Patrick's South Asia Diary

Primark Sacks Indian Suppliers

2008-06-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

Good to see in the Grauniad today that clothes giant Primark have sacked three suppliers in Tamil Nadu for using child labour, after being alerted to the siuation by the BBC. But this is just a drop in the ocean. Although there is a great deal of legislation in Indian law to prevent child labour, even the most cursory look at the Indian economy shows that child labour is an entrenched part of work practices across India.
I was always struck by the defeatism of my friends when I talked about the subject. Nothing can be done, it is too unmanageable. And I can see how people become oblivious to the problem. After about six months of living in Calcutta I eventually became numb to the amount of kids working in all kinds of businesses. It just becomes part of life. And, yes of course there are the arguments that people put forward about child labour. Like the one that says that many families need their children to work in order to survive, and that police are sometimes reluctant to harass families on the issue of their children working. Well, police seem pretty keen on harassing kids at train stations throughout India, so I don't see how these sadists suddenly develop a conscience when it comes to the parents.
Sorry, none of these arguments rub. It is an indefensible aspect of Indian society. It is not an unmanageable problem, all it takes is a bit of political willpower. Getting all the public transport in Delhi to run on carbon neutral gas must have seemed an insurmountable task when it was first suggested, but that happened, and Delhi's air is among the most bearable of any of the subcontinent's big cities.
I

India Backs Obama

2008-06-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

A surprise when I first came to India was how keen many colleagues and friends were on George W Bush. I had taken it for granted that there was a global common consensus that this guy was pretty disastrous all round. But not for India. Indeed, Dubya has been one of the friendliest presidents to India in living memory. Long gone are the spikey days when India was a bellicose leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement, a time when America despairingly sent all of her top diplomats to New Delhi only for them to be frustrated, confounded and rebuffed by Indira Gandhi and friends.
But this fascinating (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Sunday_Specials/Special_Report/McCain_vs_Obama_Whos_better_for_India/articleshow/msid-3110215,curpg-1.cms) Sunday piece in the Times of India on the upcoming presidential election seems to suggest that Barack Obama is the new darling of Indian Americans and their friends at home. This is a remarkable change in attitude towards the Democrats by Indians. In 2004, John Kerry was largely reviled by Indians, who were deeply worried about Kerry's hostility to outsourcing service industries to India. From an Indian perspective, it seemed that the Democrats were determined to put paid to India's economic progress. By contrast, George Bush and the Republicans were widely liked because it was thought that they were more open to diplomatic and economic partnerships with India. Certainly, the Bush administration recognised the new geo-political importance of India, a crucial democratic hinge between the deeply turbulent Islamic world to the west and the ever present elephant in the room that is communist China to the east. The dead (but not buried) Indo-US nuclear deal is proof of Bush's recognition of India's importance.

Chinand Rajghatta's TOI piece suggests that Indians both at home and in the US are getting swept up by the wave of feeling that Obama's candidacy has provoked. The fact that Obama has had experience of the subcontinent away from the anti-septic experience that is a state or official visit seems to have been viewed favourably by Indians generally. Unlike the Republican party's habit (and John McCain included) of sucking up to unpleasant Middle Eastern regimes, Obama is plain that he holds the leadership in countries such as Saudi Arabia in low regard.
Of course, Indians hold the concern that many Americans do; Obama represents a change, but what will that change be like? All his foreign policy noises are positive - if a little hazy - from an Indian perspective.

Looking Through The Hype

2008-06-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

This is an article that I wrote for New Age in Bangladesh. It'll probably provoke a few angry emails from Indian friends, but I hope they see the wider point.

Looking through the hype

INDIA’S cricket team, it is fair to say, have been victims of their own hype in the past few years. Like football in England, Indian cricket’s financial orgy has had a very specific effect on the national team. The team – and indeed much of the nation – have come to the conclusion that the national side’s ability to play decent cricket is directly proportional to the number of brand endorsements each of the players have, and how many crudely triumphalist adverts can be wedged into TV airtime. There is a belief that vast sums of money and a great deal of pomp can replace good organisation and infrastructure as a means to success. That illusion was shattered when India, after one of the most sustained and mind numbing media campaigns in the history of sport, were unceremoniously dumped out of last year’s cricket World Cup in the first round. This exercise in collective delusion would be amusing, were it not symptomatic of a wider delusion: India’s economic miracle.

Certainly, India’s economy has never been more relevant or exciting. India is not grabbing headlines and magazine covers for no reason. But like the nation’s boys in blue, it looks as if India’s government and business community believe their own hype, and are hence doing little to lay the foundations of an evenly developed society. At present there is no society on earth that bares naked inequality on such a grand scale as India. The country’s economic boom is restricted to a few tiny pockets of ferocious prosperity. But between the much trumped renaissance of cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai lies a nation of 800 million people who still live in abject poverty. Take Mumbai as an example. If you take a train only two hours from Victoria Terminus you will find yourself in impoverished rural Maharashtra, where suicide rates among farmers are among the highest in Asia, if not the world.

Only two sections of Indian society are profiting from this boom: the established business classes, for whom the boom means widescreen TVs and more holidays abroad, and the English-medium educated middle classes, who instead of entering the civil service, now spend their days and nights in call centres being shouted at by irate western bank customers. None of this new-found wealth disseminates to the nation’s hidden majority. As if this social inequality were not enough, the pitiable lack of investment in the most basic infrastructure will hobble India’s chances of becoming a superpower. Bangalore, the nation’s IT town, can barely provide an adequate electricity supply to its ever expanding hi-tech legions. The city’s road system is creaking under the combination of vastly increased volumes of traffic and no initiatives to try and solve this growing problem.

India also seems to take curious barometers as signs of development. Much has been made in the press recently of Tata’s acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover. This purchase has been heralded as a great sign of the times, an Indian corporation taking over a classic British brand. But did it make much business sense? After Ford’s failure to make a profit with the Jaguar brand, it seemed like only a madman would take on a financial albatross like Jaguar. But that is not the point: it is the symbolism that is important.

Many times have I heard Indians cite the sharp rise in mobile phone use as a sign of progress. And it is true that mobile phone companies (and the Reliance group in particular) have revolutionised communications in the country. Furthermore, the mobile phone boom is remarkable because a huge spectrum of Indian society has been empowered by it. Ten years ago such a development would have been unthinkable. But is there not something deeply awry in a nation where the same millions who have been empowered by the mobile phone are dogged by unreliable electricity supplies, and a chronic and widespread lack of potable water?

On broader a state-to-state basis, development is also appallingly lopsided. Eastern states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Orissa are notoriously poor and a far cry from economic powerhouses such as Gujarat. Even within economically successful states there are terrible social problems. Andhra Pradesh may boast the remarkable success of its capital Hyderabad, but it is also one of the main bastions of India’s Maoist insurgency that Manmohan Singh branded as ‘the greatest internal threat to national security.’ How has this political anachronism survived in ‘Shining India’? The existence of such a movement illustrates how removed the rural poor are from the development of the state. If there was even the most minimal of investment into rural areas, groups such as the Maoists would be instantly discredited. This is a battle that needs to be fought through development, rather than through the gun, which it currently is. Moreover, India’s underdeveloped heartland boasts a lower quality of life than many of its poorer neighbours. Recent research by the international charity Save the Children showed that infant mortality rates in India are not only higher than in Bangladesh, even without the meteoric economic growth that India has seen in the past decade, the latter has achieved deeper cuts in infant mortality.

The conditions that have made India’s economic growth possible thus far are an English speaking labour force who work long hours for a fraction of the cost of their counterparts in the west. The issue of language has been up until now as the one major advantage that India has had over China. But this can be – and is – rapidly changing, as Chinese youngsters are learning English, and as youngsters from other nations around the world are learning Mandarin and Cantonese in record numbers. An English speaking China, with its even, steady development would fast become a more attractive destination.

In addition, the same logic that dictated that it made business sense to shift operations from the west to India may in turn boomerang on India. It is not inconceivable that English speaking nations in Africa such as Ghana, Tanzania or even Uganda could – in the not-too-distant future – be just an attractive proposition for businesses seeking a cheap labour force.

India’s desire to run before it can walk is wholly understandable after years as one of the world’s largest economic hermits. But it must make sure that the money earned in this boom is invested in development throughout the country, and not just in the tiny electronic islands of profit that have fuelled this current boom.

Patrick Pringle is a freelance journalist and writes for New Age from London

Nepal's Monarchy as 'The End' Credits Scroll

2008-05-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

And so, after 240 years, the Hindu monarchy who ruled Nepal have finally been purged from their undereducated, underinvested and astoundingly beautiful country. Nepalis have suffered a beserk and horrific decade, defined by civil war and the chronic instability that comes gift wrapped with a low intensity insurgency. Like every monarchy that does not give piecemeal concession, the Bentley driving, gun toting ruling family headed by King Gyanendrahas found itself replaced by a government that will not hold truck with them even remaining figureheads in the most neutered of capacities. The Nepalis are absolute in their conviction that this most absolute of dynasties should go.
While states such as Sikkim and Arunachel Pradesh were squabbled over for hundreds of years by the British Raj, the Chinese and the modern Indian state, Nepal (like its altogether more sleepy neighbour Bhutan) remained in splendid isolation. Barring a savage war in the early 19 century against the British, Nepal has remained untouched by outside forces. But outside forces are not all aggressive; some can be beneficial. While ethnic Nepalis in India (most importantly in North Bengal) participated for the first time in a democratic process, their brothers on the other side of the border were still subject to the grotesque whims of a king that was believed to be an incarnation Vishnu.
Such a society - an ancien regime of the highest calibre - was a ripe environment for Maoism to germinate. The rise of the hard left in North Bengal and an influx of Chinese funding was to prove crucial for the development of the Nepali Maoist movement.
Now they have won power and exchanged 'the bullet for the ballot', the Maoists have been given agency by the people to govern responsibly. Will they do so? My major fear is that the basic nature of Maosim may prevent any real change being instigated. Maosim is just as steeped in authoritarian sentiment as an absolute monarchy. It would be a terrible betrayal of the purpose of that long and bloody civil war if basic freedoms were once again denied to the Nepali people.

Akash Kapur in Granta 101

2008-05-28T04:57:00.000-07:00

There is a rather brilliant piece in Granta 101 by Indian writer Akash Kapur about the destruction of the beach in and around Pondicherry (or Puducherry, as it has rather pointlessly been renamed recently) as a result of the local government's blind lust to 'modernise' the former French port at the cost of the local environment, and the fishermen who have happily coexisted within the ecosystem for centuries.
The Pondicherry government expanded the port greatly in the 1980s, and the result for beaches in the area was disastrous. The combination of this cack-handed planning and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami is that the fishermen who live along South India's once-idyllic beaches now fight to keep their homes from the water, and have to use improvised catamarans just to reach their fishing boats that once upon a time rested on the beach at the end of the day.
Kapur describes one fascinating and rather sad interview he conducted with the a woman in a village called Chinnamudaliarchavadi, I include this particular section as it reminds me of my own visit (particularly about the NGOs) to the areas hit by Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh,

"Valli says several villagers have already lost their homes to the erosion. The week before I spoke with her, the electricity pole in front of her hut had fallen into the ocean. After the tsunami, the village was crowded with government welfare officers and representatives of international NGOs. They all promised help; they promised her a new home. Nothing came of those promises. In front of her hut, men are erecting a fence of palm-tree logs. Even as they work, the waters crash right through."

