Brooklyn Marriott (333 Adams Street, www.brooklynmarriott.com; doubles from $229) allows you a Monday morning stroll down one glorious aisle: the pedestrian walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. (The Municipal Building is at the other end.) The night before, you can wander the Brooklyn Promenade for what is the clichéd-but-worth-it most romantic view of the city.

POST-KNOT You’ll need a place to eat lunch after, preferably within walking distance of the ceremony. One choice, for those wishing to keep with the bureaucratic theme, is the restaurant City Hall (131 Duane Street, www.cityhallnewyork.com), an elegant spot in a 19th-century landmark building that serves steaks, salads and a burger that’s 20 percent brisket meat.

Consider spending the night at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park (2 West Street, www.ritzcarlton.com), in a $900 suite with views of both the city and the Statue of Liberty. If you look at it one way, that’s very expensive. If you look at it another way, that’ll get you about half a wedding cake.

15/08/07 - 60 years on - whose India?

2007-08-16T17:05:00.000+08:00

By RAMACHANDRA GUHA
Published: August 15, 2007 (NYT)
Bangalore, India

IN the last months of 1990, a property dispute sparked a series of bloody riots across India. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party sought to “reclaim” for Hindus the birthplace of the legendary god-king Ram, in the small northern town of Ayodhya. That meant demolishing the mosque that had been built there in the 16th century and replacing it with a spanking new temple.

Starting in September, the militant Bharatiya Janata leader Lal Krishna Advani journeyed for five weeks between Somnath and Ayodhya, making fiery speeches at towns and villages en route, denouncing the Indian government for “appeasing” the Muslims. In many places Mr. Advani visited, attacks on Muslims followed.

In New Delhi, where I then lived, Mr. Advani’s march represented a grave threat to the inclusive, plural, secular and democratic idea of India. My boyhood hero had been Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first and arguably greatest prime minister.

When India and Pakistan came into existence in 1947, exactly 60 years ago, Mr. Nehru insisted that India would not be a “Hindu Pakistan.” Three months after the partition, he wrote to the chief provincial ministers about the Muslim minority: “whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic state. If we fail to do so, we shall have a festering sore which will eventually poison the whole body politic and probably destroy it.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s idea of India was the opposite. Their ideologues treated Muslims as potential fifth columnists. “Pakistan ya Kabristan!” (to Pakistan or the graveyard) they cried during the riots. Nonetheless, many million Muslims stayed in India; after the formation of an independent Bangladesh, in 1971, India had even more Muslim citizens than Pakistan.

Yet among my close friends in India there was not a single Muslim. The novelist Mukul Kesavan, a contemporary, has written that in his school in Delhi he never came across a Muslim name: “The only place you were sure of meeting Muslims was the movies.” Some of the finest actors, singers, composers and directors in Bombay’s film industry were Muslims. But in law, medicine, business and the upper echelons of public service, Hindus dominated. There were sprinklings of Christians and Sikhs, but very few Muslims.

As it happened, my first Muslim friend was a Pakistani I met in America. In the mid-1980s, the economist Tariq Banuri and I, both teaching at East Coast universities, were part of a colloquium on third-world development. Our bond was partly intellectual and partly linguistic, for we had grown up speaking Hindustani, that wonderful hybrid of Hindi and Urdu that was once the lingua franca of much of the Indian subcontinent. My hometown, Dehradun, and Tariq’s, Peshawar, lay at opposite ends of what was once a common cultural zone, fractured by the partition.

After I returned to India, and Tariq to Pakistan, in 1987, the antipathy between our countries meant I could not visit him. The phone lines were blocked, and the Internet had not been developed. News that trickled in from mutual friends was episodic and desultory; inevitably, we lost touch.

In the winter of 1990, Tariq began appearing in my dreams. I was always on the verge of visiting him in Islamabad, only to be thwarted by hostile immigration officials, barbed-wire fences, massed soldiers or canceled flights. That I dreamt of my friend at a time when my fellow Hindus were mounting frequent attacks on Muslims was surely not accidental.

Back in Delhi, I also came to understand (though not support) why so many Indians had favored building a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Once a center of Islamic civilization, later the center of a white man’s Raj, after 1947 Delhi had become a city of the Hindu and Sikh victims of partition. These Punjabi migrants had lost homes and businesses in that bloody summer of 1947. Starting from scratch, they had come to dominate Delhi’s commerce and social life. Yet they remained insecure; who knew when catastrophe might come again? And so they hoarded diamonds and maintained Swiss bank accounts.

They also cheated their tenants. In six years in Delhi, my wife and I had four landlords, all refugees from the Pakistani part of Punjab. All four hooked their appliances to our electricity meter, and all kept our deposits when we left.

In 1995, I finally got to visit Pakistan. I saw Tariq in Islamabad and then proceeded to Lahore, illegally, since my visa was for one city only. I met one of the last seven Hindu families in Lahore and visited the tomb of the Sikh warrior-king Ranjit Singh.

Then I went across to the majestic Badshahi Mosque, built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. It was Friday evening, and a large crowd of worshipers was coming out after the weekly prayers. Walking against the flow, I had to jostle my way through.

As I bumped into one worshiper, I was seized by panic. In one pocket of my kurta lay my wallet; in the other, an exquisite little statue of the Hindu god Ganesh, dancing. I am not a believer, but this was my mascot, a gift from my sister, carried whenever I was separated from my wife and little children. What if it now fell out and was seized upon by the crowd? How would that turn out — an infidel discovered in a Muslim shrine, an Indian visitor illegally in Lahore?

As a liberal and secular Hindu, I should not have been worried about being found out. But my fear was symptomatic also of the deeper failures of partition. It had been meant to solve, once and for all, the Hindu-Muslim question. But in both countries, the two communities have only grown further apart.

Despite their shared culture, cuisine and love for the game of cricket, India and Pakistan have already fought four wars. And judging by the number of troops on their borders and the missiles and nuclear weapons to back them, they seem prepared to fight a fifth.

Ramachandra Guha is the author of “India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy.”

14/07/08 - Happy Birthday Pakistan

2007-08-16T17:03:00.000+08:00

A wonderful piece by a wonderful author... i read his most recent novel; and does it ring true! Misunderstandings have made the world what it is today. Your freedom fighter, Bush's terrorist.

By MOHSIN HAMID
Published: August 15, 2007 (NYT)
London

SIXTY years ago, British India was granted independence and partitioned into Hindu-majority India and my native nation, Muslim-majority Pakistan. It was a birth of exceptional pain.

Handed down to me through the generations is the story of my namesake, my Kashmir-born great-grandfather. He was stabbed by a Muslim as he went for his daily stroll in Lahore’s Lawrence Gardens. Independence was only a few months away, and the communal violence that would accompany the partition was beginning to simmer.

My great-grandfather was attacked because he was mistaken for a Hindu. This was not surprising; as a lawyer, most of his colleagues were Hindus, as were many of his friends. He would shelter some of their families in his home during the murderous riots that were to come.

But my great-grandfather was a Muslim. More than that, he was a member of the Muslim League, which had campaigned for the creation of Pakistan. From the start, Pakistan has been prone to turning its knife upon itself.

Yet 1947 is also remembered in my family as a time of enormous hope. My great-grandfather survived. And the birth that year of his grandson, my father, marked the arrival of a first generation of something new: Pakistanis.

My mother recalls a childhood of sugar and flour rations. The 1950s, she says, were a decade of a young country finding its feet. She grew up in a small town and she describes a fierce love for Pakistan felt by her and her schoolmates. Pakistan was theirs, a source of pride and identity, symbolically both a parent and, because it inspired such feelings of protectiveness, a sibling.

In the 1960s, my mother’s family moved to Lahore, which had been the cultural and governmental center of Punjab Province before the region was ripped apart at independence. By then, Pakistan’s economy had begun to boom. My parents speak of cinemas showing the latest films, colleges producing idealistic graduates, and young couples walking along the banks of the River Ravi.

Yet Pakistan’s true glory at that time was the southern port of Karachi, where my uncle, then a young banker, went to live. It was, he says, a vibrant and cosmopolitan city, a place of cafes and sea breezes and visiting international flight crews; it hummed with the energy and ingenuity of millions of former refugees who had come from India.

Still, these rosy family recollections paint an incomplete picture. For the civilian government of Pakistan had been deposed by a military coup in 1958. Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan was a steadfast American ally against the Soviet Union and the recipient of large amounts of American weaponry and aid.

But deprived of democracy for much of my parents’ youth, Pakistanis were unable to articulate an inclusive vision of what their country stood for. Making things worse, the country was divided in two, separated geographically by India. West Pakistan, the army’s heartland, received far more than its fair share of resources. After years of mistreatment and rigged elections, East Pakistanis fought a war of independence, India took up arms on their side, and East Pakistan became the nation of Bangladesh.

I was born in 1971, the year of this second partition, as Pakistan once again turned its knife upon itself.

After the bloodshed, what was left of Pakistan was forced to ask what it stood for. Democracy was restored, and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto became wildly popular with a simple slogan: “Bread, clothing and a home.” In other words, Pakistan existed to lessen the poverty of its citizens.

Even I knew this slogan. At the age of two, I was reciting it on the kitchen table, standing tall as I had seen our prime minister do on television. My mother tried to get hold of me, and in my excitement I ran clear off the table, breaking my head on the kitchen floor. I still have the scar. Bhutto faired little better. He was deposed in 1977 and hanged.

So, like my parents before me, I was born in a democratic Pakistan but spent much of my youth in a dictatorship. And like General Ayub Khan before him, the new dictator, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq was a steadfast American ally against the Soviet Union. But whereas General Ayub Khan had been largely secular, General Zia envisioned Pakistan as a theocratic Muslim state. It became a staging-ground for the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and underwent a dramatic process of social engineering called Islamization.

Growing up in Lahore in the 1980s was unsettling. Assault rifles and heroin, byproducts of the war in Afghanistan, flooded the city. I had friends with drug problems, others who sometimes carried guns. Our parents had been able to mingle freely and go to the cinema. But we lived in a time of censorship and of women news anchors being forced to cover their heads on television. Preventing teenage boys and girls from falling in love seemed to be an official concern of the state, and avoiding police checkpoints became part of every date.

Although we disliked our president, my friends and I remained fiercely patriotic. We idolized Pakistani sporting heroes in cricket, field hockey and squash. We felt a thrill of achievement when we listened to bootleg cassettes of the first Pakistani rock bands. For us, the success of anything Pakistani was a source of personal pride.

In 1988, shortly before I left for college in America, General Zia died in a suspicious airplane crash and civilian rule was again restored. But the democracy of the ’90s was a disappointment, with power alternated between ineffective, feuding governments.

As my friends married and had children, a third generation of Pakistanis began to arrive. Like my parents’ generation, and like mine, these children were born in a democracy but would spend their youth under pro-American military rule, this time under Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

And now Pakistan is once again turning its knife on itself. Insurgencies simmer in the regions bordering Afghanistan, and suicide bombers have begun to kill fellow Pakistanis with increasing frequency.

For me personally, the 60th anniversary of independence, while worthy of note, is not of the utmost importance. My hopes are already dashing ahead and attaching themselves to the elections that are scheduled for later this year.

On one side are the forces of exclusion, who wish Pakistan to stand only for their kind of Pakistani. These include the political descendants of the man who stabbed my great-grandfather, the people who seek to oppress those who are clean shaven or those who toil for meager wages or those who are from provinces other than their own. But arrayed against them is something wholly new.

Pakistan now has private television stations that refuse to let the government set the news agenda. It has a Supreme Court that has asserted its independence for the first time, restoring a chief justice suspended by the president. And it has an army under physical attack from within and in desperate need of compromise with civil society.

A 60th birthday brings with it the obligation to shed some illusions. Pakistanis must realize that we have been our own worst enemies. My wish for our national anniversary is this: that we finally take the knife we have turned too often upon ourselves and place it firmly in its sheath.

Mohsin Hamid is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”

Some Baby Bibs Said to Contain Levels of Lead

2007-08-16T16:55:00.000+08:00

Children have a right to be safe and parents have a right to procure that safety for their babies. HOW DARE companies making products for children try to cut corners in ways that could possibly endanger babies?

I'm so angry that i am actually at a loss for words!

Materialism and profit will kill our babies!

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: August 15, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — Certain vinyl baby bibs sold at Toys “R” Us stores appear to be contaminated with lead, laboratory tests have shown, making the inexpensive bibs another example of a made-in-China product that may be a health hazard to children.

Mattel Recalls 19 Million Toys Sent From China (August 15, 2007)

Trouble in China Is Good News for American Toy Manufacturers (August 15, 2007) The vinyl bibs, which feature illustrations of baseball bats and soccer balls and Disney’s Winnie the Pooh characters, are sold for less than $5 each under store brand labels, including Especially for Baby and Koala Baby.

Tests this summer, financed by the Center for Environmental Health of Oakland, Calif., found lead as high as three times the level allowed in paint in several styles of the bibs purchased from both Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us stores in California.

A separate test by a laboratory hired by The New York Times of the same Toys “R” Us bibs, purchased in Maryland, found a similar level of contamination.

“These bibs are exposing children to lead in an unnecessary way,” said Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health, a nonprofit agency that for the last decade has been testing consumer products for lead, in an effort to remove them from the market.

Kathleen Waugh, a Toys “R” Us spokeswoman, said that the company had hired an independent lab to do tests on the bibs as recently as May and they were found to be in compliance with safety standards for lead levels. Any test showing that individual bibs were potentially contaminated should not be interpreted as meaning the problem is widespread, she said, adding that the company’s own tests are more stringent than federal standards. “Our uncompromising commitment to safety has been, and continues to be, our highest priority,” she said in a written statement.

Officials from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates children’s products, said that they would prefer that there be no elevated levels of lead in bibs.

But their own recent tests of baby bibs on the market in the United States found that the lead, when present, was at levels low enough that a child chewing on or rubbing the bib would not get an unhealthy dose.

As a result, the agency urges parents to discard vinyl bibs only if they are ripped or otherwise deteriorated.

“There is a potential risk of lead exposure from babies swallowing pieces of cracked vinyl on used bibs,” the agency said in a statement, after being presented with the test results on the Toys “R” Us bibs.

But agency officials have not pushed for a recall of lead-contaminated bibs, including a brand sold earlier this year at Wal-Mart Stores, which the Center for Environmental Health also identified. Wal-Mart removed the bibs from its store shelves nationwide, but in Illinois, where 60,000 of the bibs had been sold, a strict lead law required their recall.

The bibs were imported for Toys “R” Us by Hamco Baby Products, the same company that made the bibs for Wal-Mart. The bibs will be retested, Ms. Waugh, the Toys “R” Us spokeswoman, said.

Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us are jointly controlled by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and Vornado Realty Trust. Hamco is a unit of Crown Crafts.

The agency’s approach has drawn criticism from some children’s advocates, and local and state health officials.

“All lead is bad lead,” said Patrick MacRoy, director of the Chicago lead poisoning prevention program. “Why should we allow any lead to be in there?”

The lead tests done for the Center for Environmental Health, conducted by the National Food Laboratory in Dublin, Calif., found levels as high as 1,800 parts per million in the Toys “R” Us bibs — three times the amount allowed in lead paint.

The tests of the Toys “R” Us bibs conducted in July for The New York Times by the same lab found similar results.

A separate test by Bureau Veritas, a testing lab in Buffalo, found little lead in the clear plastic pocket of the bib, but said that the lead in the colorful part of the bib was at levels high enough that minute amounts could transfer to a baby’s fingers.

A third lab, STAT Analysis of Chicago, found extremely low or not detectable levels both of total lead and of what is called “accessible” lead, or the lead a child could ingest by sucking or chewing on the bib.

Federal officials, when testing bibs, do three kinds of tests — one by checking the total amount of lead using solvents; another by rubbing the vinyl with a swab and testing the swab for lead; and a third by soaking the bib in a salty solution and testing the solution for lead.

These tests, on bibs collected from retailers nationwide this year, did at times find low levels of lead. But the C.P.S.C. concluded that even if infants had the bibs in their mouths all day, not enough lead would leach into their blood system to cause harm.

Based on these results, the agency concluded that the bibs did not present a hazard as long as they were not deteriorated.

But Mr. MacRoy, other health officials and children’s advocates argue that the C.P.S.C. uses an antiquated standard for what level of lead in a child’s blood stream represents a hazard. When combined with lead from other sources, including perhaps lead-based paint in an old house or lead-contaminated jewelry, the bibs could still result in poisoning or neurological damage in a child.

As a result, Ms. Cox of the California environmental group, among others, has urged parents to stop buying bibs that have even modest levels of lead.

Industry officials said that even if the lead was not at hazardous levels, they wanted to eliminate it. “We would like it not to be happening,” said Allen Blakey, a spokesman for the Vinyl Institute, a trade association.

Lead ends up in vinyl — otherwise known as polyvinyl chloride or PVC — from one of three primary sources. It is sometimes added as an inexpensive stabilizer; it can come from pigments used to add color; or it can come from recycled vinyl, which may have had lead in it from its earlier use, industry officials said.

Legislation proposed last year in Congress would ban more than trace levels of lead in any product intended for children under 6, similar to the Illinois law.

Given problems with lead found in vinyl, some companies are moving to replace it with other raw materials that they can be assured are lead-safe.

42 and counting!

2007-08-08T11:47:00.000+08:00

RICE with sambal.
Bread with strawberry jam.
What do they have in common?
Well, they are part of the ways people try to celebrate National Day – with food.
Why? Because they are red and white.
It may sound tacky, but they are really some of the more practical ideas people have when it comes to marking this occasion.
We are a practical nation after all, aren’t we?
I know of these “themed” food ideas because my brother’s school is having a “food ministry” session to celebrate National Day, where parents will cook for their boys. And some of the red-and-white food items find themselves in the menu.
This year, those who attend the National Day Parade will also get battery-operated handheld fans that, when switched on, have rotating red LED lights that appear on the fan blades.
I won’t spoil it for those who like to be surprised by what they find in their goodie bags, but suffice to say, it may make you smile.
So our goodie bag gets better and ever more bountiful; the laser shows get more intricate; and the stage gets more impressive.
The crowds get even bigger as the places to catch the parade for free are spread over the Marina Bay area.
For such a small country, it is amazing how many different ways we can think of to celebrate the birth of our nation.
But Singaporeans can be divided into two main camps when it comes to thinking of what to do on the national day off.
Those who make a huge effort to try to get tickets for the parade, and those who just want to get tickets to get out of the country for a short holiday (this year, by taking leave on Friday to make it a four-day long weekend, perhaps).
Then, among the smaller groups, there are those who see it as a time to make money.
“Entrepreneurial” auctioneers on eBay and Yahoo try to sell off NDP tickets.
It makes you wonder if it is really a celebration of money and ways to spend money.
Personally, I want to see National Day as a time to reflect on how far we have come, and what needs to be done now.
To the younger generation, such as myself, August 9 is merely the day Singapore became independent.
I say “merely” because I wonder how many of my counterparts know the depth of meaning behind the term “independence”.
Singaporeans today play a very small role in terms of “fighting” for the nation.
And this, I see as one main reason for the apathy that some Singaporeans have for their country.
So much has been done for us, that we expect things to continue happening smoothly according to some grand plan.
They say that students from less developed nations work harder because they are hungry to prove themselves, and also because that is the way up and out for them.
Singaporeans dream less of working but more of retirement; they work to retire, not to do something for their country.
With no new dreams for a nation that we can work at together, we are content to celebrating it as if it is another day at the mall, eating, going out with family and friends.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, but how is that different from any other weekend?
So maybe, we can spend some quiet moments like in a prayer, and think about what our country has given us and what we can give back in return.
Singapore has long been known as a parent state, but I think it is time for the parent to let the children do something in return. The parent is, after all, reaching middle-age at 42, so it may be a good time as any to take a step back and let the next generation get their hands dirty and learn how to run things.
Start small by all means, we can’t have a big change overnight where, for example, those who are disgruntled suddenly cast aside their plans to emigrate to greener pastures.
But think hard this year about what you mean to the country.
And if you think Singapore can do without you, then ask yourself why.

My promise...

2007-08-08T11:36:00.000+08:00

tere liye palkon ki jhaalar bunoo,
kaliyon saa gajre mein bandhe phiroon,
dhoop lage jahaan tujhe chhaayaa banoo, aajaa saajna

tere liye palkon ki jhaalar bunoo,
kaliyon saa gajre mein bandhe phiroon,
dhoop lage jahaan tujhe chhaayaa banoo, aajaa saajna

tere liye...

mehki mehki yeh raat hai,
behki behki har baat hai,
lajon maroon, jhoome jiyaa, kaise yeh main kahoon, aajaa sajanaa

mehki mehki yeh raat hai,
behki behki har baat hai,
lajon maroon, jhoome jiyaa, kaise yeh main kahoon, aajaa sajanaa

tere liye palkon ki jhaalar bunoo,
kaliyon saa gajre mein bandhe phiroon,
dhoop lage jahaan tujhe chhaayaa banoo, aajaa saajna

tere liye...

nayaa nayaa sansaar hai,
tu hi meraa ghar baar hai,
jaisa rakhe khushi khushi, waise hi main rahoon, aajaa sajanaa

nayaa nayaa sansaar hai,
tu hi meraa ghar baar hai,
jaisa rakhe khushi khushi, waise hi main rahoon, aajaa sajanaa

tere liye palkon ki jhaalar bunoo,
kaliyon saa gajre mein bandhe phiroon,
dhoop lage jahaan tujhe chhaayaa banoo, aajaa saajna

tere liye....

pyar meraa, teri jeet hai
sabse achchha meraa meet hai
tere liye roun piya, tere liye hasoon, aajaa sajanaa

pyar meraa, teri jeet hai
sabse achchha meraa meet hai
tere liye roun piya, tere liye hasoon, aajaa sajanaa

tere liye palkon ki jhaalar bunoo,
kaliyon saa gajre mein bandhe phiroon,
dhoop lage jahaan tujhe chhaayaa banoo, aajaa saajna

Respect!

2007-07-26T08:51:00.000+08:00

I’m a grown up now! My parents left me with my siblings and went on a ten-day holiday; and I survived! I managed to wake up to send my brother to school, myself off to work, buy groceries and make it home early enough to watch my brother complete his homework and still cook dinner and coax him to eat green leafy (albeit icky) veggies (I had to eat them too, to set a good example)!

I did not collapse in hysteria, nor did I lose my mind juggling all this! The only major shift that took place was in my mind, I realised just how much my mother manages to accomplish on a daily basis as a domestic-manager! It looks so very easy from the outside to sit at home and watch soap-operas (or Hindi soap-serials in this case), while the house cleans itself! Well, in my parents’ absence, I learnt that the house does not self-clean! Rags, brooms and mops need to be wielded with two hands, and it is not beneath me to do those chores, no matter how educated, well-read, cultured and independent I may be.

My parents’ trip, while a break for them; was certainly an eye-opener for me! Not just have I learnt to respect my mother a hundred times more; but I’ve developed a healthy respect for maids as well! Some of them come to Singapore far younger than me to be domestics, and although they must have dealt with their share of chores back home; it is always different in a stranger’s house!

I know of employers who will deduct the price of broken crockery or scratched Teflon (happens when a scourer meets the face of a non-stick pan; a concept not familiar in the rural villages where most of our household help comes from, and something most employers don’t bother to explain) from the wages of their maids. While I understand the concept of paying for mistakes, I think this is too literal an application of it.

Not so long ago, it was a big deal in the press about mandatory days of leave for maids; well as an employed person, I realise the importance of some break time. While all jobs, domestic work included, have downtime, where things are not as rushed, this is far from sufficient for the human mind and body to relax and rejuvenate for more work. It is in such moments that mistakes happen and glasses break. Domestic workers will find it difficult to comprehend a glass costing more than their monthly wage; crystal holds little meaning, especially if they are not forewarned of the consequences and told to take extra care when washing certain dishes.

I don’t think I would like to have the help of a maid when I have set-up home, and especially not a live-in maid. I am not ready for the responsibility of having another human being living with me and having to worry about her eating habits and dietary needs. It would be most unfair on my part to employ a maid and expect her to conform to my eating habits (I dislike most meat and am a largely bread person). I know of Chinese families who love pork and do not make alternate eating arrangements for their Muslim house-help; sometimes leaving them with little other than plain rice.

While I don’t claim to be a perfect person, or very morally-upright; these 10 days without my parents has drawn me out of my mother’s sheltered veil; and away from her apron-strings, I’ve begun to see the darker shades of life and the world a little more clearly. Many people I know are setting up home and a maid is a mandatory addition to their homes, whether needed or not. Many of my compatriots feel it beneath them to mop the floor once in a while; and a maid is almost a status-symbol of their bourgeois lifestyles.

When my parents return home, I know that I am going to make a far greater effort to help her out with little chores, for anyone who takes care of me and my household (be it mother, grand-parent, or hired help) must have an amazing level of patience; and is more than worthy of my respect.

No pain no gain!??

2007-07-26T08:50:00.001+08:00

Thanks to various credit card companies, I have recently been the lucky recipient of a number of vouchers, covering the entire beautifying process from facials to relaxing and deep tissue massages! After I overcame my delight at receiving such goodies to beautify myself before my first day at a new job, I sat down with my calendar to make appointments!

I have never actually been for a facial, and so my first appointment was for a “bio-oxygen facial”! After trekking across Chinatown to find the wonderfully hidden little spa, I was sweating and frazzled! Stepping into the cool interior of the spa and inhaling the (so-typical) incense did help to calm me before I faced a stack of forms and disclaimers to sign, having to reveal details like my weight and height. While I was wondering how this affected a facial; my beautician turned up and led me to a private room.

As I relaxed on the bed waiting for her, I thought about how relaxed I would be in the aftermath of the facial. And indeed, the facial did start off well with a cool scrub, then a steam. The worst part began when she started using her nails on my face to dig out blackheads! While I was worrying about the hygiene level of her nails and open pores on my skin, she was gleefully humming a tune to herself! Just as I thought I was no longer going to be able to take the pain of her long nails squeezing my pores, she began to use what felt like a needle to pierce my skin to remove the said blackheads. When the tears began to flow, she asked if I would like some anaesthetizing cream to help numb the pain. As at this point I was literally sobbing, I just nodded while she muttered that it would be an additional $50 (for a facial that only cost $38).

