A town painted red, and blue too.

Odisha was in the news for a good reason recently. It was named best state for promotion of sports at the Sportstar Aces Awards, on account of Bhubaneswar having hosted three successful international events – the hockey World Cup in 2018, and the Asian Athletics Championships and the Hero Super Cup in 2017.

I am sure the state has invested in training infrastructure too. Certainly, Odisha has invested time and money in making sports more visible in the capital city. I was Bhubaneswar recently for a literature festival and found that commuting an aesthetic experience. Long stretches of street-facing walls were covered in murals.

A lot of the art focused on hockey, especially around the Kalinga Stadium. Apart from dynamic images of players in the middle of a game, there was a lot of conceptual art around hockey sticks. One of my favourites was a mural that shows large black ants winding their way around a stick. Another artist had flashes of lightning – or was it a blue pulse? – rising off the stick, as if to suggest an electrifying game.

Mural art has picked up in several cities but the murals in Bhubaneswar struck me as particular. Figures of athletes in motion brought a sense of dynamism to an otherwise quiet street. There was something of their spirit up on the walls, something akin to enthusiasm.

In another part of town, walls have been painted with flowers. Giant blue morning glories are painted such that it seemed the homely flower was demanding its due. There were a few Frida Kahlo murals too, and one I especially remember of the famous artist's face crowded in by a crush of flowers. It was almost as if flowers were emanating from her. Her hand was across her mouth, as if she was trying to hide it, or hold back a laugh, or simply posturing in a manner that could be seductive if you want to see it as that. Or, aghast at such riotous beauty.

There’s another whimsical mural where the artist has painted the feet of an Odissi dancer in motion. The adjacent wall has the eyes of the dancer, dancing with fun, with astonishment, full of rasa.

Looking at those murals made me wonder whose mind and heart was behind them. Who loves morning glories so? Who wants to make Bhubaneswar dance with its eyes?

The murals made me think about how under-utilised public space has been so far. While interiors and a few expensive homes are decorated well, as per the owners' tastes, the side of the wall that faces the street is considered nobody's personal property. Individuals rarely invest in their maintenance.

I grew up looking at urban walls covered in posters, advertisements for everything from black magic to underwear, films to political parties Then, a few years ago in Mumbai, a tiny corner was transformed through the efforts of an art collective that calls itself the Bollywood Art Project. It took nearly a decade for other public spaces to open up, especially suburban railway stations. In Delhi too, there are a few walls covered with graffiti and artwork. By and large though, our cities remain overwhelmingly grey.

Perhaps it is time our city councils and state governments start funding the creation of murals. India barely supports her artists and it is time citizens got access to a glimpse of art through the year, every year. This would serve to keep us interested in each other's imaginations. It would also make commuting a lot less dull.


First published here

The young and the political

We all maintain an internal list of things that happen to people out of luck. Things too awful to contemplate: hunger, arrest, getting beaten or stripped naked, being declared an enemy of the state.

How does a literature graduate with no political ambitions end up in jail? How does the son of an urban trader wander from the political right to the left? Is rebellion picked up on campus like a virus or is it seeded in the cradle? Questions like these led me to meet students and political activists who have taken political positions that they, or their families, could not have foreseen.

... One of the things common to aspiring activists was that they are inspired by each other. Chandu, Umar Khalid, Jatin Goraiya, all were inspired by Bhagat Singh. In turn he was inspired by boys like Kartar Singh Sarabha, executed by the British in 1915 at 19 for participating in the freedom struggle. Bhagat Singh kept a photograph of Sarabha in his pocket and made a point of garlanding it during organisation meetings.

Chaman Lal, a retired professor who has authored multiple books on the subject, believes Bhagat Singh’s “greatness” lay in his being a thinker and organiser as well as a revolutionary. He courted arrest after throwing a bomb into the Central Legislative Assembly and used court appearances, newspapers and every opportunity he got to argue his cause. He read hundreds of books and maintained notes on what he read—Wordsworth to Marx, Thomas Paine to Omar Khayyam, Plato to Gandhi, until they took him off to the gallows.