The Latest Cheerleader Scandal

2008-05-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

It is saddening to hear the all too believable allegations that arose last week about two black British cheerleader's being asked to sit out at a match between Mohali and Chennai, because their skin was 'too dark'. Wizcraft International Entertainment, the event management company who are responsible for the IPL have to date flatly denied that any such incident took place. If I were a betting man, I place big money on there being no satisfactory conclusion to this incident. And when that happens, it would be suitably emblematic of the hypocritical racism that is embedded across all strata of Indian society.
I have heard good friends of mine in India who consider themselves to be liberal say excruciating things about Africans. The handful of Africans who played football in Calcutta's clubs were largely ostracised and subject to occasional outbursts of abuse. Many (but of course not all) Indians seem to work under the deeply misguided assumption that as 'people of colour' (i.e not white) they are somehow incapable of a racist thought or action, and either become outraged or flatly deny a suggestion that this may be the case.
As the Indian economy develops, so Indian society will garner more attention, and naturally will be subject to greater scrutiny by the international community. This means that India's moral compass has to realign itself to global standards at the same rate that its economy is. There is a danger that if more high profile examples (and even allegations are damaging) crop up, then India might end up becoming synonymous with bigotry. Australia, for example, has gained a reputation (both fairly and unfairly) for racial prejudice that is proving very hard to shake. India must ensure that its society does not end up eliciting similar connotations.

Why The IPL Is The Way Forward

2008-05-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

Last week the cricket lover had the opportunity to enjoy two very contrasting experiences. The first was to listen to Henry Blofeld and Jonathan Agnew witter away on BBC Test Match Special as New Zealand and England played out a weather ruined Test. Its a comforting but slightly disappointing experience. It felt like the sporting equivalent of eating my mother's quite brilliant spaghetti carbonara, albeit at a slightly lukewarm temperature.
The second was to watch the impossibly exciting encounter between Punjab Kings XI and the rather unimaginatively named Mumbai Indians. It was a genuine one run thriller (Scorecard: http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ipl/engine/current/match/336028.html) with all the drama that one expects from a competition that has brought in male and female cheerleaders into the mix.
In England we should be embarrassed at our current non-participation. We are trying to defy the tides of change in cricket with our worrying Canute-style rejection of the IPL. We look like snobs and fools for not involving and improving our players in the IPL. The future of cricket (in whatever form it may be) is in India: it has the money, the pools of talent and crucially the obsession that we so sorely lack in England.
I have greatly enjoyed every IPL game I have seen (although I'm saddened to see Kolkata lose the plot so badly), and the well worn prediction that this will be the Packer-factor of this cricketing generation is now an inevitability as far as I am concerned.

Radical Islam's War on the Bangladeshi State

2008-05-21T06:45:00.001-07:00

I just thought I'd post up a magnificent article by Mahtab Haider, a senior journalist on Dhaka's New Age newspaper. When I stayed with Mahtab in March it was it quite obvious that the Islamist movement in Bangladesh was growing in momentum. It was increasingly apparent that any thug with a white cap and a beard instantly had some kind of moral authority over everyone else, which at least to these eyes was a little glib and disconcerting.

Radical Islam's War on the State

by Mahtab Haider

The actions of the radical Islamists have repeatedly shown that their fight is against the state itself – the principles that the Bangladeshi state currently embodies – and they are going about it by establishing an alternative state within the state as the route to state capture, writes Mahtab Haider

In years to come, political scientists charting a course of the meteoric rise of radical political Islam in Bangladesh will possibly note the clashes between the police and the Islamists on April 11, and the consequent government climbdown on the issue of gender parity, as one among a series of tell-tale signs of things to come that the country’s progressive forces chose to remain in denial about.

Three weeks ago, while all eyes were on the Baitul Mukarram mosque as radical Islamists fought pitched battles with riot police for over three hours, the message of the day was successfully delivered in Chittagong. That evening and the next morning, the Dhaka protests that had seen over 100 injured dominated the news. The news, of course, was anecdotal, as it should be. Unfortunately, so were the analyses on the editorial pages of the media and the talk shows. As people understood it, the government had framed a policy that sought to establish the constitutional right of equality for women, and the Islamists were protesting certain clauses that they deemed to be against the principles of the Quran. Ostensibly this is interpreted as an ages-old struggle between two opposing forces in society; that between conservatism and progress. Not quite. This conflict was loaded with a symbolic significance that was better represented by the press photos that emerged from the clashes, rather than the news. If a single photograph could symbolise the terms of reference of the struggle to establish radical Islam in Bangladesh, it was the one which depicted a police constable in riot gear scrambling on all fours as a couple of Islamist activists beat him with sticks and the shotgun seized from him at the gates of the Baitul Mukarram. The three elements represented in this photograph are the state in the form of its law enforcer, the Islamic establishment in the form of the national mosque, and the radical Islamist movement in the form of its cadre. The conclusion is straightforward enough.

The disquieting reality is that the radical political Islamist movement in Bangladesh is playing for higher stakes than greater social influence. As their actions, be they on the Ahmediya issue, the persistence of the fatwa, or the aim to enforce the Sharia code have repeatedly shown, their fight is against the state itself, ie the principles that the Bangladeshi state currently embodies, and they are going about it by establishing an alternative state within the state as the route to state capture.

That Friday, several battalions of riot police had barricaded the national mosque before the Jummah prayers expecting violence from religious right-wing groups united under the banner of Committee Against Anti-Quranic Laws. This amorphous committee nominally led by a section of the smaller Islamist parties, but no doubt backed by the religious-right establishment, were demanding that the government scrap its development policy on women. The government had been on the retreat on the women’s policy issue from the very first day since it was announced. As radical clerics erroneously renounced its ‘anti-Islamic’ inheritance laws, a clutch of senior advisers were falling over each other to offer palliatives that their cabinet would never legislate laws that went against the Quran.

The violence started minutes after prayers broke, when the front row of the procession suddenly tore forward and attacked the policemen escorting them alongside. As the afternoon progressed, wave after wave of brickbats from inside the national mosque landed on barricaded police battalions.

Even as this was happening, students from the Hathazari Boro Madrassah in Chittagong stormed the local police station, injuring 30, including five policemen, and set fire to a number of vehicles. The evidence at hand suggests this was not a spontaneous act of retaliation as the students who barricaded the road and ransacked the police station were armed with sticks and metal rods.

In both instances, a police force that has shown an incredible capacity for brutality be it in cowing protests by garment workers demanding higher wages, or in bludgeoning pro-democracy university students into silence, showed surprising restraint. At the Baitul Mukarram, as the rank and file of the police repeatedly attempted to enter the mosque compound, or at least fire tear gas shells into the crowds thronging the steps of the mosque and hurling brickbats, and even taunting the police, their high-ranking officers waved them back. The police took a heavy beating and yet were not provoked into retaliating with force. The terms of engagement were set by the Islamists; they controlled when the clashes would start, how far they would take the violence, when they would end, and how they would end it. The police were designated the roles of spectator and collateral damage in equal parts.

On the very outset, it is important to point out that protests by radical Islamists have been a routine feature since this military-controlled interim government came to power last year. In the past fifteen months, on various grounds and under various banners, such groups have hijacked the national mosque as a central base for their violence, implied or real. Even as a repressive state of emergency has denied the right of public gatherings to every other section of society, (even the sector commanders of the War of Independence were at least twice denied permission to hold their convention), the Islamists have enjoyed impunity in this regard. Week after week they have gathered in front of the national mosque and resorted to violence, be it over an allegedly ‘anti-Islam’ cartoon in a national daily, or the Danish cartoons, and now the women’s policy.

There is also little reason to believe that these obscurantist radicals do not realise that the women’s policy that the government has framed clearly falls short of the constitutional guarantee of equality and affirmative action that women are accorded in Bangladesh. A reworking of the women’s development policy in line with Quranic interpretations is not the end; it is the means to a greater end. In a nutshell, this was not a religious fight – this was part of a political fight to increasingly establish radical Islam in the political arena at a time when other political parties have been beaten back by the government. These radicals are using their religious garb and the authority of the national mosque to mobilise public opinion in favour of their crude, divisive, and violent politics, while enjoying the carte blanche that the state has traditionally granted to men of the cloth. Gathering in thousands to say the Friday prayers is a social act that can remain beyond the ambit of the emergency power rules, but holding rallies outside the mosque, attacking the police, and ransacking a police station, damaging and setting fire to cars, and demanding the resignation of the women’s affairs adviser are all political acts that the present government has not only allowed to carry on week after week, it has appeased and pandered to the perpetrators.

While a senior adviser to the government warned on Thursday (April 17) that any further protests at the Baitul Mukarram would be tackled with an iron fist, this was empty rhetoric given that the government had already buckled under pressure and agreed to delete key goals of the original draft, as it subsequently emerged. The radical clerics that had led the movement milked that victory for what it was worth. The April 18 rally, ie the one planned for the Friday after the first clashes, was called off that afternoon, not because the government had tightened security, not because the police had cordoned off the mosque, but because the government had submitted to their demands, thousands of activists were told through a PA system outside the national mosque.

While this movement is the latest manifestation of the Islamist radical movement’s war against the state and the constitution, over the past decade signs of this struggle have repeatedly surfaced. One of the decisive features of a functioning state is its authority to enforce the law that citizen’s representatives have legislated through parliament. The other decisive feature of the nation state is the monopoly on legal violence that it exercises. These two features imply that the state’s laws as embodied by the constitution and criminal codes are the only enforceable law governing the citizens, and that only the state’s law enforcers can commit legal violence (governed by guidelines). In the past decade, a host of religious-right movements have chipped away at both these jurisdictions of the Bangladeshi state, while at the same time erecting their own superstructure of morality, legality, and legal violence which competes with the country’s laws.

Take the issue of the Ahmediyas for instance. In line with similar movements seen in Pakistan, a section of the radical Islamists launched a movement in 2003 to have the followers of the Ahmediya sect of Islam declared ‘non-Muslim’ by the state. Scores of Ahmediya homes and mosques were attacked by bands of militant Islamists, another amorphous group united under an anti-Ahmediya banner, who desecrated those places of religious worship and violently beat up followers of the sect across the country. At the peak of that movement, just as it happened recently, the bigots started gathering outside the Ahmediya Central Mosque in Nakhalpara in Dhaka every Friday after jummah prayers, and barricaded the road, damaging cars, attacking the police, while the government of the day pandered to them. In fact, the four-party alliance government led by Khaleda Zia went so far as to ban all Ahmediya religious publications on January 8, 2004, a day before the radicals’ ultimatum to the government was to expire. This despite the fact that the state as envisioned by the Bangladesh constitution not only guarantees religious freedom, it also denies itself a jurisdiction to judge who can be deemed to belong to a faith.

As the state stood by and watched, these anti-Ahmediya bigots not only perpetrated violence to deny religious freedom guaranteed by the state, they pushed the state to be party to that violation and claimed the moral high ground in the name of religion when their bidding was done. A New Age editorial reacting to the 2004 ban reads: ‘The result, at this point, is that the country has been told in no uncertain terms that the practice of faith could or will henceforth be determined by the influence some self-proclaimed defenders of religious belief may bring to bear on the powers that be.’

