Are Historical Films Inspirational or Just Plain Nuisance?

While talking to Newsweek March 3, 2008, Israeli author Amos Oz said:"...The past doesn't just play a role; it almost dominates this region. People remember too well and too much. Both Jews and Arabs carry deep, dramatic injuries."

Historical Hindi film Jodhaa-Akbar has created a stir in India. On February 27 2008, there was chaos in the town of Sangli. (Of course, I take every report in Indian news media with a big pinch of salt because as Steve Salerno said the mainstream news business is so unaccustomed to dealing with issues at any level of complexity and nuance that they’re wont to oversimplify their story to the point of caricature.)

Supporters of the film ask us to forget the history on which purportedly it is based and just to focus on film’s cinematic values. (I then wonder why use names like Akbar & Jodhaa or Bajirao & Mastani. Why not use Zeenat-Imran or Gangubai-Balwantrao?)

They also say history is never objective and hence should be “used” to further “good causes” like Hindu-Muslim unity.

Prime Minister J L Nehru too probably would subscribe to this view.

"...All of which shows how little Nehru understood India and the communal question which tore it apart. His arrogance and ignorance contributed not a little to the tragedy. During the First World War, socialists were dismayed to find the working class as nationalistic as any other in place of the solidarity which theoreticians accepted. Sixty years after Independence we face not only the communal question but also caste divisions…"

(A.G. NOORANI “Path to Partition: A witness’ account” Frontline, October 19, 2007)

Historian T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर (1895 - 1963) argued that even Mahatma Gandhi didn’t have much use of history. Shejwalkar also wished that Nehru and Gandhi studied Panipat 1761 in any detail instead of him!

(Preface to “Panipat 1761”, 1968)

Inspirational history excites me too. Occasionally it moves me to tears. Amartya Sen is a leading exponent of it.

But does it work and for how long?

While reviewing “GOD’S CRUCIBLE /Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215 “ By David Levering Lewis, ERIC ORMSBY observed:

“…Thus, as Lewis notes, “sumptuary laws required that non-Muslims display badges and that clothing worn by dhimmis be distinguished from that worn by Arabs.” Non-Muslims were not allowed to ride on horseback without a permit, or to bear arms. Moreover, for sound fiscal reasons, conversion to Islam was not warmly encouraged since non-Muslims who converted were no longer required to pay the head tax on which state revenues depended. Though well aware of the overly rosy picture often painted of Muslim Spain, Lewis sometimes accepts it himself. Nowadays, we know all too well that the enforced wearing of badges to signify religious affiliation is hardly a sign of tolerance. That was true in Muslim Spain too…”

So was medieval tolerance, where conversion to Islam was not encouraged, anchored to the state revenues and not to some exalted value system? Even in India?

Reviewing “IDENTITY AND VIOLENCE/ The Illusion of Destiny” By Amartya Sen, Fouad Ajami said:

”… Sen works with the anecdote: His potted history is tailored for interfaith dialogues. He writes of the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who, when forced to emigrate from "an intolerant Europe" in the 12th century, was able to find "a tolerant refuge in the Arab world" in the court of the great Muslim ruler Saladin.

But this will not do as history.

Maimonides, born in 1135, did not flee "Europe" for the "Arab world": He fled his native Córdoba in Spain, which was then in the grip of religious-political terror, choking under the yoke of a Berber Muslim dynasty, the Almohads, that was to snuff out all that remained of the culture of convivencia and made the life of Spain's Jews (and of the free spirits among its Muslims) utter hell. Maimonides and his family fled the fire of the Muslim city-states in the Iberian Peninsula to Morocco and then to Jerusalem. There was darkness and terror in Morocco as well, and Jerusalem was equally inhospitable in the time of the Crusader Kingdom. Deliverance came only in Cairo -- the exception, not the rule, its social peace maintained by the enlightened Saladin…

… Inspirational history can go only so far; it will not bend to Sen's good cheer.”

