Who After Y D Phadke? य. दि. फडके

Today January 11 2014 is 6th Death Anniversary of Y D Phadke (1931-2008)

George Orwell, May 18 1944:

"...With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history..."

Julian Barnes, 'A History Of The World In 10½ Chapters', 1989

"...In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue

And then what? Everyone became wiser? People stopped building new ghettoes in which to practise the old persecutions? Stopped making the old mistakes, or new mistakes, or new versions of old mistakes? (And does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that’s too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.)

Dates don’t tell the truth. They bawl at us – left, right, left, right, pick ’em up there you miserable shower. They want to make us think we’re always progressing, always going forward..."
 
L K Advani, December 24 2013:

"...I, for one, would never expect any journal of The Hindu Group to describe Sardar Patel as  “a man rabidly communal in outlook.” It is only when I looked inside the journal that I saw that it was an article written by A.G. Noorani. The surprise therefore need not be about its authorship but simply about the fact that such a perverse article should have been made the cover page feature..."
 
It's interesting to note that Mr. Advani, in the post on his blog from which the quote above is borrowed,  has nothing to say about Mr. Noorani's stinging criticism of Mr. V D Savarkar (वि दा सावरकर),  in the pages of the same magazine, in February 2013 and his following claim of BJP's association with Savarkar:

"...But Savarkar was also the BJP’s ideologue. He was the one who coined the term Hindutva and distinguished his theme of hate elaborately from the ancient and noble faith of Hinduism..."!

Among all this, I miss Ya Di Phadke.

How I long to read him on the subject...(I once wanted his views on every piece of history of 20th century Maharashtra. I, rather audaciously, suggested to Mr. R Guha, by e-mail, that he saw see Mr. Phadke about the former's book, "A Corner of Foreign Field/ The Indian History of a British Sport", 2003 that  covers the life of Mr. Palwankar Baloo  बाळू पालवणकर/  पी. बाळू. I did it because most of Phadke's writing is not translated into English.)

I wonder who has taken on Phadke's role in narrating 20th century history of Maharashtra / India, especially its 'inconvenient' part,  in Marathi.

Today I don't see any name in his class writing in Marathi.

In the last quarter of 2013, I read the following two things by Mr. Noorani:

1. Frontline magazine dated December 13 2013

2. "Savarkar and Hindutva- The Godse Connection", 2002

After reading these two, I re-read Phadke's classic "Nathuramayan" (नथुरामायण), 1998/1999. I also have (and read) Phadke's book on Savarkar: 'शोध सावरकरांचा', 1984 ('Shodh Savarkarancha').

The late V D Savarkar poses a unique challenge to most middle-class Marathi speaking writers. I often feel they are too influenced by his two wonderfully moving patriotic songs and his other writings to be completely objective.


Noorani's book is severe on V D Savarkar while his essay in the issue of Frontline is severe on both Savarkar and Sardar Patel.

Sample the following two paragraphs from the essay.

"...If this “achievement” is magnified, Patel’s grave lapse in the failure to nip in time Savarkar’s conspiracy to murder Gandhi has been completely overlooked. Jayaprakash Narayan was among those who censured him. JP said on February 27, 1948, that he wanted “a man who was free from communalism to be in charge of the Home Department” (Bombay Chronicle, February 28, 1948)..."


"...What does the entire record reveal but a man who was rabidly communal in his outlook? The dislike of Muslims hardened over time into antipathy towards them. A hostile Vallabhbhai Patel became an anti-Muslim leader in cahoots with elements who were after their blood, the RSS and the Mahasabha. All this was overlooked and a pocket-version of the Great Patel and Bismark emerged. Simultaneously, the process of denigration of Nehru picked up speed. Nehru foresaw the danger early enough. He told Wavell on July 14, 1945, that “some of the Congress Hindus were anti-Muslim and that the psychological factors were important” (TOP, Volume 5, pages ). This fitted Patel to perfection. For all his claims to fairness, the communalist in him could never be concealed..."

On the other hand, Phadke writes in 'Nathuramayan': 

"...सरदार पटेलांच्या खासगी पत्रव्यवहाराचे अनेक खंड वाचल्यानंतर सरदार पटेल हे मुस्लिमविरोधी होते किंवा हिंदू जातीयवादी होते असे म्हणण्यास आवश्यक तो भक्कम पुरावा आढळत नाही…" (page 118)

(...After reading multiple volumes of Sardar Patel's personal correspondence one does not find concrete evidence to say that Sardar Patel was against Muslim or was a communal Hindu...)


This is hard to believe.

Noorani gives example after example of Patel's alleged 'communalism' by quoting primary sources while Phadke says he can't find anything solid to support that claim!

