Category: Enough said

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Enough said

The capital bites the dust

Which development are we talking about, when the capital city cannot withstand an hour’s rain without turning into a cesspool?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

This Saturday was a nightmare, with rains not taking a break. I’d dared to step out in the rains without realising that I’d be caught in a disaster. If commuting from Gurgaon to New Delhi wasn’t horrible enough, the scene in the capital city was shocking. Three South Delhi roads – connecting Hauz Khas with the Asiad Games Village and Green Park, also those leading to Malviya Nagar and Saket – were not visible in their long-winded glory; they resembled nullahs overflowing with garbage.

Autorickshaws were stuck in those waters, together with the danger of live wires. The only option was to stand on the roadside, with or without an umbrella and shoes, and await developments. Hundreds were stranded all over Delhi, which is not geared to combat even an hour’s rain! The days will get longer (or seem to) as the rainy season continues. Even a mild shower is enough to cause horrifying traffic snarls here, in the capital city of India.

When I am stranded in the rain, I introspect on the complete mess Delhi is in, and what third class living conditions you can find here. This is a story that plays on loop, season after season. In the dark winter months, it’s the fog that stands in the way, in the long summer, it’s the heat that kills. But these are quirks of nature, not to be helped by man. What can be helped, however, is the heap of disasters we see every monsoon.

The dreaded dengue makes an entry every year, and kills several. Live wires abound on busy roads, becoming potential death traps. Then there are the nullahs that overflow constantly. No, let’s not blame the rain gods and let’s not host a fashionable climatic change conference. We’ve always had a monsoon season, but it wasn’t treacherous like this, it was all fun and frolic and romance. After all, poets of this land have penned volumes of romantic verse on the rains.

Don’t even think of going out for a meeting in this rain, for you are sure to reach the destination, that is if you reach at all, drenched to the bone, your make-up running in rivers all over your face, your clothes reduced to see-through rags, shoes or sandals almost gone, umbrella not holding out. You might even land up at your meet with chest pain or blood pressure, your blood sugar levels on the rise. No wonder there are so many nursing homes and private medical centres mushrooming all over the place! Our living conditions make their presence inevitable.

The State dare not talk of development in the run-up to the elections. What development does it speak of, when the average citizen cannot even commute when the weather changes? When every season drags along disasters, when your health infrastructure is third class and only the rich can afford private medical care? The rest of us have to queue up at those Government hospitals, which are as good as butcherkhanas.

delhi rainCan’t we see the crux of these disasters? It’s blatant corruption that is responsible. Even the naïve can understand that these roads full of pot holes are sinking and falling apart are made of bogus material. The only remedy is that our ministers and their babus should be made to take a walk on these roads. Every single day that it rains, they should be made to stand at crossings and lanes. They should be made to walk to their workplace. May be then they would see what their power and money prevents them from seeing – how those who elected them face life when the seasons change.

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com, indiatoday.intoday.in)

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Petty speeches and hard talks

This week saw some low-level political discourse at one end of the spectrum, and an illuminating talk on the other.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Look at the irony. Tomatoes and potatoes are selling at astronomical prices, but politicians are going cheap – for just Rs 5.

Truly gone are the days of Gandhi and Nehru, when their mere words stirred the masses into action. Today, politicians are catering to the lowest common denominator, with crude and crafty speeches laced with ideas that should not enter a decent person’s thoughts, let alone creep into his public speech.

This freedom of expression cannot be used to borderline vulgarity, to say the unthinkable. Where are the leaders who unite the masses narendra modithrough stirring speeches and debates? Instead, we’re left with people who will say and do anything to make the news, who firmly believe in the adage that ‘any publicity is good publicity’. When was the last time we heard a really profound speech from a politician?

In the backdrop of these political shenanigans, last week there was a talk by noted academic Dr Vasudha Pande at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). The very focus of her talk should get the Uttarakhand Government focussing on what the erstwhile kings of the region did to harness their resources – terraced cultivation to save agricultural land and crops.