In an earlier post, I noted how the Nizam’s army slaughtered cows in a temple complex in Maharashtra. I also mentioned how Chitpavan Brahmin chieftains of Maratha army looted Hindu shrines around the same time.

But there is a crucial difference between the two.

To say, Marathas didn’t slaughter pigs in mosques would be very simplistic. But by and large they didn’t disrespect shrines, holy books and women of other religions. Until 1857 at least.

In the eyes of most Hindu readers of Indian history this difference perhaps makes some Muslim rulers evil and their Hindu counterparts – much like today’s politicians- corrupt and incompetent but not evil.

India owes a lot to Sufism. People consider ways of Sufis parallel to the ways of Bhakti saints. Like saints, Sufis are considered other-worldly and hence neutral to the politics of their time. (I would argue that most Bhakti saints were not other worldly at all.)

William Dalrymple claimed: “…Sufis succeeded in bringing together Hindu and Muslim in a movement which spanned the apparently unbridgable gulf separating the two religions. To this day, while Muslims usually predominate at Sufi shrines, you also see huge numbers of Hindus, as well as the odd Sikh and Christian. Here for once you can see religion acting to bring people together, not to divide them. In modern India, Sufism is not something other-worldly so much as a religious force that demonstrably acts as a balm on India's festering religious wounds…”.

Historian Setu Madhavrao Pagdi सेतु माधवराव पगडी, expert in Urdu and Farsi, studied sufism and wrote a book on the subject: सूफी संप्रदाय , तत्वज्ञान आणि कार्य (Sufism – Philosophy and Work) 1953. While acknowledging the debt of great sufi saints, he argued that sufis fully co-operated with the policies of aggressive Muslim rulers. He further said that many sufi shrines- he personally visited them- were built by demolishing Hindu temples.
(Jeevansetu जीवनसेतु, 1969)

With luck inspirational history may help create good cinema like Mughal-E-Azam(1960) but I wonder if it can ever work as a social balm.

Artist: J B Handlesman The New Yorker 26 February 1972

To India Goes the Award for the Most Celebrity Obsessed Culture

I couldn’t watch academy awards function this year after an hour. It got so boring.

I never watch any Indian film award function. At last count there at least are a dozen of them. This year even my wife doesn’t wish to watch any of them. They all look the same...muck like gowns at academy awards function...parade of celebrities. Rate at which Indian media are busy fabricating celebrities is scary.

A. O. SCOTT has written an excellent essay “Are Oscars Worth All This Fuss?”. (NYT February 24, 2008).

“…I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that I found myself hoping that the strike (the Writers Guild strike) would shut the Academy Awards down; that for once, in a year of such cinematic bounty and variety, appreciation for the best movies could be liberated from the pomp and tedium of Hollywood spectacle. ..

… So I am not against the Oscars, any more than I’m dismissive of the Salesman of the Year or the Employee of the Month, or opposed to lavish annual trade association conventions for actuaries or ophthalmologists. But I am nonetheless bothered by the disproportionate importance that the Academy Awards have taken on, and by the distorting influence they exercise over the way we make, market and see movies in this country. The Oscars themselves may be harmless fun, but the idea that they matter is as dangerous as it is ridiculous. ..

… In the past it was frequently safe to assume that any relationship between the Oscars and artistic quality was coincidental. The academy was never supposed to be hip, daring or responsive to what was newest and most risky in the world of cinema. It was just what its name implied: the mainstream, the establishment, the old guard. Sometimes, yes, the best picture prize would actually go to the best picture, but more often the academy’s neglect of a film was a reliable index of its merit. The good judgment not only of critics but, more important, of independent-minded, adventurous moviegoers has traditionally been measured by its distance from the consensus of the movie industry.