In similar vein, radical clerics have time and again issued fatwas which compete with the state in claiming legal authority. When the religious establishment claims a moral authority to judge crimes and award punishment, they are by implication also claiming the legal authority to do so as has been the case with the fatwa. Such acts clearly undermine the laws framed by the state, and worse still the entire judicial system that is an integral part of the state.

The case of Bangla Bhai and Shaikh Abdur Rahman of the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh makes for an ideal, if extreme, example of how the politics of opportunism has seen the religious radicals even chip away at the monopoly that the state exercises on violence.

The JMB came into prominence in northern Bangladesh in 2005 with the summary executions and public beatings that its cadre carried out in Rajshahi’s Baghmara district. It has eventually emerged that the alliance government of the day – who initially labelled the JMB as a figment of the media’s imagination – had used the JMB as a counter-terror organisation against the ultra-radical leftists in the area whose own campaign of terror and kidnappings was becoming politically costly. Of course, while the BNP-Jamaat regime thought they were using the JMB to carry out the law and order responsibilities of the state, it was actually the radical Islamists who used that government to appropriate the state’s legal and moral authority in the area, and terrifyingly, even the state’s monopoly on violence.

What happened consequently in Baghmara is symbolic of what will happen to Bangladesh if these radicals carry on in their current trajectory. Political clout of top ministers of the then regime allowed the Shaikh and Bangla Bhai to even use the local police force in their ‘law enforcement’ activities (police jeeps were used to cart ‘detainees’ to torture camps) and the local police chief was seen accompanying the duo during public executions. Locals, meanwhile, paid toll (or taxes) to the JMB and its cadre, and anyone who refused to do so had their property appropriated, their women raped, their houses ransacked. Hundreds of residents of Baghmara and the neighbouring villages were whipped and clubbed, sometimes to death, for failing to show up at the mosque for prayers, for being associated with the rival Awami League, and even for failing to have an Islamic beard. In a nutshell, Bangla Bhai and Shaikh Abdur Rahman became the 'state' in Baghmara – controlling every authority that the state exercises. While it may have been politically expedient for the BNP-Jamaat regime to sponsor this Islamist terrorist militia, what it had really done was cede state authority to them.

The JMB was an experiment of the radical Islamist movement in Bangladesh which failed, possibly because it grew so fast and became so strong that the very government which had provided it succour realised the political damage it was causing to them. But just like its Hindu right-wing counterpart in India, the Islamist religious right in Bangladesh is a hydra-headed monster, with faces for every occasion. There are the mainstream political faces which nominally accept the constitution and participate in parliamentary elections, there are the civil society faces which are active in charity and respond to humanitarian disasters, there are the non-violent social movement faces, and there are the radical faces which attack Ahmediya mosques or execute men based on their faith.

Since independence, successive governments have allowed the immunity of the white cap to run roughshod on the constitution and the principles that it espouses. Governments have time and again sought to achieve cheap popularity by treating the political agenda of these radicals as ‘sensitive’ on religious grounds, and have thus ceded the spaces that the state should occupy to the clerics who represent these movements. The fight is a political fight, and is being fought on various fronts, on television, in the universities, at the mosques, and in society, where religion is being used as a tool by the obscurantists for state capture. A weak state on any one of these fronts will have costly consequences.
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This piece is published in the 26 April edition of New Age

Don't Do It, Fatima!

2008-05-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

I'm sure many of you read the cover story for the Sunday Times Magazine last weekend, if not then here's a link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3932406.ece. I finally got round to reading it, and it is a blinder.
In a predictably expertly written feature William Dalrymple looks at the mind boggling feud that has been simmering in Pakistan's Bhutto dynasty, with Fatima Bhutto, the 25 year-old daughter of Murtaza Bhutto (who was shot by police - most probably on the orders of Benazir and her husband and current PPP chairman Asif Ali Zardari) acting as the anchor for the story.
I think that westerners often look at the absurd family feuds, improbably destructive shootouts and unbelievably convoluted plots that emanate out of Bollywood, and think that people in this part of the world like to indulge in fantasy in their trips to the cinema. After reading the article, most Bollywood plots appear as innocuous as half an hour of Neighbours.
The most extraordinary part is the alleged 'moustache shaving incident' that kicked off this almighty round of bloodshed:

"In view of their worsening relations, Murtaza is said to have rung Zardari and invited him for a chat at the Bhutto headquarters, 70 Clifton. It was agreed he should come without bodyguards, in order that the two might meet privately and try to settle their differences. Zardari agreed. But as the two men were walking through the garden, Murtaza’s guards suddenly appeared and grabbed Zardari. Murtaza took out a cut-throat razor, and after slowly sharpening it, personally shaved off half of Zardari’s moustache. Then he threw him out the house. A furious Zardari, who had presumably feared much worse than a shave, was compelled to remove the other half of his moustache once he got home."

Can you imagine Carol Thatcher ordering the death of Mark Thatcher in a deadly power struggle for the soul of the Conservative party? And then being blown up by the IRA after returning from years in exile? That is essentially what is happening in Pakistan.

And then we come to Fatima, the niece of Benazir and the daughter of Murtaza and Fauzia Fasihudin, the beautiful daughter of one of Afghanistan's top military brass during the Soviet era. Like all the young Bhuttos who grew up during General Zia's military rule, she has barely spent any time in Pakistan, and has a fairly sketchy knowledge of Urdu, having divided her time between Syria, Britain and America. She is obviously very bright and urbane, having spent the last few years denouncing her aunt in various newspapers in Pakistan and abroad. She will no doubt come into conflict with Bilawal Bhutto, the rather gormless son of Benazir and Zerdari, who the latter is grooming for the top job in the PPP. The intimation that she wants to play a central role in the party is obvious in the article, but she should, at least to these eyes walk away from the whole fiasco. For her to become involved in the fray is totally understandable, but surely she can see that she is signing her own death warrant?

"In Pakistan we live with this historical amnesia,” she tells Dalrymple “Such are the difficulties of the present that there is a strong urge to forget those of the past. But there are those of us who are not willing to forget." I fear that Fatima is also suffering a kind of amnesia if she thinks she will emerge unscathed from such an adventure.

Jaipur Blasts

2008-05-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

Another year, another set of blasts in India. This time in that most tourist-oriented of cities, Jaipur.
Plainly, this is the work of Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (L-e-T), designed to not let India forget that the old issue of Kashmir still rumbles on. Just as the Mumbai blasts on the suburban railways a couple of years ago were designed to bring India's financial centre to it's knees, and the blasts at Varanasi before that, so these blasts - situated outside a packed Hindu temple in the city of the monkey god Hanuman - are designed to inflame religious sentiments and deter tourism in that time honoured tradition that L-e-T have proved themselves particularly adept at doing.
The situation may not be as intractable as some may think. If the Indian Army did not leave themselves open to such frequent accusations of brutality in Kashmir, then these blasts may prove to be less frequent. But this works both ways; President Musharraf has a responsibility to actually do something genuinely pro-active about L-e-T, who - according to Indian ministers - have worked very closely with the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence. Just how much control he actually has over the heavily Islamist infiltrated ISI is debatable, but he could start by stopping issuing these smirking denials every time a bomb goes off in India.

A New Colonialism?

2008-04-22T03:08:00.000-07:00

Ever since I first came across Mother Teresa's cult-like followers in Calcutta, I have been sceptical of charity and NGO work. Indeed, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity managed to turn a city that was previously famous for the poetry and prose of Rabindranath Tagore and the extraordinary cinema of Satyajit Ray into a place only notable in the international eye for becoming philanthropy's equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Mother Teresa opened the door for every kind of paternalistic vulgarity and sentimentality that is practised in Calcutta in the name of charity. On top of which, not only does her influential organisation preach a strictly anti-contraception policy in a city with a savage HIV rate, but it has also in the past taken money from a whole host of grim dictators such as Manuel Noriega. Read Christopher Hitchens' brilliant The Missionary Position for more on that outrage.

But Calcutta's servility to charity is nothing compared to Bangladesh. I came back last night from five days spent in the villages that were devastated by Cyclone Sidr last November. The entire south-west district of Bagerhat has become a kind of macabre playground for the world's charities and development organistions. Disasters on Sidr's scale happen only once every twenty years, so the pressure for the charities to get in there and make their mark is huge. And so they appeared on November 18 last year, with 'The Ride of the Valkyries' heralding their arrival.

Apart from the thick palm trees that were skittled onto their side in the cyclone, it is the NGO branding that next strikes the visitor. The charities leave their mark - a painted mural or billboard wherever they go - reminding the people of Bagerhat just how lucky they are. This well was built thanks to Oxfam. That water pump was constructed in association with Muslim Aid UK. These water filters were provided by the European Union. Every basic amenity in the village is branded aggressively.

And what of the people who work in these organisations? It is a mixture of foreigners who work at a management level, and locals who do the grunt work. The foreigners, speed around the district's dirt tracks in air conditioned SUVs inspecting schools, where classes are interrupted on his arrival. The brightest, cutest kid in the class recites a Bangla poem for the visitor, who then have their photograph taken with the class.

While I was in Bagerhat, I was reading Burmese Days, George Orwell's, first broadside against imperialism. It was suitable reading. Certainly, the foreigners may not beat the locals, and they may not have European-only clubs, but the white man's burden is still very much a feature of south Asia's landscape. The local workers still treat the European management with an embarrassing deference.

Where might you ask is the government in all this fanfare? Are they no longer responsible for their own citizens? It seems not, for the Bangladeshi government was given $100 million by the Saudi Arabian government (51% of all international aid) for reconstruction after the cyclone, not a penny of which has actually been spent in the razed areas of Bagerhat, Barguna and Pathuakhali.

Adeel Khan, a stern, sincerely religious man who has been doing grunt work for Oxfam was furious at the lack of action by the government. "I was at a meeting with the Deputy Commissioner of Bagerhat district last night. I asked where the money was. It has been nearly six months since the money was given to the Bangladeshi government! He said it would take many more months. But the monsoon is coming in a few weeks, and it will be impossible to do any work then. He then tried to blame the NGOs for the bad situation."

The Indian government also pledged to help reconstruct 16 of the worst hit villages. This has not happened. Katachera, a settlement that was once a village on the shores of the Bay of Bengal is one of the places that the Indian government claimed they would assist. The settlement's landscape is surreal. It looks rather like a European music festival, with tents and mud and rubbish dotted around a gentle slope. These tents are the emergency shelters distributed last November. They have not even received any corrugated iron with which to build any kind of permanent shelter.

Since then the people of Katachera have received two aid packages from the Bangladeshi government. One 15kg delivery of rice, and a further 10kg delivery a month later. A pathetic gesture. I ask Mohammed Rustum Mullick, a fisherman who survived the cyclone by hanging onto a tree with his son and daughter pinned under him when he expects to recieve any further help. He looked vague and sad and said he expected some kind of help but no promises have been followed up on yet.

