Only True Test of Artistic Merit is Survival

After Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died, Toby Young wrote an essay for The Spectator (August 11, 2007) "Keep your wild strawberries: Bergman, Antonioni and the end of an error”.

Young says:” Sixteen years ago I got together with a group of like-minded friends and started a magazine called The Modern Review. Its premise was that popular culture is as worthy of serious critical attention as high culture… As George Orwell said, the only true test of artistic merit is survival and posterity has not been kind to the films of Bergman or Antonioni — or, indeed, the vast majority of art-house directors…

The argument, then, isn’t about the artistic merit of films like The Shop Around the Corner, The Searchers, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Lady Eve, His Girl Friday, North by Northwest, The Maltese Falcon and Some Like It Hot — which we can all agree are masterpieces — but about whether art-house directors belong in such exalted company. And to my mind, they don’t…

...I’m profoundly suspicious of the whole modernist project, particularly the notion that art and culture should only be accessible to an educated elite. As John Carey pointed out in The Intellectuals and the Masses, modernism emerged as a way for the literary intelligentsia to differentiate themselves from those they contemptuously referred to as ‘the masses’. By championing artistic endeavour that was deliberately obtuse, the intelligentsia succeeded in excluding ordinary people from sharing in their pursuits…

Unlike the champions of Bergman and Antonioni, it is popular movies I regard as true cinematic art, not obscure, art-house films — and I’m convinced that posterity will prove me right.”

Since Acharya Atre 1898-1969, P L Deshpande , champion of nostalgia, was Maharashtra’s greatest entertainer until his death in 2000. Only bigger entertainer than Pu La was Hindi film industry.

Pu La wrote about other entertainers- Bal Gandharva (legendary large-hearted Marathi stage artist), masters of Hindustani classical such as Kumar Gandharva; Bhimsen Joshi; Mallikarjun Mansur; Vasantrao Deshpande among many others. But he never wrote about Hindi films and their music.

I think Hindi film music composed from circa 1950-1970 by likes of Roshan, Madan Mohan, C Ramchandra, two Burmans, Shankar-Jaikishan etc is as good as any man has created. It is not just popular till the date but also of high artisitic standards. Some of C Ramchandra’s music, inspired by both Jazz and Hindustani classical, would make both Lionel Hampton and Govindrao Tembe (has there been any musical album better than his SANGEET MANAPMAN) proud.
Songwriters like Shailendra, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir, Majrooh etc. too were of high quality.

In Raj Kapoor’s film Shree 420, there is a scene where a milkman takes the song “Ramayya Vastavayya” from the protagonist Raj Kapoor to his estranged lover Nargis at the time of daybreak.

A milkman.

Along with Bhakti literarture, Hindi film music will outlast any art in India.


Artist: Ed Fisher The New Yorker February 12, 1955

What Colour Band-Aids for Dalits?

Many upper-caste Hindus – sympathetic to the plight of the untouchables over centuries- often complain about their inability to ‘understand’ Dalits, their politics, their actions, their thinking, their leaders, their art etc.

They are correct because Dalits now have decided to navigate to their own destiny themselves. They feel upper caste gods, leaders, writers, thinkers, artists, philosophers have let them down.

Shripad Krishna Kolhatkar श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर (1871-1934), arguably 20th century's best writer in Marathi , was an exception. He reminds me in many ways- particularly humour and social sensibilities- of Mark Twain.

Keshav Meshram केशव मेश्राम, a prominent Dalit and ex-president Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, has written about qualities of Kolhatkar’s literary work as well as his vision. (“Shabdavrat शब्दव्रत” by Keshav Meshram). Meshram quotes what Kolhatkar said after reading H N Apte ह ना आपटे’s (first Marathi novelist of any sigificance) “Pan Lakshat Kon Gheto पण लक्षात कोण घेतो”.

”If Mr. Apte could tell the story of misery of backward caste people (Dalits) the way he has told of (Brahmin) women, such a novel would be second in revolutionary qualities only to ’Uncle Tom’s Cabin’”.

Meshram says Kolhatkar’s conscience based bold opposition to the practice of caste brought him in direct confrontation with Lokmanya Tilak लोकमान्य टिळक and N C Kelkar न चि केळकरwho chose to ‘ignore’ challenges of caste instead of addressing them.

Another quality of Kolhatkar was his ability to identify and encourage young talent.
R D Karve र धो कर्वे(1882-1953) – visionary social reformer and practicing sexologist- wrote only one obit in his periodical-Samajswasthya समाजस्वास्थ्य (July 1927- November 1953)- ever. It was of S K Kolhatkar!