I wonder if Phadke and Noorani, both  based in Mumbai, ever met. Phadke died in January 2008. Therefore, I also wonder if he got to read Noorani's book on Savarkar.

Where does the truth lie?  Has any one from Maharashtra tried to counter the charges of Noorani against Patel and Savarkar?

I saw the late Narhar Kurundkar's (नरहर कुरुंदकर) 1932-1982 largely laudatory article, dated Diwali 1975, on Sardar Patel, reprinted in Loksatta dated November 10 2013  here.

I find it funny that Kurundkar has to say this about Mr. Patel: "...ते सावरकरांचे किंवा (माधव सदाशिव)
गोळवलकरांचे अनुयायी जाहीरपणे कधी नव्हतेच; पण मनातूनही कधी नव्हते..." (He never was a follower of Savarkar or (M. S.) Golvalkar overtly; not even covertly.)

Why has this to be stated for a staunch follower of Mahatma Gandhi? Does one say this about another devout Hindu and Gandhi's follower like Vinoba Bhave (विनोबा भावे)? Mr. Patel would not have certainly liked this 'certification'!

Loksatta introduces Kurundkar article with this: "पटेल हिंदुत्ववादी व जातीयवादी होते, अशा अनेक कंडय़ा सध्या पिकविल्या जात आहेत." (These days the rumours are spread that Patel was communal and a follower of Hindutva.)   

This claim is not much different than that of Mr. Advani.

But all this rhetoric does not even begin to address the serious issues raised by Mr. Noorani about Mr. Patel and Mr. Savarkar.

Is it a Selfie of Rembrandt?

S. Radhakrishnan, 'Indian Philosophy', Volume 1, 1927:

"The individual self is ever unsatisfied with itself and is struggling always to become something else. In its consciousness of limitation, there is a sense of the infinite. The finite self which is limited, which ever tries to rise beyond its sad plight, is not ultimately real. The true self has the character of imperishableness."


David Shariatmadari, The Guardian, January 1 2014:

"Previous generations seem to have been more aware of the sense of false security that images can provide – portrait paintings were often accompanied by a memento mori – often a well-placed skull signified that death was inescapable. The selfie lacks this handy feature. As we happily snap away, are we are engaged in a kind of mass denial? Things can be preserved, we seem to be saying, perfectly, digitally, and for ever."

I learnt in November 2013 that "selfie" has been named as word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries.

It is defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website"

Posing for a selfie photo at the memorial service of Nelson Mandela in December 2013 (courtesy: AFP / Getty)

The New Yorker's Robert Mankoff has some fun with this selection of the word  here.

There is not a cartoon by Peter Arno,  I don't love and so too was the case with this one. He rib-tickles me all the time.

Artist: Peter Arno, The New Yorker, 1 January 1959

My favourite 'Selfie' cartoon although is this:

Artist: Ed Fisher, The New Yorker,  11 February 1956

My caption today would be: "That's your selfie, I suppose".

I was moved to almost tears by what Jonathan Jones has to say about the following picture on his Guardian blog on November 21 2013:

"...Rembrandt, at the age of about 59, looks at us from the depth of his years, and with the authority of his craft. He has portrayed himself holding his brushes, maulstick and palette, in front of two circles drawn on a wall. Why the circles? Do they represent a sketch for a map of the world? Or is Rembrandt alluding, with this drawing on a brown surface, to stories that say the first picture was a drawing made with a stick in sand?
His eyes contain so much knowledge and melancholy that even looking at this painting on a computer screen, I get the eerie feeling that Rembrandt is looking back and weighing up my failures. You can deduce the power of the original.

He was a failure when he painted this, a proud man reduced to poverty by his enthusiastic spending – but here he throws it back on the burghers of Amsterdam. Art is not a business; it is a struggle with eternity. Rembrandt stands not proudly or arrogantly, but in the full consciousness of the heroic nature of his work.
First there is nothing, then there is a circle. The human hand, guided by the eye and the brain, makes a mark that only we can make – there are no other geometricians but us, no other animal that can draw or presumably conceive a circle.

From the circle to this portrait is another leap. Rembrandt has mapped himself with such craggy truthfulness that we simply stand and look back, wondering if we can ever be as real as he is..."

 But I still have a question....Is the picture Rembrandt's selfie?

 

"Detail from Portrait of the Artist" c.1665 from the collection at Kenwood House

Artist: Rembrandt Van Rijn

Photo courtesy: English Heritage

The Women Come And Go, Talking of Julian Peters

Today January 4 2014 is  126th Birth Anniversary of T S Eliot

 T S Eliot:

“No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written. He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.”
 
T S Eliot, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', 1915:

"...Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, ..."


"...Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement." (Wikipedia)

The poem will celebrate its centenary in 2015.

As soon I read this poem around 1982, I liked it, although I did not understand a lot of it.

