Reflections

2020 has arrived. It was to be the year when India became a developed country. It was to be the year when we arrived as a major player in the world and when India became a beacon of hope for countries with religious and regional divisions to look up to and feel confident that this was the model that should be used in order to have a democratic, tolerant and vibrantly diverse path to prosperity. Alas, the year dawned a few days ago and it has been heralded by a gasping economy, deep divisions exacerbated by those in power and unrest and violence everywhere. The sellers of dreams are still promising jam tomorrow. The state of the republic leaves much to be desired to put it mildly. Is everything lost? That is what I would have thought until the country fought back over the past month or so. It warms the cockles of my heart to see that students and young people are standing up to be heard and saying no to the narrative that appeared to be unchallenged over the past few years. The...

I was reading Umberto Eco’s novel The Prague Cemetery. This very cleverly constructed novel uses actual historical characters who interact with the fictional narrator of the book. It is a riot of intrigue and what would today be called fake news. The manner in which Jews, communists and other rebels were demonized by the creation of false documents is eye opening. That such tactics are still in use goes without saying. What struck me was how old and well tested the tactics are and how well they work. Verily, there is nothing new under the sun. In one passage, a Russian agent advises the narrator about how one can deflect discontent from the authorities to other “enemies of the people”. The tactics described so perfectly described those of the present ruling dispensation in India, Russia, Turkey and of course the US and UK, that I think it bears quoting at length. If you just substituted some words, mainly “Muslims” for Jews, it would be a blueprint for the right wing nation...

Bakshali Numericals  ( Source: Wikipedia)  The greatest mathematical discovery of all time was undoubtedly the invention of Zero. This allowed mathematicians and common people to make calculations easily and conveniently, calculations that were otherwise so complex that even very intelligent people floundered in making them. As Bailey and Borwein put it in a major article published in 2011, it was a discovery that eluded the greatest minds of the Western civilizations, mathematicians of the caliber of Archimedes, and unsurprisingly was resisted fiercely by Western mathematicians when they were first introduced to it by the Arabs and even today is often ascribed to sources other than the right one. As the French historian Georges Ifrah describes it ““Now that we can stand back from the story, the birth of our modern number-system seems a colossal event in the history of humanity, as momentous as the mastery of fire, the development of agriculture, or the invention of ...

Aravind Panagriya and Jagdish Bhagwati have been painted by media (the non presstitute kind, which are fervent Modibhakts) as opposed to the last UPA government and its doings. It was with curiosity then that I took up their well-known book “Why growth matters” . In most editorial and oped columns, the book has been depicted as ferociously opposed to the UPA economic policies and it has been claimed that the book has shown how the UPA government had derailed economic growth. However when I read the book, which was published in 2013, and presumably written in 2012 , judging by the tables published, I was bewildered. Nowhere did I find any denunciation of the UPA policies. To the contrary, all their calculations have shown that the UPA government did quite well in most of the economic parameters that they calculated. Let us take for instance the question of poverty reduction. The opposition ( read the BJP) at that time made a huge hue and cry about the poverty figures and claimed t...

Why is the Indian polity so corrupt? Forget the fools who talk about oriental values which do not include honesty and all that sort of patronizing nonsense that the West has told us over the years. What we do follow are the values of the early modern and medieval periods where corruption was not looked down upon. In medieval times as well in early modern times, it was considered normal to “look after” your family and friends, call it a feudal value if you like. The West was as corrupt as say, India is today. The corruption of the East India Company is legendary, as was the corruption among officials of the Colonial government. The celebration of honesty is quite new, it arose in the early days of the twentieth century. Before that and even after that, England itself witnessed political and commercial corruption of a very high order and today, the banking system, is, even today, by any standards as corrupt as hell. However, the West has moved on, they have embraced modern values whi...

Communalism has been part of our existence for thousands of years. For those who associate communalism with the advent of Muslims in India (and forget that they came to India by sea to Kerala in the 8 th century, not with the Ghazni invaders), should remember that we had violent communal clashes in the seventh century when Brahmanism took over ground from the Buddhists and when the Saivites in Tamil Nadu fought the followers of Vishnu. However when we talk communalism, we mean what we used to earlier say in hushed terms, and now in louder voices, the “ Muslim question”. We are we, and they are Muslims and occasionally Christians and, not to forget, in the 1980s, the Sikhs. But let us take the Muslim question which, of course, is what seems to drive the discourse among the Bengali Middle class today. When we were young, our parents had seen the communal riots during independence, but mainly as children.  The Partition and its aftermath had coloured the visions of their parent...