Bhagat Singh also wrote extensively about the state of the nation, imperialism, exploitation through capitalism, and religious faith. He forbade his parents from petitioning for mercy on his behalf. He went to the gallows with the cry of “Inquilab Zindabad” on his lips.

His family owned enough land for them to be comfortable. True, the country was under British control and Indians were second class people. Still, there was more to gain by finishing his studies and securing a comfortable position from where he could take on institutional racism. It is worth asking: how did a boy born into relative privilege end up on the gallows?

Read the full essay in Fountain Ink magazine. 

The ‘M’ in Aligarh, the ‘H’ in Banaras and what’s at stake

Days before being slandered as a university of terrorists, Aligarh Muslim University was in the news for a letter written by the local unit of the BJP’s youth wing to the vice chancellor. It sought land for a temple on campus and threatened that, permission or not, an idol would be installed and a temple built.

My first response was to wonder if the youth wing of the BJP would support the construction of a mosque and church on the Banaras Hindu University campus, where students of all religions have enrolled. There is nothing wrong with allowing prayer space for all faiths as long as both universities are held to the same standards.

AMU and BHU are two strands of Indian self-definition, separate but inextricably linked and a comparison of the two is a useful way to understand our polity and what has happened to our country.

Both universities are in Uttar Pradesh and were established – BHU in 1917, AMU in 1920 – with an emphasis on identity. Founder Madan Mohan Malaviya had been clear in his objectives when he chose to insert “Hindu” into the name of the university and insisted upon religious instruction. In Students and Politics in India (1975), Anil Baran Ray writes that in 1915, some members of the Imperial Legislative Council expressed apprehensions that the proposed university would widen the gulf between Hindus and Muslims, or foster separatist tendencies. But Pandit Malaviya argued that “religious instruction, he asserted, far from producing narrowness, liberates the mind and promotes brotherly feelings between man and man.”

How might it have turned out for India if Pandit Malaviya had dropped the word “Hindu” and been content with just Banaras University. Perhaps those who were setting up AMU would have been content with just Aligarh University?

Soon after independence, the government proposed to remove “Hindu” and “Muslim” from their respective names. In 1951, education minister Maulana Azad sought the opinion of both universities. AMU was initially amenable but BHU was not, so Azad and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru decided to quietly drop the matter.

Then, in 1965, Lal Bahadur Shastri’s government proposed to rename BHU as Madan Mohan Malaviya Kashi Vishwavidyalaya. The Jana Sangh and the RSS, which had rooms on the BHU campus since the 1930s, encouraged students to agitate. Ray writes, student organisations linked to the Sangh claimed that “the attack on the ‘Hindu’ name of the university was only the beginning. It would be followed by cutting the ‘shikha’ (top knot) and sacred thread worn by Hindus and by idol-breaking and mass conversion”.

The fact that education minister M.C. Chagla was Mohamed Ali Currim Chagla did not help matters. Torchlight processions were organised at night. Students from Gorakhpur, Patna, Allahabad, and Lucknow showed up to lend weight to the agitation.

Despite the government’s decision to postpone the Bill, students continued to agitate. Ultimately, they had their way and BHU retains “Hindu” in its name.

1965 was also the year Chagla set off ripples among Muslims. In the Lok Sabha, he denied that AMU was founded by Muslims and that it was a minority institution. Ali Yavar Jung, the Vice Chancellor, countered by pointing out that though it was a “national” university in the sense that there was no discrimination, it was created primarily to secure an education for Muslims “in their religion, philosophy and traditions”.

An essay in Frontline magazine records that the Congress party issued a whip to its members in Parliament “to secure the passage of the Amendment Act of 1965 which completely deprived the university of its autonomy. It, however, allowed a free vote on the proposal to change the name of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU).”

The question of minority status was settled in 1981 – or so we thought. It was raked up again in 2005 and continues now with the government arguing in court that it is not a “minority” institution. Meanwhile, there is no denying that Muslims, even those who have nothing to do with AMU, see this as an assault upon their civil rights. Muslims all over the country attend Catholic and Jain institutions; they go to BHU. However, AMU represents cultural freedom. It is a space where their names don’t raise brows, where they can wear jeans or a fez and loose pajamas with equal ease.