She rubbed some cream on my face and continued prodding and poking; I do not know about the pain reduction; but my tears must have washed off most of the cream. Thank goodness, it ended soon after and after a quick mask, I was ready to go. As I stepped out of the room, I was ushered into another room for a “sales talk” where they tried really hard to convince me that I wanted to cry in sheer pain once every three weeks for 6 months, at a discounted package price of only $3000! As I escaped the spa, I praised God that I had the wisdom to schedule a massage with another voucher instead of another facial.

Delightedly, I went off for my massage session the next week, and at the risk of sounding like a prude, the idea of wearing nothing under the gown except disposable knickers was a terrifying thought to me. Telling myself to grow up, I lay down on another bed in another spa and awaited another beautician/masseuse. This time though, the pain began immediately! What was supposed to be a “relaxing massage” involved the masseuse (a rather healthy-sized woman) clambering onto the bed, knees on either side of me, and kneading my poor back with her full body strength. After shedding more tears (believe me, I am not usually a cry-baby); I squealed for her to lighten up! Which accordingly she did, and I breathed easy, for about ten seconds… eventually I gave up trying to tell her to go slow and simply told her that I was in a hurry and had to go, so she could cut short the session.

As I admired the leftover sore spots on my face from my first facial and the huge blue-black bruises that decorated my back from my massage session; I picked up the phone and cancelled the remaining “free” sessions the vouchers offered. I fully understand both the clichés “no pain, no gain” and the concept of “no such thing as a free lunch”. Perhaps I am not meant to enjoy such beauty treatments, be that as it may, I am pretty happy the way I am. As a lesson learnt, I went out and splurged on a new book to relax (alternative to massage) and a box of Tate’s lavender tea (alternative to detox facial). All my credit card companies take note; I prefer tea and books, so keep such pain-free vouchers coming!

Give back!

2007-07-26T08:46:00.000+08:00

070707 was the day my graduation ceremony was held; the guest of honor is an acclaimed alumni of NUS and the arts Faculty. Having majored in political science, she then went on to dedicate her life and work to the needy. Ms. Eunice Olsen, a lady who became one of our youngest NMPs, and has indeed given to society in many ways. The question I asked myself when they announced her name was “are they inviting her as a hint to us”. Are we supposed to think less about money and success and focus on making society a better place?

As a fresh graduate, I have enough dreams to make my head swell! I am still obsessed with noble aims of wanting to write a novel that will change the way people think, that will inspire people to be true to themselves and ask what they can do for themselves, others and their nation before asking what others and their nation can do for them.

Yet in all these airy fairy dreams of mine, there is the cynic in my head which repeatedly yells that these are just dreams! The facts of life and our society dictate that as a fresh graduate I first find a job that offers a salary commensurate with what the papers keep publishing. The starting salary of an SMU graduate who entered the oil industry sometime last year was a reported $12000; with such news bites sprinkling the media, how can any self-respecting fresh graduate, who probably has a tuition fee loan running in the tens of thousands, or a CPF loan to pay off, take on a job that offers self-improvement over a high salary?

I challenge my fellow graduates to tell me how many of them would give up cushy pay packets for job satisfaction. I know I could not do that. I have to think of the costs of education loans, laptop loans, transport costs wedding and housing costs; in our society we have forgotten the less fortunate in our bid to keep rising up. The more we have, the more we want. The cycle just never ends.

I am glad that on the occasion of my graduation, the guest of honor was not another PhD candidate with a secure tenure in a top university spouting words that mean little. I am glad that NUS invited someone whom we can all identify with, a Bachelors degree holder, who has worked and earned and lived the same life we have, in the same society, and yet made something of herself; not in terms of cash perhaps, but in terms of personal growth and giving to others.

I have often written about making courteous comments to service staff in order to make their day; and to reiterate, this too is one way of giving to society. There are so many little things we can do every single day, in every single place we go, that the common excuse of “I’m too busy” simply does not stand.

Instead of throwing away that almost-new but slightly too short/tight/outdated miniskirt, stop and give it to the Salvation Army instead. Before relegating stacks of Enid Blytons and Roald Dahls to the garbage truck, box it up and donate it to various thrift shops, or the stall that currently sits outside Wisma Atria collecting and selling second hand books for charity!

Neither of the acts I described above take excessive lengths of time; and all of them seem immensely do-able to me. So since I myself lack the courage to donate all my working hours to charity, I am hardly able to challenge anyone else to do so; so while I admire Ms Olsen for her work, I am honest in my self-assessment and declare myself unable to do the same. However, since I have donated old clothes to thrift shops and books to charity, I can request the same of my peers. Give back some of what we have got, I urge you! We studied for 3 to 4 years on highly subsidized fees! It’s time to give back, with a grateful heart.

I read republican trash!

2007-07-26T08:42:00.000+08:00

Obama Hails a Unicorn
by Ann Coulter

Fox News ought to buy a copy of Monday's Democrat debate on CNN to play over and over during the general election campaign. For now, the Democratic candidates need to appeal only to their nut-base. So on Monday night, the candidates casually spouted liberal conspiracy theories that would frighten normal Americans, but are guaranteed to warm the hearts of losers blogging from their mother's basements.

B. Hussein Obama got the party started by claiming he couldn't get a cab in New York because he's black. This line was a big hit with white liberals in the audience who have never been to New York.

Even writers for The New York Times don't drag this canard out anymore. Last year, a black writer in the Times pointed out how things had changed in New York in the 10 years since he had been out of the country. Not only did he have no trouble getting a cab, but he cited statistics from taxi sting operations that showed a 96 percent compliance rate among cabbies in picking up blacks. (Remarkable, considering that New York cabbies' compliance rate on daily bathing is less than half that.)

As the Times writer noted, even 10 years ago, "most of the drivers who refused to pick me up or take me to my destination during that time were of African descent." When he asked one cabbie -- 10 years ago -- why he avoided picking up black customers, the driver displayed a scar across his neck, a souvenir from a black customer who had robbed him. "I have to choose which is worse," the driver said, "a fine or death."

Thanks to Rudy Giuliani, cab drivers in New York no longer have to make that choice. Under his mayoralty, New York City became a lot safer for cab drivers -- and everyone else. The murder rate went from about 2,000 murders a year under Mayor David Dinkins to about 700 by the end of Giuliani's term. The last time a cab driver was killed in New York was in 1997.

In addition to making it safer for (mostly African-American and Muslim) cabbies to pick up African-Americans, Giuliani made it costly for them not to. He started "Operation Refusal" in 1999, sending out teams of black undercover cops and taxi commissioners to hail cabs and give fines to those who refused to pick up blacks.

Even back in 1999, in the first 12 hours of "Operation Refusal," out of more than 800 cabs hailed, only five cab drivers refused to pick up a customer -- one of whom was a white woman with children. And by the way, I've had dozens of cabs refuse to stop for me on Fifth Avenue. Sometimes they forget to turn on the "off duty" light, or they're daydreaming or maybe they've read my columns on Muslims.

Next time, B. Hussein Obama ought to tell us the one about Kool cigarettes being owned by the KKK and causing impotence in black men. There may not be overwhelming evidence disproving that one as there is for the yarn about blacks not being able to get a cab in New York.

Overall, Hillary appeared to be the only Democrat even dimly aware that there will eventually be a general election. But she too played to her audience with wacky conspiracy theories. Oops, I mean she "discussed the Democratic platform in detail." No need for me to get judgmental.

Hillary raised the Bush-stole-the-2000-election fairy tale, saying: "I think it is a problem that Bush was elected in 2000. I actually thought somebody else was elected in that election, but ..." (Applause.)

On Nov. 12, 2001, The New York Times ran a front page article that began: "A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward."

Another Times article that day by Richard L. Berke said that the "comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots solidifies George W. Bush's legal claim on the White House because it concludes that he would have won under the ground rules prescribed by the Democrats."

On Nov. 18, 2001, notorious pro-abortion zealot Linda Greenhouse wrote in the Times that the media consortium's count of all the disputed Florida ballots -- in which the Times participated -- concluded "that George W. Bush would have won the 2000 presidential election even had the court not cut the final recount short."

If three prominent articles in the Treason Times isn't enough to convince Hillary that Bush won the 2000 election, forget the White House: ABC ought to hire her to replace Rosie O'Donnell on "The View." I know that's a big seat to fill, but maybe she can finally convince Elizabeth Hasselbeck that 9/11 was an inside job.

Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," and most recently, "Godless."

Here are a few of the comments submitted by readers.

-What a joke, as per usual!

I love the line "liberals in the audience who have never been to New York" - that's a great one! After all, most liberals hail from the hillbilly infested South and Middle American.. oh wait! Those are all the RED states! Yeah, New York City isn't fiercely liberal.. I think Ann just closes her eyes and types and whatever comes out, comes out.. and it's usually ridiculous!

I also love how she still thinks it's funny to play around with Barrack Obama's name to make him sound like a terrorist! Ann apparently still thinks like she's in 4th grade.. I wonder what she'll have to say when he's either her President or VP, cuz it's going to happen! Will she refrain from "bashing the Commander in Chief", the same thing she kills the left for? Right..

Without the Treason Times, there would have never been an Iraq War.. without the Treason Times, Bush would have never been elected a second time (they waited until after the elections to break the ILLEGAL wiretapping story). I love how a reputable news source that has been around for 100 years can simply try to do their job and tell the truth about our political process and our incompetent leadership, and suddenly they're traitors.. I sincerely wish all you righties, all of you, would just follow each other right off a cliff. The world would be so much better off without you!
CK, PhillyJul 25, 2007 @ 07:54 PM

-Annie you are a disgrace to womanhood,America, and the republican party.
cpburns, huntsville,txJul 25, 2007 @ 07:58 PM

-ahhh CK. That's the difference between liberals and conservatives. You want us to step off a cliff when all we ask is that you step off your soapbox.
fedupwithbs, washington, dcJul 25, 2007 @ 08:02 PM

Singapore Art Show - NYT comment

2007-07-25T17:34:00.001+08:00

“The thing I’m worried about is, everything we’re trying to do here is economically orientated and that’s disturbing to me,” said the artist Amanda Heng, whose work will be part of the “Curating Lab.” “Now that they’ve found art is a cultural capital, they want to get hold of it. So we put money into it, but this cannot be done with art. Art is something that you nurture slowly and it develops over time.”

She added: “Developing the art is not like making instant noodles. It takes time. The very colorful things you see from other countries come from a very long, historical art past, which we don’t have. I hope we can recognize this and start building and understanding our short art history.”

More pics!

2007-07-18T08:59:00.000+08:00

With Sunil!

Im a graduate!

2007-07-18T08:53:00.000+08:00

So Random...

2007-06-05T17:11:00.000+08:00

Eliza asked me to write a bit of something on a picture of a woman applying hot-pink lipstick...

There are some shades of pink that do not belong on the body; at least not after the 80s. The glitter on the lipstick simply screams reminders of disco-balls with "stayin' alive" playing in the smokey background with a pervasive smell of hairspray around! Not to forget masses of curly haired girls thrusting their hips around, dressed in hot-pink big-Ts worn over tight black leggings. On the other hand, that is still alot more decent than the short Ts that many girls wear over black leggings these days; but hot pink lipstick is a big nono!

For that matter, at least the 80s were a time of individuality; people tried to express themselve in different ways. There were the leggings and Ts group; but there were also eye-popping (and a lot else popping too) miniskirts, and also the first "power women" in power suits. The one thing common would be their lipstick! Lipstick just completes a woman's attire; her entire personality is defined in the colour she chooses. While pale colours and glosses symbolise the innocence (in theory) of youth, the fire-engine red that my mother wears reminds me that she is passionate; and unafraid to show it. Her personality is as bright and rich as the colour.

Hot pink on the lips... pink is always an eye-catching and attracting colour; the lips can be seen to be a very sensual part of the body; unfortunately the mix of the colour and the sensousness only creates a sluttiness on the wearer. All sensuality is best kept slightly hidden, a nude woman looks better under understated black satin than tight fuschia or hot pink! Especially if the outfit is not perfectly fitting; or the lip colour bleeds out of the lip line; or even worse, is within the lipline, displaying not only a lack of make-up skills but also carelessness in dressing and thus in life.

We are whom we pretend to be; thus we ought to be careful whom we are pretending to be. What a lesson to be learnt from a line that bleeds out of our lipstick.

SMILE!

2007-03-26T12:41:00.001+08:00

I dream of a nation where people will give way to the elderly on the bus and murmur a polite “excuse me” before elbowing their neighbors to get off the bus. I dream of a people who will not fall asleep the moment a heavily pregnant lady steps onto the bus; but instead stand to offer her a seat. In my dream, we are helpful and generous, considerate and polite; not because of any IMF and World Bank meetings, but because we inherently are.

Babies smile as soon as their muscles are developed and only frown and cry when in pain or discomfort; why then does it take so much for adults to smile and so little for them to frown? How is it that a look around the office/street/bus shows only people concentrated upon themselves and lost in their problems; if eyes meet, they quickly look away, without smiling. It’s an old joke among foreigners that if a stranger in Singapore smiles at you, they must either be new to the country; or drunk.

Yet I know many locals who are really nice, friendly and smiley people! What then turns them into sulks in the face of strangers? A friend suggests that the difference between Singaporeans and Americans is that Americans living the suburbs seldom see as many people as we do and so are friendlier. Singaporeans living in such a crowded country tend to see too many people and thus prefer to get lost in themselves.

Entirely possible I’m sure; yet I wish things were different. There is a particular bus driver I know, on service 855 who greets every passenger boarding the bus and goes so far as to ask familiar faces how their workday was! The first time I boarded the bus I was stunned, then I came to look forward to it! The passengers on the bus are the same Singaporeans who will not smile at each other on other busses but on this particular (I call it the “smiley bus”) bus ride, everyone seems slightly more cheerful. It seems the atmosphere in the bus is different; there are many more smiles, and a general sense of happiness among the tired commuters heading home (I usually take this bus at about 8pm).

The smiley driver is not an anomaly in this country, there are other drivers who are equally cheerful and many sales people who make my day with a sweet greeting or a genuine smile. However, more often than not, salespeople look stunned when I wish them a nice day and generally only manage to stammer out a shocked “thanks”. I tell taxi-drivers to drive carefully and take care as I leave their cabs and enjoy the feeling of knowing that I have given him a pleasant surprise and hopefully a smile that will carry him through the next bad customer.

There is a cliched saying that I feel rings true in all our lives, “Don’t frown, because you never know who may be falling in love with your smile”. And not just your smile I say, also your voice when you thank them, or apologise for bumping into them on the bus, or whisper excuse me instead of shoving them to board the train first.

We all smile at our loved ones; why not smile a little more in daily life and perhaps win a few more hearts (I don’t mean stalkers, I mean goodwill of people)! Smiling and being courteous, and having the favour returned is, in my opinion, the first step to being more positive as a people. Turn the frown around for a day, and see how much better you feel at the end of it! Smile, if for no other reason, then because you look better happy!

Waiting

2007-03-07T15:57:00.000+08:00

Thats the title of this picture... which somehow, magically, in its simple strokes of colour, sums up every intention i have for my life in future.

Shy, yet to eager. So alive yet so demure.

Contraidictory; and maybe a little sententious.

'Indian languages carry the legacy of caste'

2007-03-06T13:46:00.000+08:00

The Article:

'Indian languages carry the legacy of caste'
Sheela Bhatt

March 05, 2007In an article on reservation for oppressed classes in the information technology sector, noted sociologist Gail Omvedt had quoted a Dalit boy as saying: 'In Pune they just assume that anyone working with computers is a Brahmin.'
The hidden agony of being born in the former untouchable class is now coming into the open in the so-called resurgent India. Dalits, who number around 161 million and live on the margins of society, are passing through testing times.
In a changing India, they don't want to be left behind as they have for thousands of years in the past. Their aspiration to get ahead is driving them to a variety of new ideas and actions. They are also, looking back to their messiah -- freedom fighter and Constitution expert Dr B R Babasaheb Ambedkar.
New Delhi-based Chandra Bhan Prasad, 48, is a Dalit activist who writes a weekly column on Dalit issues in The Pioneer newspaper.
Born in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, in a peasant's family, Prasad has done an M Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University on technological acquisition in post-Mao China. Due to unavailability of resources he could not complete his Ph D in the Chinese history of science.
Prasad picked up the gun in the early 1980s when he joined the Communist Party of India-Maoist Leninist with dreams of changing Indian society. "The Maoists are ambiguous, they can't win," he says. "They are not reflective on the issue of caste in India so I left the CPI-ML."
Now, married but struggling without a regular income, Prasad keeps throwing up provocative ideas concerning Dalits in the national debate.
His latest idea is the anti-thesis of the saying -- 'language is the cradle of civilisation.' Prasad thinks the ethnic languages of India are carrying forward -- generation after generation -- the prejudices and biases of casteist Indian minds.
Prasad, in a passionately argued debate with Managing Editor Sheela Bhatt, claims that for the empowerment of Dalits, the knowledge of English is must, especially in a society where those who can speak English are riding up the social ladder faster than others.
English, he says, is the new goddess!
Prasad celebrated October 25, 2006, Thomas Macaulay's birthday as a day when the Dalit community in New Delhi unveiled Goddess English!

Why do you want Dalits to abandon their mother tongues and take up English which is not their mother tongue?

In Indian society nothing belongs to the Dalits. Anything that is Indian, mirrors the Indian culture, value system. It will certainly contain the strong flavour of caste and prejudice against untouchables.
In Hindi, to greet somebody we say pranam. The person bows down and there is a kind of body coordination like the folding of hands and bowing down of the head when he or she says pranam.
According to Indian tradition, Dalits don't have the right to receive pranam . Because the receiver of the pranam had the right to bless, so Dalits never received pranams. In response, the person responds with 'khush raho (be happy).

Have Dalits ever blessed the upper castes?

I want to emphasis the fact that how Indian languages -- be it Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil or Malayalam -- all of them carry the legacy of caste. But if you replace Hindi or Tamil by English you will greet by saying 'good morning.' The other person will respond saying 'good morning'. Both will look into the eyes and equality is established.
There are too many caste-based abuses in India. People say chori-chamari na karna. (Don't steal like the chamars, who are the lowest caste amongst the Dalits). In the countryside these abuses are quite common, even now. "I'll make you a bhangi(sweeper caste)!" -- is quite often used as a threat.
In Hindi films and television serials they have slightly modified these age-old abuses. They now say chori-chakari na karna. It hurts us. Analyse it with a little sensitivity. These abuses are meant for us only; it reflects the mindset of Indians.
Indians don't eat pork because untouchables were eating it. Germans eat it, why can't we eat it? They are fine people also. Indian culture carries many such caste-based biases.

What are the broader issues in favour of English?

There are several cultural aspects. The knowledge of English by Dalits will hit at the backbone of the caste system.
India's caste system relies on the twin principle of occupational purity and blood purity. You could not go out of your occupation. A cobbler's son would have to be a cobbler and a carpenter's son remained a carpenter for generations. Inter-caste marriages were strictly prohibited.
For centuries Dalits could not marry outside their caste to maintain caste purity. But if a Dalit knows English then there is no way he will be climbing a toddy tree and end up doing a manual job.
The English-speaking Dalit will not be made a sweeper or a cleaner of toilets. Good knowledge of English will emancipate him and give him leverage to liberate himself from traditional occupations.
Once you are out of your traditional socio-circle you have a higher chance to marry in the non-Dalit family. That will break the bondage of 'blood purity' as well. There are some instances of Dalits who speak English, they dress well, have a good job and are married to Brahmins.

In a recent television interview, Yogendra Yadav, the wellknown thinker on social issues, has effectively rebutted your argument. The caste system will not go away only because Dalits start speaking English. It will be more useful if the mindset of the upper caste changes.

You are right. My movement for English will not immediately demolish the caste system. But it will be a great leap forward. Look at the way ordinary people are treated in India who know only Indian languages and the way English-speaking people are treated.
When you speak English it so happens that you dress up differently. I get invited to parties and when I speak in English people talk differently and are even ready to listen to me.
What I speak, if spoken in Hindi, doesn't make an impact at all. I am dismissed but if I say the same things in English, I am heard and applauded. Also, you may have noticed that English-speaking people tend to wear suits and matching shoes. Better dressing elevates your position and makes you heard.

But it is also true that to move ahead in life you need confidence and talent more than anything else. Second, unless the upper castes change their mindset how are you going to get fair treatment, which is your real and final aim? In other words, the upper castes will give you equal status irrespective of the fact that you speak Hindi or Telugu or English if and when they realise their wrongs.

The change in mindset will only help you, not your knowledge of English. And, if you have confidence in your talent or in yourself more can be achieved than otherwise. You have an example of Planning Commission Member Dr Bal Mungekar.

He is a well-known economist who writes in English, speaks English. He didn't write his first book in Marathi, his mother tongue. If he was not English-speaking he would not have been made a member of the Planning Commission.

But that would be true for even a Brahmin economist.

For the same reason I am arguing that chances of Dalits moving ahead will be much less without knowing English.

It may not be an entirely correct argument because Lalu Prasad Yadav, a leader of the Other Backward Classes, is powerful and successful because of his ethnicity. Rather, he knows English but never speaks it because he knows that to win an election in India he should speak Hindi. How do you explain that? He ridicules English-speaking people and is still surging ahead.

You can't compare him to ordinary Dalits because he holds political office. Politics is a limited field. In democracy, you can win an election without the knowledge of English. How many can become MPs?

We are talking about his confidence.

But he is ridiculed too.

J Jaylalithaa's strength is not her knowledge of English.

You can't compare politics with what I am saying.

Okay, take Sania Mirza. Her talent and tact has nothing to do with her knowledge of English.

Films, sports and politics are different fields. I am talking of ordinary lives. These are fields offering opportunities to merely a few people. Whereas the knowledge of English can give opportunity to millions and millions of people. Not out of any complexes but with confidence we have celebrated Lord Macaulay's birthday on October 25, 2006. On that day, we have established English as the Dalits' goddess.
People condemn him for making India bilingual but I consider Macaulay the father of Indian modernity. The bottom line is that since I have some knowledge of English I feel more confident than those other Dalits who can't speak English.

Do you disagree that culture and identity is interlinked to languages?

Yes, I agree.

My response:

Irrational!by Ratna Tiwary on Mar 06, 2007 11:12 AM

"English-speaking people tend to wear suits and matching shoes" -- ie English speaking people tend to be westernised. So what our friend here is attempting to do, is not just remove caste but also all other aspects of indian culture, including native dress and language. I am not a proponent of caste, but there is a bigger picture; the day will come when dalits all speak english and wear suits, but so what? the number of jobs will still be the same, and unemplyment figures stagnant. What then? Dropping of surnames? Changing all indian names to "Smith" or "Bush"? Westernisation is not a panacea for all social ills; in fact the western countrise admit that their way of thinking is in fact detrimental to their own societies! He says: "It may not be an entirely correct argument because Lalu Prasad Yadav, a leader of the Other Backward Classes, is powerful and successful because of his ethnicity. Rather, he knows English but never speaks it because he knows that to win an election in India he should speak Hindi. How do you explain that? He ridicules English-speaking people and is still surging ahead. You can't compare him to ordinary Dalits because he holds political office. Politics is a limited field. In democracy, you can win an election without the knowledge of English. How many can become MPs?" How very contraidictory! And then celebrating Macaulay's birthday! Macaulay believed in European, especially British, superiority over all things Oriental! The term Macaulay's Children is used to refer to people born of Indian ancestry who adopt Western culture as a lifestyle, or display attitudes influenced by colonisers. The term is usually used in a derogatory fashion, and the connotation is one of disloyalty to one's country and one's heritage. "It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population." And it is this man, whom this great dalit leader revers!

Leave me alone to daydream on the bus

2007-03-06T08:13:00.000+08:00

The Electric New Paper :

Leave me alone to daydream on the bus

I DO not want to drive. To me that would represent the sacrifice of my daily dose of Ratna-time.

By Ratna Tiwary

03 March 2007

I DO not want to drive. To me that would represent the sacrifice of my daily dose of Ratna-time.

I take the bus to work and school every day and back home again at the end of a hectic day. I refuse to study in the bus (unless there is an exam that day), I seldom entertain phone calls and text messages, and I detest making inane small talk with acquaintances while travelling.

The moments I spend in the bus each day have become a refuge.

It is almost the only time in my crowded day when I do not have anything to do. I can daydream, think about articles for the next month and make plans for my dream home/wedding/career/novel.

I can peer at clouds from my seat and imagine unicorns dancing to La Bamba. My time in the bus is a time to reminisce, think about old friends and remember silly incidents as landmarks whizz by.

I pass my old school daily on my way to work, and every day, fresh memories are triggered that make me chuckle to myself. It starts my day off on a beautiful note.

Spotting the walkway leading up to school, I remember how my best friends and I did a Chinese-soldier march up the slope while singing 'wo men shi nian qing de wei guo jun' (we are the young patriotic soldiers).

Just imagine three giggly girls in pink tops and grey skirts playing soldier. As I pass the canteen, I nearly fall off the bus seat with barely-contained laughter, recalling how we used to buy beautiful birthday cakes for friends, only to smash them into their faces and then chase and be chased by them around the school grounds.

My time on the bus is a time for me to imagine. Sitting on the blue seats of the usually non-airconditioned bus service 93 every morning, feeling the cool morning air hitting my face and tousling my hair, I mentally sketch my dream home.

I'd love a balcony that allows me to enjoy the same fresh breeze every morning, preferably leading from my bedroom so that I can wake up to fresh air and singing birds.

As cars pass by, I dissect each of them and put them back together to build my dream car. The curves of the VW Beetle, with the gorgeous square headlights of old Mercedes-Benzes, the engine of a zippy little Ferrari and, hopefully, the price tag of the Chery QQ .

As I see the familiar face of a little girl on the bus each morning and smile at her, I imagine a little girl with my hair, nose, eyes, height, intelligence, and well, something from her father too. But that's a different dream (tall, fair, handsome, rich...).

When we turned 18, all my friends rushed to register for the theory of driving tests, all eagerly waiting to drive.