Dr  Pande is currently a Fellow, NMML, researching the environmental history of Uttarakhand. I quoting this abstract from her talk at the NMML:

“Katyuris are the much celebrated kings of Uttarakhand. The narrative of the Katyuri state marks the shift from pre-history to history – with copper plates, inscriptions, architectural works and folklore. Despite the great interest expressed in the Katyuri state system, little attention is paid to the most momentous contribution of the Katyuris—the shift to settled, terraced cultivation and the emergence of petty peasant production.

uttarakhand“Since Uttarakhand as defined today as a specific construct, the presentation will not restrict itself to this geographical unit. It will explore regions contiguous with present day Uttarakhand –Nepal in the east, Tarai in the south, Tibet in the north and Himachal in the west. Articulated in terms of river valley systems it will extend from the Karnali in the east to Kali, to Ganga, to Yamuna up to Sutlej in the west. By spreading the net wide, we hope to document the gradual, piecemeal change in terms of resource utilisation by hunter gatherers, fishing communities, pastoral groups, and those practicing trans-humance in this part of the Himalayan mountains.

Katyuri period, roughly defined from the 9th-14th CE as a momentous conjuncture which successfully stitched together the various food production systems then prevalent in the Central Himalayas. This brought about an increase in population and productivity. The emergence of agriculture is transformative and the result of many cumulative changes in production strategies, technology, demography, and adaptation to specific niches. How did this happen, what precipitated this transition? The Himalayas provide a wide variety of habitats across different altitudinal zones, what kinds of adaptive strategies did humans adopt in this landscape? How did these then interact with each other?”

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com, ibnlive.in.com, www.images22.com)

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Two books, two important issues

Why you need to read a new book on terrorism and ten volumes on India-Pakistan relations, both released this week.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

With terror gaining ground in the country, this book probably comes at an appropriate time. Terrorism Explained: A Graphic Account is not a typical tome on terrorism acts, but is packed with illustrative visuals and several backgrounders that serve as vital basics to understanding today’s terror acts.

Authored by academic Ram Puniyani (he was with the IIT, Mumbai earlier), the book has illustrations by Sharad Sharma, founder of the World Comics Network. Terrorism Explained: A Graphic Account was launched in the capital city this week. As Ram says, “Our book deals with the theme of terrorist violence, globally and locally. It narrates some of the major events related to terrorist acts, goes on to discuss the stereotypes associated with terrorism, takes up the genesis of global terror with politics of oil, takes up Hindutva terrorism and the ideology guiding that…”

He adds, “While acts of terror have been recorded in recent history from the last several centuries, this phenomenon has come to prominence from the ghastly tragedy of 9/11, 2001. With this, the American media popularised the words ‘Islamic terrorism’, and worldwide, this propaganda against Islam and Muslims picked up. Al Qaeda, a product of US policies to control of oil wealth in West Asia, has been the major tormentor of people and its worst victims have been people of India and Pakistan.

“Parallel with this, the likes of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Swami Aseemanand also came up with the goal of ‘Bomb for a bomb’ and for pursuing the politics of Hindu rashtra. It Ram Puniyanifocusses on the definition of terrorism, and the genesis of Al Qaeda through indoctrination in the specially set up madrassas by America in Pakistan. The phenomenon of Osama bin Laden and his support by US is presented in the book.”

The book also takes a look at the theory of ‘clash of civilisation’ and its fallacies. The series of blast from Nanded 2006 to the Ajmer and Malegaon blasts are also analysed. “The book demystifies the phenomenon of terror and shows that terrorism has nothing to do with religion but there are political goals behind the same,” Ram says.

Another 10 volumes have just been released on Indo-Pak relations, encapsulated in India-Pakistan Relations 1947-2007. They have been put together and edited by Avtar Singh Bhasin, who has worked in the External Affairs Ministry. It was after his retirement that he published a series of volumes on India’s Foreign Policy.

These 10 volumes are one of the most detailed and significant works on the subject, covering each aspect from the political relationship to defense issues, the nuclear factor, trade and financial issues, borders, minorities and evacuee property and of course, foreign  policy.

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant. 

(Pictures courtesy www.anonlineindia.com, muslimmirror.com)

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All things bright and beautiful

A new book on the ancient Indian ‘shringara’ tradition brings to mind all that’s best in our beautiful country.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

I believe that our lives in the good old days were simple and good for our overall psyche. Those ways should be brought back. Our food and lifestyle, our ideas of beauty, even the very fabric we chose to wear next to our skins jelled with the climate and our living conditions.