The situation at Katachera is illustrative of a further mismanagement that is endemic in Bagerhat district. The NGOs, in their race to make their mark on Bengal's landscape failed to make sure that there was an equal distribution of aid. There was no coordination between the competing agencies. Consequently, many of the most affected villages closest to the coast such as Katachera have received very little help, while more accessible villages further inland have been inundated with aid.

The greatest problem with this mass invasion of philanthropists, however, is that in the long run successive corrupt governments like those in Bangladesh are let off the hook time and again by aid and development agencies. They disassociate themselves of any responsibility for Bangladesh's urban and rural underclasses. That is something that the NGOs look after. The crisis becomes a distant thunder for the government.

This culture of charity strips people of their rights. It is a government's duty to look after it's own citizens, and it is a right of the citizen to expect that duty to be carried out. But there are no rights when charities are involved, they are simply lucky, and are expected to be grateful.

Dhaka's Garment Workers

2008-04-22T03:05:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I met the makers of most of my shirts, a few pairs of my trousers and many pairs of my boxer shorts in Begunbari, one of Dhaka's largest slums. Begunbari is an illegal settlement near the city's main industrial area. At least one member of every family out the thousands that live in the slum are involved in the garment manufacturing industry. The vast majority of the people in Begunari are migrant labourers from Sonagar,an impoverished district a couple of hours from Dhaka.

Begunbari is a beserk exercise in contortion and improvisation. The entire settlement is raised above the ground on 15 foot high bamboo poles, with narrow, rickety walkways connecting sheds made of corrugated iron and zinc. Ilegally tapped electricity is conveyed through bare wires eight foot above the walkways. Beneath the walkways is a swamp of mud, sewage and and any kind of waste that cannot be recycled. The only structure of any substance in the slum is the mosque.

Hard times are the standard in Begunbari, but recently times have gotten even harder with the recent jump in food prices. A year ago a kilo of rice cost Tk 20 . Last year's crop failure and the devastating effects of Cyclone Sidr have caused a national rice shortage that has resulted in today's prices of around Tk 45, an impossible figure for families at the bottom of society. Bangladesh is now almost entirely dependent on expensive rice imported from India

When rice prices rise, every aspect of life in Begunbari is affected. Abu, a vegetable seller says "I have had to raise prices in order to feed my family. People have been getting quite aggressive towards me because of the rise in prices. I feel bad, but there is nothing that I can do."
Mohammed, who owns a rice store says "everybody thinks that I am profiting at the moment, but that is not true. Because everybody's money is going on rice nobody is buying anything else. I am not profiting"
It is new born children however, that are most affected by the rise in rice prices. Virtually every woman that I spoke to said that they could no longer afford milk for their young. Instead they now feed their children a cheaper alternative that is not dissimilar from a kind of thin semolina.
The women were keenly aware that the milk substitute stunts the growth of their children, but they have to spend the large portion of their food budget on members of the family who are doing hard physical labour. This usually means that fathers and sons get the lion's share of the food, while daughters and young children eat virtually nothing in the current circumstances.

And what of the work? Most of the garment factory workers are women. Their husbands tend to do shifts on rickshaws or sell fish or vegetables in the slum's market. The women who make clothes for high street brands such a Gap and H&M recount a wide variety of experiences in the garment factories. Some work in relatively responsible factories, such as Chinese Garments that provides a creche and milk for the children of the women working, and will pay around Tk3000 (around 40GBP) per month, a handsome salary by the slum's standards. But wherever they work, the hours are excruciating. Most work from seven in the morning until eight
at night every day of the week except friday.
And then, of course, there are some terrible tales. We met 30 years old woman who was worked so hard in a garment factory that she developed a chronic back problem, and is now unable to walk. Her family saved up Tk300 and went to see a doctor. Between fits of weeping she recalls how the doctor said that the operation she required would cost Tk5000, a sum of money so indecently fantastical that she has given up hope of ever walking again.
Members of her family now see her as a kind of extra child, who although loved is increasingly resented. "I have seen on TV that NGOs can pay for treatment like mine, but nobody that I have spoken to so far can help" she says.

The journalist who took me to Begunbari was, I was comforted to see, just as appalled by this spectacularly dreadful story. "I don't really know what to say" she said. Indeed, what does one say? Have hope? Things will get better? No, it would be a terrible lie. We give a pathetic smile, thank her for her time and leave the shed.

As if the people of Begunbari's predicament were not grotesque enough, the slum is due for demolition later in the month. They have had several threating visits from the government's beastly Rapid Action Battalion a paramilitary outfit that elicits such intense fear among the the people of Begunbari that they feel they have no option but to comply.
But the greatest fear for the people of Begunbari is not state sponsered thuggery, it is the prospect of missing a few days work during the eviction. The employers at the garment factories don't listen to excuses, they simply sack and replace.
Some will stay in Dhaka, and end up living on the pavements, while others will head to their home villages before returning to the big city to prostrate themselves before their employers, hoping that that they will be allowed to sink back into their daily rhythm of hunger and explotation.

RAB

2008-04-22T03:03:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoons in Dhaka are when people relax. Lots of Dhakans finish the day of rest by taking a stroll with their families along the broad pavements that encircle Louis Kahn's vast cylindrical concrete parliament building in the centre of town. So there I was sat on a bench wrestling with the tough plastic wrapper on my 'Igloo' ice lolly, watching the angry midday Bengal sun settle into the beautiful red disc that inspired the national flag, when something fascinating happened.
A black jeep filled with men in black uniform, all wearing dark sunglasses and black bandannas drove slowly down the street, glowering over the Friday walkers. I would have laughed at their sub-Rambo outfits were it not for the effect that they had upon the the Friday walkers. A shudder coursed along the pavement. Bengalis, who stare at everything from fights and car crashes through to mundane foreigners,all averted their eyes.
This was a patrol by the Rapid Action Battallion (or RAB, pronounced 'Rab',as in 'Rabid'). They have murdered over 500 people in extra-judicial killings since the suspension of party democracy in January last year. The RAB was initially introduced by Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in 2004 to tackle crime in Dhaka, which everyone agrees had gotten way out of control. But now it seems that the RAB have gotten way out of control.
Recruited from the military and the police, the RAB are accountable to no court of law. They are in effect, a state sponsored death squad. Most of the people murdered by the RAB were criminals who were shot on the spot. But in the last year, they have expanded their field of 'combat' to include student activists and anybody else who questions the current 'caretaker' government. The RAB have a special, sinister euphemism for when they have executed somebody in broad daylight. They were killed in 'crossfire'. All witnesses to these killings privately admit that there was in fact only one shot involved in the incident, and that came from an RAB rifle.
The 1971 War of Liberation dominates the Bangladeshi national psyche, reminders of that extraordinary conflict are everywhere you look, it is the foundation and a constant reference point for practically every political discussion in the country. And rightly so, for it was one of the most dramatic births of a nation in the 20th Century. The Bengali guerillas who fought that war, the Mukhti Bahini became emblematic of the struggle for freedom, they captured the spirit of the era.
The RAB are, sadly, what many people will remember from this current era of Bangladeshi public life. Last night I attended a play called 'No Sleep', which was a kind of narrative of the War of Liberation. The protagonist's final monologue of the play asked the audience, "Is this what we fought for in 1971? To replace one set of oppressors with another?"

Racism in Cricket

2008-01-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

For a sport that can for some seem lethargic and indeed for many pointless, one cannot deny that cricket is a sport that seems to breed extraordinary controversy. Whether it was the 'Bodyline' series of 1932-33 Ashes series between England and Australia that nearly caused a serious diplomatic rift between the two nations, the numerous incidents involving umpire Darryl Hair or South African-born England captain Tony Greig infamously telling the media in 1976 that England would make the West Indies 'grovel' (West Indies pacemen Michael Holding and Andy Roberts made mince meat of Greig), controversy, and particularly racial controversy has never been far away.
And so it is that this week the ugly spectre of racism has reared its hydra-like head in the game. But this time it was different, an almost disorientating drama with a cast and a script that we are simply not used to. Australian captain Ricky Ponting and powerful half Afro-Caribbean all-rounder Andrew Symonds accused Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh of calling Symonds 'a monkey'.
What? Can it be? A member of the Australian cricket team being racially abused by an Indian? The cricket following public are so accustomed to the charge being directed the other way that is a genuinely strange situation to digest. Not least in India, where the press seem to have centred more upon umpire Dave Bucknor's dodgy umpiring in India's final innings than the fact that one of their star players racially abused a member of the opposing team.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Should_Team_India_abandon_Australia_tour/articleshow/2679532.cms
Is this the same nation that only a year ago was scandalised by a fading Bollywood star being 'racially' abused on Big Brother? Surely calling a black man a 'monkey' is far less ambiguous than anything levelled against Shilpa Shetty?
There may be an added dimension to this recent saga, and it may be more to do with class than race. The vast majority of the Indian team are upper class urban Brahmins (Ganguly, Tendulkar, Sharma, Kumble, Dravid) who more than likely view the Australian team (many of whom are comparatively working class backgrounds) with some disdain. In many respects it was a classic rerun of 'The Gentlemen vs The Players' games that exposed England's class fault lines well into the second half of the 20th century. The pride laden hearts of the Indian upper classes are simply not used to being given the rough treatment that the Australians have no compunction about dishing out.

All In The Family

2008-01-02T12:35:00.001-08:00

One of the most striking aspects of the tributes to Benazir Bhutto's assassination was the amount of emphasis that people put on Bhutto being a woman. Many seemed to frame her as some kind of remarkable figure because she was a woman in the volatile world of Pakistani politics, and consequently she was portrayed in the media as some kind of feminist icon. The assumptions are lazy, and become a distraction from the regressive, dynastic politics that have dominated India, Pakistan and Bangladesh for years.
Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru yielded the mantle in India, the political dynasty has meant much more than any other factor in deciding political leadership. Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, was initially made leader of Congress solely because the Congress leadership thought that her name would ensure Congress dominance. The Congress old guard believed Indira would be a kind of totemistic figure for the masses to rally around. They were not, however, prepared for Indira to have a strong political will of her own,. Indira's son, Rajiv Gandhi reluctantly became Prime Minister after his mother's assassination in 1984. Even more curiously, Rajiv Gandhi's Italian wife, Sonia, was offered the top job, but wisely turned it down.
There is a frightening similarity between the predicament of Bhutto's son, Bilawal, and that of Rajiv Gandhi. Gandhi was a commercial airline pilot who married an Italian woman, and never thought he would ever enter the world of politics. Bilawal is so westernised that he cannot even speak Urdu fluently, and has lived for most of his life in Dubai, and yet at the age of 19 he has been thrust into the limelight.
Yet again, Bangladesh's political scene has been overshadowed by the two feuding Begums, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina. Both women are from incredibly powerful political dynasties. Both have done nothing more for the people of Bangladesh than to embezzle public money for private purposes with extraordinary gusto.
The great mistake that many commentators and media in the west make is to assume that having women in power in these countries is to be viewed as some kind of social progress; women still have enormously restricted lives in most parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh (and huge swathes of rural and working class India), and these women leaders have done very little to alleviate that position. These leaders are not symbolic of women, they are symbolic of nepotism and a crippling preoccupation with history.