Young historian and thinker T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर too received valuable encouragement from Kolhatkar.

Shejwalkar’s writing is brilliant, vision broad, thinking global, language precise but there is only one problem.

He probably never gauged accurately the importance of Dalit-movement led by Dr. Ambedkar to the future of India. Contrast that with V S Naipaul’s description of Dr. Ambedkar’s birthday celebration at Mumbai in his book “India A Million Mutinies Now” (1990).

Shejwalkar is not alone. This blog is indebted to The New Yorker. It has scored many hits and few misses. Here is their biggest miss of them all.

John Updike says:”(During the fourth decade of The New Yorker 1955-1964) the foremost domestic issue of the time was the struggle of the black minority for civil rights, yet people of color are almost totally absent from these cartoons.”

The only exception is this picture...


Artist: William O'Brian The New Yorker May 10, 1963

Ramsevaks Reflect

India keeps churning out news faster than we all can digest. Ram once again is in news: “Did he really exist or not?”

Ram and his story are so central (see my previous post on this) to India that it doesn’t matter.

TULSI RAMAYAN- Ramcharitmanas is arguably the best book in Hindi. Vinoba Bhave विनोबा भावे has written beautifully on the book. ("Vinoba Saraswat" Edited by Ram Shewalkar, Sahitya Akademi 1987)

Utopia is translated as “Ram Rajya” (Ram’s Regime) in Indian languages.

Tukaram describes Ram Rajya thus: राम राजा राम प्रजा लोकपाळ, एकचि सकळ दुजे नाही। (In which kingdom Ram is king, in which kingdom Ram is populace and in which kingdom Ram is the administrator)

Mahatma Gandhi’s famous last words were “He Ram”.

Now in the name of Maryada-Purushottam Ram, at Bangalore, Ramsevaks have attacked the house of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi’s daughter because he reportedly said: “Ram was a mythical figure and there was no historical evidence of his existence.”

I would say: Ramsevaks, Reflect. Let tham call you conservative.


Artist: George Price The New Yorker July 21 1934

WORLD CAR-FREE DAY is on September 22

The Economist June 8 2006 “The dirty sky”:
“…cars—potent symbols of individualism (and, some would say, individual selfishness)—“.

I don't like any car. People slobber over different models of cars. I find each of them ugly. I have never driven one in my life and may never. I have made career choices to fulfill this objective!

The only automobile I ever liked was Royal Enfield made Bullet motorcycle-which again I have never driven- not its looks but its sound..loud ticking of heartbeats..Jazz drumming...

Adbusters:

"Every September 22, people across the globe get together to swear off their cars - if only for one day - in a collective reminder that we don't have to accept car-dominated societies, cities, or personal lives. Since its earliest incarnations in the 1970s and '80s, WORLD CAR-FREE DAY has grown into a massive global celebration of human-centric communities and people-powered transportation.

Car-Free Day 2007 could turn out to be the biggest yet. For the first time, China's government is hopping on board, with official events talking place in more than 100 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. Officials will reportedly be trading in their famed black sedans for public transportation, and some roads will be closed to private cars.

As the world tunes in to the fact that the climate is heating up, this is the perfect opportunity to take the heat off the planet, and put it on city planners and politicians to give priority to cycling, walking and public transport, instead of oil-hungry automobiles."


John le Carre “The Russia House”

''...Americans have poisoned the world with materialistic logic. If my neighbour has a car, I must have two cars. If my neighbour has a gun, I must have two guns. If my neighbour has a bomb, I must have a bigger bomb and more of them, never mind they can't reach their targets. So all I have to do is imagine my neighbour's gun and double it and I have the justification for whatever I want to manufacture...''

Self-absorption makes V S Naipaul caricature of himself

V S Naipaul willynilly became poster boy of Hindutva brigade during NDA administration in India. (The brigade perhaps didn't include Shiv Sena because Naipaul has called Bal Thackeray a 'failed cartoonist'!). India Today has put him on the cover of its issue dated September 10, 2007.

When I read V S Naipaul’s “India: A Wounded Civilization” (first published 1977), it was one of my most profound experiences. The book still has not left me.

Commenting on Mahatma Gandhi’s description of his passage to England from “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, Naipaul said (“A Defect of Vision”):
“…That is the voyage: an internal adventure of anxieties felt and food eaten, with not a word of anything seen or heard that did not directly affect the physical or mental well-being of the writer. The inward concentration is fierce, the self-absorption complete…. Though Gandhi spent three years in England, there is nothing in his autobiography about the climate or the seasons, so unlike heat and monsoon of Gujarat and Bombay…No London building is described, no street, no room, no crowd, no public conveyance…”

Reading this was like touching a hot pan, waking up from a deep slumber.