And that, it should not be forgotten, is what the Academy Awards represent: the self-assessment of a self-interested, self-involved professional clique…

… In the old days it was more often the opposite: the academy would belatedly gild the lily of commercial success with a shiny finish of ersatz class. This vulgarity was the saving grace of the Oscars. It was not necessary for film lovers to take them seriously or for media outlets to cover them like presidential campaigns, with horse-race reporting, sober analysis and war room spin doctoring. A bit of perspective is needed. The wonderful thing about the Academy Awards is that they are fundamentally trivial. To pretend otherwise is to trivialize movies.”

Private Benefits at Public Cost? Sugar Cooperatives in Maharashtra.

A K D Jadhav, Mumbai has written scathingly about sugar cooperatives in Maharashtra (Economic & Political Weekly, February 16-22 2008).

Sugarcane is auspicious for a “cultural Hindu” like me. I was raised in Western Maharashtra where I often saw a standing crop of sugarcane (see picture below). It gave me a great solace.

Sight of sugarcane getting transported from fields to factories in bullock-carts and trucks brought great excitement to us. Many boys- and few men- chased those vehicles to pull out a long sugarcane stick. It almost always was a very dangerous game. I remember many accidents those acts caused.

During the sugarcane season, in the evenings, our mother often took three of us to a particular sugarcane juice bar ऊसाचे गु-हाळ at Miraj. There a male buffalo pulled a huge, creaky, wooden juicer. If it didn’t scare, the sound always precluded any conversation, making us concentrate on the act of drinking.

Even today a glass of sugarcane juice at Muralidhar sugarcane juice bar मुरलीधर रसवंती गृह on Bajirao Road, Pune gives me greater pleasure than a glass of beer or any other beverage.

Despite movies like "The Contest" सामना 1975, I believed sugar cooperatives generally did more good than bad for farmers of Maharashtra and the society at large.

That impression started to change few years ago.

In Maharashtra, sugar cane covers just three percent of the land yet corners around 60 percent of the state irrigation supply and is a cause of substantial groundwater withdrawals; the water table in places has dropped from 15 metres to around 65 metres in the past 20 years.

Frontline March 2005:

“…There was a time when the sugar cooperatives did benefit rural areas. The very first sugar cooperative, which was established by Vithalrao Vikhe Patil, was a reaction to the plight of cane-growing peasants who were trapped by landlessness, moneylenders and the exploitative policies of private sugar mills. In the mid-1940s peasants struggled to market their sugarcane. Extracting sugar from cane was expensive and uneconomical. So the cane was made into jaggery. But as there was a surfeit of raw sugarcane and jaggery prices invariably reached rock bottom. In 1948, Vikhe Patil organised the sugarcane growers of 44 villages in Ahmednagar district in western Maharashtra. The outcome was Asia's first cooperative sugar factory, which was commissioned in 1950…

… The strength of the movement was the involvement of the farmers who were shareholders in the sugar mill regardless of the size of their holdings. Over the years, this truly democratic idea got corrupted and farmers with larger holdings grew more powerful. In practice, this altered the power structure of the cooperatives. In the elections to the governing bodies of the sugar factories, money became such a powerful tool that the top posts of chairman and vice-chairman usually went to the richest farmers even though the majority of members were farmers with small- or medium-sized holdings…

…`Private benefits at public cost' is how a report of the World Bank summed up the role of Maharashtra's sugar cooperatives. Though the cooperative movement has helped rural Maharashtra, it has also been at a high cost to the exchequer. Sugar cooperatives have a complicated structure, which makes it possible for them to incur losses but not profits. This is because profits are fully distributed among the members of the cooperative, whereas losses are not; losses accrue to the cooperative. It is bad enough when a cooperative makes losses but when it is shown to be making a loss when it has actually made profits, then the members of the cooperative are being cheated of their share of the profits. In addition, the burden on the government rises because the government bears the losses of the sugar cooperatives and also provides subsidies.