Cottons and khadi are apt for our summers and the humidity, yet we ditch them for synthetics and polyesters. This brings to mind an incident, several years ago, when Delhi- based art historian Jyotindra Jain had gone to meet writer Mulk Raj Anand. The first thing that the writer did was to send Jain to the nearest Gandhi Ashram so that the latter could change his clothes – his trousers and synthetic shirt – and slip into a more comfortable and suitable khadi kurta pyjama!

Another thing to bring to mind my present preoccupation (for this column) with healthy living and beauty, was writer Alka Pande’s alka panderecently published book, Shringara – The Many Faces Of Indian Beauty.

Right on the front cover is this overwhelming photograph of Indian woman clad in ethnic clothes, while the back cover has a woman from a bygone era getting her somewhat bare body massaged; she is in a semi-Kamasutra pose, but as you sift through the pages, you understand that the underlying theme is shringara. The book takes you through shringara in verse, paintings, architecture, form and figure.

As Pande elaborates, “As an art historian, I’m often asked to define beauty in a word, phrase or even as a concept. I see beauty essentially as a value connected to the perception of different alternative aspects of human emotionality. When we perceive something that is in harmony with nature and generates a feeling of joy and pleasure within us, we describe it to be beautiful…”

shringar of the ladyShe adds, “Today, the cultural diversity of India faces the pulls and pressures of tradition and modernity, rural and urban, folk and classical, and most importantly, local and global. Shringara, too, faces the challenges of perception, where the beauty of adornment and the beauty of ugliness are two sides of the same coin…this is a time to ask important  questions on the concept of beauty: Has the morphology of the old nayika been given up for more westernised perceptions? Has there been an Indian renaissance, apart from path-breaking initiatives of AK Coomaraswamy and Rabindranath Tagore? Who are the new patrons of Indian art?”

What I took away from this book was not just the easy flow of words, but also the pictures and graphics that merged seamlessly with the narrative. It nudged me to introspect, perceive more, think of all that’s beautiful in our land.

(Pictures courtesy alkapande.com, www.exoticindia.com)

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When aerial surveys don’t help

What do our politicians try to accomplish by taking aerial surveys of disasters? Shouldn’t they be on the ground, helping?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

No, Sir, aerial surveys won’t do in the Uttarakhand region. You cannot view disasters from so far away, from such a safe place. You have to be there, amongst your people.

It’s disgusting how VVIPs are touring the devastated region in a detached manner, even at this stage when thousands have been killed. And it’s more than disgusting to know that even now these political creatures are conducting aerial surveys. As representatives of the people, they ought to be right there on the ground, ferrying essentials, supplying food and medicines or even helping in the rescue operations.

But they opt to sit far away, in safe environs, and write bogus speeches. I have a feeling that these same speeches are routinely used and re-used in every successive calamity; it is possible that professional speech writers have penned these speeches, conveying the right dose of sorrow and political statement, while leaving room for minor changes, as the calamity may be.

Another disaster struck the Kashmir Valley recently, and it also attracted its own set of VVIPs. During their two-day visit to the Valley, one hoped that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi would visit the families of those sitting in the ruins of their homes, shattered by the recent earthquakes that had hit the Kishtwar/Doda region. Seemingly no speeches were written for that aerialinteraction, for none were made. Also, there were no statements from the duo on the recently re-opened case of the 1991 mass rapes that took place in Kunan Poshpora, the village of Kashmir that was witness to several women were raped in one night. Till date, the tragedy has been camouflaged and watered-down in several ways, but today, the villagers of Kunan Poshpora are no longer scared of a backlash and what the establishment can do against their vocal protests. The villagers are boldly speaking of how those rapes were completely hushed up by the Government and its agencies.

There has also been complete silence on the rape and murder of two Shopian women – Aasiya Jan and Niloufer Jan. The two young women were murdered in 2009, but till date, have received no justice. The culprits have not yet been arrested, and there has been no hue and cry over the cover-ups in the investigation. I recall, during the summer of 2010, when family members of those two women wanted to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was on a two-day visit to the Valley, they were not just halted but also detained in a police station located in the very heart of Srinagar city. They were released only after the PM had left the Valley. And this is not a lone example – this happens every time a top politician visits the area and the naïve ones looking for justice want to meet them.

rahul gandhi gives a speechAt times I wonder: why can’t these announcements of special packages be made from New Delhi? Why should these ‘leaders’ travel all the way when they cannot meet or interact with the commoner? Anyway, these packages mean little for the average citizen, since their benefits rarely reach the masses.