I tagged along andpassed both the Basic and Final theory tests, but driving lessons annoyed me. I had to focus on the car, I was responsible for all those people passing me, driving behind me, crossing the road before me, at traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, everywhere.

I could no longer dream and imagine and reminisce while the world passed me by and the breeze ruffled my hair.

Eventually, I stopped the lessons because those moments of freedom in the bus were just too vital to me. The euphoria they bring and the sheer joy I feel are too important to sacrifice.

Perhaps in a different place and time, I too will see a need to drive - to ferry my children to school, my husband to work, myself to the mall.

Perhaps then I may treasure the gurgling laughter of my children and their endless questions, the scent of my husband's cologne in the car and the thrill of my own driving, more than I treasure my freedom in the bus today.

In the meantime, however, if you see me in the bus, please smile, but then leave me to my dreams and memories.

--
The writer is a graduate in political science and South Asian studies from NUS. To give feedback, e-mail tnp@sph.com.sg.

Wonderful piece i came across

2007-02-28T15:21:00.000+08:00

I'm 71 retired, married for 49 years. The day we were married I promised my self that I would be all I could be to my husband and my children, to the best of my ability.

I got up an hour early so I could have some space to quietly relax and drink my coffee and make a list of things to do that day.

Every one had their own alarm clock.

I fixed breakfast, usually hot cereal, some time pancakes or waffles and always orange juice. On weekend we had grape juice for a treat instead of orange juice.

Got my husband off to work and my children off to school with a full belly.

I spent 1/2 hour every day working on my list. If you with out fail spend 1/2 hour on house work you can usually get the thing on your list done.

I showered and fixed myself up for the day. Tried to be finished by 10 am. I always had a little private race with myself to reach my 10 am deadline.

I was free to do as I chose until 1:30 pm.

At 1:30 I started preparing dinner.

Kids were home between 3:15 to 3:45 and they were starving hungry.

I had dinner on the table when my husband came home at 4:00.

We ate, my husband had his shower.

While he showered myself and kids had a race to see if we could get the kitchened cleaned up by the time he finished his shower.

The kids did their home work, sometimes needing my husbands or my help.

I ran what some would call a tight ship, but we had the evening free from five on.

Kids were in their room or in bed by 8:30. Leaving some quiet time for both my husband and myself.

Yes, due to sicknes or other extinuating circumstances our schedule was interupted.

You learn to dicipline your self and the rest of the family.

My married kids are trying to do the same for their family.

They tell me that I made their home a sanctuary and no matter how bad things were at school, they knew they were coming home to a safe, happy home.

We worked together and we played together and life was good.

Your schedule will probably be different but you can create your own to build a safe, happy sanctuary.

I hope this is helpful and I hope I didn't tell you more that you wanted to know.

Try it. Do what you have to do. Do your best.

Caste clouds India's high hopes

2007-02-07T09:45:00.000+08:00

Indians want to see their country punch its weight around the world - but are worried the caste system is holding it back, a BBC poll suggests.
Almost two-thirds of respondents in the World Service poll said India being an economic superpower was important.
But 55% thought caste issues were still a "barrier to social harmony".
Visitors to BBC websites chose questions for the survey. A nationally representative sample of 1,616 Indians was interviewed in December.
The poll found that a majority (71%) are proud to be an Indian.
Most also thought it was important that India should be a political (60%) and military (60%) superpower.

A majority were optimistic about many aspects of the modern Indian state - more than half (55%) think the Indian justice system treats rich and poor people fairly, a statistic which some may find surprising given perceived failures in the police and courts.
Nearly as many (52%) think being a woman is no barrier to success any more.
And the survey found that twice as many people (48%) would rather work for a private company than for the government (22%).
But on other topics respondents were less positive.
Forty-seven percent agreed that "corruption is a fact of life which we should accept as the price of doing business in today's world", although younger people were less tolerant of corruption than older people.
And if Indians are agreed on the need for India to be an economic superpower, they are less sure they are seeing the fruits of recent economic growth.
Asked whether India's economic growth over the past 10 years had benefited them and their families directly, exactly the same proportion (45%) said that it had, as disagreed.
One in two (50%) felt that "people in India don't take their religion seriously enough", while two in five (40%) believed that "young people have lost touch with their heritage and traditions".

In total 1,616 citizens in India were interviewed between 5-15 December 2006.
Polling was conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan and its research partner in India. The margin of error is +/-2.5.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6320413.stmPublished: 2007/02/05 00:03:10 GMT© BBC MMVII

Papa, you're my Valentine forever

2007-02-06T09:19:00.000+08:00

The Electric New Paper :

I HAVE had the same Valentine for the past 22 years. And now that I reflect on it, he is probably the best man to have as a Valentine.

By Ratna Tiwary
03 February 2007

I HAVE had the same Valentine for the past 22 years. And now that I reflect on it, he is probably the best man to have as a Valentine.
You see, 14 Feb is my father's birthday.
So understandably, he's been my companion every year on that day.
After years of wishing I could go out with friends on that day - I have never spent it with a boyfriend - this year, I'm actually looking forward to spending quality time with my papa.
A father-daughter relationship is a special one.
And I agree with all those who say that women look for their fathers in their partners.

PILLAR OF STRENGTH

My father is a strong man. Not in the sense that he is Samson-like, but he has always dealt with life in a manner that makes me admire him.
This dawned on me only after my teenage years - which was not too long ago. During those years though, I suppressed all positive feelings about him and spent my time trying to paint him in big-bad-wolf shades.
How is it that in the rush to grow up, and then in the fight to not grow old so soon, a girl's father often gets forgotten?

Faith Hill sang a song entitled Daddy's Little Girl, which aptly sums up this relationship:
'He's a book of advice/More than I need/The look in his eyes is saying to me/Let me help you all I can/While I'm still in this world'.

Yes, my father is a big man, always there for me.
I know papa looks stern all the time and makes valiant attempts to scare away friends of mine whom he deems undesirable.
But I also remember that this is the same man who took me out daily when I was feeling left out after my brother was born. He also bought me dolls to make sure I had a 'new baby' too.
He's the same man who now buys me Cacharel perfume from the duty-free shop every time he goes out of the country, and reads my academic articles when once, he read my fumbling teenage poetry.

Is it not surprising how, in the blur of day-to-day commitments, we often forget those who matter the most to us?
In the quest to celebrate special occasions with friends, how often do we stop to remember that these celebrations are also meant to be spent with our families?

SIMPLE CELEBRATION

It doesn't have to be elaborate, expensive or held overseas. It just has to be a time to get together.I remember papa's past 22 birthdays that we spent together, and that warm feeling of it being an important day for the most important man in my life.
Friends and lovers come and go, but deep in my heart, I know that be it a scraped knee or a broken heart, papa will always be there.
I think it's simply perfect that Valentine's Day also marks the birth of the man who, to me at least, personifies love.

Happy birthday in advance, papa, my Valentine forever.

The writer is an undergraduate in Political Science and South Asian studies from NUS.

HDB Woes

2007-01-17T08:51:00.001+08:00

I’ve decided that I want the first house that I buy to be an HDB apartment. The decision was the simple and sensible part, I mean why not take the grants the government is giving? I might as well buy it before my income goes above $8000 and whole new sets of rules begin to apply. Even below $8000, the whole process is maddening!
When the decision is made, that you want a HDB, the first thing to decide would be if you want to get it with your partner (opposite sex only), or your parent, or are you old enough to apply for one on your own? Have I confused you yet, this was the easy part you see!
The next step involves figuring out which HDB you want? This is a two-fold process, first is it going to be anew flat (aka a shoebox), or would you prefer a much roomier, albeit older (and maybe haunted, murdered-in) resale flat? So then, there are the 1,2,3,4 and 5 room flats, not to mention the maisonettes, jumbo flats, executive apartments, executive condominiums and built-to-order units! Mind you, most of which only have three bedrooms anyway. Yes, a 5-room flat has 3 bedrooms, and a dining room and a utility room (does this make sense to you)?
Have I mentioned that each of the above mentioned category has a few sub categories? How about the 3 and 4NG (new generation) flats, the "normal" 3 and 4 room flats, and the whole host of others! 4-S, 4-A, 4-A1, 4-A2, 4-I, 5-S, 5-I, 5-A! The differences? Essentially, a few square centimetres!
Call a real estate agent, just have a normal conversation and tell her/him you’re interested in buying a flat, even before she begins counting her commission, she’ll drown you in questions you never knew existed, so obviously can not answer?
"Are you planning to buy a house within 2KM of your parents?" , "Uh, I don’t know, if I can get one…"
"Are you taking the $40,000 or $50,000 rebate?" , "can I have both?"
"Are you married?", "no… planning to"
When are you getting married?, "soon…"
"Is he Singaporean?", "uh…"
"What race is he?", "uh…"
She was firing questions faster than I could begin to answer them. I was just waiting for her to ask me what was my shoe size, but then she got down to money matters. First off, "how much do you earn", "and what is your partner’s salary".
By the time we had settled her questions and decided which part of Singapore (which suddenly seemed too big to me), I wanted to reside in, she told me she would begin to arrange viewings. Fine, so it was ok thus far, although I feel that my personal details are no longer mine (strange feeling for someone who writes about her life in the papers).
So she calls me the next day, and tells me that she has 4 flats open for viewing at Holland Village, before I can exclaim in joy and dig out my diary, she informs me "but ah, Indian cannot"!
Leaving me spluttering in dismay, she then tells me that actually there are no available flats open for sale to Indians, as the Indian quotas for that area are full! After a few such phone calls, I’ve surrendered. I told her to call me the next time there is an "Indian flat" open. After all, on my salary I think it might take a while to reach $8000, and since I’m not married, under 35 and don’t plan to apply for a flat with my parents, I have all the time in the world!
However, HDB does need to make itself far more friendly to the busy yuppie with little time to battle with estate agents who want to palm you the first flat you don’t say NO to. Perhaps HDB-accredited agents who receive commissions from HDB directly, so that they are more patient with clients?
Buying a house is often a dream come true, although I have time on my hands, the fact that my dream is beginning to be tinged with nightmarish aspects doesn’t please me!

Back-to-school!

2007-01-05T13:22:00.000+08:00

It’s that time of year again, when malls are overflowing with children screaming that this year power-puff girls/astro-man are out of fashion and don’t the department stores have “desperate housewives” schoolbags? I’m not talking about gifts! I mean back-to-school shopping.

I have a younger, school-going brother, so trust me, I know how passionate children get about their school kits. My mom often remarks that in her day, having a schoolbag and not having to share (BATA brand) school shoes with siblings were already dreams come true. Not that I identify with that thought, but I do miss back-to-school shopping, yet I never wanted a desperate housewives schoolbag!

I loved going back to school, it meant going to the uniform store and trying on new sets of uniforms, the fondness for the smell of new clothes has not left me to this day. It was a moment in my life when I genuinely wanted to know that my dress size had increased and I was taller! The elderly Chinese lady in the yang-tze-kiang uniform shop would look me up and down and always pick out the correct size for me to try! Despite all the horrible things I thought about my uniform the rest of the year (shapeless, boring, etc), that one day, in the sparkling white shirt and rich navy pinafore, I loved my uniform.

Uniforms were followed by wrapping paper for books, stationery, a new bag for school, a lunch box and matching water bottle! The thrill I got while buying all this and then prohibiting myself from using it until the first day of school made me look forward intensely to school. There was something special about shopping for school, the thrill of wondering what your best friend is going to buy and how to pick things for yourself that you are the undoubted queen of waterbottles/schoolbags,etc.

The last stop on the big day was BATA. The term is still synonymous to me with school! Until a few years back, I was convinced that BATA was a local brand and only Singaporean children wore BATA shoes to school! Then I realised that many children from many different countries thought that BATA was solely theirs! What amazing branding!

The field is wider for schoolchildren these days, my brother’s main concern is whether Nike shoes are cool enough or should he buy (a third pair) of Adidas Climacools. Schools have since allowed track shoes to be worn and BATA shoes are no longer a must buy on the shopping list. When I was a kid the choices were limited to BATA with laces, or BATA with laces and a velcro strap.

I figure the magic of back-to-school shopping has changed, and I’ve become a relic, but hey, maybe it was more fun in “my time”. Our parents wanted the goods, we had them and so wanted them to have cute pictures, and the children who shop these days have dumped cute pictures in favour of cuter logos and heavier price tags. The magic I remember was not concerned with price, maybe the children of today understand things differently and their brand of magic can be bought.

The article that made me (in)famous

2007-01-05T13:21:00.000+08:00

Arts students should shape up or ship out
By Ratna Tiwary

December 02, 2006

THERE is constant discussion on campus about why graduates from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are unable to land jobs easily.

I read in the papers some months back about a woman lamenting her jobless fate as an arts honours graduate despite having submitted more than 2,000 applications.

As a final-year arts student, having already had many good offers, I am beginning to think that it's more about the lack of effort put in by undergraduates in looking for a job, or how they go about planning it.

I've done two internships while studying, both of which I found after sending my resume to several companies.

My friends asked why I needed to intern twice, and my answer was simple: Experience helps.

When I began applying for jobs in my last semester, they thought I was too kiasu, but I had the last laugh after landing a job.

On the one hand, I agree that many globally-ranked universities have excellent career placement programmes, something local universities are still trying to establish by widening and strengthening alumni relations - in the hope that alumni members will offer job opportunities to new graduates.

But how much longer will our students be spoon-fed everything?

The job market is expanding, but it seems that nothing is good enough for our fresh graduates, least of all arts graduates who expect reserved seats in the civil service.

I spoke to an assistant dean at the National University of Singapore for an interview I was conducting for the faculty newsletter last year, and his comments stayed with me.

He said that most arts graduates begin job hunting only after graduation, when the good positions have generally been taken by foreign-educated graduates or more proactive students.

The other problem is, few graduates bother dressing up for interviews, with many turning up in jeans or even shorts. Some students just do not bother, assuming their degree will 'take them places'.

Such an attitude not only reflects badly on them, but eventually, on the faculty and university as well. Which company would want to hire someone with no grooming skills?

Foreign students turn up for career talks and seminars in suits and ties; local students go in casual wear. For all the good intentions the alumni may have of hiring local students, can we blame them for taking on 'foreign talent'?

In mixed faculty classes, the ones who seldom complete assignments are generally arts students.

Unfortunately, these habits have carried over into working life for some students, and this minority has created an image of arts grads that others have to live down.

During an interview with a foreign publishing company, my interviewer was surprised to learn that I consciously chose to join the faculty, and not because I could not get into Law or Medicine.

I know of an arts undergrad who is pursuing her degree with less than half-hearted interest, doing a degree with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants on the side, and a dance diploma as a backup. According to her, she's doing this merely to be known as an NUS grad.

These students are a minority, but that doesn't mean they can be ignored.

The university ought to assess the capabilities of its students and their aptitude for the arts field before granting them admittance.

There are already interview procedures in place for borderline students wishing to enter the faculty; and although I can see logistical difficulties, I think this procedure should be extended to all students applying for the faculty.

I take pride in my degree, and I know that I have worked for it. It was a choice I made to pursue a career in the arts field.

How many of my fellow final-year university mates can say as much?

Varsity life

2006-11-03T15:26:00.000+08:00

tThere must be no other community as diverse and as integrated as the one we experience in university days! Every single person comes from a different background and yet each of those different people are in classes together, working on projects together and waging the fight for better grades together.

It is that magical period of life where racism and other communal biases come to a temporary standstill; while it is not utopia, it is a wonderful respite from the world and many a graduate turns to post-graduate programmes in an attempt to remain in this utopia instead of facing the trials of a job and the working world in general. I know many students who choose to pursue further studies in almost any field, simply to stay on in school. The idea of not having a professor to run to, living without steady pocket money, and the knowledge that school fees will be paid (or else there is financial aid), is simply too scary a thought for them. To be fair however, the country is relatively well prepared for the influx of graduates every July and most employers are understanding enough to help ease the fresh graduates into the pace of work slowly.

College life and culture is reminiscent of hippie-life and culture, most sins are forgiven and there is acceptance of very liberal concepts of life. In the blink of an eye one can see a girl in little more than a bikini, talking and hugging a girl covered in a burqa. Male students dress in everything ranging from freshly ironed shirts and trousers to singlets and running shorts!

A short walk to the canteen will show a myriad of cuisines – everything ranging from Japanese to Vietnamese and middle-eastern to the normal chicken rice and yong-tau-foo. More amazing is the sight of locals experimenting with kebab rolls while the exchange students they are dining with are flushing red at the spice in the chicken curry of the Indian stall, and the ever conscious dieters dine on salads and tea without milk.

Classes must be the same everywhere, but the cacophony of different languages buzzing on the same topics never fails to make me smile. Wherever these students may be from and whatever their majors of study, departments and sub-departments, their worries differ little – deadlines, essays and of course, dating and gossip.

Not everyone has friends in every lecture and freshmen sitting alone are often pleasantly surprised when their neighbours include them in the general complaining about the university and the people in it. It is indeed an anomaly in the same country where people refuse to smile at each other in the MRT!

Considering that most polytechnic graduates start work about the same age that undergraduates start university, the massive difference in mindsets and behaviour must be acknowledged. University students get college life as an extra holiday from real life and are allowed to soak in the academic, yet fun and playful atmosphere of university. In my experience polytechnic students tend to be more pragmatic and hands-on, while the university graduates tend to be more focused on ‘thinking’ and analysing different patterns before working them out. This is a wonderful work structure, to have different people, equipped with different talents in a multi-ethnic and multi-talented nation.

Despite the ever looming deadlines of essays and presentations, the seemingly terrible number of lectures and tutorials to attend, as well as consultations and project meetings; university life is a period which most students come to see as the most golden period of their lives. Education is not just the best personal investment one can make but an investment by society as well.

All school fees (right up to university) are heavily subsidised in Singapore, so technically every taxpayer can be said to have paid for my education. What then does the tax payer get for this? Well, a graduate stores up the experiences of university and applies them to life. We live in a multicultural world and it is the experiences of mingling that one learns in educational institutions that allow many of us to attain success in the right places. As the HSBC advertisements strive to tell us, different cultures see things differently, body art may seem taboo to some, while it may be a sacred ritual for others. The myriad cultures intermingling in university provides an excellent entry point to the world.

The best thing about university life, from my experience thus far, is the fact that almost all students have finally realised that an education includes more than getting a piece of paper to frame on the wall. Hallways ring with laughter and flirtations, but there are snippets of conversations on human rights mingled with talk on the latest buy-over of some company and the newest medical technology.

This is not to say that students who are here merely to gain that wall decoration do not exist in the university; they most certainly do, but they are certainly rarer a species than the pseudo-academic.

University experience is indeed a wonderful experience and gives one the opportunity and the maturity to truly experience different cultures and ways of life, to fall in and out of love, to fall and pick oneself up, to learn and laugh and live, with few criticisms; because college education is simply, to complete one’s education.

A comparison study of caste practices between North Indian Brahmins in Diasporic Societies, especially Singapore; and the homeland.

2006-10-25T13:43:00.000+08:00

Introduction:

The current Indian Diaspora all over the world is made up of two main waves of immigration; one would be in the mid and late 19th century as part of the British policy of indentured labour; and the second would be in the mid 20th century, post-partition era where many professionals moved out of India to other more profitable areas, Singapore included.

In the first wave, the Indian indentured labourers were transplanted to areas such as Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, South America, Fiji, Surinam and Guyana. Many of these labourers were of North Indian Origin. Of these migrants, a significant number must have been of Brahmin origin . Other than the indentured labourers, there were a small number of immigrants who came to these states of their own free will, to set up businesses or provide professional expertise. This move across the dreaded “kala pani ” would have stripped them of all rights that their caste brought along with it, in fact stripping them of their high caste and rendering them ‘untouchable’.

However, these immigrants had little choice but to make the crossing as the need to feed and clothe their children was far more pressing. The economics of the situation outweighed any social stigmas that came along with it. However, upon reaching the new land, wherever it was, these Brahmins (yes, they still saw themselves as Brahmins), continued to fit in their caste practices and languages into their new lives. In fact, as this essay discusses, these immigrants hung onto their caste and cultural practices very strongly, relying upon them as an identity in a land where they were a tiny minority.

With time, India has moved on and matured as a society, discarding certain practices and modifying others; and these Diasporic groups, now labelled People of Indian Origin (PIOs) by the Indian government have become relics, left behind by the tides of time. It is rare to find now, in the motherland, a moustachioed, janeu-wearing, dhoti clad Brahmin man chatting away in Awadhi or Bhojpuri, or any one of a dozen Northern-Indian dialects, trying to find a good Brahmin match for his daughter. In fact, many Brahmins in India simply allow their daughters to work and find their own matches, the degree of freedom and gender equality in India is far greater than that afforded by Diasporic Indians to their female progeny.

The ‘fossilisation’ of certain practices has made these Diasporic groups outcastes all over again, both in India, which they have for so long revered and tried to be a part of by preserving the Indian culture of a hundred years back, as well as in their adopted lands, which they seldom, if ever, tried to become a part of.

This essay aims to examine the differences and similarities between North-Indian Brahmins in urban Indian societies and in the Diasporic group in Singapore. There is a significant void in current literature on the study of Brahmins in a modern society, especially in the context of the Indian Diaspora; as such the methodology of this paper will rely largely on interviews with Indians resident in India, through email and telephone; as well as interviews with local Brahmin leaders and Priests as well as local Brahmin laypeople. Yeo Chor Siang’s study of Singapore’s Bihari Dairymen provides a good guide for this paper; however due to space constraints, I will focus more on cultural practices of the Brahmins instead of their economic practices. This paper will examine the appearances of these two groups, as well as the languages and dialects they use and interact in, and their practices, social, cultural and religious.
Appearance:

“The home itself becomes, to an increasing degree, the only environment in which a traditional Hindu life can be maintained. ” In the Diasporic experience, there can be said to be a concentrated effort to maintain and retain the values which these migrants practiced in the homeland. In the Singapore Brahmin experience, we will analyse how the immigrants and their progeny differ from their counterparts in the homeland.

There are certain practices that Brahmins ought to maintain in order to be recognised as one; this section of this paper will examine and compare these traits across Singapore and India; especially the urban centres of the latter.

According to Pt. Ramji Shastri of Laxmi Narayan Mandir, the only North-Indian temple in Singapore, for males, these outward traits are the wearing of the sacred-thread (janeu), the maintaining of a little tail of uncut hair (churki), a mark of sandalwood paste on the forehead (chandan) and finally, the greeting of others with hands folded and a slight bending down (bandan). Finally, there has also developed a habit of not shaving the moustache of a male until the death of his father. With regards to female Brahmins, there are no outward appearances of their caste, but they are generally sheltered and have their head covered; this will be addressed under the section on practices and religion.

To begin with the moustache, my interaction with India-based Indians has revealed that the moustache is seldom maintained in urban centres today. It is perceived as being both messy and old-fashioned. In Singapore, the perceptions of the moustache are similar, but a casual glance around the male half of the prayer hall at Laxmi Narayan Mandir will show that many of them do maintain moustaches; including the younger generation. In fact, the need to preserve this outward mark of a socio-religious belief is so strong that many parents seek letters from the temple priests to certify that this is indeed a valid custom to present to school principals in a bid to exempt their sons from school rules regarding the prohibition of maintaining facial hair in schools.

The janeu has suffered similarly in the homeland context, where my respondents told me that is an embarrassment in intimate situations . There are two schools of thought with regards to the janeu, one being that it is better to skip it altogether than to wear it and desecrate it by not following the proper protocol attached to it . The other school believes in wearing it as a reminder of one’s identity, in the hope that the physical symbol will make it easier to maintain other, intangible, Brahmanic values. In Singapore and India, the ceremony where a young boy is made to wear the janeu is known as the yagyopaveet ceremony and this is celebrated with great pomp and splendour as this represents the “second birth” of the male concerned, this time as a proper Brahmin. The main difference in the two countries with regard to the janeu is the age at which the yagyopaveet is performed. In Singapore, the ceremony is usually performed when the male is grown-up enough to understand the meaning of the sacred thread and attempt to maintain the values attached to it; usually in the teenage years. In India however, this ceremony is often ignored until it is time for the male to marry . In India my respondents remarked that the janeu was usually ignored once the ceremony was over, worn only for religious rituals. In Singapore, the case is not radically different, but post-marriage, many Brahmin men do take to wearing the janeu daily, claiming that they then begin to lead a more ‘settled’ life and are thus not desecrating the janeu. This phenomenon is also noted in a discussion with Dr. Amit Mishra with regards to Brahmins in Mauritius and Fiji; the observation being that even among the Diasporic societies in those two states, the wearing of the sacred-thread is a common, every-day part of life.

With regards to the putting on of the chandan and performing bandan; both of these are usually practiced only in the temple; in both countries. However, the main difference between the two countries is that, in the Singaporean context, Indians are a minority and Brahmins a smaller minority within a minority; so performing bandan would be quite irrelevant in an everyday context, as the majority Chinese in Singapore would both be puzzled and would even treat the act as something beyond their comprehension. There is no such problem in the homeland, yet the fading out of this practice only goes to show that the ‘modernisation’ of Indian values has replaced the bandan with the handshake. The chandan shares the same experience, in Singapore it would be seen to be unprofessional and require extensive explanations, somewhat explaining its lack on weekdays; in India it is understood to be what it is, yet the homeland Brahmins choose to ignore it and classify these symbols as ‘backward’.

The churki is probably the most ‘invisible’ Brahmanic symbol; as often seen to be the most ‘backward’ of the lot. It is basically a little ‘tail’ of hair, which is not cut and usually tied up and camouflaged within the hair. It is seldom seen in either country now but it is still more prevalent in Singapore than in urban centres, among the older generation, it is however, common among the rural Brahmins in India. A simple explanation for this is that it can tend to look slightly messy and present an ‘unprofessional’ exterior for those working in big companies, a problem that the older generation in Singapore and the rural population of India do not face.