Cinema in Bengal Today

2007-12-13T02:05:00.000-08:00

Although Calcuttans hesitate to admit it, watching contemporary Bengali films is a thoroughly depressing experience. There are two worlds of Bengali cinema today: those made for middle class people, and those made for the peasants. Shortly before I left, two of the biggest 'middle class' Bengali releases in a while hit the city's silver screens. Anuranan (written and directed by debutant Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, and curiously one in which I am an extra) and The Bong Connection (by Calcutta icon Anjun Dutt) were vastly hyped films that were supposed to be emblematic of a resurgent Bengal defined by an international perspective. Both films consisted of Anglicised upper class Bengalis trotting the globe, in London (Anuranan) and America (The Bong Connection).
The scripts for both films were atrocious, loaded with such strong thematic cliches that even a foreigner such as myself found utterly predictable. The Bengali middle class are a discerning and highly educated bunch; I was amazed that so many professed to liking such rubbish. It reminded me of the reaction of English crowds to Richard Curtis films, where a crowd takes a strange quasi-jingoistic pleasure in seeing their collective stereotype projected for all to see.
In The Bong Connection, one of the protagonists is haunted by his decrepit grandfather who becomes a kind of motif for 'Old' Bengal throughout the film. The actor who plays the grandfather is Soumitra Chatterjee - Satyajit Ray's favourite actor.
Although a clever reference, this nostalgic touch to the film garishly highlights how the standards have slipped in Bengali film making. Ray and his contemporaries Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen produced shoestring budget films of such astounding beauty and maturity. The fall from grace of the Bengali film industry is startling and for the most part inexplicable: there is no shortage of talent, but somehow the ideas are not executed with the same outrageous genius. The innovation is gone.
The near total collapse of Calcutta from 1969 to 1972 had a great deal to do with the collapse of 'Tollywood'. There was no money in the city, all the business was packing up and leaving town, and cinema was no exception. This catastrophic period, which saw even Ray contemplating a move away from the city, undoubtedly made it more difficult for young film makers to have access to even the most basic film facilities.
But we now see a city which is improving in every sense at an unprecedented rate, and yet still the films have not gotten back to the standard that they were 35 years ago.
The peasant films also deserve a mention. Scores of ultra-low budget films are produced every year, catering specifically to the small town cinemas in the districts. If Amitabh Bachchan rules Bollywood, then Mithun Chakraborty definitely rules Tollywood. At this point it might be worth mentioning that Bollywood is not particularly popular in rural Bengal, they would much prefer to see a Bengali film, no matter how bad it is. The films are utterly simplistic and frequently have religious themes. In short, they are escapist fodder for people who lead hard and miserable lives. That's not to say that they aren't entertaining, going to watch one in the cinema is quite amazing. Watching the audience is more interesting than the film; such strong reactions are elicited in these marathon films.

The Taslima Nasreen Riots

2007-12-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

Calcutta broke out in riots last month over Bangladeshi feminist Taslima Nasreen's refuge in the city after she wrote a controversial book called Dwikhandito that resulted in her receiving death threats in her native Bangladesh.
Calcutta's Muslims rioted in Park Circus, the city's main Muslim neighbourhood. Riots are not unusual in Calcutta, the city has at times treated rioting as a kind of city-wide past time. But these riots were different: for the past 50 years Calcutta has rioted because of secular reasons, usually associated with Unions and various political factions within the communist spectrum that West Bengal has so enthusiastically embraced.
The last time Calcutta rioted in a secterian manner was in 1946, when Hindus and Muslims fought each other savagely on the streets. Approximately 4000 people died, and Gandhi was forced to intervene to keep the peace.
West Bengal has many Muslims (they make up a third of the state's population), and has always had the potential to follow the disastrous secterian route of states like Gujarat. To their credit, the citizens of Calcutta have since 1946 studiously avoided voting in any political parties that play upon religious sentiments. The ongoing success of the Left Front can surely in part be attributed to the city's wish to avoid becoming divided along religious lines.
Which makes the Taslima Nasreen riots all the more disturbing. Calcutta's Muslims are far from being an intolerant bunch. Taslima Nasreen's refuge in Calcutta should be a badge of honour for a city that is easily the most secular in India: long may it last.

3 Men In A Car Part 3

2007-12-11T07:36:00.001-08:00

We were reluctant to leave Varanasi, not only had we had a serene evening on the Ganges watching the evening rituals at the ghats, but we had also chanced upon a splendid and inexpensive hotel. Our next destination was Kanpur, a good five hundred kilometers or so from Varanasi.
The Lonely Planet guide book - that most indispensable of guide books for the foreigner – had a politely phrased but nevertheless slightly ominous entry for Kanpur. We toyed with the idea of staying in Allahabad, but realised it would be a terrible slog to Delhi from Allahabad. And so we tramped back onto our old friend the Grand Trunk Road. Uttar Pradesh felt rather like I had imagined India was like before I had ever visited India, with small villages dotting the flat, dry, brown plains. Remarkably, we were able to get fantastic reception for the BBC World Service in the middle of nowhere. It was very strange listening to mundane discussions about London life while we were in the middle of rural Uttar Pradesh.
We soon reached Allahabad, the birthplace of Nehru, and saw a reasonable amount of the city as the Grand Trunk Road passes straight through a large portion of the city. We all agreed that Allahabad looked like a wonderful, elegant city, it evidently had a strong sense of history to it, and felt as if it had a nice laid back pace for a city of its size. Retrospectively, how we wished that Allahabad was slightly closer to Delhi.
In the 1857 Uprising (or First War of Independence, depending on which history book you learn from) Cawnpore – as it was then known – was the scene of one of the bloodiest slaughters of Britons in the conflict. If the Cawnpore of the Victorian era was anything like the modern city of Kanpur, the sepoys may well have been doing the hapless Britons a favour. A charmless, monstrously polluted and un-welcoming city, there was evidently nothing to see in this vast industrial sprawl that reminded me of Detroit. After a typically demanding day of driving, George looked as if he was about to have apoplexy when he encountered the traffic at the centre of Kanpur, a city which seemed to be packed full of suicidal cyclists. We eventually found a hotel that offered parking for the car some way outside the city.
We have heard much in the news recently about CIA secret prisons abroad, and I have no doubt that the CIA had only just vacated the hotel room that we took. 'Extraordinary Rendition' began to take on rather different connotations. The room was divided into two parts, a living room and a bedroom. The furniture was absurdly nasty, and the room was windowless, creating an insufferable furnace in the peak of the summer heat. It was with considerable relief that we found out the room had a rather beaten up air-conditioner. It was with equal horror that there was a lengthy power cut in the middle of the night, resulting in one of the most uncomfortable night’s sleep any of us have ever had. Max, who was sleeping on the sofa in the adjoining room did not even have an occasional spurt of air-conditioning to soften the blow. The next morning George and I came into the living room to find a rabidly thirsty and near deranged shadow of a man lurking under a mosquito net. Suffice to say that we left Kanpur extremely sharply in the morning. The others were amused by my pacing and cajoling at five thirty in the morning, urging us to exit this dreadful city as soon as possible.
As a final parting shot, we were given the worst directions possible by the hotel staff, which resulted in us completing the Delhi leg of our journey in crushingly slow style. Instead of directing us onto Route 2 to Delhi we ended up on the rather more convoluted Route 91 that eventually took us through Ghaziabad to the east of Delhi.
It was in Delhi that my time accompanying Max and George ended. A couple of unforeseen bits of bureaucracy needed to be sorted out for the rest of their journey, and this meant staying in Delhi. We waited in anticipation for five days for the necessary documentation, but alas to no avail, and I had to return to work in Calcutta.
The upside was that I had an opportunity to get better acquainted with a city that I had not particularly liked on my first visit six months ago. On my first visit, Delhi seemed to lack the devastating hipness of Mumbai, and had little of the warm affability of Calcutta. In addition, Delhi is home to Paharganj, unquestionably the most embarrassing tourist circus in the world. Never have I felt more mortified to be a westerner than in Paharganj, a dreadful den of iniquity packed full of gormless hippies, drugs and crooks.
Visits to the splendid Jama Masjid and highly underrated Humayan’s Tomb were the undoubted highlights of Delhi, as well as a visit to the riveting Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum. I concluded that Delhi was in fact rather like my hometown London – it is an unsympathetic city but is nevertheless utterly compelling.
And so it was back to Calcutta, my ‘hometown’ in India. I shared my compartment with five friendly old Bangladeshi gents who relentlessly fed me dates (which I hate) while gently admonishing me for having no marriage prospects.

3 Men In A Car Part 2

2007-12-11T07:35:00.001-08:00

Our morning in Bodhgaya began with much listless staring into the bottom of our glasses of lime soda. After arriving in our hotel we ended up practically passing out with fatigue after the previous day’s rather fraught expedition through Jharkand. Our original aim for the first day was to reach Varanasi, but the state of the roads dictated that we would only get as far as Bodhgaya.
Keen to arrive in Varanasi at a reasonable hour, we again set out quite early. It was a shame not to see the sites of Bodhgaya along with the hordes of Buddhist tourists, but it was a good thing that we left when we did. The Grand Trunk Road soon descended into near anarchy after about ten o’clock in the morning, when all the lorries and other assorted traffic began to saddle up for another day’s motorised lunacy. There seemed to be a set pattern to the condition of the road. One would encounter a decent stretch of dual carriageway, and then all of a sudden the road would suddenly deteriorate into a terrible assault course of dust, broken concrete and twisted wire.
The designers of the Ambassador way back in 1957 presumably did not conceive that their car would be negotiating the badlands of southern Bihar in 2007. Each time we went over another hair-raising undulation, we would pray that we didn’t hear the awful scraping of the underbelly of the Ambassador on the ground. This occurred a number of times, but thankfully to no adverse effect to the car’s performance. In fact, our chief fear was a puncture. Although easy to fix, the physical exertion of fixing a tire in the heat - which according to the car thermometer was over 45 degrees Celsius - was too hideous to imagine. Conditions inside the car were beastly. Any refrigerated water that we bought along the way was soon half boiled and was very unpleasant to drink. Putting your head outside the car window in a vain effort to catch some wind chill only resulted in an effect that was something like putting a hairdryer on hot setting in front of one’s face.
Although there was little difference to tell in terms landscape, we were glad to enter Uttar Pradesh. Bihar had on the whole been a fairly depressing experience. Our entrance to Varanasi was characterised by typical grand farce. Once again, my rather hazy map reading was partly to blame, but I would like to think that the complete lack of any kind of road sign for one of India’s holiest cities contributed to the gratuitous adventure that followed.
George, who was beginning to feel the strain after negotiating the gauntlet that was the latest section of the Grand Trunk Road, was growing agitated at the increasing non-appearance of Varanasi. Max and I looked desperately various maps trying to work out which river we had just crossed. We saw what looked like a town in the distance, but concluded that it couldn’t possibly be Varanasi, as there were no signs and there seemed to be no obvious turn off the road. “Where on earth is this place?” we all increasingly tensely wondered aloud. We continued for what seemed like aeons. Max was the first to draw the conclusion that we may have passed Varanasi already. George looked appalled at this idea. “We can’t possibly have simply gone past one of India’s largest cities! There wasn’t any indication that this was Varanasi whatsoever!” he said indignantly.
Our worst fears were confirmed when we stopped at a petrol pump. According to some of the cheerful lorry drivers parked on the side of the road, we were in fact half way to Allahabad! ‘Bloody hell’, was a rough estimation of our conversation at that point. After retracing our tracks, we got to where the lorry drivers said the exit for Varanasi was. George gingerly braked the Ambi. Was this really the exit for Varanasi?
“Varanasi?” I hesitantly asked a raisin of an old man who was sitting by the roadside. He gestured in a vaguely knowing way with his head towards a distinctly unpromising looking track. “Varanasi?” I repeated. The man gestured with his hand this time towards the mixture of cobbles and dust. It did indeed turn out to be the route into Varanasi.
After checking into a hotel in the cantonment area, we decided to go down to the ghats to watch the evening ceremony from a boat on the Ganges. Unlike a number of foreigners, I must confess that I have never been seduced by the spiritual side of India, and was therefore not sure what to expect from Varanasi. From my first visit to the chaos of Kali Temple in Calcutta, I have always found Hinduism very difficult to understand; it is just so radically different from any type of prominent religion that we grow up with in the west.. The difference between Christianity and Islam is (to draw a very crude comparison) akin to the difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union. Hinduism presents an altogether different proposition for the western foreigner. Trying to get a westerner to genuinely understand Hinduism is rather like trying to explain the rules of cricket to an American. They understand that there’s a game rather like baseball going on, but the rules, language, ceremony and logic used in the game utterly confounds them.
I suppose the closest that I will ever come to understanding Hinduism was watching the evening ceremony from the riverside. It was a marvellously atmospheric event that reminded me of my favourite scenes out of Ray’s Aparajito. The experience was certainly enough to make these three resolutely atheist foreigners feel that they had made a worthwhile trip.