See picture below of “The Buddha preaching” at Sarnath.

Later I read Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत saying how, from Kalidasa to Dnyaneshwar to almost 20th century, our literature never mentions a butterfly/moth! (“पिवळीच मी पाकोळी की” from “Nisrgotsav” Dileep Prakashan, 1996).

Forget lowly butterfly-moth पाकोळी, what about heavenly Supernova?

SN 1054 (Crab Supernova) was a supernova that was widely seen on Earth in the year 1054. It was recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers as being bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days, outshining the most brilliant stars in the heavens.

Dr. Jayant Narlikar in his book “The Scientific Edge” (Penguin Books India 2003) has a chapter titled “The Search for records of the Sighting of the Crab Supernova”. It describes Herculean efforts put in by his team to locate any record of this grand celestial event in Indian historical records, including popular literature.

Sadly, they failed. Narlikar has not blamed Muslim invaders for this.

Is it because of our ancestors’ Gandhi-Buddha-like self-absorption described by Naipaul so eloquently?

In the Nobel lecture on Dec 7, 2001, Naipaul said:"...I am near the end of my work now. I am glad to have done what I have done, glad creatively to have pushed myself as far as I could go. Because of the intuitive way in which I have written, and also because of the baffling nature of my material, every book has come as a blessing. Every book has amazed me; up to the moment of writing I never knew it was there. But the greatest miracle for me was getting started. I feel - and the anxiety is still vivid to me - that I might easily have failed before I began."

Well, he has failed with his ‘new’, 29th book “A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling".

First of all there is nothing new in this book. Second he makes sweeping statements without backing them up.

Naipaul’s biggest problem, like most Western analysts of India, is he does not read any Indian language. That is a big handicap because best of India has always been expressed in its native languages. And tragically, it is not always translated in English.

I wish Naipaul read Marathi. If he did, he would read Vinoba Bhave's Marathi books and realize why, along with poet-saints, Vinoba is Marathi's rare 'best-seller'.

Naipaul says "(In India) literary criticism is still hardly known as an art". This is far from the truth. He should care to read Dilip Chitre's book on Tukaram ("Punha Tukaram" which also is available in English) or Durga Bhagwat's commentary on Mahabharata ("Vyas Parva") or M V Dhond's criticism of B S Mardhekar's poetry ("Tarihi Yeto Vas Phulana") etc.

Naipaul says 'Indian writers to speak generally seem to know only about their own families and their places of work". This may be true of R K Narayan or Vikram Seth but not of Bhau Padhye- the original chronicler of Bombay (ahead of Vikram Chandra) in all its colours.

Naipaul like most Indians does not know when to shut up, when to retire. Man has become caricature of himself.



The Buddha preaching, Sarnath, fifth century A.D. (ASI Museum, Sarnath). This is the classic image of the Buddha that was developed in the Gupta period. The mudra suggests that he is teaching and setting in motion the wheel of Dharma, also seen in the panel. The inward look, with the gaze centred on the tip of the nose, conveys a great sense of peace and tranquility.

Frontline Aug. 11-24, 2007



The Spectator September 15, 2007 has published this picture of Naipaul as a cartoon. Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे has drawn caricatures (अर्क चित्रे)of many Marathi authors and publishers.

Maharashtra Farmers Just Sit and Chew Tobacco?

On September 9, 2007, Union textile minister Shankarsinh Vaghela said farmers of Vidarbha were themselves to be blamed for their plight.

He reportedly said: “If you just sit and chew tobacco in the farms, how can you expect good crops? The government can only help you to an extent. You should emulate the practices of farmers in Gujarat”

There has been big hue and cry after this. Vaghela of course has declared that he is misquoted and this is a “fabrication” by BJP to malign him.

These debates have been going on for long.

When I was in Assam, I often heard all other communities talking about Assamese as “Lahe Lahe” people.

One of the best non-fictional Marathi book in recent years is the late R B Patankar’s “अपूर्ण क्रांती ” ‘Incomplete Revolution’ (Mauj Prakashan 1999). He has written extensively about two important periodicals of 19th century Maharashtra. ‘मराठी ज्ञान प्रसारक Marathi Dnyan Prasarak’ and ‘विविध ज्ञान विस्तार Vividh Dnyan Vistar’.