Since the 1992 demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Indian Muslims have experienced great social isolation. They find themselves pushed into ghettos. They worry about their safety and future prospects while surrounded by shrill political rhetoric and hate speech. However, Aligarh in particular has always been kept on the boil.

In 1978, after a serious riot, journalist Suchitra Behal wrote in India Today that AMU was “a perpetual thorn in the side” of people whose names figured prominently in course of the riots. Witnesses swore that the President of the local unit of the Janata Party had been “personally directing the loot and arson” during the riot. Besides, seven young Muslims were shot dead but no Hindus died of bullets fired by the Police Armed Constabulary. “How do the PAC bullets recognise only the Muslims?” Behal asks. “How long can such a tenuous and uneasy peace be maintained?”

The peace did not hold. So far, riots had been confined to the town; students were protected. In 1979, for the first time, students of AMU were dragged into the communal riots. After deaths and police firing, the university had to be shut down.

Students have got into violent confrontations for one reason or the other ever since but matters reached a new low in May 2018. Former Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari, was visiting campus and being conferred with life membership of the students’ union. The guest house he was in was approached by men, allegedly affiliated with the Hindu Yuva Vahini, shouting slogans. Shots were allegedly fired. When student representatives went to the police to lodge a complaint, they were beaten with lathis and tear-gassed.

This week’s fracas involved a team from Republic TV followed by students affiliated with right-wing groups, some of them carrying guns. The police responded to a complaint about alleged anti-national slogans by charging 14 students with sedition.

At this juncture, we must recall Nirad C. Chaudhuri. In an essay about AMU’s history of political interference, AG Noorani quotes Chaudhuri, who grew up disliking Aligarh for he saw it as the cradle of the Islamic revivalism in India. “Under the teaching of Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Vivekananda most of us had become Hindu revivalist, but were not on that account prepared to concede to the Muslim the right to his revivalism, because we regarded our Hinduism in its revivified form as nationalism, and reformed Islam as anti-national.”

Chaudhuri also noticed that the academic standards at AMU were fairly high, and said, “If loyalty to the Islamic way of life has given this stability to the academic life of Aligarh, it would be madness to take it away or try to destroy that loyalty.”

This dual standard continues to rent asunder the fabric of India. The “Hindu” student – at least, a student affiliated with right wing political or cultural outfits – at BHU, AMU or anywhere else can be regressive, discriminatory, even violent while laying exclusive claim to a patriotic agenda. The Muslim student, no matter that he focuses on his studies, is unarmed or even a victim of violence, is constantly suspect. Worse, he dare not count on the state machinery to do the right thing.

In the context of Aligarh, Nirad C. Chaudhuri had said that Hindus and Muslims can come to terms only if the two ways of life are recognised to be equally valid and good. I can do no more than echo him.


First published in Arre: https://www.arre.co.in/politics/aligarh-muslim-university-banaras-hindu-university-terrorists-students-sedition/

A new mobile fantasy

I don't know what made me think of pedal-boats. Perhaps it was the whiplash of January rain. Perhaps it was the feeling of being cramped and under-exercised. Recently, I began to think of how much fun it would be if cars could run on a pedal principle, the way boats can.

It would also a good way to hold onto an old motor vehicle, especially one whose body is more or less fine but which isn't going to fetch significant money in the used car market. What if the body was retained, the tyres re-aligned and fixed up to connect to peddles that the driver would use?

When I said this out loud, I was politely informed that it was an impractical idea. One would have to do a whole lot of furious peddling to get anywhere, and even if one did have the muscular stretch to push the car a few kilometers, one would hold up the rest of the traffic.

I personally think it is a sensible idea. Certainly, it is more practical than burning up gallons of fossil fuels, bankrupting the planet, causing the air of all our cities to become toxic, and making little kids sick.

A car-cycle wouldn't hold up traffic just as bicycles don't. Fossil fuelled motors could be given one dedicated lane. If cities can conceive of bicycle or bus lanes, we can also conceive of car-cycle lanes. It would cut down fossil fuel use. It might even help cultivate a culture of sticking to dedicated lanes if vehicles that look like regular cars and just as big were to occupy a wider pedal lane.