On the note on appearance, the traditional outfits of North India, the dhoti for men and the sari for grown women are both seldom seen in the urban centres of India and the business life of Singapore. However, on Sundays when most of the North-Indian community of Singapore gather at the temple, most married women turn up in saris and unmarried girls in salwaar-kameez. Although the men do not wear dhotis, most of them are armed with the knowledge of knowing how to wear one. My India-based informants told me that most of them did not know how to wear a dhoti or a sari properly; they were worn only on festival occasions and even then they were helped by their parents and family members.

The comparisons above go on to prove the thesis of this paper, that Brahmanic and ‘Indian’ symbols are far more common in Diasporic societies than they are in the homeland. A large part of this can be attributed to the love one develops for what one lacks in life. The Diasporic groups hang on to these physical signs of their culture and identity as they fear being merged into the mainstream group of Singapore Indians otherwise. Brahmin surnames are not known among the masses for being ‘Brahmin’, as such, the main feature of the Brahmin identity has already disappeared in Singapore, while most India-based Indians know the different caste-names, thus there is a less passionate need to maintain these other symbols of identity among homeland Brahmins. This is seen in the above comparisons but also in the importance that the head covering had to Diasporic women; it was difficult to get traditional Indian saris and salwaar-kameez in the early Diasporic settlements, as such they tended to wear the sarong-kebaya in Malaya and western dresses in the Caribbean islands; but they made it a point to keep their heads and thus their modesty covered. This is merely a custom among Brahmin women to protect them from the male gaze and not religious in nature, yet it remains an important part of their culture. These very same symbols are not so important to women in the urban areas of India, where they are merely viewed as cumbersome and a sign of backwardness and outdated caste-consciousness.
Practices:

Attire and appearances aside, the most important aspect of a study on any group of people would be their practices. It is a commonly acknowledged fact that in the life of a Hindu, there are 3 main events – birth, marriage and death. These three are celebrated on a grand scale and as previously mentioned, in the life of the Brahmin, in between the first two, there is also the yagyopaveet ceremony.

The marriage is definitely one of the most important ceremonies of a Hindu’s life, Brahmins notwithstanding. Marriage in the Brahmin community is a grand scale celebration. There is a lead up to the actual wedding with the search for the bride/groom, matching of horoscopes, picking of a date to exchange rings and finalise the match, discussions on issues like dowries and wedding locations, the engagement party, various pre-wedding ceremonies and finally the wedding itself.

The Brahman caste or class is divided into ten sections, all based upon geographical distribution, which differs in customs and standing and do not intermarry . The UP Brahmins can be divided into a further two groups, the Kanyakubj and Saryuparin Brahmins who are by caste-rules allowed to take daan , and the second group of Brahmins who are not. While caste and sub-castes are obviously important to Brahmins in relation to marriage, so are gotras. Gotra is the Sanskrit term for a much older system of tribal clans; it was initially used by the Vedic people for the identification of the lineages. Generally, these lineages refer to a line of patrilineal descent from the mythical sages or rishis among Brahmins; warriors and administrators among Kshatriyas ; and ancestors among Vaishyas

Within the Singapore community, we see a continuance of such practices and the importance of gotra and sub-castes in terms of marriage. In order to preserve this ‘purity’ of caste and sub-caste, there is a significant trend of ‘importing’ brides from rural villages of India, where the women are generally believed to be more unaware of worldly issues and rather more ‘untouched’. In the Singapore case, trends of dowry-giving and announcing the amount given during the wedding ceremony are not uncommon during Brahmin weddings. Age-old mindsets that good wives ought not work is another reason for the ‘importing’ of rural brides as these women are more amenable to working in the home and are generally not educationally qualified to join the Singaporean workforce.
In the urban sectors of India, marriage and its planning have changed drastically. A simple scan of Brahmin matches posted on any one of a dozen matrimonial sites will show that resident Indians are more open to inter sub-caste marriages than the Diasporic community. Inter sub-caste marriages are frowned upon in Diasporic communities until there is absolutely no choice in the matter, as one Saryuparin Brahmin respondent recounted that her parents agreed to her inter-sub caste marriage (to a Kanyakubj Brahmin) because there were no Saryuparin Brahmin boys of her educational qualifications single and available at the time when she was ready for marriage.

Family life is very highly valued in Diasporic societies and joint families and finances are more common than they are in resident Indian families. Yeo Chor Siang notes similar trends among Bihari Dairymen in her study on them . These trends have become ‘outdated’ in India as many couples marry and move away from the family home and set up nuclear families of their own. My resident Indian respondents noted that it was believed among their parents that nuclear families provided a more modern and cosmopolitan approach to life; whereas joint families were inherently political and held one back from moving forward in life.

In terms of the larger society, there are also various caste rules of purity that Brahmins are expected to follow; both within the home and outside. According to traditional rules of purity, a barber cuts their hair and nails, and is paid in cash for doing this polluting service, which traditional rules of purity do not allow caste Hindus to perform for themselves . This is practiced widely in the rural areas of India and among the older Diaspora in Singapore. The dearth of barbers willing to provide this service has ensured that most local Indians, as well as urban settled resident Indians go to hairdressers and modern barbers to get their hair trimmed. The cutting of nails has become a matter of personal hygiene as there are no more barbers willing to perform this service.

Caste rules also prohibit members of the ‘untouchable’ castes from entering the homes of Brahmins or temples where Brahmins attend functions for fear of polluting the space. In the early days of the Diaspora, both these rules were adhered to. Until the mid 1960s, there was no inter-dining and entrance into caste homes for non-caste Indians . In the south Indian Brahmin context, Mani comments:

It can be said that the caste situation was one in which the Indian social system was implanted with minor modifications. This system was kept revitalised by the constant journeys to… home villages after … [a] tour of duty in Singapore… [caste difference was further strengthened] by the fact that most caste-Hindus came [to Singapore] to earn a living as shopkeepers and itinerant labourers, whilst the Adi-drividas came largely to be employed as ‘coolies’ in the Municipality and the British installations .

The same situation applied to the North Indian, UP/Bihar community of Brahmins, a large number of Brahmins came as milkmen and traders under the free immigration laws whereas a large number of the non-caste Hindus came as watchmen and coolies. The situation has changed over time, one main reason being the move into HDB flats in Singapore. These flats are situated next to each other with no common space where a caste and non-caste Hindu can have a discussion , also the upward mobility allowed in Singapore placed members of many different castes on the same social strata, thus eradicating many of the traditional caste differences. As a result, in Laxmi Narayan temple today, you can see chamar women in the temple, sitting and worshipping with ladies of all castes. In this new ‘caste system’, there is respect for age and social station more so than for caste in Singapore; however, as mentioned above, respect while in its place, does not mean that intermarriage is encouraged. Similarly in the urban areas of India although rules governing entrance into temples are stricter and there are different non-caste temples built for the untouchable groups, a phenomenon impossible in tiny Singapore with such a small community of such people. Untouchability rules are however still prevalent in village setups and rural areas in India.

It is undeniable that ‘caste though changed, remains important to Indians ’. Mani comments that in the South Indian Diaspora, each caste “tried to insulate itself not by seeking ascendancy over others, but to help itself not to lose its identity. They ‘involuted’ by maintaining a strict endogamy, and they began to ‘compartmentalize’ their social norms with regard to each caste, other Tamils, and other Singaporeans ” The same situation applied to the UP/Bihar Brahmins who can be said to have compartmentalized their social norms and caste-rules, albeit with modifications, in order to maintain their identity.

Food habits:

A discussion of food habits of Brahmins between the homeland and the Diaspora is of the few areas where the resident Indian community will be seen to be maintaining stricter rules than the Diasporic communities; however, there is a very simple explanation for this, as well as a reversing trend.

Brahmins are by caste-rules strict vegetarians, abstaining even from ‘heaty and aphrodisiac’ foods such as garlic and onions. However in the early Diasporic communities is was very difficult to remain vegetarian given the limited food options, what more cutting out onion and garlic from food. Most of the local respondents have at some time in their lives been eating non-vegetarian food, especially in the families of the earlier settlers; i.e. those who came before partition in India. However, in their old age, many of these settlers and their families do revert back to vegetarianism. In India, it is much easier to preserve vegetarianism given the wider range of options available as well as the fact that there is a large family structure to fall back upon, with home-cooked food readily available. This latter option was not open to many of the early settlers who were either bachelors or men travelling alone, with their families left in India.

In current urban India, many Brahmins families are dual-income and lack the time to cook, while there is no dearth of vegetarian food options in India, fast-food and western non-vegetarian options are gaining popularity. On the other hand, in Diasporic communities, wider food options and more time for cooking are reversing the non-vegetarian trend and vegetarianism is making a comeback among the people.

Still on the discussion of food, Hinduism is a religion which is often practiced through a variety of fasts, Yeo Chor Siang notes in her study that over 40 fasts are widely known, while only about a quarter of these are practiced . The major Hindu festivals when fasts would be observed include MahaShivraatri and KrishnaJanamashtmi. These are two of the most major religious festivals of Hinduism and in both Diasporic and resident communities are celebrated on large scales. However, the small number of the Diasporic community could be one reason for the unity with which these are celebrated, with almost all members of the community turning up at the Laxmi Narayan temple to sing and celebrate together. Those members who are offering ‘Prasad ’ ensure that the forbidden foods are not included in the Prasad.

Other than these fasts, women maintain a certain repertoire of fasts unto themselves; these include the teej fast for their husbands, Saraswati Jayanti fast for their children and the chaath fast for their families. The teej is especially common in the UP/Bihar region and is widely practiced among the Singapore Diasporic community. Women fast without water and celebrate in the evenings with communal hymn singing in the temple and dressing up in new clothes and jewellery gifted by their husbands. Among the urban resident Indian community however, the teej fast is fast losing out to the more popular Karva Chauth fast; this fast has been popularised among the masses through television serials and Hollywood movies; thus making it seem more ‘upmarket and modern’ than the teej fast. These urban Indian women seldom practice the other ritual fasts also, the reasons for this are many, including the fact that many of them are working and find it difficult to abstain from food. On the same note, it must be noted that some of the Diasporic community women are also working wives, yet they make an effort to maintain their repertoire of fasts, as one respondent questioned, “if we don’t fast, what values and habits will we be passing on to our children”.

Women are also supposed to be deemed ‘impure’ while menstruating and ought not touch the prayer altar or enter the kitchen to maintain the purity of these places. This is slowly being phased out in resident Indian families settled in urban areas today; however it has long since been phased out among the Diaspora. This ritual is almost impossible to maintain due to nuclear families and the fact that there was only one woman in the household and if she were to abstain from cooking, the men and children of the household would have to forage for themselves. In most homes, only the altar on which the Gods are placed has remained true to the traditional rules of pollution and purity .

Religion:

“People seek contexts of religious activity in which they can communicate with religious specialists and other participants in their own language, and in which they have clear ideas of what to expect and what is expected of them. ” There has been a clear reduction in the amount of time available for ceremonial activity, with the result that religion becomes largely, an activity for weekday evenings and Sunday mornings. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that in the Laxmi Narayan temple, the largest turnouts are on Sunday mornings, followed by certain weekday evenings. The Tuesday afternoon hymn-singing sessions are attended only by retirees and housewives. The working hours and professionalism required by one in the Diasporic communities and urban areas in India has resulted in a subtle change in the ways one attends temple functions, work takes a priority to this outward expression of religiousness.

It has also changed the way that many religious festivals are celebrated in Singapore. “In recent times, only one widely-observed Hindu festival – Dipavali – has had the status of a public holiday. Other festivals unless they happen to fall on weekends, must inevitably compete with other obligations… The overall result is a situation in which many festivals must be celebrated in a reduced scale in the evenings. ” This situation is very different from that in the homeland where leeways are accorded for major religious festivals and holidays granted accordingly allowing these festivals to be celebrated as they ought to be, generally in the mornings.

The order of the Gods in the Hindu pantheon has also changed in the Diasporic communities, Henry’s study in UP shows that mother goddesses are usually worshipped by lower castes; although high castes still cannot escape the worship of mother goddess due to her malevolent nature if ignored . In the local context, more or less all castes perform mother goddess worship, but Brahmins were loath to sponsor private mother goddess prayers in the early years. However, in the current context, every Tuesday afternoon is dedicated to the worship of the mother goddess, by women of all castes in the UP/Bihar Diaspora community. One reason mentioned by my respondents for this phenomenon could be that the mother goddess is seen as a protector, which would be something that immigrants would have felt they needed in building their lives in a new land; thus her popularity among all castes, including Brahmins.

A similar explanation is available for the Hanuman Chalisa being sung by women in the aforementioned temple. The Hanuman Chalisa is a chant that is generally reserved for men as the monkey God is known to be worshipped for physical strength. He is also however, acknowledged as a protector. In the Diasporic communities, we often see a trend among the members of the community to be ‘as religious as possible’; possibly to steep themselves even deeper in their identity as Hindus, different from those around them. Also, women are always seen as the ‘religious’ symbols in families and since men in the Diaspora started out with demanding work hours, women took over the role of praying for them; thus one possible reason for the recitation of the Hanuman Chalisa by women in the Diaspora.

Religion is still something held very sacred even in urban Indian centres, although it is often ignored, it is still held sacred and resident Indians take pains to ensure that they do not listen to religious songs while lying down or performing impure acts. In the Diaspora these rules are relaxed and it is taken that as long as the heart is pure, the position one is sitting or lying in, is irrelevant to the worship of God.

There is also significantly less of a ‘temple culture’ in the Indian urban centres. The importance of the temple to Singapore is peculiar to Diasporic communities because the temple becomes a social institution as well, often the only North Indian Social institution in Diasporic settlements.

This oft-mentioned Laxmi Narayan temple in Singapore was set up in 1969 to cater to the religious needs of the Hindi-speaking community. Rather than a philosophical character, the form of Hinduism practiced in the temple veers more towards the folk-devotional . It was set up largely through donations from the community to instil a sense of cultural continuity in an environment very different from that they had left behind in India. Over time the religious institution has become a social and recreational centre, where the devotees meet to do more than just worship . It has become a form of social outing for the cloistered women of traditional Brahmin families and a chance to mingle and socialise, exchange news and gossip, and to catch up with friends and relatives . It is also an ideal place for families to get to know each other as well as new immigrants and as a result, has become the centre for the arrangement of marriages .

In the case of resident Indians, there is no need for such a strong temple culture, as there is no shortage of places to meet people of similar caste and backgrounds, as Indians are obviously a majority in that case, with social institutions already well woven into the social fabric. In the rural case, people are already well acquainted with each other and marriages and alliances are thus easier to arrange.

Conclusion:

In the words of Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, the former minister of Human Resource Development in India; travelling great distances in the search for knowledge or for economic reasons are not new, however most who travel, do not maintain contact with those they leave behind .

“But, greater the distance and the difficulties in keeping in touch, more were the chances for displaced communities to hold together and retain their identity. Even when loss of identity is rewarded or forced by the rulers who commanded their economic activities these communities had their own mechanism to remain frozen to a time vis-à-vis their belief and practices, while their brethren back home has invented and/or undergone many changes.”

Dr. Joshi’s observations are completely apt to the case of Brahmins in the Diaspora, especially with relation to the case of Singapore, as this essay proves. There have been very significant changes in the caste practices among the Saryuparin and Kanyakubj Brahmins in the urban centres of India with relation to their appearance, practices in marriages et al, as well as their outward expressions of religion and the role it plays in their lives, there is also a significant trend toward change in issues like fasting and rituals, as well as general food habits.

Inversely, the Diasporic community in Singapore has struggled to hang on to the very same notions of ‘Brahmanism” that the resident Indians are striving to shed in favour of western beliefs of modernity. The very fact that coming to a foreign land had apparently made them outcastes made the Diaspora all the more determined to protect the symbols that they saw to be the definition of their identity.

Bibliography:

Bates, Crispin, Community, Empire and Migration: South Asians in Diaspora. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.

Govindasamy, Deva Kumari., Social change and the caste system: intergenerational attitude towards caste practices of the Brahmin community of Singapore. Singapore: University of Singapore, 1975.

Gupta, Giri Raj (ed), Religion in Modern India. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976.

Kalaivani Kanagasundram, the Indian Diaspora in Singapore : the politics of sameness and difference. Academic exercise-Dept. of Geography, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, 2003.

Mani, A, The changing caste-structure amongst the Singapore Indians. Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.) - Dept. of Sociology, University of Singapore, 1978.

Parameswaran, Ashvin, Who is a Brahmin in Singapore. Academic exercise - Faculty of Media, Society, and Culture, Curtin University of Technology, Perth.
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Rayaparol, Aparna, “'Can You Talk Indian?' Shifting Notions of Community and Identity in the Indian Diaspora” in Jodhka, Surinder S (ed.), Community and identities : contemporary discourses on culture and politics in India. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications, 2001.

Robb, David, “Brahmins from Abroad: English Expatriates and Spiritual Consciousness in Modern America” in Meckier, Jerome (ed.), Critical essays on Aldous Huxley. New York: G.K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall International, c1996.

Sandhu K.S. & Mani A. (eds), Indian communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: ISEAS and Times Academic Press, 1993.

Sharma, Rekha, Annamalai E (eds), Indian Diaspora: in search of identity. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 2003.

Sinha, Vineeta, Hinduism in Singapore: a sociological and ethnographic perspective. Thesis (M. Soc. Sci.)--Dept. of Sociology, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, 1988.

Walker, Anthony R (ed.), New place, old ways: essays on Indian society and culture in modern Singapore. Delhi: Hindustan Pub. Corp., 1994.

in the papers!

2006-06-18T13:43:00.000+08:00

“The pursuit of human rights in foreign policy and the pursuit of commercial interests are inherently contradictory." Do you agree?”

2006-06-13T17:22:00.000+08:00

"The pursuit of human rights in foreign policy and the pursuit of commercial interests are inherently contradictory." Do you agree?”

Introduction:

The aim of this essay is to disprove the hypothesis in the question. I do not agree with the statement, and believe that the pursuit of commercial interests and the pursuit of human rights are far from contradictory and are in fact complementary. However, I do admit that in the context of world politics and international relations today, the manner in which human rights is being pursued, has resulted in it being contradictory to the pursuit of commercial interests. This essay aims to show the futility of keeping the two as contradictory and instead extols the virtues of trade as a means of furthering human rights pursuits and simultaneously furthering the states’ commercial interests.

Human Rights:

“Your right to swing your arm ends where the other person’s nose begins ”. This is a rather simple manner in which to describe our rights and their limitations. It is also often said, “one person’s right is another person’s duty ”. Bearing these in mind, for purposes of this essay, we define human rights as entitlements that we have by virtue of being human – against the state; and these rights are meant to “make life fulfilling… and are essential for keeping us alive” . In layman’s terms, these ‘human rights’ are certain claims that all human beings are entitled to, which cannot be taken away from us and are in fact something that the individual can stand up to the state for; if not awarded them.

There are many nations which do not practice human rights as set out in the International Bill of Human Rights; some examples would include Nazi Germany, Saddam’s Iraq, current day North Korea, Africa and arguably, even the United States .

One of the most common ways for other countries to urge these ‘rouge’ countries to toe human rights law is to impose economic sanctions on them, essentially restricting trade and withdrawing aid. However this results in economic losses for both nations and may in fact end up worsening the human rights situation in the sanctioned nation. Blocking free trade hurts consumers and the most economically vulnerable citizens and does little to improve general humanitarian conditions . Simple examples to prove this would be the current sanctions imposed by the European Union upon Nepal. In order to restrict the atrocities committed by the Nepali police upon protestors, the European Union has imposed sanctions upon the sale of arms to Nepal. However King Gyanendra of Nepal has showed no inclination to treat the protestors in a manner other than the one he has been using so far .

Another prime example of the failure of economic sanctions to further human rights can be seen in the case of Iraq. The United Nations imposed sanctions upon Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and imposed a “blanket ban on all imports and exports except for "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs. ” This severe sanction resulted in little more than the severe malnutrition in Iraq and great suffering among the people of the nation. This example just goes to show that imposing sanctions is usually a futile exercise and does little to stop human rights violations, instead worsening the situation for innocent citizens, already under a rule that does not respect human rights.

Trade furthering human rights:

China is a case in point of how trade can further human rights development. This goes to prove the thesis of this essay that the pursuit of human rights and the pursuit of commercial interests are not contradictory.

China has enjoyed Most Favoured Nation status with the United States, as have most other nations, even nations facing US sanctions at the same time. The US however, regularly threatens to withdraw this status. MFN is merely a misnomer for normal trade relations. MFN over the years can be one reason for increased economic growth in China. “Economic reforms in China have transformed daily life for hundreds of millions of people who now enjoy greater opportunity, freedom of movement, material abundance, and access to western ideas. ” Imposing trade sanctions upon China will do little to improve the human rights situation in China and as the failed embargo against Cuba went to prove, it will serve to only isolate the victims and under privileged which strengthening their persecutors by giving them another weapon to damn the West and its ideals. As Pope John Paul II said in relation to imposing economic sanctions, “It is always imperative to foresee the humanitarian consequences of sanctions, without failing to respect the just proportion that such measures should have in relation to the very evil which they are meant to remedy ”.
American – Chinese trade has ensured that American consumers have ready and affordable access to items, which it does not have a comparative advantage in producing itself. This allows America to focus on producing those items, which it is comparatively better at, such as financial services, computers and peripherals, vehicles, furniture and building supplies, to name some. These items are then available for export to China and supply Chinese people with items they would not have such easy access to otherwise .

Imposing trade sanctions on any one country serves to push up the prices of the goods that that country exports; thus punishing the sanctioning country as well as the sanctioned country. Further, article 25 of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights states that every human “has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social service”. By imposing sanctions on China, the United States would be violating both China’s and its own rights to free trade. Sanctions on China will drive up the price of nearly all goods required to maintain an adequate standard of living for Americans, cosmetics, shoes, toys and clothes, all are made in China, and increasing the cost of living for Americans is not a desirable consequence, especially if it has no impact on improving the human rights situation anyway.

In the words of Lee Teng Hui, “vigorous economic development leads to independent thinking. People hope to be able to fully satisfy their free will and see their rights fully protected. And then demand ensues for political reform… The model of our quiet revolution will eventually take hold of the Chinese mainland ”. In the manner of Taiwan, continued free trade and exchange of ideas with China will most probably result in an increasingly well-to-do society who will then demand their rights, as the Taiwanese did. As markets spread, people acquire greater wealth and thus have a much stronger interest in then participating in the political process of their nation in order to protect their property. As Michael Novak writes, “the capitalist preference for law and due process leads naturally enough to the… basic institutions of democracy: the rule of law, limited government, separated powers, and the protection of the rights of individuals and minorities ”. Maintaining free trade will put pressure on governments and policy makers to protect private property rights and to pursuer prudent monetary, fiscal and regulatory policies to avoid massive capital outflows. “Global market competition helps good government crowd out bad government ”.

Stop Aid, Not Trade:

The Norwegian foreign policy can be summarized in the phrase “stop aid, not trade”. By first admitting that economic sanctions are little more than a blunt instrument in combating human rights violations. In their first four years in office, we have seen the Bush regime imposing 68 sanctions on various countries, most non-western. Human rights and commercial interests have become contradictory as both countries only stand to suffer from these sanctions; which just goes to prove that the sanctions and human rights are contradictory and it is in fact commercial interests and human rights of a state that go hand in hand. The Norwegian ministry of foreign affairs espouses to its citizens who conduct business in countries where human rights are not given the same respect as they are in Norway to demonstrate social responsibility by setting an example to the people of the nation .

Norway tries to continue trade as far as possible and in extreme cases, the most it does is to limit the amount of aid that it offers the nation, rather than stopping aid or trade altogether. It tries to ‘identify the most crucial challenges… and also to propose measures, tools and mechanisms ” to improve “awareness of and respect for human rights within the context of economic involvement abroad ”.

The Norwegian policy seems to be the most effective of the lot, the simplest way of gauging this would be the general perspective globally of Norway being seen as a fair and just nation. Stopping or limiting aid rather than curtailing trade serves to continue to exchange of ideas which trade brings with it; as well as sending a message to the concerned authorities on how seriously it takes the flouting of human rights norms.
Conclusion:

In the words of no less than Adam Smith himself, the development of trade and commercial activities in Europe “gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals ”. On a more contemporary note, Harvard Economist Robert Barro’s study on free society finds that “improvements in the standard of living… substantially raise the probability that political institutions will become more democratic over time ”. He concludes his study with the assertion that “if economic freedom can be established in a poor country, then growth would be encouraged, and the country would tend eventually to become more democratic on its own ”.

With the example of failed sanctions from a number of countries, we have seen the futility of imposing sanctions on any nation in order to influence it to improve its human rights situation. The pursuit of human rights in foreign policy ought to follow the ‘stop aid, not trade’ method instead of penalizing their own citizens by imposing sanctions. By pursuing this policy, the pursuit of commercial interests and human rights will not be at all contradictory and instead be inherently complementary, and much more efficient than the method of imposing sanctions.

Of course, this is not to say that sanctions are never justified. If to say, the US were to stop the sale of arms to a nation with which it was at war, this would be seen as justified, for to continue that would be suicidal. Another example would be if the goods concerned were being made with slave labour or prison labour, or even child labour, in this case, to limit the trade of such goods (like child-made Pakistani carpets), would be justified as the bulk of the money does not go to the carpet-making children anyway. However, even in these cases, there ought not be a blanket ban on trade with the country but instead a restriction on only certain goods.

No country has the right to interfere with free trade for the purposes of promoting its style of governance or because of what it sees as a human rights violation. The freedom to trade is an individual’s right, not a right derived from any government. Human rights violations should indeed be condemned, vehemently at that; but it does not warrant imposing greater suffering upon innocent civilians by imposing sanctions on them. In the words of American President Bush’s predecessor, Ronald Reagan, “the freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations ”.

Bibliography:

Barro, R.J. Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society. Cambridge: Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1996

Dorn, James A “Trade and Human Rights: The Case of China”, The CATO Journal, Vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 1996).