Though initially the subsidies provided to the cooperative sector did benefit farmers both rich and poor, they gradually came to benefit only the rich farmers…

… With low cash inputs, high subsidies, high returns and generous financial support from the State, it is clear why sugar cooperatives are attractive to promoters. But these have also been the reasons for the cooperative movement's downfall…”

A K D Jadhav:

“…As far back as 1977 Michael Lipton in his book Why Poor People Stay Poor highlighted the driving force behind unequal associations as their susceptibility to capture. The cooperative movement of Maharashtra is a classic study of this phenomenon, whereby the Maratha Deshmukhs sought to use caste as a means to induct Maratha Kunbis (peasants) in their bid to capture and perpetuate power and pelf.

Y B Chavan, schooled in M N Roy’s dialectics, saw the potential for building the edifice early in his life. The contrived Maratha “majority” through Kunbi (OBC) induction in large swathes of western Maharashtra in the 1950s and 1960s, around the time of the formation of the state, created an opportune moment for Chavan and his 96 clans (96 kulis) to capture the state Congress and through it the levers of political power in the state.
Almost immediately thereafter the cooperative movement received large sums of tax-payers’ money as virtual handouts from the state budget. The extraordinary scheme was and is still based on a special debtequity of 90: 10, the debt being provided by the cooperative banks based on state guarantees and 90 per cent of the equity being provided by the state from its budget as a direct handout.

Maratha clansmen backed by Kunbi numbers were encouraged to get into “coops”, pick up readymade projects of Rs 10 to 20 crore (1960s and 1970s), access 99 per cent of the funds from the state and its institutions and use the structure to perpetuate their hegemony.

What Baviskar calls the “success” of the cooperative movement in Maharashtra is in fact a humongous failure of the rule of law. The genesis of the sugar cooperative lies not in the “business” of making sugar and earning wealth for the cooperative but in the use of the structure as a medium for siphoning off funds from the treasury into the coffers of the kulaks. All the sugar coops have thrived on running subsidies not only by way of the original infusion of fixed and working capital by publicly funded institutions, but with continuous infusions at regular intervals thereafter in the form of revival and restructuring grants, soft loans and government guarantees.

For this reason it is not possible to understand Baviskar’s pride in the 5 million tonnes of sugar produced in Maharashtra, because that sugar is produced at a huge cost to the state exchequer, depriving other sections of society of public funds to which they have a far greater claim.”

Celebrating Next Big Sterile Statistics

Which statistics will Indian media celebrate next? I can never guess.

Currently they are celebrating figures at which cricketers were auctioned. My son is a cricket-stat nut. Sometimes he is a big nuisance around.

Outlook February 25, 2008 celebrated:

”…1.60 million Indians can’t resist the Facebook Phenomenon” and then went on to discuss exciting facebook lives of many so-called celebrities.

I don’t quite get it. Perhaps because I am still not on Facebook.

”… Facebook purports to be a place for human connectivity, but it’s made us more wary of real human confrontation...For young people, Facebook is yet another form of escapism; we can turn our lives into stage dramas and relationships into comedy routines…” (ALICE MATHIAS, NYT October 06, 2007).


'We met on Facebook and split up on Bebo.'

The Spectator February 2008

What is a Real Oriental, Edward Said?

Do only insiders can know the truth about their societies? Edward Said’s much-discussed Orientalism (1978) thought so.

About it, David S. Landes said his classic “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” (1998):

“Insofar as one uses this claim to discredit the work of intellectual adversaries, it is polemical and antiscientific. But insofar as it points to the instrumental value and power of information, for good and for bad, it makes an important point.”

While reviewing 'The Great Transformation' by Karen Armstrong, JOHN WILSON said:

“…In our own time of "great fear and pain,"Armstrong proposes that we look to the Axial sages for "two important pieces of advice," both of which turn out to be quite uncontroversial: We should practice self-criticism (amen), and we should "take practical, effective action" against excessively aggressive tendencies in our own traditions (amen again).

But after 400 pages of historical argument, the banality of such declarations is staggering.