3 Men In A Car Part 1

2007-12-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

We left Calcutta before the sun had a chance to rise. Calcutta is such a schizophrenic city. In the daytime it is chaos exemplified, by night it is still, save for the turning of pavement dweller's bodies on mats and a few hyperactive dogs making the most of the early morning cool. Calcutta is not a city affected by insomnia. Weeks of preparation had finally come to fruition for Max and George, my two pals who are driving this plain white and heavily loaded Ambassador back to England, via some of the world's most difficult roads. Max and George were a mixture of low key excitement and apprehension. I don't think either of them could quite believe that it was actually finally happening. They had to go through endless hassles with visas, equipment and car purchase, and then they had to do the drive itself, which will take them through some unhappy parts of the world. I was more relaxed, for I was only hitching a ride from Calcutta as far as a bit of time off work would take me. Max and I packed the car (spare parts, spare tires, clothes, food, water and fuel containers etc etc) in the middle of the night after having drank a rather unwise amount of whisky, while George went to bed as he was driving first thing.
We crossed the suspension bridge over the Hooghly that leads to Calcutta's sister, Howrah an industrial city that time has forgotten. Howrah was just waking up when we got onto the Mughal built Grand Trunk Road, the road which will in theory lead us to Delhi. George couldn't quite believe that we were on the Grand Trunk Road. " I can't believe that this is the road that leads to Delhi!" I must confess I agreed, but all the addresses above the shops seemed to indicate that this was indeed the Grand Trunk Road. I had read much about India's new national highway's and I foolishly assumed that they would be some kind of broad motorway, when in fact they are little more than a two way road.
The first day's driving was meant to be the longest slog, taking us to Bodhgaya in Bihar. Bodhgaya was where Buddha found enlightenment, and is consequently a major place of pilgrimage for the Buddhists from all over the world.
But first we had to drive through Bihar and Jharkand two northern plain states that create one of the most economically depressed regions of India, and possibly even the world. We were informed that we should not drive through Bihar or Jharkand after dark, as both states suffer from frequent highway attacks by dacoits (bandits) and Maoist extremists known as Naxalites. It was therefore imperative that we reached Bodhgaya by nightfall, the worst case scenario being stranded in a small village after dark.
The state of the road got progressively worse as we fell out of Calcutta's ragged but increasingly glorious orbit. The sun eventually caught up with us, and was soon beating down on the car, boiling the three foreigners inside. George was by far the most experienced driver having driven for several years, while Max had recently 'acquired' an Indian driving license. I was totally out of the question, having failed the theory test at least twice. There was no question that on stretches of road as impossible as this that George would be doing the driving.
The behaviour of not only motorists but also pedestrians on the national highway was nothing short of astonishing. Halfway through the first day we had to draw the conclusion that most of these people simply did not value their own lives. The highways were for everybody, not just cars and lorries. All kinds of wildly inappropriate forms of transport made their way down the Grand Trunk Road, be they cycle rickshaws on the hard shoulder, pedestrians and of course insouciant cattle. Lorry drivers, that most thuggish of driving breeds on the streets of Calcutta stepped up to an entirely new level of machismo-infused lunacy when given the liberating mono-direction of the Grand Trunk road.
There were many times when George was compelled to execute some kind of desparate brake procedure (which required some skill when in control of a heavily loaded Ambassador) in order to avoid the thunderous and indiscriminate advance of a monstrously overloaded lorry coming in the other direction. Breathless and thankful that by the grace of some abstract road god we had survived that hair raising encounter, the Ambassador hauled itself warily onto the Grand Trunk Road again.
Perhaps the most disconcerting part of the drive was when one encountered a stretch of dual carriageway, heaved a sigh of relief and began to pick up some speed. Just as the speedometer crept to 80kph, the car would give out collective gasp of horror as a lorry would suddenly appear in the fast lane coming towards you on your side of the road. The frequency of this occurence was perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the whole thing.
Traffic jams must be rare thing on the open stretches of the Grand Trunk Road, and we were more than a little surprised when we encountered one in a northern part of Jharkand. A long snake of Tata lorries stretched on a viaduct over what must have been a river at a less parched time of the year.
Our hearts sank when we saw the intimidatingly long jam, and so we made a decision that (for at least ten seconds) seemed not only pragmatic and obvious, but also close to genius. We crossed to the other side of the road and simply bypassed the entire queue. It was after a handful of seconds that we realised that we may have just made a fearful mistake. The road ahead was blocked, not by the customary piles of gravel or lumps of concrete, but by a crowd of people. As we got closer we could see a dead body under a white sheet next to a bicycle. A considerable crowd were gathered round, with no police in sight. A dark thought entered my head. I had frequently read that fake accidents were a classic way in which Naxalites attract police and army for ambushes, and a very efficient way by which Dacoits rob travellers.
It was puzzling that there were no police around, and also that the bicycle was undamaged considering there had been an accident.
Jharkand has a terrible reputation for this kind of thing, and we were certainly taking no chances, reversing the car and driving rather sheepishly to the back of the queue. The possibility of robbery or re-education by Maoists swiftly became a rather secondary concern when we realised that the viaduct that we were on was appallingly overloaded by the accumalating traffic. The viaduct groaned and shuddered in a dreadful way everytime a lorry shuffled past us in a neighbouring lane.
It was with a mixture of relief and sadness that we learnt that it had in fact been a bona fide traffic accident. The (somewhat idiotic) victim was struck by a lorry while riding his bicycle in the fast lane.

None of our prior experiences in Indian society prepared us for the backwaters of Bihar and Jharkand.
My personal experiences of India had on the whole been urban, geographical extremes, be it Calcutta, Bombay or even Trivandrum. I had never visited the Indian heartlands that comprise so much of the Indian experience, and I must confess that I found it a rather saddening experience.
Our primary context by which all of us judged poverty in India was Calcutta, which is frequently described as the poorest of the major cities in India. People may be poor in Calcutta, but it is a hive of hyperactivity, a place in which it is very difficult to sink into a chronic state of depression. There is simply too much going on, too much to take in. But as the Ambassador ground along the Grand Trunk Road through countless, identically forlorn villages in Jharkand and later on Bihar, one was struck by a very different and altogether more sharp type of poverty. Here there was a sense of resignation and total desolation. It was impossible to buy even vernacular newspapers, presumably because barely anybody in these villages could read at all. There was no sense of enterprise or entertainment to anasthetise one to the stark economic condition.
When a foreigner stays in Calcutta one is constantly reminded how liberal Calcutta is, and specifically that caste does not matter as much in that part of the world. One is told with such frequency that the statement becomes cliche, and the foreigner becomes cynical about the assertion, especially when one reads the resolutely caste conscious matrimonial columns in the newspapers. After having visited Bihar and Jharkand I now have a keener appreciation of the Calcuttan's frequent declaration about his or her city. The absolute conservatism (even of the larger towns) on the northern plains was tangible. The Grand Trunk Road turned into a desparate parade of deafeningly poor villages that seemed totally at odds and miles away from the 'shining' and 'poised' India that is so triumphantly trumpeted from every information medium in the country.
A combination of no road signs and my appalling map reading skills meant that we overshot the exit for Bodhgaya by some distance. We stopped to ask for directions in the nearest town. In that time-honoured Indian fashion, a crowd of inquisitive young men soon assembled out of nowhere; it was very possible that we were the only people to have actually stopped in the village for years. These fellows were clearly astonished to see us, and practised their stilted English on us, and promptly sent us in the right direction after a vigorous handshake.
Bodhgaya was a relaxed town that was quite unlike any other that we passed through. A thriving tourist industry was evident, with scores of tourists from South East Asia being bused from a nearby airport to the bizarre collection of starchy hotels that lined the town's leafy streets.
We were all anxious to get off the road and into bed, so we plumped for the first reasonable looking hotel that we passed. The longest single stretch of the journey had, it seemed passed. More importantly, the car seemed to have survived, save for one back door that seemed to constantly open itself every five or so kilometers.