I looked up the idea online and found people were thinking along similar lines. In North Carolina, USA, there exists a hybrid vehicle called ELF (Electric, Light, Fun). It's a tiny three-wheeler, a bit like our battery rickshaws, except the tyres are more like bicycle tyres and it is pedalled by the driver. News reports suggest it can do 20 miles an hour. It is also fitted with a solar panel that powers an electric motor, which can push speeds upto 35 miles an hour.

Cars are re-purposed in strange ways, like cutting them up into halves, pulling out seats and turning them into furniture that's unlikely to appeal to anyone except motor fanatics. If we could instead use car bodies to make pedal mobiles, it would solve many problems. People may like to bicycle around cities, but must sometimes take along older people or children. A car-cycle would be good for them. There could be a dual pedal system too, as in boats, so the physical work can be shared.

It would be useful for bad weather. A bicycle, or even an auto-rickshaw, exposes you to rain and cold winds. India's summer sun makes bicycling an unpopular idea. A car-cycle would protect you from sunburn and keep you fit. You would no longer need to pay for gym memberships, nor would you have the excuse that long commutes interfere with workouts. The car would be the gym!

It is worth attempting, especially on campuses and in industrial parks where car use should be limited in any case. I, for one, would be up for a test drive.

First published here: https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/how-about-upgrading-our-pedal-power-endeavours-to-the-level-of-cars/article26183637.ece?fbclid=IwAR0y-BMfIrMgZIP8Vy5ZHxeu8XqSI0iXkndQ0AxyxKwpj_El8lQUrIoVT2w

Will she, won't she? Maybe?

It had begun at Rajiv Gandhi’s funeral, when pictures of the grieving family were published in every newspaper and magazine across the country. Through the shock of his assassination, there was an urgent need for a transfer of leadership that would minimize conflict. Drawing room conversations veered towards the next generation. Young Priyanka drew a great deal of attention, with her striking resemblance to Indira Gandhi. Ever since, the question has hung in the air: Would she? Could she?

Over the next three decades, the country, particularly north India, has waited to see if she would step forward, particularly since her brother also took his time settling into his role as leader of the Congress party. In Rahul Gandhi, his tentativeness was seen as a weakness. In politics, not making a grab for power at the first given opportunity, to think of consequences, to reflect upon one’s capacity for conflict and relentless scrutiny, is viewed with suspicion.

In Priyanka, however, her reluctance has helped solidify the anticipation around the role she would eventually play. People hold women to different standards of responsibility. That she is married and has children explained her decision to absent herself from overwhelming political duties, and it may have won her additional approval from the conservative corner...

Read the full article here: 

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/priyanka-gandhi-lucknow-rally-congress

A mobile fantasy

I don't know what made me think of pedal-boats. Perhaps it was the whiplash of January rain. Perhaps it was the feeling of being cramped and under-exercised. Recently, I began to think of how much fun it would be if cars could run on a pedal principle, the way boats can.

It would also a good way to hold onto an old motor vehicle, especially one whose body is more or less fine but which isn't going to fetch significant money in the used car market. What if the body was retained, the tyres re-aligned and fixed up to connect to peddles that the driver would use?

When I said this out loud, I was politely informed that it was an impractical idea. One would have to do a whole lot of furious peddling to get anywhere, and even if one did have the muscular stretch to push the car a few kilometers, one would hold up the rest of the traffic.

I personally think it is a sensible idea. Certainly, it is more practical than burning up gallons of fossil fuels, bankrupting the planet, causing the air of all our cities to become toxic, and making little kids sick.

A car-cycle wouldn't hold up traffic just as bicycles don't. Fossil fueled motors could be given one dedicated lane. If cities can conceive of bicycle or bus lanes, we can also conceive of car-cycle lanes. It would cut down fossil fuel use. It might even help cultivate a culture of sticking to dedicated lanes if vehicles that look like regular cars and just as big were to occupy a wider pedal lane.