Yes, we need to learn to see things from other points of view. But once we have done that, once indifference and ignorance and prejudice and other obstacles are cleared away, real differences — political, religious, and cultural — remain. “ (NYT, April 30, 2006)

Wilson sounds as if it is easy to clear indifference and ignorance.

On the other hand, it’s impossible to clear it considering following state of affairs in USA.

Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason”:

“Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.” She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.” (NYT February 14, 2008)


“… Most people at the CIA don't speak foreign languages, so communications between and within other nations go untranslated…” (Doug Brown’s review of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA” by Tim Weiner). (Powells.com February 16,2008)

Why just middle-east? In the West, I feel, quality of scholarship about India was better in 19th century than today. Many India based 'popular' Indian historians don't read Indian language books to source their material.
I have already written about ignorance of likes of V S Naipaul when it comes to India. For the same reason, even many educated and well-off Indians- living in India and abroad- are ignorant about India.


Artist: Ned Hilton The New Yorker 5 September 1936

Write it Down Anju. Multi-Storied Parking Lot at Pune.

The multi-storied parking lot with a capacity to accommodate 300 cars or 2,000 two-wheelers was inaugurated on November 5, 2007 at Pune. Of course, there are few roads- like FC road- that now seem to be used only for parking!

The 4.55-crore parking lot project includes a ground plus five stories and is constructed on a 10,000 sq m plot.A six metre-wide ramp has been constructed for vehicles to pass through to upper levels and provision has been made for installing lifts in the future.

I hope my wife Anju will note the advice in following picture.


'For heaven's sakes, Dennis, write it down.'

The Spectator, February 2008

Manage Repressed Hostility Without Getting Asthma. How? Ask Eknath एकनाथ.

Times of India February 22, 2008 reported:

“Anger slows down healing process: The adage that laughter is the best medicine has been backed by an unusual investigation which says that people who seethe with anger take longer to recover from injury.

Previous studies have linked ill tempered behaviour, whether brow-beating or road rage, with higher incidence of coronary heart disease, hypertension and stroke, especially among men…“

In the past I suffered from extreme anger. Anger described aptly in following line:
"भोवतालच्या माणसांना एकच मुंडी असती तर ती आपण अत्यंत आनंदाने पीरगाळली असती."
(if surrounding people had one neck, I would have gladly twisted it)

(स्वामी जी ए कुलकर्णी Swamee G A Kulkarni पिंगळावेळ "Owl Time" 1977)

Our previous generations had a bigger problem with anger. See a related post here.

Laxmibai Tilak’s लक्ष्मीबाई टिळक classic स्मृतिचित्रे (Memory-pictures) 1934 is full of description of extreme anger filled scenes from many Marathi speaking homes.

Anger was very fashionable in Maharashtra.

Vinoba Bhave wrote an excellent essay on Saint Eknath संत एकनाथ. (विनोबा सारस्वत "Vinoba Saraswat" edited by राम शेवाळकर Ram Shewalkar 1987). Vinoba says all saints are known for their serenity but Eknath was probably the best among them on this count.

Nath said:”आपुलीच दारा, जरी टेके व्यभिचारा, क्रोधाचा थारा अंतरी न ये.”

“To our door, even if infidelity touched, let anger not enter our inside”


Artist: Robert Weber The New Yorker 24 November 1962

Long, Cruel Road to the Slaughterhouse. My Own Rude Awakening.

Independent UK had this story on February 13, 2008:

“…Across the world, more than a billion live animals are transported every week, many over long distances. In shocking footage (available here), animals including horses, pigs, sheep and chickens are seen being transported thousands of miles across the world, when they could as easily be carried as meat.