Duffy, Cristina Suarez and Harrold, Michael. FreedomWorks Issue Analysis 33A - Don't Break the China: “Why Continued MFN Status Helps Americans and Chinese”. June 13, 1997.
http://www.freedomworks.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=140 (Accessed on 01/10/05)

English and Stapleton, The Human Rights Handbook, Chapter 1 “What are human rights”, 1997

International Nepal Solidarity Network, “The case for sanctions and extension of restrictive measures: ACHR”. 5/10/05.
http://insn.org/?p=2014 (accessed on 29/10/05)

Journalists for human rights http://www.jhr.ca/countryprofiles.html (Accessed on 10/10/05). ©Copyrights 2002-2003 JHR Journalists for Human Rights JDH Journalistes pour les Droits Humains

Novak, Michael “Introduction”, in Messick, R. E. World Survery of Economic Freedom, 1995-1996. New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers, for Freedom House.

Reagan, Ronald “Remarks at a White House Meeting With Business and Trade Leaders”, September 23, 1985.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/92385a.htm (Accessed on 01/10/05)

Sirico, Robert - Trade Policy briefing paper no. 2“Free trade and human rights : the moral case for engagement”, 17/7/05. Paper based on remarks delivered at CATO Institute Policy Forum, 27/5/1998

Smith, Adam The Wealth of Nations, Edited by Edwin Cannan. New York: The Modern Library (Random House). ([1997] 1937)

Utenriksdepartementet: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Commercial Aspects of Human Rights Endeavours”
http://odin.dep.no/ud/english/doc/handbooks/032111-120003/hov003-bu.html (Accessed on 01/10/05)

Going beyond “Chick Lit”.

2006-06-13T17:20:00.000+08:00

Title: Going beyond “Chick Lit”
A study of women being women’s worst oppressors in a South Asian context, through the juxtaposition of fictional and non-fictional literary works.
Sections:
1. Introduction
2. Education
3. Working Prospects
4. Marriage
5. Conclusion

Introduction:

‘Chick Lit.’ has become a very popular genre of modern literature; and this is apparent throughout the world as more women are becoming educated and willing to spend money on these ‘frivolous’ books.

“What makes these books popular? A more realistic portrayal of the present day working women - the frustrations and insecurities that are very much a part of the independent lives they are leading. But it is all done in good humour without a hint of pathos.” (Deccan Herald, Sunday, April 25, 2004)

In a South Asian context, this is also apparent. Often in these books, we see an increasing amount of text dedicated to female oppression. While this is a good thing in that it allows a larger mass of people to know what is happening in this region, the case often is one of exaggeration and misinterpretation.

Women are always the ‘victims’ in the situations, often being physically and verbally abused. However, these women are not willing to drag themselves out of their ‘situations’. While they are discontent, they are content to remain so and go so far as to impose the same strictures they grew up with, on the next generation of females. Thus, more and more of these female writers, often having grown up outside of South Asia, are trying to analyse the oppression faced by the foremothers. In this process, a clear strain of oppression has come through, it seems that women are women’s worse oppressors in a South Asian context.

This essay aims to explore the theme of ‘women being women’s oppressors’ in modern South Asian literary works. It chooses to conduct this exploration through a study of some fictional works because fiction, in this case at least, seems to personify reality, and very importantly, it also spreads a message to the masses, in and out of South Asia. These fictional works will be juxtaposed with non-fictional works to gauge their relevance to society and prove the depth of their ‘reality’. Familial relations, such as those between mother and daughter, sisters, mother-in-law and daughter-in law will be examined as well as those outside the family, such as doctor-patient relations or teacher-student relations as well as those between female friends.

These fictional works will be compared to autobiographies of certain women in similar environments as the protagonists in the works of fiction are. This will allow a benchmark to be set for the forms of oppression that will be uncovered. This comparison will also allow the reader to judge the extent to which fiction relates the truth of the matter; this especially being the case in post-feminist literature, otherwise known as ‘chick-lit’ (Deccan Herald, Sunday, April 25, 2004)

In conjunction with the above theme, the efforts of men (fathers, brothers, husbands, family doctors, teachers, etc), to lift the women of their familial and social circles out of the quagmire they often choose to fall into due to a greater sense of comfort of the known, even if it is oppression, will be examined.

Education, household work and chores, commercial work and marriage will all be examined, as these are the main ‘worries’ of the modern South Asian woman. These women often want to ‘modernise’ themselves and improve themselves in terms of education and work experience, early and arranged marriage being a trade off. However, as seen in these books, fiction and non-fiction, the females often pressure them into sticking to ‘the norm’ whereas their male family members and friends often urge them to improve themselves.

This essay chooses to move away from the ‘norm’ of women seen as being oppressed by the other gender and chooses to study this theme through a juxtaposition of non-fiction in the form of autobiographies and fiction in the genre of ‘chick lit.’

Education:

Taslima Nasrin in her autobiography, ‘My Girlhood’, repeatedly depicts how her father insists upon her being sent to the best schools and her mother’s vehement objections. It is her mother who would rather she attend religious classes than go to a secular school, rather she be properly covered in a Burkha than wear dresses. Nasrin’s mother goes so far as to bring her daughter home from boarding school under the guise of a death in the family. It is her father who repeatedly forces her to attend school and pay attention to her lessons so as to make something of herself. This is radically different from the ‘norm’ that springs to mind when we think of women and education in India. A similar situation is seen in Nalinaksha Bhattacharya’s novel “Hem and football”. While Hem wants to continue with school and her hobbies, her mother insists that she leave all this and get married at the tender age of 14. In Uma Vasudev’s ‘Shreya of Sonagrah’, we see Father, Husband and Father-in-law, encouraging the protagonist in the novel, Shreya, to continue her education, but she refuses on the account that married life is not about continuing education. Before marriage, her excuse was that her role in life was to get married. We do not see any empathetic disputes between her and her mother on this issue. The mother seems quite content, if not proud, of her daughter’s views on Indian womanhood.

As such, it is apparent, that the male figures in the lives of these protagonists, in both fiction and non-fiction works of literature, would like ‘their women’ to improve themselves; it is the women who are content with their lot as it seems too ‘difficult’ (Nasrin, 2001).

The only difference is seen in times of conflict and strife, as during the period of the Indian freedom struggle. During this period, the seemingly ‘normal’ societal rules were relaxed and the first woman to attain a Masters’ degree did so during this time. Her relation to the “Father of Modern India” – Jawaharlal Nehru, meant that the rules were relaxed in terms of university entry to men’s’ colleges and courses (Sahgal, 1994). During the period of India’s freedom struggle and soon after the Partition of India, feminism in India reached its peak, as many women were part of the independence movement. Numerous women created ‘firsts’ by joining strikes and rioting, as well as being jailed. The fact that the police force treated men and women with equal brutality, gave the women a new respect in the eyes of the other sex. However, once South Asia settled down, the women were expected to cast away thoughts of equality and revert to customary social norms.

The question then would be, why is it women who impose these social norms on their progeny. Women are in a South Asian context the more ‘social’ of a traditional male-female couple, and as such, feel that they have something to ‘live up to’ in society’s views. To avoid gossip and awkward questions from members of their community as well as to maintain their standing in the community, they have to get their daughters married early and to reputable families, with no mention of falling in love or further education (Mazumdar, 1989).

Women have always been seen as the honour of their family (Adnan, 2005). As such, they feel it their duty to cast aside modern beliefs and live their lives, as well as dictate those of their daughters and nieces, in a way whereby society will be satisfied with them and there will not be any inflammatory gossip. Much the same rules apply for working prospects of these women,

Working prospects:

Without education it is near impossible to find any form of work anywhere in the world. However, in South Asia, gender discrimination in the work place aside, there is prevalent gender discrimination in the home with relation to work and being out of the house in general.

In “Hem and Football”, we see the protagonist’s mother not only trying to prevent Hem from playing football altogether but even when she does allow Hem to do so, imposes ridiculous restrictions upon her, which include lengthening the length of her shorts, even if they then get in the way of her playing, making sure she gets no bruises that may ruin her ‘marriage ability’, and imposes a number more restrictions along those lines. It seems to the casual reader here that the mother, another woman, instead of easing the stigma of being a woman in a patriarchal society is instead reinforcing it in her daughter. From the western-educated perspective of the casual reader, it seems preposterous for a mother to want to marry off her daughter at any cost to avoid her enjoying her life and playing football, as in Bhattacharya’s book.

A similar scene is available in Nasrin’s autobiography whereby we see that the only women who have jobs, in the village where Nasrin grew up, are either outcast women or mere servant-class women. No respectable woman has any form of income. When Nasrin’s father tries to encourage her to study hard in order to succeed him as a doctor, the mother demands of her husband whether he intends to make his own daughter a loose woman! Her ambitions for her daughter extend toward an early marriage for her, numerous children, preferably sons, and end there.

Nasrin’s experiences match that of the protagonist in Bhattacharya’s novel; thus again reinforcing the thesis of this essay, that at least in the context of South Asian ‘chick-lit”, reality does indeed mirror fiction. Mindsets towards an independent life and education are similar in both reality as seen in autobiographies and in fictional accounts.

Again, the exceptions come in during times of crisis. From Vasudev’s depiction of Shreya in her novel, we can see that upon the death of the protagonist’s mother in law, she was called upon to fill her shoes as a post-partition politician, and was thus thrown into politics with the same staff her mother in law had, with no thought for her personal comfort with these staff members. To protect the honour of the family, Shreya has to forgo her personal choices and preferences. We see in the novel, as in all the others, that female characters are not only restricted from making choices by other older female characters, but they are also called upon to replace these characters in times of death and loss, thus forcing them to fit themselves into the mould of these other women. This is one of the main reasons for women becoming women’s worst oppressors. In order to maintain the honour of the family name and to maintain discipline as it has been maintained for generations past, this ‘oppression’ in necessary. In fact, it is seen as oppression only in westernised viewpoints, in South Asia, this ‘oppression’ is merely a part of everyday existence.

As leading authors on human rights are finally beginning to realise, cultures differ from region to region; Asia has its own beliefs, many of which centre around the concept of “family before self”. Thus to many women in South Asia, if oppression of future generations means protecting family honour, then oppression is not a bad thing. This could also be why the male members of the family are sometimes more liberal. Usually being the breadwinners of the family, they are exposed to the outside world and its strictures; thus they see things in a different way. To these generally educated men, independence is essential for both sexes in this highly unstable world. While mothers would see love as being able to find the best man to take care of their daughter, love for a father in the modern South Asian world would be making sure his daughter can support herself, if the need arises; as we can see in Nasrin’s autobiography as well as Vasudev’s Shreya and even in “Daughters of the House” by Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen, where we see the uncle trying to convince his orphan niece to put her education to some use by working and getting a taste of the real world outside her sheltered existence. To these educated men, there is more to a woman’s life than mere marriage and child rearing.

Marriage:

In all the books examined, one common thread runs through them, and this is in relation to marriage. All women in books concerned seem to want their wards and younger women of their acquaintance to get married early. There are myriad reasons for this; including the same concept of honour mentioned above, if one were to delay marriage, it is entirely possible that the girl in question may have a romantic dalliance and ruin her own chances of making a good match. The concept of love before marriage does not feature in these novels, and love after marriage is merely a bonus, not something to be expected.

In Nasrin’s autobiography we expect her mother to pressure her into getting married, given the mother’s very conservative nature. However, even in Nehru’s family we see that the girls who were the first in India to achieve Masters’ degrees also have to settle down and succumb to arranged marriages at the insistence of their mothers. In Mazumdar’s memoirs, we have the most blatant example whereby the extended family and friends all began gossiping when Mazumdar is not yet married at age 10.

Once again mirroring reality, we see Hem’s mother pressuring her to get married and going so far as to marry her off to a mad boy simply because there was no one else around and it was imperative to marry Hem off to avoid gossip. Arranged marriages are often set up with no need for any form of consent from either side, especially the girl. In Vasudev’s Shreya, we again see how her father agreed to her marriage to his best-friend’s son and when he cursorily asked her if she agreed, she was not given the chance to answer before the two men had already started planning the wedding. This is a clear indication of the extent of men wanting to limit female oppression in South Asia, although they are willing to allow education and even some exposure to work and the outside world, marriage seems to be something where the girl has no say at all.

When this marriage does not work out, it is the fault of the woman, obviously. In “Shreya of Sonagarh”, when Shreya ultimately mentions to her mother the problems she is having in her marriage, her mother advises her to just bear with things, violence included. Similarly, when Hem leaves her mentally challenged husband and returns home, she is ostracized, mostly by her own mother. These women are seen to be unlucky as they have failed to maintain their marriage and society has no place for them, being neither single nor respectable widows.

In a South Asian context, it is the job of a mother to get her daughter married and the duty of close relatives and friends to not only help in looking for a groom but also to ensure that if the mother falters in her role, they are there to ensure the marriage goes through. This also applies in all other areas of upbringing. It is precisely to maintain the status quo of society that women end up oppressing other women.

Conclusion:

If the status quo was relaxed and women were allowed free reign to education and work, it would make the women who did not have these opportunities much more limited, in relation; their power would then be limited. Unlike the world of men, where each proves his worth economically, women have traditionally proved their worth through their family honour, and to change this, a change of mindset is required, for all of society.

However, as the thesis of this essay goes, women are women’s worst oppressors in a South Asian context; it is indeed clear from the examination of a number of literary works, that this thesis is indeed true. It is also clear that in the case of South Asian chick lit, reality does indeed play a very significant role in this genre of literature. Be it in terms of education, work or marriage, male and female roles are very similar across fiction and non-fiction.

As Jean de La Bruyère said in 1668, “It is because of men that women dislike one another”. It is precisely for this reason that women gossip and play a perpetual game of one-upmanship with other women. In order to prove themselves to be the spitting image of Sita , they undermine women around them and try to prove their worth in that manner. Women try to mould themselves and their daughters to be like Sita, all the while condemning the other women of their acquaintance. The tool of gossip is very powerful in a woman’s domain as once again it is linked to not only her honour but that of both her natal and marital families.

Evelyn Cunnigham once mentioned that “women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors”. This is indeed true. Whether or not one sees women to be the worst oppressors of other women, it must nonetheless be admitted that they do play the most important part in the mindsets that other women form. Teachers, mothers, sisters and doctors, as well as women of the marital family are the most important people in a woman’s life and it is these people, these women, who cause her to think and act as she does, to avoid dishonouring her family.

Thus, the thesis of this essay still stands as, ‘women are women’s worst oppressors’ in a South Asian context as seen through the examination of literary sources, the only possible exception being in time of crisis.

Bibliography:

Adnan, Shapan. Lectures delivered for SN 2234 – Gender and Society in South Asia, LT 12, National University of Singapore; Semester I, AY 2005/6.

Aikath-Gyaltsen, Indrani, 1993. Daughters of the House. New York: Ballantine Books.

Ali, Monica, 2004. Brick Lane: a novel. New York: Scribner, 2004

Bhattacharya, Nalinaksha, 1995. Hem and Maxine. London: Jonathan Cape.

Bhattacharya, Nalinaksha, 1992. Hem and Football. London: Secker & Warburg.

Jean de La Bruyère, 1668. Caractères. Publisher not available. Published in France.

Mazumdar, Shudha, 1989. Memoirs of an Indian Woman. Edited with an introduction by Geraldine Forbes. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe

Nasrin, Taslima, 2001. My Girlhood. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Sahgal, Manmohini Zutshi, 1994. An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life. Edited by Geraldine Forbes; with a foreword by B.K. Nehru. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

Vani, Mahesh, 2004. “Post-feminist, or more fondly, Chick-lit!” Bangalore: Deccan Herald (Sunday Herald). April 25, 2004: Articulations, Book Day Special.
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr252004/artic2.asp
(Accessed 6th October, 2005)

Vasudev, Uma, 1993. Shreya of Sonagarh. New Delhi: UBS Publishers' Distributors.

“Ma’am, Are You A Virgin”?

2006-06-07T12:56:00.000+08:00

I’m an idealist; I want to be a teacher. That too, for little children, so that I can make a difference to as yet “uncorrupted” minds. Imagine my horror then at hearing an old friend (now a teacher) telling me that one little boy in her class raised his hand and asked her; “Ma’am, are you a virgin”.

This question has a hundred throwbacks, ranging from the importance of virginity in our society today to what our children are thinking about today! My baby brother (barely a teenager), watches Desperate Housewives with the air of one who has ‘been there and seen that’. In an innocent conversation during on e of the ads (I’m a Desperate Housewives Virgin), we began talking about the few minutes I had caught, where the son sued the mother for slapping him. My brother said that he and his compatriots agreed that it was too ‘liberal’ but Singapore should change; after all, the mother was sleeping around!

Where did this ‘blame generation’ spring from? Where did this generation of children get these thoughts from? I’m not all that old, still in the same generation really! After all this time and money spent on top schools, expensive vacations, computers, games, mobile phones and clothes, is it time to weigh the benefits that we are really getting?

While children are thinking out of the box, are they losing the essence of being ‘children’? Play grounds and bicycles have surrendered to Gameboys and Playstations. As mentioned above, Desperate Housewives has replaced Captain Planet and the Mickey Mouse Show is history.

From an idealist, I am becoming a questioner; I want to know if the benefits of these ‘newfangled’ pastimes are truly beneficial. I am 22 and have begun to realize that I will probably have children in the next 5 years and am thinking about what I want them to be like. The one thing flashing in my head is that I certainly don’t want my son’s teacher to be subjected to the question my friend was. I cannot ban him from the internet or articles which talk about sex; but I can pray that he’ll come to me with his questions and I want to make myself available for that.

Is that what kids today are missing - The chance to clear things with their parents? My friend later told me that another boy had later asked her what virgin meant, he had not known, but had participated in the laughter just the same. While the caretakers parents provide for their children are often the best they can get, there seems to be a lack somewhere. These (often) foreign domestics are not on the same level as parents and being young, are more interested in chatting about fashion and friends than teaching values and explaining things. Perhaps children are unwittingly picking up these topics of conversation and certain ‘interesting’ words and phrases and subjecting their teachers to them!

There could be a hundred more explanations but this is a likely one; especially as the boy involved was brought up by a domestic worker because his parents were away. He spent his time on the computer and television, had a girlfriend (even I feel left out, single at 22), and was living the life of a 22 year old before turning into a teenager even!
Is this what money has brought us- Children old before their time?

It should be rape-even if he's your husband

2006-06-07T09:57:00.000+08:00

The Electric New Paper :

It should be rape-even if he's your husband

IN no way does marriage give one individual the right to control or force your spouse into doing something against his or her will.
By Ratna Tiwary

28 May 2006

IN no way does marriage give one individual the right to control or force your spouse into doing something against his or her will.

I think most of us will agree on this.

What I don't understand is why the law in civilised Singapore protects men who force their wives into sexual intercourse?

Yes, there's no such thing as raping your own wife here.

The White Ribbon Campaign is an annual international drive organised by men to stop violence against women. It is marked on 25 Nov, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

In 2004, the campaign, run by the Association of Women for Action and Research, focused on sexual violence in the home. The following year, men took over the reins, and they undertook a personal pledge: 'Never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women.'

While their work is more than admirable (and their advertisements and free postcards did depict very soul-stirring graphics), more needs to be done by the Government about laws (or the lack of) against marital rape.

A man who kills his wife is charged with murder. A man who steals from his wife is charged with theft. But a man who forces his wife to have sex with him or rapes her goes unpunished.

It questions what the priorities of our society are. Apparently money matters more than dignity and modesty because money is protected by the law.

Do concepts of modesty and consent no longer matter once the wedding ring is slipped on the finger? It reminds one of an old joke where marriage is said to require three rings: Engagement ring, wedding ring and suffeRING.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't seem to remember the Justices of the Peace mentioning in the marriage vows that sex is a given whenever the husband wants it.

In a well-developed, almost first-world nation, marital rape ought to be illegal.

Basic human rights including modesty and freedom of choice (on whether and when to have sex) do not get eliminated upon marriage.

Section 375 of the Penal Code states that 'sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 13 years of age, is not rape'.

The laws of many other countries such as India and Malaysia, have explicit exemptions for marital rape. Perhaps it's time we follow.

In her research, Dr Diana Russell, an activist against violence against women reported that 8 per cent of 900 randomly selected women in the US said they had been raped by their husbands.

A survey by the National Victim Center in the state of Virginia states that 10 per cent of all sexual assault cases reported by women involved either a husband or an ex-husband.

We hardly hear of cases of marital rape in Singapore. But that's not to say there are no victims. And what good will it do them to go running to the police when it's not a crime for a man to rape his wife?

At best, it can be construed as family violence if the wife was beaten during the forced sexual intercourse.

Granted, sexual abuse in marriages is a grey issue. For one, it's hard to prove a husband raped his wife. So enforcing any law on marital rape may have to be on a case-by-case basis.

But that doesn't mean sexual abuse in a marriage is acceptable.

So before the debate over oral sex and homosexuality can continue, perhaps our society should look at this pertinent issue before too many women continue to suffer in silence. Sex, whenever he wants it, is not a prerogative of marriage.

Men need to know this, as do women.

The writer is a third-year political science and South Asian Studies undergraduate at NUS

Copyright © 2005 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co. Regn. No. 198402868E. All rights reserved.
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Liberation?

2006-06-07T09:56:00.000+08:00

No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman. ~Frank O'Connor

Men and women have been discussing liberation and feminist theories since time immemorial, the question I think we ought to ask after all this time is that, what has all this discussion done? Where has it bought the whole issue?

On the one hand, it is undeniable that women have come a long way from being clubbed on the head by a prospective suitor and being dragged by her hair into his cave, but on the other hand, what have we lost to gain this "liberation”? It is a pretty legit argument that has often been espoused, that women have lost that intrinsic "femininity" in their quest for this so-called liberation

In this quest for some version of equality between the sexes, we seem to have almost merged both sexes into one. Radical feminists used to be a minority, but now we hear their rallying cry too often for my comfort at least, “Women can do everything men can”. Well, maybe we can, but do we really want to? I’m very happy to sit in the toilet and take time off for kids; both of which men don’t usually do.

At the risk of sounding like a woman who is a male chauvinist, let me clarify. I feel that gender differences were created for a reason, some form of specialization of labour, the minute either sex crosses the boundaries the carefully crafted balance falls apart. The current situation brings to my mind the old adage, “give an inch and he’ll take a mile”. Women should have a say in politics and definitely I thank the early suffragists for fighting for my right to vote (although I still didn’t get to); but when in the sixties they burnt the bra, did they burn femininity along with it?

Now you ask what this femininity I’m going on about is. Simple really, I would define it to include a little HEART-work, a little bit more concern and gentleness. The feminists want to stone me now, I sound like I’m from the Stone Age anyway; but stop and think a minute. Women are biologically smaller, more apt to emotional blitzes and generally softer (emotionally and physically; not mentally). This would make women fantastic in many job roles but instead of injecting better working conditions or living conditions; women at the top often try to outdo the men they have replaced!

India came closest to losing democracy at the hands of a woman; Pakistani women did not benefit in any great way from a female head of state and most female CEOs work long hours and expect more from their staff; maid abusers are often women given a chance to lord over someone else! It seems that we have left dark oppression only to become more oppressive.

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.
~Joan Baez, "Sexism Seen but not Heard," Los Angeles Times, 1974

WHIP!!

2006-04-07T12:28:00.000+08:00

The entire concept of the whip being raised for some “opposition area” PAP members just sounds wrong, whither the double standards; is the desperation for a clean sweep at the polls so very strong? If a “potong pasir-ite” is to vote for PAP, I am sure it is because he wants PAP leadership in his area, not because he wants an MP who is going to go against PAP policies just because he can. The NCMP and NMP schemes have already given us ‘alternative’ voices in parliament but opposition constituencies still remain; a clear sign that the electorate wants ‘real’ and not simulated opposition; a view that political observer Seah Chiang Nee confers with.

We have enough trust in our leaders to know that they already asking relevant questions and will not vote for a policy that is radically “wrong” or one that they disapprove of. In 41 years of history, most policies have been apt and called for, those that were not, were soon amended.

The first such policy we learn about in Political Science Public Administration classes is the raising of taxi fares in the 1980s, a policy amended in merely 21 days due to the strong reaction of the taxi drivers. Despite being labelled ‘apathetic’ time and again, Singaporeans are sufficiently socially and politically conscious to realise that wrong policies ought to be changed and it is the role of the people to make their dissatisfaction heard. An opposition-type PAP member will make little difference to the larger scheme of things. One major effect it may have instead, would be to urge even more people to swing their crosses to the SPP or WP box in Potong Pasir and Hougand respectively since the SM himself is making opposiotion politicians ‘different’ from PAP ones in terms of the rights they are given to express the views of their constituents in parliament!

Mr Goh told an audience of about 500 at the Hougang Community Club: "If you vote for Eric Low, I can tell the Prime Minister to let him be the 'Opposition' in the Parliament. We can lift the Whip so that he can speak his mind. Then you can have the best of both worlds".

The very simple statement speaks volumes in terms of the “world” as it is now; where PAP ministers cannot “speak their mind”. The politics and logics of a party whip may not be immediately understandable to all and sundry, the SM’s statement serves to only create an image of PAP ministers as “yes-men”, undoing all the good that their education and excellent credentials do.

Threats that opposition wards will turn into ‘slums’ with no upgrading and such very radical promises with regards to party policies are creating a sense that the PAP is very desperate to win back opposition wards, an image that seem to portray them as almost ‘afraid’ of the opposition, not an image they would like to cultivate surely.

“From appreciation to a demand – The move from Streedhan to Dahej”

2006-04-06T12:07:00.000+08:00

Introduction:
Colonialism is such a phenomena that it often ends in the misuse of certain symbols. One example of this statement would be the use of dowry before, during and after the period of British colonialisation in India. The culture of dowry giving is spreading even to communities, which had no such tradition a generation or two ago. This despite the fact that in the last two decades the anti dowry laws have been made very stringent and draconian. Many interpret the failure of these laws to lessen dowry giving as a sign of their poor implementation. However, these laws have so many inherent flaws that their honest implementation is well nigh impossible. In fact, these laws have created more problems than they have solved. You cannot combat a 'crime' which is as ill defined as the anti dowry laws of India.
This essay aims to examine using dowry as a symbol, the way that the British colonial rulers in India changed the way that certain traditional Indian symbols were seen and used. Also this essay hopes to examine how the current post-colonial mindset has again given these symbols a new face; thus causing these symbols to evolve and re-evolve, creating a very ‘gendered’ history. This can be examined in the sense of the “white man” attempting to protect the “brown woman”, thus causing the “brown man” to grow more fixated with the symbols that the British were fighting against and emphasizing their importance even more.
As per the Dowry Prohibition Act (originally passed in 1961 and amended twice in the 1980s), dowry is defined as 'any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly by one party to a marriage to the other party to the marriage or by the parents of either party to a marriage or by any other person, to either party to the marriage or to any other person at or before [or any other time after the marriage] in connection with the marriage of the said parties' .
Madhu Kishwar commented most aptly that “It has become politically fashionable to attribute all forms of violence and discrimination against women, including female infanticide and female foeticide to the economic burden of dowry that a daughter is said to represent. ” Through such comments, we can see how many undesirable faces of history have become attributed to women. Instead, an examination of colonial policies that were implemented by the British in India would be able to provide a more comprehensive reason for the dowry system and its exorbitant growth.