Gay Bombay

2007-12-11T07:32:00.001-08:00

My stay in Bombay a few months ago was capped by an extraordinary evening courtesy of Andy, a friend of mine who used to live in Calcutta, but then moved to Bombay half way through last year. Andy is a really interesting fellow. A gay man from a liberal academic Puerto Rican family, he has lived for the last few years in India, and is currently working for an NGO that gives support for less affluent members of Bombay’s gay community.
It is worth noting before I begin that homosexuality is still illegal in India. While homosexuality is pretty much accepted in cosmopolitan upper middle class circles in cities such as Bombay and Calcutta, for gay men further down India’s financial food chain, life is very tough.
The NGO that Andy worked for rented out a crumbling ex-government building a short auto ride from Andheri’s suburban railway station. The event for the evening was ‘Mr Gay Pride 2006’. As we climbed the staircase, it felt more like entering some kind of nightclub than an NGO dealing with one of India’s most glaring social issues. A kick drum pulsed through the building, with Hijras (a caste transvestites and eunuchs), their broad shoulders look a little incongruous in their saris, lining the ascending banisters. As the music got clearer, so did whoops and cries of pleasure become more audible. Gay Bombay was really going for it tonight. “A lot of these guys lead normal married lives. In the evening they leave work, change into their gear for the evening, and then change back to have dinner with their wives” said Andy.
Much unhappiness comes from the issue of marriage. There is great pressure on lower middle class and working class men to get married fairly promptly after their education ends. For gay men this presents a serious problem. Either be in constant conflict with your family over your refusal to marry, or alternatively marry a woman who you cannot be a dedicated husband to. It is not fair on the man who is just not attracted to women, and it is doubly unfair on the woman, who is consigned to a meaningless married life with man who will never be sexually attracted to her.
When we entered the sweaty open plan room with an eight-foot high ceiling, the cheesy Eurobeat of a Vengaboys track was propelling oiled up pectorals down a makeshift runway. The programme for the evening was judging the best individual body, followed by a series of dance routines, some by individuals, some by groups. Pairs of men who had spent far too much time in the gym paraded down the runway, with a hijra sandwiched between them, clasping the flexing arms of the contestants with tangible delight. Each man wore a number pinned to his jeans or underpants.
My appearance in the crowd caused quite a stir. While Andy is a westerner, he could probably pass for an Indian in terms of complexion. I however look about as Indian as Denis Thatcher. The only white and probably only straight person in the room was all of a sudden centre of attention. I was immediately made to feel at home, with some poor queen being ejected from his seat for the sahib to come and sit down. I felt sorry for contestants 4 to 6, as for about five minutes all eyes in the room were on me. I took all of this in my stride until I was handed a piece of paper and a pen. “Here,” said a monster of a man with a Mike Tyson voice “You must mark the best and the worst contestants.” Blimey. Not wanting to cause offence, I sternly studied each washboard stomach, doing my best to give out fair marks to each contestant.
My utmost sympathy lay with contestants who did not find favour with the crowd; they were absolutely brutal to these poor souls. To grease yourself up in baby oil and present yourself to this kind of discerning crowd takes a lot of courage. One poor fellow, who had (at least to my eyes) a fairly reasonable physique was greeted with howls of derision and disgust. The poor chap stood there vogueing in a tortured manner, looking increasingly wounded, before tramping backstage to sulk.
Some of the dance routines were actually very impressive. The dances began inauspiciously, with some awful little runt prancing about to ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ by Guns and Roses. He was soon replaced by a ‘girl’ who was famous in the dance bars of Bombay. In her prime, this dancing queen earned thousands of rupees a night. She had been completely out of work since the dance bars had been shut down by the city’s administration. She was apparently incredibly depressed and was a shadow of the dancer that she was. This was, however, pretty unfair, as she was still a highly accomplished dancer. If it weren’t for the fact that ‘she’ was a ‘he’, I have every confidence that she would have kicked Preity Zinta or Aishwarya Rai’s butts at any Bollywood dance routine. There was never any doubt as to who was the crowd’s favourite. We left just before the end to avoid the rush down the stairs. Those with wives to return to went to the toilets to change back into their trousers and sombre shirts, furiously scrubbing make up off their faces. Those who had no family to return to carried on hanging out until the hall was shut, shunting them into the rather less hospitable world outside.
The work that Andy does with these guys demands respect. Lots of support organisations for gays in India generally seem to focus on two groups: rent boys and upper class gays. Very few organisations help the average gay Indian man, the guys who perhaps most sharply feel the pressures of a society that is far from being comfortable with homosexuality.

Trinamul Congress Riots in Calcutta

2007-12-11T07:30:00.001-08:00

Yesterday’s strike in protest at the government massacre of 15 (some sources say the figure is closer to 50) villagers in Nandigram was according The Telegraph ‘one of the most violent in recent times’. It was certainly the most edgy strike,or ‘bandh’ as they are known in Bengal, since I have been in the city.
I had to get up at the unearthly hour of 5.45am to go to the airport to interview people who had been left stranded there by the total absence of taxis in the city. The atmosphere in Calcutta can be incredibly schizophrenic, even in its normal rhythms. During the day time it is one of the most raucous and bustling cities in the world, but at night, the city becomes completely deserted and quiet. On bandh days, Calcutta generally doesn’t wake up, except to suffer fits of extreme agitation.
The only traffic on the roads were ambulances, with their sirens disturbing the otherwise silent city. The unusual number of ambulances on the road struck me as being curious. I then remembered that that there were two major hospitals nearby, and didn’t think much more of it.
The airport was a picture of chaos when I arrived. The Emirates flight from Dubai had landed, chiefly containing Bengali ex-pats who work in the Emirates. Flights from Bangkok and Dhaka were also imminently landing. People flying from Dubai had only been informed while in the air that there was a bandh on in Calcutta, as a result it was practically impossible for people to make travel arrangements in advance.
Calcutta is a city that relies on taxis as a principle form of transport, and there was not a single taxi waiting for the arrivals. Somehow, people were getting away from the airport (which is quite a distance from the city centre). It turned out that just behind the airport, there was a long rank of ambulances that, for a premium rate, would act as a taxi for the day. It was the only mode of transport that would not attract the ire of the Trinamul mobs who were gearing up for a days worth of rioting. In some ways this could be considered a masterstroke of entrepreneurship, but at the back of my mind I kept on thinking, ‘If the ambulances are taxis, then what are the ambulances?’
Returning from the airport, we encountered a bus stop manned by the Marxists, who were defending the few State Transport Buses that were still running that day. The policemen, with their steel tipped lathis (truncheons) and Michelin Man physiques were looking increasingly worried. Apparently an agitated Trinamul Congress mob was heading in the same direction as the Marxist gathering. We hurried back down the road to catch the Trinamul supporters’ approach to the bus stop and police outpost. We waited for quite a while for them to appear. I nodded off, and only woke up as the stragglers were filing past. Sanjoy, one of the Telegraph photographers had already left, and was photographing them up the front of the procession.
A couple of hundred meters up the road, a State Transport bus was parked in sight of the mob, who went absolutely berserk. Rocks and broken concrete rained down on the bus, with passengers and bystanders running to get out of the range of the missiles. Deciding it was perhaps prudent to keep my distance (As a deeply sweaty and sunburnt foreigner, I was already attracting a little attention from the stragglers), I bought a cup of tea at the roadside, while watching the mob go about the demolition of the bus. By the time I finished my cup of tea the bus was a wreck, with acrid smoke pouring from what I assume was the fuel tank. Somebody was clearly very badly injured, because when I went to look inside the bus wreck, there was dark blood spattered over the interior.
During all of this mayhem, at least 20 ‘Ambulances’ shuffled shiftily through the middle of the Trinamul mob, rather like Martin Sheen when he discovers Colonel Kurtz’s army in Apocalypse Now. It was all highly amusing.
Just before the Trinamul mob encountered the Marxist bus stop gathering, another State Bus wearily ground to a halt, with passengers spilling out of the doors. Once again the Trinamul mob were enraged by its presence, smashing the murky bus windows, and tearing at the radiator grill. Their orgy of vandalism was disturbed this time by the police, who lathi-charged the mob, sending the Trinamul goondas scattering into the side streets. A few of the more athletic policemen chased and caught some of the slower elements in the mob. The police arrested around 40 Trinamul goons, dragging them into the back of the police vans, with Marxists and passengers of the wrecked buses chipping in with the odd punch and kick.
I returned to The Telegraph office at around midday. Esplanade and Chandni Chowk were characterised by total desertion. During the day, Trinamul supporters tried to storm Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s residence, while just under 200 Trinamul and Congress supporters were arrested.

Getting Away With Murder

2007-12-11T07:29:00.001-08:00

Navjot Singh Sidhu is one of the most recognisable men in Indian life. Sidhu has his fingers in lots of different pies, be it politics, cricket, commentating and the million endorsements that follow life in such arenas. A big bustling Sikh with a taste for bright pink turbans, his sharp, witty metaphor-laden commentating style has earned him many fans, and has introduced a new phrase into the Indian vocabulary, the ‘Sidhuism’. Sidhu is also a man who is emblematic of a deep rot in Indian public life.
Sidhu first entered the public sphere as an international cricketer, playing 50 odd Tests for India, notching up nine centuries and averaging a more than respectable 42 with the bat. He was certainly no Tendulkar, but he was a steady batsman who earned plaudits, especially for his contemptuous treatment of some of the world’s best spin bowlers.
Renowned as a tempestuous personality in the dressing room, India was subjected to the full force of Sidhu when he began commentating in the twilight of his career. Sidhu became a distinctive voice, with what Amit Varma of Cricinfo very succinctly described as a “mauling of the spoken word with a unique, entertaining concoction of mixed metaphors and garbled cliché.” The big man from Punjab quickly became a cult fixture, regularly commentating on televised matches. It was not to last forever, however, with Sidhu, during the course of an argument, eventually warning fellow ESPN commentator Alan Wilkins “not to fuck around” with him. The threat was picked up on one of the microphones, and ESPN promptly terminated his contract.
In the intervening years, Sidhu became active in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP leadership was sharp enough to get the charismatic Sidhu on-side to fight a very close election in Punjab, which Sidhu subsequently won. Over the last ten years BJP have become synonymous with encouraging Islamophobia, with the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat being all but encouraged by the BJP’s Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s Chief minister at the time. (Interestingly, a great deal of the BJP’s funding come not from India, but from Non-Resident Indians in the western world, many of whom have only visited India a handful of times in their life.)
Sidhu has been in the headlines very frequently over the last few months for two reasons. The first was his trial for the 1988 killing of a man in Patiala in Punjab. Sidhu beat a man to do death over a parking dispute. It took until 2006 for Sidhu to actually stand trial. Sidhu was eventually found guilty of ‘culpable homocide’, and was sentenced to three years in prison, a farce of a decision considering that one is talking about beating a man to death in a parking dispute. The fact that Sidhu packed the courtroom with BJP heavies must have helped the jury reach their decision.
In light of the decision Sidhu immediately resigned his seat in the Lok Sabha. The Punjab and Haryana Court stayed his jail term giving him time to appeal to the Supreme Court. Incredibly, the Supreme Court quashed his conviction, citing his ‘high moral standards’ by resigning his Lok Sabha seat as being the chief reason for the quashing of the conviction.
Sorry, come again? Sidhu took the life of another man, and he had his joke of an initial sentence repealed because he offered his resignation from the national parliament. The implication that Sidhu’s resignation from Lok Sabha was some kind of courageous moral act is ludicrous. It should be a given that he would resign from his post once he was convicted. Sidhu has expressed very little public remorse for his crime, a characteristic that should by normal legal standards, would severely count against a person convicted of a violent crime.
Sidhu has just been re-elected to his Amritsar seat, with various interviews in the newspapers painting him as a sensitive man who meditates and seeks inspiration from Gandhi and Vivekananda. Only a fool would be taken in by the new cuddly Sidhu Mark II.
The manner in which the Sidhu murder case has been handled is very disconcerting. The message that such a judgement gives out is that so long as you are famous and have power, you can quite literally get away with murder. A heady mixture of charisma and bullying will, it seems, get you a very long way.