I looked up the idea online and found people were thinking along similar lines. In North Carolina, USA, there exists a hybrid vehicle called ELF (Electric, Light, Fun). It's a tiny three-wheeler, a bit like our battery rickshaws, except the tyres are more like bicycle tyres and it is pedaled by the driver. News reports suggest it can do 20 miles an hour. It is also fitted with a solar panel that powers an electric motor, which can push speeds upto 35 miles an hour.

Cars are re-purposed in strange ways, like cutting them up into halves, pulling out seats and turning them into furniture that's unlikely to appeal to anyone except motor fanatics. If we could instead use car bodies to make pedal mobiles, it would solve many problems. People may like to bicycle around cities, but must sometimes take along older people or children. A car-cycle would be good for them. There could be a dual pedal system too, as in boats, so the physical work can be shared.

It would be useful for bad weather. A bicycle, or even an auto-rickshaw, exposes you to rain and cold winds. India's summer sun makes bicycling an unpopular idea. A car-cycle would protect you from sunburn and keep you fit. You would no longer need to pay for gym memberships, nor would you have the excuse that long commutes interfere with workouts. The car would be the gym!

It is worth attempting, especially on campuses and in industrial parks where car use should be limited in any case. I, for one, would be up for a test drive.

Published here: https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/how-about-upgrading-our-pedal-power-endeavours-to-the-level-of-cars/article26183637.ece

Park at your own risk

There is a rumour afoot that the authorities – in Delhi at least – might do something about parking norms, like insisting that people park only on their own property. If enforced strictly, this could bring welcome relief. Doubled parked streets are starting to be the norm in most cities and I see cars and private buses parked on public property as a theft of valuable space.

This does not, however, solve the problem of parking once you leave your property to go somewhere else, which is the whole point of having a motor vehicle. If you're going to a commercial spot, hopefully, there is a parking lot nearby. It is much more troubling when you go visiting people. Many highrise residential societies put up notices saying: “Visitor Parking Not Allowed”.

This is so much the norm, particularly in Mumbai, that we no longer think to challenge it. I didn't even know that, according to existing norms, at least 25 percent of the parking space in housing complexes was reserved for visitors. The notices forbidding visitor parking, then, were not quite legal. However, societies often have little choice because many builders diverge from the blueprint and sell off the space meant for visitor parking.

I found out about the rule only in recent months, after it was reported that the Maharashta government is altering it. The 25 percent allocation was no longer seen as practical and is being slashed to five percent. Whether even five percent will turn out to be practical is anybody's guess.

Not all the problems associated with parking are about space though. They are also about an attitude of entitlement once you acquire a vehicle.

In April last year, there was a bloodbath: it started out as a family feud, turned into a parking squabble, and ended with two men and one woman dead. Jaspal Singh and Gurjeet Singh were reportedly quite well off. They lived in a large bungalow but obviously, there are only so many cars that can be parked outside a house. Between them, the two brothers owned as many as nine cars. One night, the brothers got into an argument about who was going to park where. According to news reports, brother smashed the other's car, who then attacked him with a kirpan (dagger). Other family members got involved, as did the gun-toting personal security officers accompanying one of the men. The latter opened fire.

This might appear to be a typically Delhi story: too many fancy cars, too much money at stake, too much aggression, fragile egos. But it could happen even to those who do not have as much money, and don't even have cars. Earlier this year, a 19-year-old was reportedly beaten to death as a result of a parking dispute in Delhi's Sultanpuri area. This one was about a scooter. In Mumbai too, last year, there was more than one ugly fight that ended with calamity across various suburbs – Chembur, Powai, Amboli. In one case, a security guard assaulted a biker. In another, a couple beat The year before that, another death had been reported, this time that of a retired army Major. Another report was from Thiruvananthpuram.

Based on the details mentioned newspaper reports, a lot of these fights seem to start the same way. Someone's vehicle is blocking someone else's way, either on purpose or inadvertently. An apology and a little patience would suffice to avert bloodshed. What we need, perhaps, are kiosks selling apologies and patience at all petrol pumps.

Published here: https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/what-can-be-solved-with-a-little-patience-or-a-few-words-of-apology-sometimes-snowballs-into-blood-spilling-brawls/article26059461.ece