Colonial rule and Dowry:
Dowry requirements are merely another excuse for considering daughters a burden. The anti-dowry movement, by constantly citing of 'dowry abolition' as the most effective method to attain women's empowerment and as the primary strategy for ending their oppression, has only helped give further legitimacy to the conventional belief that daughters are an economic liability.
There is little mention of exorbitant dowries causing the ruin of families in the literature of pre-British India. Ruin due to exorbitant dowry payments became a major theme in nineteenth century literature because this period witnessed an unprecedented erosion of women's economic importance and inheritance rights due to the manner in which the colonial rulers carried out land settlement operations in India. In conformity with Victorian norms that were the norm in England, land entitlements were given to the male heads of the family, bypassing Indian customary laws that allowed various categories of entitlements to women; including the concept of Stridhana, where the bride takes land and money with her, in her name, to her marital family. This “bride wealth” is then inherited in a matrilineal line. This concentrated property in the hands of men in an unprecedented way and paved the way for the eventual complete disinheritance of women. In addition, the enormous land revenue demands imposed by the British drained large amounts of the economic surplus from the rural economy. It made the peasants extremely cash poor. The destruction of traditional crafts pushed large sections of impoverished artisan groups to fall back on their small landholdings and the consequent increasing pressure on land made land ownership bestow special power and status; which naturally men exploited from each other whenever possible, especially through marital alliances.
To again quote Madhu Kishwar, “Thus, our modem inheritance laws have increasingly moved in favour of men and against the interests of women. All those communities that practiced matrilineal inheritance, such as the Nairs in Kerala, have also been forced through legislation to move towards patrilineal inheritance. Systems that provided reasonable or adequate protection of women's economic rights have been steamrollered out of existence. ”

How dowry engendered colonial society:
The colonial concern about rising dowry payments, infanticide linked to Hindu concerns about not being able to pay dowry, and the attempt to control marriage expenses to diminish the impoverishment attributed to dowry were all attempts that cast "Hindu culture" as the problem and justify colonial paternalist domination.
Even female infanticide can be linked back to colonial policies instead of being seen as a high-caste Hindu problem. The growing preference for sons had a far greater correlation with colonial land and revenue policies and suppression of modern industry than with any cultural male-preference. A very strong correlation can be seen with the colonial construction of males as property owners and the creation of lucrative wage jobs in the military. The simple fact the colonial rule completely sidelined Hindu women from the workforce served to reduce their importance and thus increased the perception that females were a burden. The colonial situation and even the present scenario in India bear little resemblance to pre-colonial traditions where men often worked alongside women in fields. So dowry by the 1850's went from being a way of showing the appreciation a family had for their daughter to becoming a demand. As the colonial economy was commoditized, women were as well, through the dowry demand. Systems of reciprocity, the fact that villages would come together to give a woman gifts, gave way to contractual systems leading to chronic indebtedness; and thus women were left without legal entitlements.
In opposition to the reigning mindset of the time that the private sphere was a realm of freedom and traditional practices, the British administration in India saw the private sphere in the colony instead as a space of "barbarism" that required change and ‘civilizing’. This produced the structure of the "scandal" as the mode through which the private sphere was made available to public scrutiny. Through law, patriarchy was imposed upon the private sphere. So criminalizing cultural or traditional practices was the way the colonial state was able to get out of its own proclaimed stance of non-interference.
The banning of dowry, child-marriages and sati however, served to do little else than intensify these practices as they came to be seen as ‘rebellion’ against the colonial powers. Dowry gradually became more and more exorbitant and in a vicious cycle, the more the grew, the more the colonial rulers and missionaries tried to stamp it out, serving only to again intensify it. In this war of culture and civilizations, women were increasingly disenfranchised and discriminated against; becoming mere chattels.
Dowry became such an issue at the time that even non-Hindus, for whom dowry was not part of tradition, came to take it as part of their belief system. It can be explained in terms of "hypergamy" where families seek to marry daughters to families of higher status and to the "sanskritisation" of India where communities try to improve their caste status by adopting dowry practices. The latter is clearly apparent in the adoption of the dowry system by Indian Christians and Muslims. For the Muslims, the concept of dowry was nonexistent, the groom instead paying the bride’s family a “bride price”. The adoption of a “Hindu” dowry culture has helped the other religious groups stand on a common ground with the Hindus and perhaps try to create a common “Indian” culture. The British also often favoured the Hindus in India, perhaps contributing to the ‘sanskritisation’ of India.

Conclusion:
Putting landed property exclusively in male hands, and holding the latter responsible for the payment of revenue had the effect of making the Indian male the dominant legal subject. The British further made the peasants pay revenue twice a year on a fixed date. Inability to pay would result in the land being auctioned off by the government. As a result, peasant were forced, during a bad year, to use their land as collateral to borrow from the moneylender, in order to pay taxes. The British resolve to rationalize and modernize the revenue was particularly hard on women. From being co-partners in pre-colonial landholding arrangement, they found themselves denied all access to economic resources, turning them into dependents. In the event they faced marital problems, they were left with no legal entitlements whatsoever.
The contemporary phenomenon of Indian dowry can be explained not in terms of scriptural and cultural concepts but more as a modern institution of showing off wealth connected to the colonial monetization of the economy and then again to postcolonial globalization. That the extreme devaluation of women reflected in contemporary practices such as dowry, female infanticide and female feticide may be traced back in India to colonial policies. This disenfranchisement makes women even more dependent on marriage as a route to economic security, and makes it likely that women will tolerate abuse within marriage. In fact in the current situation, as Madhu Kishwar studied, it may be that women themselves concur with dowry for their own marriages because they know they will receive little else from their parents .
Traditional forms of social life were changed due to modern conceptions of agency, consent, and individuality. Dowry, which was once a practice that enabled women, has now been transformed into one that oppresses them.

Bibliography:
Basu, Srimati. She Comes to Take Her Rights: Indian Women, Property and Propriety, 2001
http://www.boloji.com/wfs/wfs159.htm (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)

Caleekal, Anuppa. Dowry Death: Its gruesome reality and future interface in a digital cultural revolution. 1997
http://www.digitalism.org/ (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)

Kishwar, Madhu. Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Kishwar, Madhu Purnima. Destined to fail in Manushi, Issue 148
(published July 2005 in India Together)

Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Interview in Times of India, Mumbai as appeared on 31/1/03.
http://www.esamskriti.com/html/new_essay_page.asp?cat_name=why&cid=1030&sid=168 (Accessed 26th March, 2006)

Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime; Oxford University Press, 2003

THE DOWRY PROHIBITION ACT, 1961, (No. 28 of 1961)
http://socialwelfare.delhigovt.nic.in/dowryact.htm (Accessed on 28th March, 2006)

The Impact of the Mass Media on Indian Culture and forms of Communication

2006-03-29T14:19:00.000+08:00

Introduction:

The impact of mass media in India is very significant and this is clearly apparent through the rising number of advertisers who are capitalizing on these media channels to spread their messages. Rural or urban, regardless of caste and religious boundaries, Indians are glued to television and radio serials. The question this essay aims to examine is the intangible cost involved in this burgeoning mass media culture.
“Films are seen once or twice while ad films are seen over and over. Yet the advertising for many of these iconic brands doesn't seem to drive social change in behaviour and values as strongly as some of the heroes and heroines do through their portrayals in films and serials. ”
It is the people and their characters that the masses of India seem to identify with. With regards to their dressing and personifications of themselves, mass media has affected the lives of people in many ways. As village politician Chandraprakash Dwivedi said “Now village girls want to dress like Rani Mukherjee in Bunty aur Babli -- this within four weeks of the release of the film. ” Men want a hairstyle like “Radhe Bhayya ” in hit movie Tere Naam. Bindis, blouses, and bangles define the concept of beauty for girls in small towns - influenced by the looks of the saas-bahus in the umpteen TV serials beaming into their drawing rooms on various satellite channels.
In Kirk Johnson’s study of a small town two hours away from Mumbai city where television had just reached, he noted how television upset existing social structures and created new ones. This essay aims to answer the question it has put forth above through the examination of the differences in social structures in India from the past to the present; as well as the differences in forms of communication and entertainment.

Folk Music, television and cinema will be examined under the category of communication and entertainment. Communication in India often took on a musical tone, especially in the communication of religious works or literature. Poetry and religious texts were often sung. The advent of television however has made this rather obsolete. Similarly, village theatre and dance (nautanki) has been replaced by cinema and television serials.

Social structures in India have also changed with respect to the caste system as Johnson’s work shall demonstrate. Owning forms of media and communication (televisions) has becomes more a more important symbol of class than caste. Similarly; village story-telling and word-of-mouth has lost its following and has thus changed the social structure of things as well.

“Traditional forms of communication and entertainment”

The culture of India is one of the oldest cultures in the world and yet it is so diverse as to be impossible to pin down and define. The South, North, and Northeast have their own distinct cultures and almost every state has carved out its own cultural niche. In spite of the diversity, it's bound by a common thread as one civilization perhaps because of its shared history of colonialisation and the following struggle for independence from the British.
Culture and its preservation matters a great deal to Indians, at least in rhectoric. The Government of India has even formulated a “Cultural Policy” which lays out three major objectives as preserving the cultural heritage of India, inculcating Indian art consciousness amongst Indians and promoting high standards in creative and performing arts. Unfortunately, it seems the advent of mass media has made the cultural policy redundant as performing arts seem to have virtually disappeared for the masses of India.
In the past, Indian drama and theatre were a significant part of “Indian culture” and some of the oldest plays in the world originated from India. The tradition of folk theatre was also alive in nearly all the linguistic regions of the country. In addition, there is a rich tradition of puppet theatre in rural India. There were many theatre groups that used to travel from village to village putting up small skits and these served as entertainment and also as a means of communications between different villages as information travelled through word of mouth. These nautanki goups have since been replaced by Bollywood cinema and the tv-serial market.

Similarly, the earliest Indian literary traditions were first orally spread and only later transcribed. Most of these spring from Hindu tradition and are represented by sacred works like the Vedas, the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. These works were narrated with an accompanying discourse by learned speakers or visiting sanskrit scholars and Brahmins.

Finally, the music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, pop and classical music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religious inspiration, cultural expression and pure entertainment. India is made up of several dozen ethnic groups, speaking their own languages and dialects, as a result, folk music plays an essential role in uniting people of the same dialect group who may be far apart geographically. An example is the folk music of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Bhojpuri music. It serves as a means of communication as the lyrics of the songs often cover recent cultural changes and events; as well as religious content. Bhojpuri music is spread through visiting singers as well as everyday singing by laypeople. The songs are not static and their lyrics are often played around and substituted by the singers. This allows for communication between gepgraphically disparate groups. Later in this essay, the loss of such a means of communication will be examined with regard to the invention of casette tapes and television.

Changes in forms of Media and Communiation:
Music, drama and literature have all changed with time and are now digitally enahnced are available to a wider base of people. The television and print revolutions have granted access to these forms of media to the masses across india. Villages often have their own newspapers and access to television is readily available to the majority. Bollywood cinema is not restricted to the urban community and is in fact highly popular with the rural masses.
The ease of making casette tapes and now compact discs has allowed for a very widespread distribution of music; negating the need for traditional folk singers and concerts. Bhojpuri folk music is an example of a dying genre of music that is now regaining some following due to overseas diaspora groups desperate to maintain their links to their dialect. As Ajeet Praimsingh, leader of the bhojpuri singing group D’Bhuyaa Saaj said, “we don’t speak Bhojpuri any more, so all that we sing is by the ear. But we love this form of music and we perform quite often”.
In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium, the portable cassette player, caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption. Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism.

Television has had a more or less similar impact due to its widespread reach. It is nearly impossible to establish the precise number of people with access to a television set in “the poor world ”, as James Murdoch, chief executive of STAR TV Group told a cable conference in India; due to the fact that individual cable subscribers sometimes pass on the service illegally to an entire neighborhood. “Moreover, in parts of the developing world, large numbers of people often crowd into one house or cafe to watch television, a factor that is hard to quantify ”.
In the case of India, media empires have had to adjust their strategies to suit the Indian context. STAR TV realized that its mainly American oriented programming was only reaching a tiny, although wealthy, urban audience. It therefore started adding Hindi subtitles to Hollywood films broadcast on its 24-hour channel and dubbing popular U.S. soaps into Hindi. In October 1996, STAR Plus began telecasting programs in English and Hindi. In 1999, it claimed 19 million viewers in India.
Another example of this cultural hybridity is Zee TV, India’s first private Hindi-language satellite channel. Zee was launched in October 1992 and depended initially on recycled programming. It then broke television taboos by broadcasting programs about sex, relationships, and horoscopes. The channel thrives on a mixture of Hindi film, serials, musical countdowns, and quiz contests. Zee’s innovative programming includes news in “Hinglish.” Despite the influence of the English language in India, the biggest media growth is in regional languages. Even U.S. series like “Friends” (known as “Hello Friends” in India) have been hybridized, although the latter has not been as successful as expected—the lifestyle of the Hyderabadi versions of the New Yorker originals did not settle in the Indian imagination.
Such television shows are the prime example of how American culture has become more popular in India than Indian culture. Even Indian soap operas, set in traditional households often portray traditionally dressed women who behave and dress in a completely Western manner out of the house. Television serials, both Indian and western oriented ones have deemphasized traditional dress. As a Bengali fieldworker commented, in the cities it is difficult to tell men and women apart by their dress. Movies and television have created a new fashion that is being emulated all over the country, rural and urban.

Changes in Social Structure:

The people of India belong to thousands of castes and caste like groups--hierarchically ordered, named groups into which members are born. Caste members are expected to marry within the group and follow caste rules pertaining to diet, avoidance of ritual pollution, and many other aspects of life.

With the advent of mass media and channels of communication and information, the Brahmins who have traditionally been at the top of the caste system have been replaced by those with colour television sets in their homes reports Kirk Johnson in his study. The next level seems now to be those with access to colour TV, followed by black and white TV owners and then those with access to black and white TVs.

Caste lines have been blurred in the quest to gain access to information; which in itself is not a bad thing. Television watching, especially in the rural areas has become a communal event and it is not uncommon for TV owners to position their television sets such that they are facing the open door; allowing members of other caste groups to sit outside the home and enjoy the shows . Similarly, in villages where there is one common, government-provided television set, members of the village gather around to watch communally. This is especially the case for religious programs as well as those related to agriculture.

However, such interaction means that traditional social structures have been destroyed and more people are flocking to the cities that they see on television in the hopes of achieving the material goods that are telecast. This has resulted indirectly in an increasing number of unemployed in the cities as well as a growing number of slums, as these internal migrants are often lowly skilled and unable to find suitable jobs in the city.

Other than changing the social structure and norm, the media revolution has also contributed to the disintegration of so-called 'Indian norms'. Movies such as "Monsoon Wedding" are an ideal demonstration of the culture shock faced by many young Indians today. There is a chasm between traditional values of chastity and dressing conservatively and the TV values of stylish and often skimpy dressing and more liberal values, including dating before marriage and other 'western norms'.

Although information and communication links that television, cinema, radio and newspapers have brought about are immense; it is undeniable that they have had a very strong and not altogether beneficial impact upon the masses who watch them. Culture and social structures have suffered, as have traditional art forms and methods of communication.

Conclusion:

Other than dress; many other aspects of culture have been sacrificed in favour of western influences. Folk music and travelling singers have given way to cassettes and compact discs; nautanki shows have dissolved under the pressure and competition brought forth by television and cinema. The traditions of story telling has also taken a back seat due to casette playbacks of discourses and the ease with which printed material is cheaply available.

Just as traditions have gone ‘out of fashion’, it seems that many beliefs have done so as well. Television has reached a stage where even religious discourse is broadcast, negating the need for temple visits and religious-social gatherings. Infrastructure and the mass media influenences that it has brought with it have created a culture where person to person interaction has nearly stopped. Information is relayed to us through media channels, radio, television, books and newspapers.
It seems almost as if we have entered an era of ‘cognitive imperialism ’ where as Carolyn Martin famously commented, “Western civilization was the center of the stage play for which the rest of the world was an awestruck audience ." The interaction between the media and the people it impacts is ever changing and evolving; the Indian-themed but Hollywood made movie, “Monsoon Wedding,” demonstrates how globalization and the media reveal striking features in cultural contexts. Societies like India’s are being affected by globalization and the western influences that are a large part of it, but their interest also plays an active role in fostering it.

Bibliography:

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “Monsoon Wedding” Demonstrates Cultural Impact of Globalization on Many Levels, 27/02/2003.
http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?file=news1&id=44
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)

Chatterji, Shoma. Information as Empowerment in India Together, 24th March, 2006.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/mar/med-navodayam.htm
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)

Culture of India. Culture of India, Mumbai, 2004.
http://www.cultureofindia.net/
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)

Iyer, Venkatesh R. Culture Cops in India Together, July 2004
http://indiatogether.org/2004/jul/med-copmedia.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)

Hartmann, Paul. The mass media and village life : an Indian study. New Delhi ; Newbury Park : Sage Publications, 1989.

Johnson, Kirk. Television and social change in rural India. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2000.

Lahiri, Nisha Chutney makes the music, in The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) 25/2/05
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050225/asp/calcutta/story_4419987.asp (Accessed on 24/3/06)

Lal, Vinay, Associate Professor of History, UCLA. Culture, December 12, 2002.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/culture.html
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)

Manuel, Peter Lamarche. Cassette culture: popular music and technology in north India.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, 1988.

Neuman, Daniel M. The Life of Music in North India : The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. University Of Chicago Press; 1990.

Richards, Michael and French, David. From Global Development to Global Culture in Contemporary television: eastern perspectives. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications, 1996

Rao, Bhaskara N. Media needs a new outlook and approach. 7th October, 2005
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050710/edit.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)

Sabnavis, Madhukar, Can ads impact popular culture, July 1, 2005 on Rediff.com
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/jul/01guest2.htm
(Accessed 23rd March)

Thomas, Bella. What the World's Poor Watch on TV. From the March 2003 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 50, No. 3) http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/947.cfm#down (Accessed on 20th march 2006)

together... but with breathing space...