This post is reblogged from the blog Kafila It is written by Uzair Belgami I hope it proves to be slight antidote to the ad nauseum pro Modi propaganda that we are havinng to endure from the Indian media. The only problem is that it is longer than 200 words, which will probably make it difficult for most netziens to read! I have been reading around of late and was surprised to see that there are actually still some people who think there is still a chance that Narendra Modi will not become PM of this country in 2014. Hah! Must be those minorities, or those Secularists, or those Communists who are saying and thinking this – all are Pakistan-lovers, Leftists and anti-nationals. I felt it is necessary I deal with these people through this article, in order to deal the ‘final blow’ before the elections. Modi-ji shall bring an end to corruption in this land. He is the sole answer to those Congress thieves who have looted our motherland for 10 years! Scam after scam has been witnessed un...

This account is from Wisden. England, in their first representative match in this country with India, gained a fine victory shortly after four o'clock on the third afternoon by 158 runs. Before that result had been achieved, however, the home side, particularly on the first day, experienced some anxious moments. Actually, on the Saturday, they cut a very poor figure. Indeed, the manner in which they began called to mind the all too frequent failures in recent years of England at the beginning of a match against Australia. On paper, England looked to be particularly strong in batting. The dropping-out from international cricket of Hobbs had placed the selectors in something of a quandary as to whom to pick as opening batsman with Sutcliffe. Recourse was therefore had to Percy Holmes, Sutcliffe's regular partner for Yorkshire. This on the face of it seemed something of a retrograde movement seeing that it was 11 years since Holmes had been called upon for England. As it turne...

This is the second part of the post I had published last week. Here we hear about : India – the view from outside Harsh is a consumer research & design consultant. An easy-going guy who strongly sees himself as a man of today's times. The job allows him an unique opportunity to observe people across countries & social strata. This touch with real people & his wife keeps him grounded in life. What keeps him going are traveling & cricket. India. The best thing about this word is that it means something to virtually everyone in the world! Not all populations are so blessed. The blessing has often also been a curse in the past & has led to some fairly violent episodes in history. The present of the last 20-years has shown the inherent promise & power of this blessing. However, we now stand at a cusp – what the future holds for this blessing will be shaped by the next 2 generations. So, here are my thoughts on India as a young man, who doesn’t live in...

I always wonder what exactly young Indians think about India and its future. We are the generation that benefited from the reforms of 1991; however our mindset and thinking was entirely from the seventies and eighties. We instinctively stiffen if there is even a mild criticism of India from a foreign source, we are instinctively left of centre and deeply suspicious of the United States, we are all for women’s freedom and participation in the workforce, but have to struggle to suppress our disapproval of women wearing western dress. We feel that the youngsters today have lack of patriotism (as we see it) and voluntarism which was very much a part of our lives as students and young men. In order to find out, I asked my former student and now friend (if there can be friendship across this large age difference) Yachana Prakash ( I use her maiden name)to find me some young and articulate people who think about our India and ask them what they feel about it. The following are contribution...

I just got back from a two week stay in India distributed between indore, Mandu , its environs and Calcutta/ Siliguri. This is the best time of the year to be in India and that proved to be true this year as well. It was deliciously cold in Indore, Calcutta as well as in North Bengal. The sun was out for most of time so that we had glorious sunny days and crisp cold nights. Life was good as an advertisement says. It made us seriously wonder what we are doing in exile. I most enjoyed revisiting Mandu. I have been there some 22 years ago and it appeared to have not changed a bit. I shall talk about this sometime, but today I want to set down my impressions of India as a visitor. No matter what the newspapers say, the country is progressing. This may be because of government policies, or in spite of them, but the impression one gets is of an energy that we really never saw during our travels across India earlier. Sadly this is more evident in Indore than in West Bengal. Indore gave...

It is fashionable for the media in India to put on long faces and bemoan the difficulties that the country may be going through especially during the run up to Independence Day and Republic Day. As my readers may have noticed I am an incorrigible optimist and I feel that over the past 40 odd years that I have been following political events, I have never failed to read a host of articles that prophesied doom for India during this time. Unfortunately for the Doom sayers and fortunately for all the rest of us, India is alive and doing reasonably well, thank you very much. When I first started reading newspapers in the sixties, they were saying that we would starve to death in a few years time. Far from it, we became self sufficient in food and it became possible for us to waste foodgrains by keeping it rotting in inadequate storage areas. Then in the seventies, corruption was going to make us collapse and we were lost as a democracy, Unfortunately (for them) we overcame all that an...