I particularly loved these two lines:

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."

Why? I don't know.

 (On September 28 2007, I wrote a post  "In the Room the Women Come And Go, Talking of Dev Anand", on Dev Anand's autobiography.)
  
On the art of comics, Holland Cotter says in the New York Times, November 15 2013:

"Comic art is, on a very basic level, about concentration, about fitting a complete world in a small space and keeping it coherent and readable."

Isn't poetry about the same: 

"fitting a complete world in a small space and keeping it coherent and readable."?

Recently,  I got too see an adaptation of the Eliot's poem as a comic book by Julian Peters

 

Artist: Julian Peters

Now, there are five frames in the picture above.

The third, "Let us go and make our visit",  is fine and so is the fourth, "In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo", and so are the frames one and two at the top where the poet is shown dressing up.

They all are very good drawings but add no value to my appreciation of the poem.

But wait...what makes the comic strip of Peters special is the fifth frame depicting the following line:

"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes"

That is the way the fog rubs its back upon the window-panes as the poet walks by...Wonderful. 

I hope when they celebrate the poem in 2015, they will also remember Julian Peters's adaptation.

Jean-Jacques Sempé's Picture Moves us to Penance?

John Gray, February 2012:

"...Comte wanted his new religion to be based on science, so the temples of humanity pointed only as far as science could reach. That is why his new church failed. The very idea of a science-based religion is an absurdity. The value of religion is that it points beyond anything that can be known by the methods of science, showing us that a mystery would remain even if everything could be finally explained. The heart of religion isn't belief, but something more like what Keats described as negative capability: "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"..."

Ned Flanders:

"Why me, Lord? Where have I gone wrong? I've always been nice to people! I don't drink or dance or swear! I've even kept kosher just to be on the safe side! I've done everything the Bible says; even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! What more could I do?" 

 (The Simpsons, 'Hurricane Neddy', Season 8 Episode 8, Aired December 29, 1996)
 
Look at the following picture by great cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé. 

 
Artist: Jean-Jacques Sempé (August 17 1932 - )

courtesy: Madhukar Dharmapurikar (मधुकर धर्मापुरीकर) 

In a church, an old lady is stunned to find a mouse, with a halo around its head, is being chased by a ferocious looking cat. The outcome looks almost certain.

Unfortunately, all the details in the picture are not very clear. For instance, there are a couple of paintings on the wall of the church. And if you look closely, you will notice they depict some kind of violence. 

Andrew Graham-Dixon writes in "Caravaggio A Life Sacred and Profane", 2012:

"Caravaggio’s art is made from darkness and light. His pictures present spotlit moments of extreme and often agonized human experience. A man is decapitated in his bedchamber, blood spurting from a deep gash in his neck. A man is assassinated on the high altar of a church..."

'The Beheading of St John', 1608    Location St. John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta

Artist: Caravaggio  ( "In the blood gushing from the saint’s neck, Caravaggio signed his name. It is his only signature on a painting.")

In Sempe's church, it's not going to be a man but just a mouse. But in the background, there is probably a Caravaggio.


Edward Mendelson has said:

"Great institutions thrive on internal contradictions and irresolvable divisions. This has always been the case with governments and universities, and especially with religions..."

A church mouse that has earned its halo, no less, finds no mercy as it is about to breathe its last.

While reviewing 'Hunting Evil/ The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Quest to Bring Them to Justice' by Guy Walters, Deborah E.Lipstadt says:

"...The Vatican also went out of its way to protect criminals. It provided passports, refuge and other means of support for them. While the church's record during the war may be open to some debate, its record in helping the murderers escape responsibility afterward is clear, as has been documented by both Michael Phayer in "The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965" and Gerald Steinacher in "Nazis auf der Flucht..."

Is Sempe's church protecting the killer cat?

Mr. Graham-Dixon says in the book quoted above:

"...The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed a widespread call to order – a movement intended to take religious art back to the values of an earlier and supposedly purer time. Carlo Borromeo was at its forefront. As well as containing recommendations of every kind about church architecture and decoration, his Instructiones set out his views on art with typical forthrightness. No animals or other distracting details should be included, unless actually mentioned in the biblical text that the artist had been instructed to illustrate. In the seventeenth chapter of his book, devoted to the correct representation of sacred events, Borromeo determined the appropriate fines and punishments for artists who failed to meet the strictest standards of decorum. In Milan, errant artists as well as heretics were liable to come to the attentions of the archbishop’s famiglia armata. No painter could be in any doubt about what was required of him. Images should be clear and direct. It was the job of art simply to educate spectators and move them to penance..."

In Sempe's picture, there are two animals...there are lots of distracting details...even then Sempe's picture perhaps moves us to penance!