2006-03-18T12:26:00.000+08:00

This is just what i dream of...
~~~~

Let there be spaces in your togetherness
And let the winds of heaven dance between you.

Love one another,
but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

And stand together,
but yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shade.

-Kahlil Gibran

KA HO!?

2006-03-13T03:11:00.000+08:00

Culture is a shared entity as acknowledged by Conrad Phillip Kottak . Folk songs and folk traditions often make up a significant aspect of such ‘culture’ as shared by people both in and out of a nation. With reference to India and the Indian Diaspora, folk songs have played a huge role in uniting masses and providing disparate groups with a shared ‘culture’.

The Bhojpuri folksongs shared by the people of North India, mainly Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is one such example. It is a genre that has transcended the usual gender and caste boundaries to become a shared love of the people. Bhojpuri, a dialect of Hindi is spoken, with slight variations, over large parts of Northern India. Folk music plays a very important role in Northern India where it features in every ceremony from weddings to funerals, with different songs for each part of the ceremony, welcoming the groom, the arrival of the bride, the wedding itself and the bride’s bittersweet farewell, etc. There are also songs for each of the different seasons and times of harvest. Indian folk music is very diverse, reflecting the variety of cultures in the subcontinent. To take merely the political unit of Bihar state as an example, it encompasses the culturally distinct entities of the Bhojpuri dialect region, the Mithila dialect region as well as 29 tribal groups. Music styles are also differentiated by jati (caste), sex and context. Furthermore folkdance and drama must be considered in conjunction with vocal and instrumental music. Folksong, with or without instrumental support, and instrumental music are often partners of folkdance. Folk theatre (like ancient classical theatre) and most Indian films feature a tripartite integration of song, dance and drama, showing the everlasting influence of folk music even in today’s modernized movie songs. Themes have remained unchanged, focusing on weddings, farewells and the ever popular “male-female one-up man-ship”.

Folk music in India has even played the role of mediator among religions, which few other art forms or even people have been able to do. While the kirtan theoretically bypasses caste and class divisions, it and the bhajan, another type of devotional song, are clearly Hindu; their Muslim counterpart is qawwali. Other cultural groups such as the Bauls of Bengal disregard the boundaries of any religious system and their songs reflect this. Village songs have revealed a disregard for religious separatism. In a woman's song from Bhojpuri (Uttar Pradesh) Allah, the Muslim God is appealed to in a song for the Hindu smallpox goddess, Sitala. It has been noted that this song refers indirectly to the story of the marriage of Sitala with Allah which was apparently widespread before independence and partition movements developed, as was the participation of Hindu and Muslim communities in each other's religious festivals.

Long before Partition however, it was another act of the colonial rulers that created a wide Indian Diaspora and along with that, expanded the use f Bhojpuri and popularized its music. The continuous migration of landless labourers from Bihar and Eastern U P during the British raj to far-off places in the Mediterranean and the Pacific left a trail of pathos and sentimentalism for the mother country which resulted in the creation of new customs and an immensely rich literature that continues to be a living tradition in these areas, according to a study; however it also resulted in what some esteemed professors call the ‘fossilization of culture’. This is a phenomenon whereby immigrants leave the mother country with their cultures and traditions, and continue to preserve them long after the mother country has moved forward. An excellent example would be the main case study for this essay, the preservation of Bhojpuri music among the Indian Diaspora.
The folk songs, that depict the pathos of families whose loved ones had left them and never returned, as also the agonies of destitute peoples struggling for survival in an alien land, are being systematically compiled and documented jointly by a social science institute here and two other institutions, one of The Netherlands and Surinam, both countries home to a sizeable and now financially well-off Bhojpuri community.
"The Bidesia project which derives its name from the songs composed by legendary Bhojpuri poet Bhikari Thakur, tends to study the social and cultural changes that were caused by the migration from the Bhojpuri belt ," says Dr Badri Narain Tiwari of Gobind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute (GBPSSI). The project is being undertaken by GBPSSI in collaboration with Royal Tropical Institue, Amsterdam and IMWO, a social science institute affiliated to the University of Surinam. Describing the psyche of the woman prototype, who is usually the protagonist of Bidesia songs, Tiwari quotes from a Bhojpuri verse "my husband went in search of gold, my hair turned silver. Neither gold was found, nor my husband returned. He settled down in an alien land." "These lines poignantly describe the pain experienced by the migrants' families . The ones who left the country could later establish no contact with their kin back home, who spent virtually their entire lives waiting and hoping," Tiwari says .
The migrants, who are left in a distant land with their hopes for a better future shattered, strive in a myriad ways to keep memories of homeland alive, which provides them with the resilience to endure the daily grind. The trauma of the migrants can be seen in the Bhojpuri songs sung in foreign countries in which an older generation recalls how it had come to distant lands with the hopes of a good life. Now their descendants, often a product of one settled migrant ‘importing’ a spouse from the motherland and settling up a family in the new country. These lines of first-generation citizens are often a mix of traditions of the motherland and the nation in which they were born. Folk songs and such fusion music is a very strong tool of maintaining their indigenous culture. In Singapore this is clearly visible in the large number of youth members in the newly established Bhojpuri society, to which the author belongs.
It is this ‘youth wing’ which often is the most involved in the society’s activities, going so far as to re-establish festivals which Singapore has not seen in a long time on such a scale, eg. Holi (Phaguwa), the festival of colours, often celebrated as the North Indian New Year. One very important factor that repeatedly came up in meetings was the relevance of music in making these third and fourth generation Singaporeans realize their Bhojpuri roots and the magic of their own dialect. The Singaporean Bhojpuri Society often invites Bhojpuri poets and musicians from different countries as well as from the mother land, to perform at major festivals and have even tried to popularize the use of Bhojpuri in temple activities.
Commercial interests have joined the fray and are making the search for culture even more interesting by creating funky remixes of traditional Bhojpuri folksongs and thus creating a wider appeal. HMV is targeting mainly the Indian migrant population with its Bhojpuri remixes. HMV says it was inspired to tap the market after the runaway remix-hit, Kaanta Laga . The hit song from HMV is already doing the rounds of satellite channels and has set sales soaring . HMV even admitted its target audience was mostly the huge migrant population . HMV’s competition with old war horse T-series has provided the migrants with a larger range of Bhojpuri music as HMV’s remixes are radically different from T-Series’ use of well-established singers like Radhey Sham Rasia, Guddu Rangeela and Manoj Tiwari who render folk songs and bhajans in the traditionally manner.

As such, it is apparent how essential folk music and the festivals described in them are important to Diasporic groups who have little scope of returning ‘home’ due to financial interests. The quest for culture in an increasingly Westernised world is making these migrants turn back towards a search for their differentiating factor so as to avoid becoming just another face in the crowd. As most Diasporic groups share a common history of having left the motherland due to financial reasons, they have developed a shared cultural inheritance although these groups may never have met and are separated through large geographical boundaries. The advent of communication technology has allowed numerous Diasporic Bhojpuri groups to spring up on the Internet and the success of Bhojpuri is making other Indian dialects equally popular, including Awadhi and Maithili. A result of Acculturalation as well as a simple need to preserve their own cultures, cultural features in these traditional folk songs have changed but their motive has not, they still serve to unite Indians world wide in a shared dialect and also interest the youth in their heritage.

I'll be on this list soon!

2006-03-13T03:05:00.000+08:00

A complete listing of AP's Pulitzer Prize Winners

The Associated Press has won 48 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization in categories for which it can compete. The AP has won 19 Pulitzer Prizes for writing and 29 Pulitzer Prizes for pictures.

The Pulitzer Prizes, American journalism's most prestigious honor, were established by Joseph Pulitzer and are presented annually for outstanding achievement.
Here is a list of The Associated Press winners:

2005 -Bilal Hussein, Karim Kadim, BrennanLinsley, Jim MacMillan, Samir Mizban, Khalid Mohammed, John B. Moore , Muhammad Muheisen, Anja Niedringhaus, Murad Sezer and Mohammed Uraibi for breaking news photography for a stunning series of pictures of bloody yearlong combat inside Iraqi cities.

2001 -Alan Diaz for his photo of a federal agent in riot gear during a pre-dawn raid in Miami, confronting a man holding Elian Gonzalez in a closet.

2000 -Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley, Martha Mendoza and Randy Herschaft for Investigative Reporting, for "The Bridge at No Gun Ri," a package of stories reporting the mass killings of South Korean civilians by American troops at the start of the Korean War..

1999 -J. Scott Applewhite, Roberto Borea, Khue Bui, Robert F. Bukaty, Ruth Fremson, Greg Gibson, Ron Heflin, Charles Krupa, Wilfredo Lee, Dan Loh, Joe Marquette, Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Doug Mills, Stephan Savoia and Susan Walsh, Feature Photography, for a series of pictures of the events surrounding President Clinton's impeachment.

1999 -Sayyid Azim, Jean-Marc Bouju, Dave Caulkin, Brennan Linsley, John McConnico and Khalil Senosi, Spot News Photography, for a series of pictures after the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

1997 -Alexander Zemlianichenko, for his photo of Russian President Boris Yeltsin dancing at a rock concert in Rostov before elections.

1996 -Charles Porter IV, for his photo of a fireman cradling an infant victim of the Oklahoma City bombing.

1995 -Mark Fritz, for reports on the ethnic violence in Rwanda.

1995 -Jackie Arzt, Javier Bauluz, Jean-Marc Bouju, Karsten Thielker for photos of the ethnic violence in Rwanda.

1993 -J. Scott Applewhite, Richard Drew, Greg Gibson, David Longstreath, Doug Mills, Marcia Nighswander, Amy Sancetta, Stephan Savoia, Reed Saxon and Lynne Sladky for a series of pictures from the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign.

1992 -Olga Shalygin, Liu Heung Shing, Czarek Sokolowski, Boris Yurchenko and Alexander Zemlianichenko, for a series of pictures on the attempted coup in the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Communist regime.

1991 -Greg Marinovich, for a series of pictures showing the brutal killing of a man believed to be a Zulu Inkatha supporter in South Africa.

1983 -Bill Foley, for a series of pictures of victims and survivors of the massacre of Palestinians in a refugee camp in Beirut.

1982 -Saul Pett, for a series of stories on the bureaucracy of the federal government.

1982 -Ron Edmonds, for a series of pictures showing the attempted assassination of President Reagan.

1978 -J. Ross Baughman, for a series of pictures showing white Rhodesian soldiers beating and torturing black nationalist guerrillas.

1977 -Neal Ulevich, for a series of pictures showing bloody fighting between police and left-wing students in Bangkok, Thailand.

1977 -Walter R. Mears, for reports on the 1976 presidential campaign and election.

1974 -Anthony K. Roberts, for his picture sequence made during an alleged kidnapping attempt in Hollywood.

1974 -Slava (Sal) Veder, for a picture of a U.S. Air Force officer being greeted by his family after being held a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

1973 -Huynh Cong (Nick) Ut, for a picture of a Vietnamese girl fleeing in terror after a napalm attack.

1972 -Horst Faas and Michel Laurent, for a series of pictures of tortures and executions in Bangladesh.

1970 -Steve Starr, for a picture of armed black students emerging after their 36-hour occupation of a Cornell University building.

1969 -Edward (Eddie) Adams, for a picture of Vietnamese Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner on a Saigon street.

1967 -Jack Thornell, for a picture of James Meredith falling after being hit by a shotgun blast near Hernando, Miss.

1966 -Peter Arnett, for war reports from Vietnam.

1965 -Horst Faas, for photos from Vietnam.

1964 -Malcolm Browne, for war reports from Vietnam, including the overthrow of the Diem regime.

1962 -Paul Vathis, for a picture of President Kennedy and former President Eisenhower walking at Camp David following an unsuccessful 1961 Cuban invasion.

1961 -Lynn Heinzerling, for reports on the early stages of the Congo crisis and analysis of other African events.

1958 -Relman Morin, for reports on school desegregation rioting at Little Rock.

1954 -Mrs. Walter M. Schau, for a photo of a thrilling rescue in Redding, Calif.

1953 -Don Whitehead, for a story on President-elect Eisenhower's secret trips to Korea.

1952 -John Hightower, for reporting of international affairs.

1951 -Max Desfor, for a picture of Korean War refugees in flight over ruins of a Taedong River bridge.

1951 -Relman Morin and Don Whitehead, for war reports from Korea.

1947 -Arnold Hardy, for his photo of a girl leaping to death in a hotel fire.

1947 -Eddy Gilmore, for news reports from Russia, especially an interview with Joseph Stalin.

1945 -Hal Boyle, for columns and stories from the North African and European war theaters.

1945 -Joe Rosenthal, for a picture of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima.

1944 -Daniel DeLuce, for a series of stories from Yugoslavia disclosing the strength of the Tito movement.

1944 -Frank Filan, for a picture of a blasted Japanese pillbox on Tarawa.

1943 -Frank Noel, for a picture of a survivor of a torpedo attack begging for water in a lifeboat.

1942 -Laurence E. Allen, for war reporting, especially stories on the bombing of the British aircraft carrier Illustrious.

1939 -Louis P. Lochner, for news reports from Nazi Germany.

1937 -Howard W. Blakeslee, for reporting on the Harvard Tercentenary celebration.

1933 -Francis A. Jamieson, for a news beat on finding the body of the kidnapped Lindbergh baby.

1922 -Kirke L. Simpson, for a series of stories on the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

phir, ek baar

2006-01-14T11:16:00.000+08:00

Kahan gaye wo din
Kahan chor ke gaye aap?

Bina khabar bina pyaar,
Bina aap, mai to ho gayi beinsaan.

Kabhi to do mere dil ko chain,
Kabhi to nibha do, wo purane wade.

Sirf do pal ki muskurahat,
Sirf do pal chaihiye mujhe.

Keh do ek baar to,
Keh do mujhe tumse hua hai pyar.

Bana lo mujhko apni,
Bana lo hume apni dil ki rani.

Yeh sirf do pal ki baat hai,
yeh hain aapke do pal,
yeh banenge meri zindigi

To my pati - for always

2006-01-07T18:34:00.000+08:00

Every time you smile,
I want it to be for me.
Every joy you feel,
I want it to be due to me.

Every tear that falls,
I want it to be
An outpouring of happiness –
Due to me.

Every song you sing,
Dedicate it to me.
Every word you write,
Let it be my name.

Every thought you have,
let it be the very essence of me.
Breathe each breath,
Just for me.

Eat every grain,
With my laughter in your mind.
Live your life,
With my love around you.

Am I asking for too much?
I am your wife, in every sense.
You are simply,
My life.

to my future daughter - one day

2006-01-07T18:24:00.000+08:00

Insulated you in my womb,
preotected you.

Your tug at my breast,
nutrified you.

Picked you up when you fell,
soothed you.

Cradled you when you sobbed,
comforted you.

Then, you grew up.

When you cried,
you pushed me aside.

When you fell,
you were to proud for my soothing.

You were, too grown up for my touch.

I played your game, though
it broke my heart.

A decked up bride tonight,
you look so beautiful.

Things are full circle,
now i'm sobbing in your arms.

You grew up, my baby,
but i never let you grow away.

Dreams

2006-01-07T17:49:00.000+08:00

Seldom did I dare,
Allow myself to dream

Since you walked in
To my life
I can’t help but dream

Red lehengas and flowers
Shehnaai playing and
Hidden shoes

I dream dreams
Of an everlasting love
Holding hands at 72

Children and grandchildren
A house and garden
A dog, cat and you

Always you
My friend, lover, confidante
My husband

I see my dreams
Reflected in your eyes
That’s when I know

They’re no longer dreams
They’re our future.

am i!?

2005-12-08T18:24:00.000+08:00

I think,
I’m falling in love.

Aisa lagta hai,
Jaise sadiyon baad,
Ek koi apna sa mil gaya.

Uske baton me,
Apne vichaar sulajhte hai.

I never before knew,
The meaning of a soul mate,
The meaning of love.

For the Bandit Queen

2005-10-21T17:47:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-20T08:17:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-14T11:44:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-14T10:59:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-10T14:04:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-10T13:39:00.000+08:00

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?

2005-10-10T13:34:00.000+08:00

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.

chapter 2

2005-06-16T15:01:00.000+08:00

Replying to my emails, my mind is still in the kitchen, planning your lunch. Your habit of living near your workplace has never left you and the great part is that you can pop home for lunch, or occasionally, even coffee, anytime!

I head to the kitchen and place potatoes to boil. As they boil, I tidy up and clean the house. Memories of my stubborn youth come flooding back and I remember many conversations we had where I vehemently declared never to clean the house! I love cleaning your house; I love doing everything for you. I’m more than your wife; I’m your other half, your life.

Feeling rather sweaty now, I ignore the beep of my computer and rush for another bath instead. It’s almost 11, you’ll be home soon, other than you, and everything else can wait! Dressing in a prettier sari now that the housework is done, I place a flower in my hair and set about preparing the rest of the meal and setting the table, with everything done and the food heating, I sit down to answer my emails. I hear the click of the door and hear you come in; I rush to the hall and kiss you.

“I missed you, I know it’s only 4.5 hours, but I still missed you!”

You laugh and kiss me back, unbuttoning your shirt as you settle at the table, smiling at you, I feel the same excitement in me as I have, every single time I have seen you, right from the beginning.

Putting rice and some dishes on a thali, I again feed you, and just as you reach for the plate, I laugh and eat too, alternating mouthfuls between you and me. This is what I have always longed for, a life of laughter and fun, hugs and kisses, being utterly comfortable with someone – you.

As you finish your last mouthful, I rinse my hands and bring you sweetened lemon juice to freshen your mouth. As we move to the sofa, arm in arm, we discuss our respective days so far. I’m so thankful that you were the one to get me involved in my own writing and never once deride me for not having a ‘proper’ day job. I’m so grateful that you empathise with the work I do as well as the other little chores that you never fail to appreciate.

“Babul, jo tumne sikhaya, jo tumse payaa, Sajan ghar le chali. Sajan ghar mai chali… Kaise bhool paaungi mai Baba, sune jo tumse kahaaniya, chor chali aangan me maiya, bachpan ki nishaaniya. Ban gaya pardes, ghar janam ka, mili hai dunia, mujhe nayee. Naam jo piya se maine jora, naye rishton se bandh gayee. Mere Sasur Ji Pitah hain, Pati devta hai, Devar chavi Krishna ki.”
Finishing the dedication of my new book, I thank God that my life turned out the way it did. Things were never easy, nor will the road ahead be lined with roses; but the knowledge that being with you does not hurt anyone and I am doing exactly what my parents always wanted me to do, is sufficient to carry me through any hardship life may bring.
Sitting at my laptop, as I send the dedication to my editor, I stop a minute and look at our wedding photo on my desktop; the thought that possibly, you too are looking at the same photo fills my soul with warmth.

I remember my Bidai, it’s been almost 2 years with you, yet, I can remember so clearly, every moment of our wedding. Both sets of parents had ultimately deigned to attend, and your mother had even bought me a Bidai sari. It was the fact that the sari was pink that made me sure that life was going to be good with you. It was the final sign I needed. Bidai was definitely the saddest moment for my family and me too. We were all aware that as I walked away, I was walking into a new life leaving my family and relations behind, to join yours and adopt your family as my own. I left with tears of joy and sadness but knowing that I carried only the very best wishes from all who were there made me sure that the future would only bring us all joy!

I was so quiet in the car; the ceremony had meant so much to me, as I know it did to you. We had come so far together; the future seemed endless and beautiful. I clutched your hand as I thought about all the vows we had made.

My Papa doing the kanyadaan was to me, the most touching part of the ceremony. As he washed your feet, and ritually bestowed the worldly goods of Vishnu on you, I knew that in his heart he was praying with everything he had in him that I had made the right choice. To both my parents, the Kanyadaan was very emotional whereby both of them gave the responsibility of their daughter to you; this signified not only their blessing of this union but also their approval. I was so glad I was not there to witness that, my tears would not have stopped, as it is, looking at your damp eyes in the mandap made me sure that you too loved my Papa as I did and appreciated his actions.

During the Hasta Mallap, the priest was chanting away, but all I noticed was the strength of your hand as mine was placed on yours. I could honestly feel the union of our hearts forever as we held hands in that moment. As we promised with God and all guests as witnesses, to remain devoted to each other and to treat each other with love, respect, sympathy and compassion, I couldn’t help but tear.

The priest then looped white raw cotton round twenty four times, and put it around our shoulders. Symbolising the different characteristics and virtues of human life, these threads of cotton bound us together forever from now on. They were a vow to each other, to fulfil each of our roles fully and honestly.

After the Agni Poojan, as we stepped on the stone together, we looked at each other, and I knew that we would always look and walk in the same direction, with the same goals.

Although we had been ‘dating’ for so long, and everyone saw us as nearly married, ourselves included, we both knew that these rituals were needed to bind us ever closer, in the eyes of the world, as well as God. The Mangal Fere would symbolically solidify our marriage and make us husband and wife. The four rounds represented Dharma and a life of righteousness, Artha and a life of prosperity, Kama and a happy family and Moksha, a life dedicated to God. As the cloth that was tied to my pallu was put over your shoulder, I knew you would always take care of me. As Vikram filled our hands with rice and grains, denoting a bounty of wealth, good health, prosperity and happiness, I could sense that even my little brother wa praying that we would have all that and more in our life. Together, we offered these to the Agni and seeked blessings.
You smiled at me and slowly led me around the Agni three times, as we both vowed to follow each other anywhere – in happiness or in times of hardship and shall always serve you. On the final round it was my turn to lead you, signifying that in old age, when it is time to depart, all I wanted from God to take me before he touched you.

Following that, we took the Saptapadi. Christian vows always sound so touching, but it was not till our wedding day that I truly realised how much sweeter our vows were. We looked at each other (shameless me, I should have been looking down), as we took a step with each vow. Vowing to live with honour and respect and to provide our household with nourishment; to be happy and enjoy life, to develop mental, spiritual and physical peace and progress; to share joys and pains together and to increase wealth and prosperity for righteous use; to remember our parents and elders, to acquire knowledge, happiness and harmony through mutual love, trust and respect; to observe acts of charity and be blessed with healthy, strong and courageous children; to develop self-restraint and be true partners, with love and sacrifice and to remain life-long partners in wedlock and friendship.

I was still lost in the significance of all that I had just promised you when I felt you placing the sindoor in my maang and clasping the mangalsutra round my neck. Someone placed kheer in my hands and smiling at you, with tears in my eyes, I raised the spoon to your lips and vowed to bind your heart with the thread of truth, sincerity and love, so my heart will be yours and your heart will be mine forever.

I wiped away my tears and smiled at your photo, thoughts of you are always just beneath the surface, it is so simple to get lost in you.

chapter 1

2005-06-16T14:59:00.000+08:00

You’ll be asleep, but I open my eyes and slide out of your embrace, feeling
you turn over; I kiss your forehead gently and sit up in bed. I graze my hand over your feet and touch it to my heart and head. I’ve been blessed.

I step into the bathroom and look at my reflection, maybe my skin is not as taut and there are fine lines at the edge of my eyes. Yet, my eyes capture my heart, I see you in them. I see a complexion that glows despite the early hour, I see a woman who is content. There is no beauty that can surpass that. The beauty that comes from loving you. I run my fingers through my hair and see the first white strand, I laugh to myself, thinking of the jokes you can finally make, the same ones I have been teasing you with the last 3 years.

I step under the shower and the thought that you’re in the next room infuses me with happiness. I inhale the scent of vanilla shower cream and I can imagine your fingers on me. It’s gone beyond minutes, hours, days, weeks and months. Its gone into years, and its still you, only you, always you. After years, I still think of you every moment, every beat of my heart, I dedicate to you.

I step back into the room to dress and as I pleat my sari I see you looking at me, I giggle and fling my blouse at you, “stop peeping”! You grin sleepily at me and doze off… I can’t help remembering the first time we went out with me in a sari, for a Hindi movie, of all things! As I brush my hair I can smell your cologne in the room, a fragrance I’ve always loved. I tuck the end of my sari tightly into the gathers around my hip and again, your thought pops into my mind, as I see you looking at me, in my minds’ eye. I see you admiring my waist… kissing my navel and waiting for the day when you kiss my navel and kiss two people.

I switch on dim lights and open curtains as I walk to the kitchen to prepare the prayer items. As I go around the cosy little room we designed, I recite the ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ along with prayers for your well-being. Finally, covering my head I walk into the prayer room and settle down for an hour’s peace. ‘Tis no one but you who occupies my mind and prayers. Since I got to know you I have dedicated prayers to you and for you. Getting to spend my life with you is not a prayer come true, it’s a dream so huge, that I never dared dream it!

As I hear the clock strike a quarter past 7, I wrap up my thanksgiving and raise the offerings to my head. Wandering back to my cosy peach-coloured kitchen, I put the tea to boil and wonder if you have discovered that I serve you tea not made in water but in milk. Pouring the tea into a pretty cup, I inhale the sweet scent and remind myself to brush my hair again. I place the tea next to you and gently awaken you while smoothing back my hair.

“Good morning Ji… Chai aa gaya”;

I smile as you stretch and place your head on my lap. Stroking your hair, I coax you out of bed and hug you from the back as you sip your tea. As you head to the shower, I set about laying out your (pre-ironed) clothes. Heading back to my favourite nook – the kitchen, I get your breakfast done, Indian style. Aloo parathas and chutney, with dahi if you’re in the mood, of course, your steaming hot milk is already waiting. As you come into the kitchen in search of me, I button your shirt for you and push you into the chair, popping a sweetmeat I had offered earlier in my prayers, into your mouth. Planting your milk in front of you, I ask if you’ve finished the tea. Breaking off some of the paratha, I place it in your mouth. This sweet habit was borne out of necessity, as neither of us liked you going to work with masala-scented hands or a stained shirt. Halfway through the meal you begin protesting, so resorting to old tricks, I cajole you into a mouthful for mother, father, sister, brother and finally, laughingly, for myself.

As you stand to wash up, I wait next to you with a towel in my hands. Walking with you to the door, I pick up my prayer tray and place a vermilion spot on your forehead, I wait as you fill the parting of my hair with the fragrant vermilion and kiss my cheek as you leave for the day.

I bend to touch your feet once more and knot your laces. I wave at your departing back once more, then, smiling to myself, I close the door and lean back against it, just thinking of you and still feeling your presence in the little house. Shaking my head, I begin to clear up in the kitchen and place the dry dishes back in the cupboards. Hearing my laptop beep, I head to my study, fully prepared to battle with my editor. God bless you for sending my work to a publisher! Although every cut my editor makes hurts me, I’m so grateful that I can work from home and be around for you all day.

Article on IIT

2005-04-14T16:33:00.000+08:00

An article from www.indiatimes.com: It's just so sad that not just in IIT and india, but all over the world, parents tend to judge their children by what they can achieve... 'my good for nothing son' and 'my intelligent daughter' kinda thing...
children should be loved simply cuz of who they are, not what they are!

Not just children, but everyone, we cant walk around with our school crests tatooed on our heads right!? this mindset of getting into the best schools at the expense of all else is little more than a reflection of the failure of education.

now, if only we could really educate people, but that sort of education comes from life, not schools and books.

----------------
MUMBAI: In one of Mumbai's old gloomy buildings, grim parents are walking through a dark corridor with the somewhat melancholic resolve of converting their children into engineering graduates, if not engineers.

Over three dozen of them are squeezed into a 150 sq ft classroom along with other adolescents - boys who have just grown taller than their fathers and studious girls who do not yet have the domestic right to shape their own eyebrows; potentially talented singers, writers and athletes, all consumed by the great native obsession to enter the Indian Institute of Technology. It's an annual ritual. It's an orientation programme for parents and 10th standard students before they sign up for a strenuous two-year preparatory programme for IIT's feared Joint Entrance Exam. Panthers can just walk into the IIT campus in Mumbai, but human adolescents must take one of the toughest exams in the world for entry. Only one in 60 will make it. The ratio is only a bit kinder for other top engineering tests. Last year, over 250,000 students took the All-India Engineering Entrance Examinations for the 7,500 merit seats in second rung colleges.

The fate of India's young today is so inextricably tied to tough entrance exams that a section of this country's youth is lost to a long stoic preparation. Even eighth standard students have begun a long arduous road towards IIT, full four years away. An average 12th standard student today takes at least three entrance tests.
A graduate hoping to escape poverty through a management degree takes even more. Then there is medicine, and of course, the avarice of dentistry. Over 170,000 students took CBSE's Pre-Medical and Pre-Dental Exams last year, of whom about 1,600 will be chosen by top colleges. Nearly 7,000 12th standard students take an annual aptitude test for the 80 seats in the premier National Law School in Bangalore. The entrance exams of even second rung law schools eliminate over 90 candidates for every three who are admitted. It's worse in top management exams like the Common Admission Test (CAT).

Though the glamour of working for the government has faded for urban students over the years, the number of candidates who take the civil services exam every year has only increased, while the vacancies have decreased. Last year, nearly 200,000 appeared for 385 vacancies in the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, Indian Police Service and other benevolent names that the bureaucracy wears.

Even modest clerical jobs in the Reserve Bank of India see 3-4 lakh candidates battling for 200 posts. The RBI officers' exam attracts 60,000-70,000 graduates. Usually, less than 60 make it. Indian Railways too is forced to wield such unkind ratios to contain the flood of hopefuls.

If you want to make God laugh, old Western mothers often say bitterly, tell him about your plans. But in this country that pretends to be fatalistic when convenient, preparing for the future is a massive organised industry.

Coaching for IIT's JEE alone, "might be a Rs 2,000-3,000 crore industry if you include small one-man tutorials," according to Shiva Kumar, a key person in Career Launcher, a popular entrance exam coaching chain. Hopeful parents are the drivers. Enticed by IIT's power to cure Indian destinies, impoverished parents in semi-urban and rural areas are taking drastic steps to pay expensive tutorials. "They sell their jewels, sell their lands, take money on high interest, take extreme measures," says TC Badan, marketing manager of Brilliant Tutorials. Three years ago, a poor farmer from Muzaffarnagar district sold his land to enroll his son in a JEE coaching class in Delhi. Encouraged by nothing else but the sheer act of sending his son to a coaching class, the man began to tell everybody back home that his son would sail through. The boy didn't. But the grief-stricken son lied to his father that he had passed. When the father finally found out that his son was working as a salesman to discreetly fund a second shot at the JEE, the boy attempted suicide by jumping in front of a train. Even in the cities, the pressures that parents exert on their children is not exactly subtle. "My parents are more nervous than me," says Pranav Baxi who will sit for the JEE in a few weeks. Sixteen-year old Shashwat Purushottam has not distracted himself with anything in the past two years but prepared for the JEE "four to six hours a day apart from studying for the board exams. I don't think I have missed out on anything. Nothing is more important than IIT."