The Indian Cultural Centre at Kuala Lumpur is one of 24 centres set up at different capitals to showcase Indian culture and to project what is now called its “soft power”. It has a fine library and an Ayurvedic Information centre as well as a small auditorium where lectures and other shows are held and, we are told, movies will also be shown at a later date.It makes me feel proud that now we have centres like this in important cities. In our younger days we frequented the USIS and the British Council libraries as well as Gorky Sadan, now I can, in Kuala Lumpur visit the Indian Cultural Centre. There is a fairly large library, and they appear to be buying books all the time. The choice is eclectic and there does not appear to be much political bias in the buying. Jawaharlal Nehru rubs shoulders with Lal Krishna Advani and there are many coffee table books on various aspects of Indian culture and history that I find very attractive. There is a wide array of fiction. Amitava Ghosh, my ...

Yesterday I got into an argument with one of the Indian residents of the condominium where I live. This young man, while discussing living conditions in Malaysia nd how it compares with life back home began to bemoan the lack of independence for Malaysian women, particularly of the Muslim faith. As proof of this he cited the widespread use of the tudong, the head scarf, which is widely, though not compulsorily used in Malaysia among Muslim women. (The Prime Minister’s wife does not wear a tudong.) There has been a hoo-hah in the press recently about some teacher who insisted that his schoolgirl charge wear the tudong at least during the duration of the Ramadan month . This has set off a lot of brouhaha in the press and the comment was in this context. In recent times, Muslim women have been criticized for sometimes voluntarily draping themselves in burkhas, hijabs and for covering their hair. This has led to even legislation in Western European countries preventing them from doing so...

This time when I went to Delhi, I had a free morning which I spent in the National Gallery of Modern Art. I have wanted to visit it many times in the past, but somehow it never happened. This time I was determined to go and we went on the Saturday morning the day after we travelled up from Ranthambhore. It is conveniently located, near India Gate and it costs just Rs 10 to get in. It is a steal. Looking at it from a Malaysian viewpoint, less than one Ringitt takes you to one of the most marvelous displays of art in India. India has always been at the forefront of art since the days of antiquity. The Mauryas, Kushans and Guptas have left behind some of the best sculpture ever created. However paintings from those times have obviously not survived. At a much later age the Mughals gave rise to the Mughal Rajput miniature paintings which according to one authority” is a remarkable synthesis between the imported tastes of the Mughals and the indigenous Indian sensibility.” We saw many pa...

It is the long weekend here in Malaysia. The Chinese New Year is a big festival here. I remember watching dragon dances in Kolkata in my younger days when there was a large and vibrant Chinese population in Kolkata. Even today, I am told the New Year is celebrated with great fervour in Tangra, but ever since the heart of Chinatown moved out from central Kolkata, I have really lost track of it. Mummy’s Kitchen is now a memory; the many evenings we spent eating out there for practically nothing now part of a Kolkata that is now like a fading photograph. The last time I was there, the Chinese temple still existed, and the school also seemed to be functioning, I wonder if it still does. Those of us who spent the seventies and the eighties as students, interns, housemen and postgraduates in the Medical College of Bengal will know what I am talking about. When I returned to my alma mater as part of the staff in the nineties I realized that the Chinatown had shifted its focus from Central ...

So, what seemed inevitable over the past few weeks has happened, Bark Obama has won the elections and will be USA’s first (half) Black President. The newspapers and the websites are full of the historical significance of the victory. It is significant, no doubt, in many ways. He had to defeat the Democratic Party machine which was all for Hillary Clinton, and then the Republicans. What with the popularity (or otherwise) of George Bush and the economic crisis, this was the easier battle. If we read today’s newspapers, it would appear that we are at the dawn of a new era where Aslan will rule and all will be well in the Kingdom of Narnia. However before being carried away by the euphoria, let us draw some lessons from history. The last time that a US Presidential election caused such a hullabaloo was when a peanut farmer from Georgia won the elections. No matter what sort of person he may have been, Jimmy Carter was a lousy president. He also presided over a decline of the liberals that...