In June 1851, an article was published titled “Comparison of Gujarati and Marathi people’s current condition”. Author Keshav Janardan Punalekar said that “Marathi people have indifference towards commerce, fondness for undisciplined expenditure, arrogant nature and laziness” and Gujarati people have “interest in commerce, simplicity, industriousness, habit of limited expendituere”.

Punalekar is not just critical but suggests how Marathi people can change their ways.

Patankar does not mention any controversy after publication of Punalekar’s article.

Mr. Minsiter, is this farmer in Thurber's picture from Maharashtra or Assam?


Artist: James Thurber The New yorker August 15, 1936

Of Dying Kittens and Rajasthani Girls

For the past several weeks, two stray female kittens had made our home their playground. We fell in love with them. I was coming in close contact with a cat after almost 26 years. Before that Chintya, our pet cat, had given us a lot of pleasure and pain from circa 1969-1981.

One of the kittens has died since then.

I had been warning my family about chances of their survival in this cruel world. I said probability of them reaching child bearing age is much less than 50%.

I did not know this was true of Rajasthani girls too!

Rema Nagarajan (Times of India September 10, 2007) says:

“Nearly half of all female deaths in rural Rajasthan are of girls below the age of 20. The precise figure is 49.4%. Out of these, 42% of the deaths are of girls who haven't yet celebrated their fifth birthday. In short, a girl born in a Rajasthan village will have to be very lucky to grow up, marry, bear children — things that are taken fairly for granted in the modern world.

The shocking news doesn't end here. What's worse is that the situation is virtually the same for girls in most Hindi heartland states, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In UP, for instance, nearly half the female deaths in a year — 47%, to be precise — are of girls below 20 years. Bulk of these deaths are in rural areas.

What this really means is that the girl child is barely looked after. The first case of influenza or whooping cough, and there is a good chance that the girl child from these states will not be able to survive it. This tells a lot about the attitude towards females in these states. It also means that all the effort by the government to increase awareness about the girl child is hardly making a dent into deep-seated prejudices……”

However there is some good news too.

DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. (NYT September 13, 2007) says: “For the first time since record keeping began in 1960, the number of deaths of young children around the world has fallen below 10 million a year, according to figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund being released today.

This public health triumph has arisen, Unicef officials said, partly from campaigns against measles, malaria and bottle-feeding, and partly from improvements in the economies of most of the world outside Africa…..”

If we pay attention, we will hear Indian girl child telling us……….

Artist: Mike Twohy The New Yorker May 16, 1994

Human Story is NOT a March Toward some Culminating Idea

David Brooks has written a beautiful essay-“ Where History Reigns”-for NYT May 8, 2007.

He writes: “…History, in the British public culture, takes precedence over philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics. And with a few obvious exceptions, British historians have not seen history as the unfolding of abstract processes. They have not seen the human story as the march toward some culminating idea.

Instead they’ve seen history as a hodgepodge of activity — as one damn thing after another. As a result, George Orwell generalised, the English "have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘worldview’." This isn’t because they are practical — that’s a national myth, Orwell wrote — it’s just that given the stuttering realities of history, they find systems absurd.

Even philosophers in Britain tend to be sceptics, and emphasise how little we know or can know. Edmund Burke distrusted each individual’s stock of reason and put his faith in the accumulated wisdom of tradition. Adam Smith put his faith in the collective judgment of the market. Michael Oakeshott ridiculed rationalism. Berlin celebrated pluralism, arguing there is no single body of truth.

This scepticism permeates national life, for while the British can be socially deferential, they are rarely intellectually deferential…

The Brits’ historical consciousness means that in moments of crisis they can all swing together and act as one. But in normal times, as Orwell also noted, "the gentleness of the English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic." Americans talk of "happiness," but Brits talk, less transcendentally, of "enjoyment."

American journalists, for example, are spiritually descended from Walter Lippmann. We are always earnestly striving toward some future elevated state. British journalists are spiritually descended from Samuel Johnson. They are conversationalists enjoying the inevitable conflicts that, as W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman put it, pit the wrong but romantic against the right but repugnant.”

I wish we Indians became a little more like Brits in this regard.

Next only to fanatic religionists, we must be craziest hero-worshippers. We put our heroes on pedestals, beyond any reproach.

In the process we forget: Every hero-alive or dead-is human, Has a funny side, Is full of innate contradictions.

Maybe this is one reason our humour is not as robust as it used to be.


Artist: George Price The New Yorker August 9, 1947

Attending Nature's Call Before Going on Rampage

Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे has drawn some penetrating pictures of crowds of Mumbai. Here is one of my favourite- Marching through public urinal.