In fact, each time a VVIP from Delhi schedules a visit in the Valley, there is a mood of gloom that quickly spreads. For the average citizen knows he has to sit indoors, ordered to stay away, traffic is moved or halted – everything comes to a standstill while the visiting dignitary is there. If our politicos are not going to actively help the people, why should they hamper their movements?

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.deccanchronicle.com, www.theunrealtimes.com, www.indiatimes.com, blogs.reuters.com)

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Citizens fight back against injustice

The days of people quietly accepting atrocities by the State are long gone – now they’re combating injustice with information.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, made a rather dignified announcement, which put a formal end to their marriage. It was known before the announcement, that the two were rarely together, and that they had been dragging the marriage along for years.

What impressed me was the manner in which the announcement was made. The couple is middle-aged, yet they didn’t let their age come in the way of their decision. To part at 60 cannot be easy.

Just pause and think of how we, in India, rarely take this step at age 60 and beyond, preferring to keep up the sham. We pretend everything’s fine, we are comfortable portraying a reality that doesn’t exist. We can keep up the pretence for years. That’s just who we are.

And because we are so happy propagating a private lie, we are happy lying in the public sphere as well. Even as parts of North India are being wrecked by the monsoon, with hundreds being killed in flash floods and landslides, our politicians are doing what they do best – nothing. Political leaders from across the board should currently be a part of the relief operations in affected regions, putting to good use the sarkari and non-sarkari brigades they nurture. But what are they really doing? Conducting aerial tours, sitting far away and giving boring speeches.

Some politicians are otherwise engaged in justifying fake encounter killings or arresting innocents. In Lucknow, activists are protesting outside the UP State Assembly, against the khalid mujahidillegal arrest and killing of Khalid Mujahid by the UP cops (see pic on right). But Mulayam and Akhilesh Yadav are choosing to divert attention by distributing computers and laptops!

In Gujarat, where Mumbai-based student Ishrat Jehan who was killed in a fake encounter on the pretext of her part in a terror plot, the case has been reopened and the focus is now on the blatant killings conducted by the State. A few months ago, I had spoken to well-known human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover, who is the counsel for Ishrat’s mother. She said, “It was soon after the Sohrabuddin case was taken up by the Supreme Court and the nexus between the cops and politicians was exposed that I was contacted by Ishrat’s family to take up their case.

“It was the conviction of the mother and family in the innocence of Ishrat and their determination to have her name cleared of the tag of terrorism that persuaded me. They wanted their respect and dignity restored. As a human rights lawyer, I often represent victims of police atrocities and violence. But, after meeting Shamima Kauser (Ishrat’s mother) and her children, seeing the case file and the reading the truth about Sohrabuddin’s murder, it was clear that this ‘encounter’ was not just a crime committed by some trigger-happy cops, but rather part of the State-sanctioned and planned violence against Muslims, which was unleashed in the genocidal pogrom of 2002.

Ishrat_Jahan“The FIR recorded by the Police of these encounters refers to the riots and killings of Muslims in 2002 and claims that the alleged ‘terrorists’ wanted to kill Modi and take revenge for the 2002 attack on Muslims. These encounters, about 22 of them in Gujarat, are part of the politics of hate to polarise and build mistrust and fear between the communities. It is very important to recognise a clear pattern of targeting Muslims and demonising them as the enemy that must be eliminated, by use of State power, whether through engineered riots or staged fake encounters i.e cold blooded murders by those in State power.”

She went on, “It is very important to bring out the truth behind these fake encounters because in Gujarat there is a criminal nexus between the political executive, the police and even persons in critical positions in the IB, both in the Centre and State. This is a very dangerous and lethal combination and before our eyes a fascist State is in the making. To fight for Ishrat’s truth is part of the battle against fascism. The mechanics of electoral democracy may not deliver justice and the legal battle is important so that the killers and their masterminds are unmasked and punished.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy news.in.msn.com, www.rina.in, rihaaimanch.blogspot.com)

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