Most students who are preparing for JEE believe that the training has changed them forever. "I feel I can do anything now," Purushottam says.
Prasad Rao, project head of IMS Learning Resources, believes that eight months of "diligent" training two hours every day is enough for those taking one of the toughest management tests in the world, CAT. "But the insecurity of students has forced coaching institutes to offer 18-month courses. That's the level of desperation." Back at that gloomy orientation in Mumbai, the newbies reflect that desperation as they wait silently for Arun Roy of Arun Roy classes. Middleclass parents sit clutching a yellow course brochure that lays out the importance of quality training worth Rs 38, 000 for two years, surveying each other as though they are all rivals.A portly man looks at a red paperback that this correspondent is holding. The man is worried because he was given only a yellow brochure, no red book. "Can I have a look?" he asks nervously, worried that some important material that will ensure the security of his gelled 15-year-old son has been denied to him. He looks carefully at Marquez's Love In The Time Of Cholera. He asks, "Is it a guide?" "It's a love story." The man falls back to the peace of waiting for Mr. Roy. Arun Roy, evidently wise, walks in like an affable teacher and asks everybody, "What is inertia?" The gelled boy next to his portly father raises his hand and is in the middle of a wrong answer. "Shut up," Roy says. "But don't be afraid to answer next time. At the most I will humiliate you. Your parents pay me for that."
Some tutorials in Chennai and Hyderabad begin at four in the morning. Several entrance exam tutorials, like educationalist Chukka Ramaiah's famous coaching centre in Hyderabad, conduct their own entrance exams to filter out aspirants. One out of 10 who want to join Ramaiah makes it. One out of three who are interested in Arun Roy Coaching classes is accepted.

Some of those who are lost to engineering and management entrance exams, eventually return to the Arts that they originally loved in their later careers. They become singers, writers, economists and other things, greatly favoured by a hilarious rumour that they must all be intelligent. Strangely, they could crack the toughest exams in the world but could not answer in time their primary school teacher's first enduring question, "Children, what do you want to become in life?"

Marital rape!

2005-02-22T17:45:00.000+08:00

In no way does marriage give one individual the right to control or force another into doing something against their will. Why then does the penal code of our civilised society protect Singaporean men who force their wives into sexual intercourse? How is it that our society does not punish marital RAPE?

A man who kills his wife gets charged with murder; a man who steals from his wife also gets charged, with theft. Yet a man who outrages his wife’s modesty goes free. It brings to mind the question of what the priorities of our society are, apparently money matters more than dignity and modesty because money is protected under the law.

The White Ribbon campaign run by AWARE is admirable and they have numerous forms of advertisements to spread the facts of this ‘loophole’ in our legal code, but something needs to be done by our government, as soon as possible.

In a well developed, almost first world nation, essentials such as marital rape ought definitely be crimes by law. Basic human rights including modesty and freedom of choice (on whether and when to have sex) do not get eliminated upon marriage.

Before the debate over oral sex and homosexuality can continue, our society needs to look at this pertinent issue before too many women suffer. Women need to know that it is a crime, as do men. Sex, whenever HE wants it is not a prerogative of marriage, and we wonder why educated women choose to remain single!

all about the power

2004-12-01T11:16:00.000+08:00

U cannot hurt me
I won’t grant u that
Power.

I am in control
I am master of
Myself.

denials

2004-12-01T11:13:00.000+08:00

Denials make hollow facts

We deny the truth

Afraid of reality

Children fear the dark,

But adults fear light.

Leave me by candlelight

So I can at least delude

Myself.

i did it

2004-12-01T11:12:00.000+08:00

I stopped crying

U thought I was happy

I had reached beyond the bottom

Was 5.5 feet under.

I wanted to keep you

But when u left

I realised that

I needed u not

I rose up and out

On my own.

~reality is a bracket~

2004-12-01T11:10:00.000+08:00

One day,
My prince will come.

(prince of hades
feeling sympathetic that day)

Sweep me away,
On a pink palomino.

(horses are never pink
and cannot sweep)

take me to a rose garden
build me an arbour.

(im allergic to pollen
and arbours let in rain)

we’ll have a lil
prince and princess.

(monsters more like
yelling all day)

I’ll maintain my figure
And wear icy-pink ball-dresses.

(hairnets and bathrobes,
with morning coffee stains)

I’ll be gracious and cordial
A married Diana.

(snapping all day long
a true-blue fishwife)

if i loved a married man

2004-12-01T11:06:00.000+08:00

Everywhere I turn,
I see her face.
You’re my husband,
But she’s your wife.

Can you ever be mine?
I daily wonder.
Will I ever,
Carry your name?

What am I really?
The love of your life?
Or
Your hidden shame?

Babies, a home,
Cooking dinner,
Doing laundry and ironing,
These are pleasures destined not for me.

Daily arguments over kids’ school,
Their undone homework,
Her indecent dressing,
His soccer practice.

Why Why Why?
Why does she get these privileges,
I’m the one who loves you,
‘tis indeed an unjust world.

Every thought of mine,
Revolves around you,
My every breath is yours,
But you are Hers.

capitalism

2004-10-29T11:25:00.000+08:00

I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by capitalism,

no longer starving, hysterical, naked,

but portly, Prozac fed, Armani clad,

dragging themselves through neon shopping malls at dawn looking for a

cashflow fix,

angelheaded hype-stars burning for a brand name connection - Victoria's

Secret, maybe, or Starbucks - to open up another outlet, to milk the

sacred cow of commerce and make things predictable, tedious, subject to

a national marketing strategy;

WHO once in poverty and tatters, hollow-eyed and high, sat up smoking in

the supernatural darkness...

WHO were expelled from the academies for craziness & publishing obscene

odes on the windows of the skull, and

WHO are now engaged in the most mammoth dumbing down of culture the

world has ever seen,

WHO wringing their hands in car retrieval lobbies of Intercontinentals,

after six hour feasts, impatient for the stretch Rolls, sing madrigals

to global consumerism, sternly reminding me of Soviet horrors, Tianamen

Square, famines, secret police ...

and anyway, the entire population of China deserves to be shod in Nike,

with their distinctive polyurethane airbag cushions,

containing sulphur hexafluoride,

the world's most lethal greenhouse gas,

with a global warming hit 22,000 times greater than

carbon dioxide,

and which hangs in the atmosphere for 500 years;

yes, produced by girls in Indonesia for five bucks,

strikes outlawed, overtime compulsory, 20 cents an hour,

Nike's inflate on-the-shelf to $200.

Asked about onerous conditions,

the area manager shrugs:

"I don't know that I need to know".

Bliss.

Shimmering on Fortune's list of fabulous

rates of return to investors, (46.9%),

Nike is a Shareholder Superstar,

to the best minds of my generation,

not a Sweatshop Slavelord.

These are the minds

WHO manipulate, degrade and exploit the ass end of pop culture in all

its forms, using tabloid sadism, salivating weeklies, splatter-trash

cinema ("it's art! it's art!"), footie fetishism, and gluttony elevated

to haute cuisine,

WHO justify intellectual slumming, star-fucking-then-crushing, fad

promotions, supergossip, with the

ineluctable logic of economic rationalism,

the most odious of opiates,

the cruellest of illusions,

WHO, knowing the decline of health & happiness outside their elite

zones, persist in formenting the great Dumbing Down (including their own

minds, once finegazing at starry nights with radiant cool eyes, poetry

on their lips and no thought of material excess), yes, subsidising the

hip vulgarity of media scams with ads, promos and "tie-ins" for

objects objects objects

of destruction,

either of self,

or the swirling backyard we 5.6 billion inhabit, and

WHO, by fostering commercial falsehoods,

shield us from the truth,

and each other,

either in small matters, like wrinkle banishing lotions or

big myths, like multi millionaires being good for the planet because

gold trickles down to the peasants in Brazil, ha!

(and to avoid too many cliches you'll notice I haven't mentioned

resource depletion);

WHO don't know that they need to know, these growth-rate trippers

hallucinating Sydney 2000 real estate,

WHO provoke the scandalised descendants of Victor Hugo to call for "a

halt to the pillage of Disney", after their ancestor's story was stolen

and his name excluded from posters plastering the planet, nor honoured

in the merchandised debauch of fluffy toys, CD's & video nasties;

WHO so excessively reward the chairman of Disney

that it would take a Mickey Mouse pyjama seamstress in Haiti

three lifetimes

to earn what Michael Eisner makes in a day,

WHO pride themselves on stretching the frontiers of youth marketing,

even beyond alco-pop, "the most important teen drinking trend in

decades", to the irresistable alchemy of ...

alco-milk;

WHO, because of soaring US profits of the female shaving industry,

Target Europe with a $20 million campaign to render women uncouth &

smelly unless they reach for a

plastic pink handled Lady Protector,

every day,

WHO once screamed out of windows in despair until rescued by throngs of

songsters dreaming gleaming impossible utopias, for the hell of it, for

the high of it, and now, looking back, plan to sanitize & bastardize it

as

a 1000 acre Woodstock Theme Park

of museums, train rides, theatres, and jelly vats writhing with

skinny-dipping hippie robots,

a Hard Rock cafe franchise and,

to promote Mega Virgin Global,

a sky-flying inflatable Jimi Hendrix;

(Why not?

Che Guevara is already a Swatch watch);

as the likelihood of real political change recedes,

we are told,

people need symbols of resistance -

it makes them feel better;

WHO in everyday seeming unimportant ways

connive in their own dumbing down -

as did John Travolta, recently on David Letterman worldwide, (isn't

everything?) hugging, schmoozing, drivel-drooling, playing to the

brain dead gallery,

anything to stop futon spuds channel drifting,

never to say anything of import, or even for a moment

think aloud

in case it unleashes the wrath of an unseen ratings god

and crush a career,

(Maybe they're right.

It's why Dennis Potter called his cancer

Rupert),

WHO realise that outside their gilded enclaves are gridlocked

slumblocks,

cars cars cars,

exeeding 500 million this year

airports airports airports ,

annual release of carbon dioxide 23 bilion tonnes,

casinos multiplying, like youth suicides, tides of landless, jobless,

homeless, swarming citywards,

trees felled, salt rising, heat rising, cancer rising, coasts wrecked -

a strip of Bali three McDonalds already - everywhere mangroves uprooted

for hotels, dugongs gutted,

countless mammal species,

168 bird species judged critically endangered,

goodbye, goodbye,

who know in their hearts of this hellshock, yes, these best minds of my

generation, who control & mould the global brainbox and cannot bear to

recognise the most obvious connections between what they do

and don't do

and the destiny of this toxic orb.

In my dreams you walk dripping from a lost journey on the superhighway

in tears

to my clifftop door in the Western night.

Write an essay on 'the movement for Pakistan'. How would you evaluate Muhammad Ali Jinnah's leadership of that 'movement'?

2004-10-29T11:22:00.000+08:00

Introduction and Stand:

The purpose of this essay is to evaluate and analyse the contributions of Mohamed Ali Jinnah to the creation of Pakistan as a sovereign state. It also aims to criticise his aims and ambitions in doing so. With the aim of depicting M.A. Jinnah as a man who led the movement for Pakistan with personal power as one of his motivating factors, this essay will prove the aforesaid hypothesis and yet go on to show that despite his own motivations, M.A. Jinnah led the movement in a highly admirable manner.

Jinnah's Beginning:

To begin at the beginning, the idea of a separate state for Muslims was not an idea that Jinnah liked or supported. Being a highly secular man, trained in British law and practicing constitutional, democratic politics, the idea of a separate state was not something he encouraged until his return to India after his self-imposed exile in Britain (1937). When the idea of a separate Muslim state was first conceptualised by the Islamic poet, Mohamed Iqbal and a nationalistic minded student in Britain told Jinnah of the plan, he slapped the student in outrage . He resented being typecast as a 'Muslim', according to his good friend, “He was very very British” . Being a member of both the Muslim League and Indian National Congress, he spent his early political career working to bring them together. It was due to Jinnah's leadership and liaison role that the 1915 session of the Muslim League coincided with that of Congress, and at that session, Jinnah played a significant role in negotiations, which resulted in the Lucknow pact of 1916. This pact was one of the first formal Hindu-Muslim agreements granting rights to Muslims, and it was the only time that the Muslim League and Congress came to a voluntary agreement about India. The Lucknow Pact granted Indian Muslims a separate electorate, and 'weightage' in legislative councils that had a Muslim minority. It had but a temporary effect on Hindu-Muslim relations as it represented only the agreement of a 'tiny political elite' of the two communities. There were many reasons that resulted in the most dramatic change in a man that history has ever seen; religious, personal and otherwise. The aim of the question is to 'evaluate' Jinnah's 'leadership' of the 'movement' for Pakistan, as such, before analysing his work, we must first analyse the situations before and after his 'policies' were put into action.

His 'Transformation':

The main reason for the increasing sense of nationalism among the Indian Muslims at that time was due to a growing fear of their increasing marginalisation, and not just in India.
It is often suspected that Jinnah's sudden change from secular constitutional leader to a pro-Islam figure had a lot to do with his disillusionment of the non-constitutional and increasingly Hindu-oriented policies practiced by his fellow congress leader and good friend Mohandas K. Gandhi. It was Gandhi's 'Civil Disobedience Campaign' that Jinnah was ill-at-ease with and he resigned soon after Gandhi gained control of the Congress party in 1920. There was in India at that time, a growing fear of the 'British Raj' being replaced by 'Ram Raj' . Jinnah was shrewd enough to realise that Hindu extremists could make life difficult for Muslims in India.
Increasing this fear was the marginalizing of minorities in Germany under Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. Golwalkar's 'We Or Our Nationhood Defined' (1938), which argued that, if German Jews could be exterminated by Hitler, so could Indian Muslims by Hindus. Jinnah commented in relation to the increasingly tense situation of Indian Hindus and Muslims that, “Hitler's attempt at purity was a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by” . The sheer enormity of his linking the German genocide to India showed his growing concern, and that of the masses of Muslims in South Asia about the growing threat of Hindu extremism.
Another factor frequently attributed to the growing fear of being sidelined among the Muslims was the collapse of Ottoman Caliphate Empire. This was the loss of one of the biggest Islamic powers in the world. However, although Jinnah sympathized with his fellow Muslims, he was not convinced that Muslims should march out of British India and migrate to Muslim states like Afghanistan.
Another reason often attributed to Jinnah's sudden departure to England was the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919. These reforms posed a significant setback to Jinnah's career; education, public works and local self-governance were all transferred to the control of local ministers in a diarchal system. This was a good opportunity for politicians with strong local support which Jinnah lacked as he had always seen himself representing India in its entirety and lacked a landed or tribal powerbase. Although he tried to carry on in his previous role as a Hindu-Muslim negotiator, he was not on the best terms with Nehru and many of his proposal were often rejected , and his mediatory role was taken over by Mian Fazl-I-Husain who had a much stronger provincial base and thus greater authority in negotiating on the behalf of Muslims in India.

His return and alliances formed:

One of the biographers of M. A. Jinnah, Stanley Wolpert of UCLA said: "Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three. Hailed as 'Great Leader' (Quaid-I-Azam) of Pakistan and its first governor-general, Jinnah virtually conjured that country into statehood by the force of his indomitable will. His place of primacy in Pakistan's history looms like a minaret over the achievements of all his contemporaries in the Muslim League." "We are a nation," Jinnah said, three years before Partition, "with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitude and ambitions - in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life." When in 1934 the Muslims of India elected Jinnah as their representative to the Central Legislative Assembly, in his absence, and the 1935 Government of India Act gave him an opportunity to regain his former influence, Jinnah returned to India and worked towards the creation of a separate state for Muslims by uniting the various disparate Muslim groups scattered throughout India
Jinnah knew exactly what he was doing throughout his leadership of the Pakistan movement. He was “an able, single-minded political tactician who took full advantage of the dramatic political changes which occurred after India's entry into the Second World War” . However, even before the advent of the Second World War, Jinnah made his alliances and manipulated them to benefit his cause. His alliance with Sikander Hayat Khan, after the 1937 elections where the Unionist Party won the majority of Muslim votes, was a recognition of the latter's power and the need for the support of rural landowners who controlled the majority of rural votes. In exchange for Khan's support in National politics, Jinnah allowed him control over the organisation of the Muslim League. By 1939, the Muslim League had greatly increased their influence; this was largely due to the blunders of Congress. After the 1937 elections, Congress had won the mandate to form ministries in 7 out of 11 provinces, which put many Muslims under Congress (largely Hindu) rule. This would have been an apt opportunity for Congress to establish itself as an all-India party and shed its 'Hindu' mantle, however, the reality was quite the opposite. Congress made no effort to empathize with or respect Muslim culture and religion . This boosted the Muslim League's rhectoric that it alone could safeguard Islamic interests in India. It was after this period that the demand for Pakistan intensified. Even the British agreed with this viewpoint, in 1939, Linlithgow dubbed Congress 'a Hindu organisation', implicitly accepting the right of the Muslim League to speak for all Indian Muslims.

It could be said that the outbreak of World War Two was a watershed in the movement for Pakistan. World War Two served to firstly accelerate British departure and also to put Muslim League and Congress on the same platform. The 1942 Crippes Mission, which was a British attempt to garner wartime support from India in exchange for self-government, conceded the theory of partition. “The British could not contemplate the transfer of their present responsibility for the peace and welfare of India to any system of government whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life.”

The Psychological Game:

Jinnah's creation of a 'modern Muslim persona' was the binding force that brought about the uniting of the Muslims in India. The main divisions among them at that time were a common dress, language, political organization, sect and territory. Jinnah brought together the various factions with his vociferous talk for a 'common land' - Pakistan. In this 'Muslim utopia', Urdu would be the common language; the Muslim League a central political organisation and Jinnah's own dress sense and lack of any particular sect the common practices. Just as Nehru and Gandhi used clothes to unite and bring together the majority of Hindus, Jinnah amalgamated the various forms of Islamic dress to form a common attire that would appeal to all sects of Muslim society. By dressing in an Islamic fashion, he managed to completely divide himself from his previous counterparts, Gandhi, Nehru and the largely Hindu Congress party. When he was once asked for his sect (Sunni or Shia), he responded by asking what was the prophet . This again brought about a sense of unity among the Muslims of India, divided among themselves on the basis of their Islamisation. Some were Hindu converts from the time of the Mughal empire, others were of Arab or Turkish descent. Jinnah's answer, radical as it might have been for that time, united all of them as Muslims.

Also, Jinnah made all Muslims feel an affinity with this new 'dream nation', which would have a place for all Muslims, and thus served to unite the people of the future Pakistan. Professor Ziauddin Ahmad, the biographer of “Quaid-e-Azam”, commented, "When he defined Muslim nationhood in such tangible terms, every Muslim found himself testifying to the justice of this claim, and subscribing to the logical corollary of the fact and recognition of separate Muslim nationhood, viz., the demand for a Muslim homeland."

There are many factors that go to show that Mohamed Ali Jinnah did ensure that the newly created nation of Pakistan would be a fair and just nation for all its citizens, regardless of sect or gender. In a social system where women were, more often than not, oppressed, Jinnah brought about woman's rights, human rights and minority rights.

Was it all for power?

His sincerity in ensuring the creation of a land for his followers could be seen in his repeated rejection of the offer to be the first Indian prime minister in exchange for giving up the idea of Pakistan and maintaining a united India. There is a common misconception that Jinnah wanted a separate state for Muslims, even if it was at the expense of many innocent lives. However, Jinnah did actually accept the Cabinet Mission plan for a united India with Muslim-majority areas to be under Muslim rule. The Cabinet Mission plan advocated a union of India comprising both British India and the Indian States, with a central government to deal with foreign affairs, defence and communications. The union would have an Executive and a Legislature. Each province would maintain power over all other areas. The provinces were also to be divided into three sections. Provinces could opt out of any group after the first general elections. Lastly, there would be an interim government having the support of the major political parties. It was only when Nehru rejected the plan as a 'stop-gap' , after Congress had first accepted it on 24th May 1946, that Jinnah, for the first time in his political career, turned to a non-constitutional move and called for a communal mobilisation among the Muslims, resulting in rapidly spreading horrific violence, starting in Calcutta, India seemed to be on the brink of a civil war . It was only when Viceroy Wavell invited the League to join Congress in forming the interim government that the violence decreased.

Conclusion:

Jinnah began his leadership of the Pakistan movement around the time he turned 40, the age Muslims believe is a turning point in life. The death of his wife ended his family commitments and his children were grown. Repeated appeals to return to India to guide the Muslims could have been a way for him to get back with God and Islam. Whatever his motivations, Jinnah was indeed a leader who despite his personal motives, served to unite the Islamic people of India and give them a land to call their own.
By analysing his motives however, we can see that he seemed to be motivated largely by both a quest for personal power and to a desire to carry out his politics in the diplomatic manner he saw fit as opposed to Gandhi's anti-British movements, and to perhaps prove the superiority of constitutional politics as opposed to anti-constitutional means.
His psychological method of using himself as an example in terms of dress, religion and politics to unite the Muslims was an extraordinary. His inclusion of minority and women's rights made him a politician with support on all sides and a very wide base to work with. He realised after the 1937 elections and the poor showing of the Muslim League that theories were good but grassroots participation was needed to establish power.
He was shrewd in his dealings with his opponents and made use of the unionists to garner support crucial for the Muslim league in 1936 and then moved to essentially put them down in 1944
Jinnah leadership of the moment was impeccable for the uniting of the disparate Muslim factions but it was lacking in that there was no 'successor' capable of replacing Jinnah's place after his death. Knowing that his death was close, Jinnah ought to have groomed a successor to prevent Pakistan from falling into the quagmire it did. However his quest for power could have stood in the way of that. The other factor that could have possibly influenced his decision not to 'share' his power and leadership could have been that at that stage, Pakistan needed one strong leader and power could not have been shared. As such, as Lord Mouthbatten called Jinnah, a “psychopathic case ” or otherwise, Mohamed Ali Jinnah used the Pakistan demand to hoist himself to power and succeeded remarkably at the same time managing to create a nation-state which was, for a short time, the dream of many an Indian Muslim.

Feminism -should feminist politics aim to establish gender equality or difference

2004-10-29T11:20:00.000+08:00

Introduction:
The aim of this essay is to prove the impossibility of achieving equality and the futility of aiming to establish equality in feminist politics. In feminist politics, equality and difference have been understood to be alternative concepts; difference has become the reverse side of equality. Over the years, one of these terms has gained the laurel of being a positive term and the other a negative term. Before analysing whether or not equality is indeed possible, a brief overview of feminism and equality is needed. There are three schools of feminist thought, which are namely Liberalist, Marxist and Radicalist.

The Liberal school of thought believes that 'gender equality can be brought about through incremental reform' . They believe that all of society has the ability to govern itself, including women and they need to be elevated to power in order to use their governing abilities, this elevation can be brought about by reforms. This is in significant contrast to the Radical feminists' viewpoint, where a significantly more negative view of the order of things exists. This branch of feminism sees 'gender divisions to be the most politically significant of social cleavages, and believes that they are rooted in the structure of domestic life' . Basically, radical feminists see the world as 'run by men… for men' . Their point of view is not completely different from that of Marxist feminists, who believe in much the same thing but see things from a more economic point of view as opposed to the gender inequality point of view of radical feminists. Thus, it is apparent, that despite the differences in the different branches of feminism, the quest for equality, albeit in different forms, is a common thread among them.

Stand:
Equality is in itself a word with many connotations. It could mean parity or sameness, among other meanings. Now, to be 'same' would be impossible in this context given the biological differences between males and females. Parity, however, is what feminists seek to implement when gender equality is mentioned. Seeking similar levels of opportunities in careers, a level ratio in political representation, and in some countries, namely strongly Islamic states, levels of freedom that are on par with that received by males.

Equality and difference theories both aim to establish women in a better position in society, the end in similar, just the method that is different. The option that feminists face is to pursue either 'gender neutrality' - equality, or 'gender visibility' - difference. This essay takes the stand that gender difference ought to be established instead of gender equality due to the differing concerns of men and women in society and politics. After all, gender-neutrality would mean to imply that women lose the right to leave and continued job security when having babies. This would definitely be unacceptable because in the rapidly aging populations of many developed nations, childbirth is counted as socially necessary work, and women at this stage have unique needs which must be fulfilled for the better good and continuation of society.

Differences between Masculine and Feminine peoples:
In a study conducted to find the differences between political inclinations and interests of masculine and feminine people, it was seen that masculine people expressed greater interest in the generic term 'politics' whereas feminine people expressed more interest in particular issues such as women as candidates and public officials, abortion and the equal rights amendment. This study goes to prove that men focus on generalities and women on particularities.
In the highly general aspect of the world, society at large and politics, it is then apparent why men have been dominant in this realm, thus far. With women focusing largely on personal and domestic politics, it does not make sense to put them in charge of volatile international affairs or national defence arenas, which could be a possibility if complete gender equality was somehow achieved. As such, feminist politics, ought definitely to aim to establish gender visibility as opposed to gender neutrality.
To bring out the best in each gender instead of ignoring sex and gender differences, not just in the area of politics, but also in terms of career opportunities and domestic issues. Specialisation of labour according to one's strong points is definitely preferable to trying one's hand at something with the possibility of failure.

Probability of Gender Equality:
Other than the previous argument regarding the possibility of aiming for gender equality decreasing the quality of output produced, by men or women in society, there is another important argument; which is that achieving gender equality is a nigh impossible task, which should not even be attempted. As Mackinnon said,

to require that one be the same as those who set the standard - those which one is already socially different from - simply means that sex equality is designed never to be achieved. Those who most need equal treatment will be the least similar, socially, to those whose situation sets the standard as against which one's entitlement to be equally treated is measured. Doctrinally speaking, the deepest problem of sex inequality will not find women 'similarly situated' to men. Far less will practices of sex inequality require that acts be intentionally discriminatory.

In fact, some feminists themselves agree that the 'struggle' against gender inequality and the establishment of feminist politics requires the dropping of 'equality' for 'autonomy' .

“Equality… implies a measurement according to a given standard.”
“Autonomy… implies the right to accept or reject such norms or standards according to their appropriateness to one's self-definition. Struggles for equality… imply an acceptance of given standards and a conformity to their expectations and requirements. Struggles for autonomy, on the other hand, imply the right to reject such standards and create new ones.”

As such, to aim for equality would not just be to agree that the actions of men today are right but would also be to 'become the enemy', to do what you have fought against. As such, the stand of this essay is reaffirmed, that feminist politics ought to aim for gender difference as opposed to gender equality. If women want to be free to redefine social roles, as they please to suit the modern woman of today, then autonomy and not equality should be their rallying cry and aim in mind.

Autonomy:
If autonomy were to be the aim of feminists, then some of the policies they would suggest would include the right to represent themselves in sectors of government that directly affect their interests, including abortion, human rights legislation, women's charter, domestic violence, etc. These are some of the areas of particular interest to feminine peoples.7 The right to choose areas of governance to involve themselves in, would certainly drive home their rejection of the 'male-stream' values of today's society and state.
Policies regarding childcare benefits and maternity leave ought to be restructured so as to better suit women's job schedules and allow them greater opportunities in applying for jobs.
A major obstacle in the employment of women in today's workforce is their domestic 'duties'. It has come to a stage where employers do not wish to employ newly married women or those who are at an age where their biological clock is ticking loudly, for fear that they would soon apply for maternity leave and childcare and medical benefits, which would not contribute to the company's profits in any way.
Merits of Equality (Flipside):

It must however be mentioned that equality, despite the many complications it does present, has proved to be more than efficient over the years. It is through the concept of equality that women gained the legislation to vote and managed to prevent (at least to some extent) the arbitrary treatment of women. It is only, that as mentioned above, the main problems with the notion of equality is that they not only cause women to become more 'masculine' but also that they ruin the specialised balance of labour and power that biological and physiological differences in men and women have wrought in society over the years. Equality is based on the premise that en and women are essentially similar and as such, women can be compared by the same yardstick that applies to men. This however, completely ignores the nurturing process that girls go through that makes them completely unsuitable for male tasks. Men better understand defence issues due to conscription and armed forces service, whereas women learn to abhor war due to massive loss of loved ones. Men are trained to be physically more able than women and thus are better equipped for certain jobs and gender equality can simply never be achieved because physically, women are and will always be disadvantaged.

Conclusion:

Thus, women could only make a more significant impact in the workforce and political arenas by playing up their skills in jobs that require the 'human touch' and greater 'emotions' as opposed to trying to 'compete' with men; competition being a 'masculine' obsession anyway . In the political scene, they ought to campaign for offices that focus on areas that particularly interest them. It is on this basis that women can then propel themselves further and into other realms of politics and careers, based on the success they first achieve in these areas. As such the establishment of differences between the 2 genders would serve the purposes of feminist politics far more than the aim to establish equality ever