Nandigram Riots - Initial Violence

2007-12-11T07:28:00.001-08:00

Mamata's Called another strike for Friday After alleged atrocities while acquisitioning land for a new chemical plant. The word is that many more people have died. We just saw on Bengali TV a woman get beaten by the police while trying to help her husband who had been shot. Horrible stuff.
Here's the PTI wires.
Nandigra cal3
sez-ld firing violence in nandigram, reports of several killed and injured
nandigram (wb), mar 14 (pti) violence erupted again in nandigram with villagers, protesting against land acquisition, fighting pitched battles with police amidst reports that five persons were killed and scores others injured.
The trouble started since morning when a large contingent of security forces tried to enter various villages in nandigram area and was faced with stiff resistance from activists of bhumi ucched pratirodh (land acquisition resistence) committee forcing police to open fire.
Superintendent of police g a srinivas, who was supervising the operation, said that police had to open fire after teargas shells failed to control the situation.
He, however, was not clear about the number of casualties but said that “a number of people including some policemen must have been killed in the clashes”.
Unconfirmed reports said that at least five persons were killed and nearly 50 others were injured. (more) pti cor sak cr ksm 03141300 del

ez-ld firing 2 state home secretary p r roy while confirming the clash between security personnel and protestors, however, told reporters at kolkata that eight to 10 people were injured. ig (law and order) raj kanojia also expressed ignorance about any casualty but said that police had to resort to firing after teargas and lathicharge failed to disperse the protestors. srinivas also said that clashes occurred when policemen tried to enter the villages of bhangabera, maheshpur and kalicharanpur, which had been inaccessible to the security personnel since early january when violence had first happened. (more) pti cor sbr sak cr ksm 03141319 del
ez-ld firing 2 state home secretary p r roy while confirming the clash between security personnel and protestors, however, told reporters at kolkata that eight to 10 people were injured. ig (law and order) raj kanojia also expressed ignorance about any casualty but said that police had to resort to firing after teargas and lathicharge failed to disperse the protestors. srinivas also said that clashes occurred when policemen tried to enter the villages of bhangabera, maheshpur and kalicharanpur, which had been inaccessible to the security personnel since early january when violence had first happened. (more) pti cor sbr sak cr ksm 03141319 del
sez-ld firing 4 last soon after the security personnel started moving into the villages, members of bupc along with women and children allegedly clashed with them which led to pitched battles. subhendu adhikary, trinamool congress mla from kanthi in the district, claimed that many people were killed in the firing by the police. tc leader and leader of opposition in the state assembly, partha chatterjee, claimed in the house that six persons were killed in the firing and 36 others injured and demanded immediate intervention of the centre and dismissal of the buddhadeb bhattacharjee government. ashoke ghosh, leader of forward bloc, a constituent of the ruling left front, condemned the incident saying, “it is very regrettable. People in west bengal are not accustomed to such incidents.” he also said that he has asked lf chairman biman bose to immediately convene a meeting tomorrow to disucss the situation as “this is not good left front.” Pti cor sbr pkc sak nn ksm 03141334 del

McDonalds in Calcutta

2007-12-11T07:25:00.001-08:00

Well, McDonald’s has finally come to Calcutta, with their first restaurant opening on Park Street on Friday. There will be three more in the city by the end of the year. The first branch is replacing an old restaurant called the Blue Fox, which was something of an institution in its day, but was bankrupted by the Waiters’ Union. The property has remained derelict ever since I came to the city, and McDonald’s has seized the day. A pair of shiny golden arches appeared out of nowhere while I was walking along last night. The McDonald’s menu in India is pretty strange for a westerner weaned on the original menu. Obviously there’s no beef or pork, so one is left with a pretty miserable collection of chicken sandwiches, crappy veggy burgers and the hilariously named McAloo.
Feelings are mixed about the arrival of McDonald’s in Calcutta. Veterans from the legendary Park Street dining scene of the 60s and early 70s have harrumphed a bit about McDonald’s advent, but generally people are pleased that Ronald and his gang are coming to town.
Chains such as McDonald’s and Marks & Spencers coming to Calcutta gives the city confidence. Calcutta is still seen as a pretty backward city compared to Bombay, Delhi or Chennai. From the 1970s onwards, few Indian companies, let alone foreign companies had the balls to do business in the city. Hindusthan Motors, the makers of the Ambassador car, and one of the biggest industrial employers in Bengal at the time closed their Bengal factories after one too many fracas with the unions. It was at this point that the city fell apart, starved of trade.
How times change. Over the last few years the Marxist State Government, sensing that their protectionist policies were unsustainable, have decided/been forced to make a change. No electorate will tolerate a government that stunts the economy of a city, while other big cities grow at a rate of 9 to 10 % a year. The shrewd Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattcharjee has walked a tricky tightrope since he took over from his stubborn, ideologically obsessed predecessor Jyoti Basu. How does one remain credible to the hardliners in the CPI(M), while remaining accessible to big business? So far he has handled the role really competently, with a bit of Anti-Bush posturing mixed with a quiet courting of corporations.
There has been a big ruckus recently over the building of a Tata car factory at Singur, with the tiny Trinamul Congress opposition fiercely opposing the development, with the Marxists wooing the big corporations. Over the next month there are at least four new shopping malls opening. And these are BIG shopping malls.
Our newspaper ran a feature on the first McDonald’s today, and in the article it was pointed out that when KFC, the first fast food chain to hit Calcutta appeared, it did not affect (as many predicted) the trade of Calcutta’s most popular homegrown restaurants like Mocambo and Peter Cat. The main worry is that the gap between rich and poor is getting much more pronounced. Calcutta is a very safe city, but it will become less safe as parts of the city become more wealthy, while others remain completely stagnant. After 30 years of promises, it’s now time for the state government to start to make a real difference to Calcutta’s enormous underclass.
Once again, the most resistant voice I have heard about multi-national development in the city has not come from a Bengali, a Bihari, a Marwari or any other resident of this city, but from a foreign traveller. Here was this awful hairy type from Germany sermonising to Indians about ‘ethical’ choices, and how it is terrible that India is going the same way as the west. What? You mean you’d like India to stay as poverty-ridden nation of sharecroppers? You mean India should do as we say and not as we do? Pah, this kind of attitude reeks of hypocrisy.
These kinds of hippies who crawl out of the woodwork in this country are so out of touch with the momentum and aspirations of modern India its almost distressing. They are caricatures of people vainly chasing a caricature of a nation.

Calcutta's Food

2007-12-11T07:22:00.000-08:00

I must be one of the few people on the planet to have put on over a stone’s weight since I came out to India, so I think that it’s only appropriate to write a little about food. There is so much great food in this city it’s impossible to know where to begin. Perhaps it would be logical if we work from the streets up into the posh restaurants, while also moving from each different region’s dishes.
One of Calcutta’s most popular street dishes is the kathi roll, it, a starchy deep fried roll dripping oil that is filled with chicken, paneer (roasted cottage cheese) or mutton. There is a place by the Chowringhee Square Mosque that does beef ones, which are also pretty special. Your choice of filling is then coated in a wonderful chili sauce, with a load of onions thrown in for good measure. One has to have a pretty strong stomach for the things, they’re not cooked in the most hygenic of conditions. They are, however, so irresistible that they are worth a little bit of bad gut.
Another street food favourite in this neck of the woods are puchkas, which are little hollow balls of fried dough, which one then breaks up and has a variety of sauces.
My real discovery (although a friend of mine from London introduced it to me, so I can’t really claim much originality) has been South Indian food. It has now become my lunchtime regular, almost by virtue of the fact that there are three bloody good south Indian restaurants right by my office. They are called Udipi (very basic, eat at communal tables, bloody cheap) Anand (the best of the bunch, although you feel like you’re eating in an episode of 1980s Doctor Who) and Chennai Kitchen (slick décor, good food, slimy staff). There are a couple of other really posh ones, but they are a bit of an effort to get to.
The basic and most popular dish is the Masala Dosa, a dosa, being a lentil pancake with a delicious combination of carrots, potatoes and spices all mushed up into a paste. The dosa is accompanied by two small soups, one that’s quite hot, the other which is apparently made out of coconuts, although my taste buds say this must be a gross bit of misinformation. There is also a thicker dish called the Ooothapam, which is rather like a pizza, with a similar repertoire of toppings.
When I was in Kerala, I had Vadas for breakfast every morning. In essence these things are small doughnuts with cracked pepper and spices impressed in them. You eat them with (like so many things) chutney. The southerners also have a miserable, boring dish that they eat at breakfast called the Idly. It’s basically a rice dumpling that sits on your plate and scowls at you while you finish off everything else on the plate.
The Malayali of Kerala share one ingredient in common with Bengali dishes, and that is a plethora of fish. I find Bengali fish more exciting than Malayali stuff so, I’ll concentrate on the Bengali stuff. Bengalis are very keen on fish and rice, with a nice thick dal to bind it all together with. They also produce some of the most sensational thick, grainy mustard that I’ve ever come across. The main fish here is Beckti, a fresh water fish that is often fried, or steamed and wrapped up in banana leaves. Mmmm.
I think I’ve written enough in the past about the obsession with sweets in this city. Sohini got quite annoyed with me when I was talking about this the other day. “It’s not just a Bengali thing, it’s a nationwide obsession.” Sorry Sohini, I just can’t agree with you on this one, Calcutta is singularly and utterly infatuated with sugar in all its forms. Bombay and Delhi weren’t a patch on Cal in the misti stakes. Remember Homer Simpson prancing in Chocolate dreamland? Well it Calcutta had its way, I have no doubt you could take big bites out of chocolate stray dogs.
North Indian food, particularly Punjabi stuff, is closer to what you get in the takeaway at home, with lots of spiced meats and kebabs. I had an absolute orgy at this place in Delhi called Karim’s which is in a little side street of Jama Masjid (the biggest mosque in India). The seekh kebab, which is a combination of rolled and heavily spiced meats that are then skewered was one of the culinary highlights so far. I just couldn’t help myself and ended up stuffing myself with eight of them before I did a monstrously long train journey through the plains of Uttar Pradesh. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
I’ve experimented with various regional thalis (a kind of mixed bag of stuff) with the Rajasthani Thali proving to be remarkable. Rajasthan is a notoriously barren bit of India, which is apparently very beautiful. Rajasthanis are the biggest business community in Calcutta, so quite a lot of their stuff turns up on menus. Anyway they do a lot with a little with their thali, which involves rotis and dhal with lots of things done very nicely, such as spiced up cauliflower soup.
Honourable mentions must go to Tibetan Momos, a kind of big pasta sachet full of whatever you want, usually accompanied by THE most ferocious sauce I have ever encountered. I was actually rolling on the floor in shock first time I had it. But pleasurable, in an ever so slightly masochistic manner. Another honourable mention must go to Anglo-Indian cuisine. The descendents of intermarriage between Indians and English have somehow managed to cling onto a remarkably stodgy repertoire of English colonial dishes. The pick of their cuisine must be French Onion Soup which was absolutely stunning.
An honourable mention certainly doesn’t go to Calcutta’s Chinese food, which is absolutely crap. For a start it is more Indian than Chinese, secondly mthey overdoe horribly on artificial flavourings. It makes you realise how high the standard of Chinese food in England can be.
And that’s it. As you can see, all of Calcutta’s migrant communities have contributed something to the personality of the city’s food, resulting in one of the widest menus that an Indian city has to offer.

Good Afternoon

2007-12-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

Hi there,
I ended up in India almost by accident. A stint for a newspaper in Calcutta turned into what is probably going to be a lifelong relationship with the Indian subcontinent. I've been writing for quite a while on various topics associated with modern Indian life, but they have been rather scattered, so I am going to collect them all in one place in this blog. I hope that it proves to be informative for people who have never been. At the same time I hope that my Indian friends find it interesting and not too obvious!

The first load of posts are old ones from the last couple of years in Calcutta.

Patrick Pringle