Crowds define India. Even Babar noticed them.

But as C P SURENDRAN says in Times of India September 5 2007 "Mobs on the rampage", crowds have started degenerating into mobs with the slightest of provocation.

“…If justice and punishment are a matter for a throng of people to dispense with, why have courts of law?

Other instances abound of mob assuming for itself a kind of vigilantism that is hard to distinguish from full-fledged riot. Just about anything could spark it. A desecrated statue, a professor who passed a lewd remark on a student, a movie with lesbian innuendoes, a scholar who said the king was naked, a novelist who laughed at a god - just about anything, including two displaced leopards, trapped and beaten to death in Nashik by the mob recently. Anything is reason for the crowd to morph itself into the killer mode of the mob. Any object, painting, truck, or wildcat could be the wand that waved a mob out of men merely staring into the middle distance and sipping tea.

The sad fact is that the mob is so much a part of the so-called Emerging India. It is people who have lost trust in the due process of law, whose sense of retribution brooks no delay in gratification. Mob is a people in a hurry to avenge. And there are so many of them. Add to it poor policing. Every thousand Indians need to make do with just one policeman. Compare that with the UN recommendation of one policeman to 400 people.

An equally contributory cause is the high level of frustration that a vengefully consumerist society - India, for instance, is one of the fastest growing car markets in the world - will transmit to the voyeuristic have-nots. The increasing incidence of mob fury is more a warning than an indication that there are a lot of unhappy people looking for an excuse to get angry as hell.

As pockets of plutocrats increase, we are likely to see more and more of the mob, representing the Indians left out from the movement forward, taking to the road and travelling backward to the stone age of intolerance and violence, a twilight land where a botched attempt at snatching a chain could be seen as an act of arch villainy and mindless violence as its inexplicable but just comeuppance…….”

Dr. Shreeram Lagoo डाँ. श्रीराम लागू (who makes first appearance on this blog earlier) once said how disturbed he felt when mobs attacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) at Pune in January 2004. It reminded him of arson in many parts of Maharashtra, targeting Brahmins, after assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.

Writer Pratibha Ranade (famous for her first-hand account of Afghanistan and books on life and work of Rani Laxmibai & Durga Bhagwat) has given a chilling account of that period, describing what happened to her middle-class Brahmin family in Kolhapur when their cosy neighbourhood morphed into a mob.


Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे 1973 (source- “Savadhan! Pudhe Valan Ahe!” Mauj Prakashan 1990)

Languages that are understood all over the Country

U.R. Ananthamurthy says (India Today, August 20, 2007): “The only two languages that are understood all over the country are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.”

He could as well have added one more- Ganga (Ganges) because he himself touchingly says:
“My grandfather, deeply religious and orthodox, would never have said something like “I am an Indian” in his whole life. Yet India was still an idea, a concept derived mostly from her rivers. When he drew water from our well and poured it over his head he recited a mantra which prayed that the waters of the Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmada and Kaveri be present in the well-water of our home and sanctify him… Both globalised, rootless modernity and ferocious, fundamentalist communalism will weaken the Puranic sense of unity that is present among the people of India.”

My son, my wife and I might have stopped chanting names of rivers while bathing but I remember my mother doing it. I think it’s a beautiful tradition.

Business Standard September 04, 2007 says: “The Ganges figures on the list of the world's ten most endangered rivers, according to a report of the World Wide Fund for Nature. But the Ministry of Environment and Forests has claimed in Parliament that the quality of water has improved since 1985, when the first Ganga Action Plan (GAP) was launched… The World Health Organisation says that an estimated 114 towns release waste into the Ganges. The Centre for Science and Environment, which brought out a report on polluted rivers last year, has said the claim does not hold ground because the hardware created under the GAP is inadequate.”

Let us hope the government is right.

Julian Crandall Hollick has recently written a book “Ganga”. Business Standard has reviewed it.
“……how come Indians venerate the Ganga so much and yet seem bent on destroying it with such vigour with their pollution, dams and other acts of the most frightening vandalism?
Hollick has also taken the trouble to speak to many scientists whose views would not otherwise become known to the lay public. They appear to confirm what the godmen have been saying about the Ganga — that, thanks to the amount of dissolved oxygen in it, not to mention other things like its high rate of aeration and its amazing ability to retain dissolved oxygen, it is something of a scientific marvel.”

Do you want to read Hollick’s book?

Artist: Helen E. Hokinson The New Yorker 22 Feb 1947