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A dash of humanity

Three academics in Delhi have set up a trust that will encompass the spectrum of Humanities Studies in the country.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Last week, I wrote about Kolkata’s Presidency College introducing ‘Love’ as a subject in its curriculum. Now there’s another bit of good news from the world of academia – three senior academics in New Delhi, Rakesh Batabyal, Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan and Antony Thomas have set up the Humanities Trust.

What for, you ask. I quote Dr Batabyal (in pic above), “The Trust will try and encourage high quality in humanities education, which will include research and publication in different languages of Indian and other societies. The Trust also seeks to come to help the teachers of classical languages, liberal arts. Its centre for advanced study will try and spread the message of Indian philosophy and culture, through high standards of research that it will try and promote.”

This Humanities Trust has a definite plan to set up several concrete platforms to reach out to the masses. In fact, these academics want to reach the masses through this Trust by setting up the Institute of Advanced Studies (HTIAS), Curriculum Resource Centre (CRC), Humanities Bibliospaces and Espaces: New libraries for schools in remote areas and for students from deprived sections (HBE), Centre for the Study of Philosophy of Religion and Secularism (CSPRS), Centre for Studies on Institutions (CSI), Centre for Indian Nationalism (CIN), to name a few initiatives.

Dr Batabyal adds, “With the declining quality in education, particularly in public education delivery, there is an urgency to intervene in the education system by starting an Institute of Advanced Studies. The Institute will house scholars from across the country and the world who would use its residential character to congregate and discourse on issues and areas designed broadly by the Institute. The active training, publication and seminar programmes of the Trust aims at disseminating the work of these scholars and their discussion to hundreds of other institutions of education, which would bring the cutting edge knowledge paradigms closer to those who do not have access to these.

“The  Curriculum Resource Centre (CRC) shall be an ongoing archive, documentation and facilitation centre for curriculum development across education segments. These will be made available to institutions to enable long-term development as well as for short-term modules. The centre will provide the training for educators in the using of these curriculum frameworks as well. The Trust shall also seek to develop a centre for the study of religions – the philosophies, history and evolution of newer belief-systems. It will also seek to promote the understanding of secularism through research, seminars and teaching modules on conceptual issues, thinkers, philosophical questions related to the subject.

“The endeavor is to truly integrate the idea of humanism with that of inquiry. The Trust shall study the origin and trends in the growth of institutions across the world, particularly the democratic institutions. Legislation has been the finest art of human kind and therefore study of legislating institutions shall be studied in close conformity with the changing patterns of humanistic expressions.”

He signs off by saying, “The study of the unique phenomenon of Indian Nationalism will be encouraged in the context of its anti-colonial past and globalized present. There will also be emphasis on the comparative history and process of nation-building in different parts of the developing world.”

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

(Picture courtesy utcp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp)

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Enough said

Lessons on love

Kolkata’s Presidency College is starting a course on love. What could be a better idea in this day and age?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

In the midst of the almost daily barrage of bad news and gloom, comes this good news of an ‘academic’ nature, which has come as a breath of fresh air. Kolkata’s Presidency College is starting a new course…on love.

Yes, I said ‘love’. The subject is to be introduced as a full-fledged one by the College’s Sociology Department, and like English Literature, would be open for all students from different departments, faculties and streams.

Perhaps, for the very first time in this country, love will be discussed in a formal way, just like it used to be centuries ago, when there would be heady discussions on love, romance and emotions, before a frenzied development mode took over and bypassed lay ‘subjects’ like love and everything connected to it.

So we are finally moving backwards, towards the very basics of our existence, for with love, there are bound to be emotions. I’m not sure whether these classes on love will be held under sprawling banyans or neems. And why not? Why not impart all this gyaan out there in the open, amidst the natural environment?

Wherever these classes are conducted – indoors or outdoors – those discussions on love will have a direct impact on the very thought processes of students, and might have long-lasting effects. I have no idea of the teaching format or how the syllabus is going to be shaped for this newly-introduced subject, but in all probability, these classes will help simplify the tangle of confusing notions blamed on love. These discussions would bring about a de-link between love and lust, between want and desire, between fulfillment and release, between innocent spontaneity and stalking, between fall-outs and falling in love!

Today’s youth need these lessons, at least to be able to tell negative emotions apart from positive ones, when several confused boys and girls associated both with real love. Even some loveof our current films reinforce these wrong stereotypes, and which can be dangerous on a vulnerable mind.

And what about the other departments of our other universities and colleges moving ahead with the times and introducing ‘love’ as a subject? When will they discuss it and all that is connected to it, right from the theoretical to the practical to the mystic and even beyond, taking the learner towards the Divine?

Love is important in today’s times. Love is powerful. There’s something so magical about love; it has the power to heal, to protect, to smoothen out troubles, to reach out, to keep illnesses at bay, to help you understand life with all its complexities. When one accepts love in its totality, with the immense pain and turmoil it brings along, it takes one to another level of existence. After all, love brings along a powerful ingredient – emotion.

You can buy sex, but you cannot buy emotions. I’m tempted to quote this line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memory of My Melancholy Whores, ‘Sex is the consolation one has for not finding enough love.’

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

 (Pictures courtesy www.fanpop.com, funlava.com)

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When divisions benefit the rulers

The carving out of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh could have very real implications for others looking for separate State status.
Humra Quraishiby Humra  Quraishi

Divisions spell doom. A division is like a divorce. There is a break-up, with long lasting implications and offshoots. Divisions aren’t good for anybody.

This week came the news of the new State of Telangana being carved out in the Andhra belt. There is a very real danger of several other States in this country demanding divisions of territory. The list could get longer and be no longer contained to just Maharashtra – who is to stop J&K, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal or Bihar taking the same route?

Divisions suit the politician and the bureaucracy. Not just for purposes of the clichéd ‘the  more, the merrier…’ but more along the lines of governance. A freshly-carved State brings with it the need for more political and bureaucratic heads, justifies the need for planning commissions and departments and ministries. The field becomes wider for several mafias to extract an extra pound of flesh even from the malnourished and the diseased, as the new State grapples with working within new systems. And do not for a minute think that these divisions and bifurcations benefit those in the backward sections of society.

A good example I can cite is that of the State of Uttarakhand. Several years ago, it was carved out from the erstwhile undivided Uttar Pradesh. See for yourself – apart from being blessed with its own natural bounty, on which the State subsists, where is the development? Could it combat nature’s fury, is it able to deal with the ongoing destruction and havoc in the wake of the ghastly floods?

Divisions also brings along distractions of the worst sort. Not to drag you backwards, but I must write of the prominent happenings of this week – we, the hapless masses, could not telangana even adequately react to the teenaged biker being shot dead by the cops in the heart of the capital city, nor could we mourn the sight of a dead human form being pulled by a bull dozer, nor could we find the miracle meal costing just a couple of rupees!

As much as it depresses me, I am beginning to be convinced of the Right Wing parties’s theory that the Congress and the Samjawadi Party are adopting the age-old political strategy of relaying a set of opinions – one to suit the majority, and the other for those ‘others’ in the minority. Soon after the Batla House encounter verdict, those residing in the Jamia Nagar/Okhla/Batla House localities seem convinced that this particular encounter was State-managed; this suspicion is fuelled by the dramatic U-turn that the Congressmen, who were earlier with these people, have not taken in their stand.

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 www.thehindu.com, theviewspaper.net)

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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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