Thousands of animals die en route from disease, heat exhaustion, hunger and stress. The others escape the intolerable conditions only to confront, immediately, the butcher's knife…

… In Spain, thousands of horses are illegally crammed into lorries for a sweltering 46-hour journey to Italy. Canadian pigs, in conditions just as obscene, are condemned to a 4,500-mile journey by land and sea to Hawaii, so that, when slaughtered, their carcasses can be sold as "Island Produced Pork". For nine days, hundreds of pigs are crammed together in the dark, standing in their own excrement. Exhausted and hungry, they become ill, vomiting from motion sickness and waiting for long periods without food…

… Australia sends four million live sheep every year on the barbaric journey to the Middle East. They are transported in such cramped conditions that many die of suffocation on the way. On arrival, they are killed according to Halal butchery laws. “

Indian stories are equally cruel.


Artist: Alan Dunn The New Yorker 27 June 1942

p.s This picture also brought to my mind the final journey of Boxer in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”.

Migratory Birds Have Started Returning from Pune

Pudhari पुढारी February 21, 2008 reported that birds that came over to Pune this winter, from far off places like Africa, Mangolia, Siberia, Tibet etc had started returning.

I have a question for them…

Lazy species like me would surely stay put.


Artist: Victoria Roberts The New Yorker 15 November 1993

Civil Wars- India’s and American

Some say India has been fighting a civil war for last 40 years.

India Today February 11, 208 reported:

“…Left wing extremism (LWE) or Naxalism has killed thousands of people to emerge as an immediate threat to internal security. Worse still, more than a year after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged the severity of this threat by calling it the “single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country”, there is no holistic initiative to tackle the bloodlust.

The militants, who launched an armed movement in 1967 claiming to fight for the rights of poor peasants and landless labourers, are active in at least 16 of the country’s 33 states. Of the total 12,476 police stations in the country, Maoist violence was reported from 395 in 11 states in 2006.

What was confined initially to pockets in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh in the early 1970s has not only spread in a virulent manner but emerged as a major political force in the tribal woods of Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand.

They strike at will with accurate planning, ambush police teams, break into jails and hit select targets to create a fear psychosis as is the wont of terror groups everywhere.

Despite the improvement of the information gathering networks in the affected areas, the range and intensity of the Maoist violence spirals upwards…”

But this pales compared to American civil war that remains one of the bloodiest in the history of mankind.

“…Americans had never endured anything like the losses they suffered between 1861 and 1865 and have experienced nothing like them since. Two percent of the United States population died in uniform — 620,000 men, North and South, roughly the same number as those lost in all of America’s other wars from the Revolution through Korea combined. The equivalent toll today would be six million…”

(GEOFFREY C. WARD’s review of “THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING/ Death and the American Civil War” By Drew Gilpin Faust. NYT January 27, 2008).

India has never seen a war like this on its soil. Bloodiest battle of modern times in India perhaps was Panipat 1761 where estimated 50,000-100,000 people died.
What about the battle of Plassey, which supposedly changed the subcontinent’s history?
“…The nawab began the battle with fifty thousand troops, against three thousand for the British. Of the fifty thousand, only twelve thousand actually fought for him, and these withdrew so quickly that they suffered only five hundred casualties. British losses numbered four Europeans and fourteen sepoys….”

What was India’s population in 1761?

“…We have no censuses, but one estimate gives the figure of 100 million for the late sixteenth century, and this may well be low…” (“The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” by David S. Landes, 1998)

Even if we take the figure of 100 million for 1761, we are still talking about 0.1% deaths at upper end of the band.

GEOFFREY C. WARD: “…Little wonder. Some 7,000 corpses lay scattered across the Pennsylvania countryside, alongside more than 3,000 dead horses and mules — an estimated six million pounds of human and animal flesh, swollen and blackening in the July heat. For weeks afterward, townspeople carried bottles of peppermint oil to neutralize the smell…”

Panipat 1761’s aftermath would have been comparable to this though thankfully it was a cold winter of January. If it were to be during a monsoon month, it surely would have triggered an epidemic.

Drew Gilpin Faust: “Death created the modern American union, not just by ensuring national survival, but by shaping enduring national structures and commitments”

Civil war brings Abraham Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg to mind.


Artist: Jack Ziegler The New Yorker 18 December 1989