Innholdsfortegnelse for 17 September 2018 i Open Magazine

THE ART OF BEING FOOLED We love the idea of listening to stories and if the story is packaged and sold well, then we also tend to believe it easily without questioning too much (‘Some Fake News Lasts For Ever’ by Yuval Noah Harari, September 10th, 2018). In fact, some would say that fooling people into believing fake news and messages is an art in itself. Political propaganda can be seen to this effect as can several of the advertising campaigns we are exposed to on a daily basis. They are as fake as some of the news we hear on social media or in popular media. But we believe them if they are told to us in a convincing manner, backed by ‘studies’ and ‘surveys’. Most people will believe…

THE QUESTION THAT the striking down of Section 377 brings out is why do laws that are clearly unjust and have no serious opposition from any major groups remain on the books for so long. Religious groups are disdainful of homosexuality but, even so, most didn’t care if it was decriminalised. But, like a breathing fossil, Section 377 persisted because of inertia. If criminalisation was too much, no one wanted to be seen as sanctioning legitimacy to homosexuality either. This probably explains the earlier judgment of the Supreme Court which, in fact, reversed a Delhi High Court order that decriminalised homosexuality. The court then put the ball in Parliament’s court and despite most major parties, including Congress and BJP, signalling their desire to amend the section, it continued on. And…

SOMETIMES I FEEL proud and pleased that I am a doctor. It’s a fascinating profession where we encounter such a wide range of patients who are suffering from disease and injury who come to us and we, through our knowledge and experience, are in a special position to help them. I also marvel at the achievements of some of my multitalented colleagues who not only work as doctors but are also gifted writers. One of them is the author of this book. Gavin Francis was born in 1975, trained as a doctor in Edinburgh and then spent 10 years travelling, during which he visited all the seven continents. He has worked in India and Africa, has crossed Australia and parts of Asia by motorcycle, and has worked as a doctor…

The chapter taken from Yuval Harari’s new book is interesting (‘Some Fake News Lasts For Ever ’, September 10th, 2018). It seems the new book is the extension of his previous one Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harari’s findings and observations seem to be stunningly true as humankind is and has been living in a smokescreen of fake news since time immemorial. Man’s best invention is the art of telling lies. From religions to WhatsApp good morning images, stories are made and moulded to frame and hold human interests. Indeed, people attract and believe fake news as they have the inherent tendency to gather and listen to stories. The author emphasises on religion and politics revolving around fake news as the two influential facets in the history of…

THE MUCH-DELAYED ‘2+2’ format of meetings between India’s Defence and External Affairs ministers and their US counterparts is finally taking place after a number of postponements. The meetings, scheduled for September 6th, are an important step in the evolution of India’s bilateral relations with the US. Ever since the time of Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao began reorienting India’s relations with the US in 1990s, the two countries have had robust mechanisms to exchange views and further cooperation at the official level. This has been topped up with occasional political level meetings. While the latter hog all the limelight, much of the spadework in developing relations has been done at the level of officials. In the last five-odd years, however, it had become increasingly clear that political direction and coordination…

As humanity comes to terms with its wrongs, it is entirely appropriate for the historically oppressed to choose the terms by which they delineate their identity. ‘Nigger’, for instance, is a taboo word to use in the US for anyone who is not an African American. Likewise, in India, the Scheduled Castes refused to accept the term ‘Harijan’ that Mahatma Gandhi patronisingly gave to them. But Dalit, on the other hand, is something they themselves appropriated as a label of protest. When the courts and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting try to proscribe its use in the media, then it is once again taking the voice of the Dalits away and speaking for them. WORD’S WORTH “Oppressive language does more than represent violence, it is violence; does more than…

ON THE 10TH of November, 1918, |Mahadev Desai, the personal secretary of Mahatma Gandhi, began his diary entry with, ‘Influenza raging in the Ashram’. He then went on to quote verbatim a letter that Gandhi, in a disease-stricken weakened state, wrote to one Gangabehn—‘I could read only today your card telling me that you, Kiki and others had fallen ill. I was glad to learn, however, that by the grace of God you are all progressing. The body of the person who has chosen to follow the dharma of service must become as strong as steel as a result of his holy work. Our ancestors could build such tough bodies in the past. But today we are reduced to a state of miserable weakness and are easily infected by noxious…

IT WAS IN November of 1993 when I saw the movie The Joy Luck Club (1993) which featured an all-Asian cast and, as far as I can remember, there has not been another movie since with an Asian cast till now. Warner Bros Pictures is releasing Crazy Rich Asians (2018) that showcases a very talented and handsome cast consisting of Asians from all parts of the globe. The movie is already causing a great amount of buzz. Michelle Yeoh—with whom we are all familiar from her roles in a James Bond movie, countless martial arts movies and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)—plays the domineering, protective matriarch to the super-rich male lead. Born in Ipoh, Malaysia, on August 6th, 1962, she is a rare female action movie star in the industry.…

LAST WEEK WAS largely dominated by a lot of shrill and indignant outpouring over the police raids on five Left-wing ‘intellectuals’ who were charged by the Pune Police of being complicit in social unrest and, more serious, tangentially involved in a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister. So far, the courts have not accepted the police version but they haven’t rejected it altogether. The liberal intelligentsia has gone ballistic over the raids and arrests. They have equated it with an organised suppression of dissent and there have been comparisons with Indira Gandhi’s infamous Emergency. The parallel is quite spurious. I was a college student during the Emergency and can say without fear of contradiction that the suppression of all opposition voices was total and unequivocal. The media was censored and…

IN JANUARY THIS year, four of the senior-most judges of the Supreme Court did an unprecedented press conference to complain to the nation about misadministration by the Chief Justice of India, primarily in how benches were being constituted for sensitive cases. The face of the protest was Justice J Chelameswar. He was going to retire soon and, having decided to abjure any appointments after that, was unburdened by consequences. On the other hand, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who stoically sat next to Chelameswar at the time, was taking a personal risk. He was next in line to be the chief justice by seniority but that was convention. There were instances when it had not been followed earlier, like Indira Gandhi superseding a judge she didn’t approve of. And then, the very…

IN THESE TURBULENT times it’s useful to recall stories from the past. They help put things into perspective and they introduce an element of levity into the grey grimness that increasingly surrounds us. So let me recall an anecdotal tale from the early 1970s. St Stephen’s College in Delhi was (and remains) a far cry from Presidency College or Jadavpur University in Kolkata. As now, then too it was associated with academics and a certain elitism that cocooned it from Delhi University. It wasn’t the kind of college where Revolution would come knocking in the wake of the Naxalbari peasant uprising in distant West Bengal. The students were children from privileged and entitled families. Yet Revolution did come calling. And it was not limited to students scrawling ‘China’s path is…

FOR OVER A YEAR, Susan Dias would frequently travel to the Chota Nagpur Plateau, a region covering the central eastern states of Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattishgarh, accosting tribals in villages there with an unusual question. “Do you have mahua here?” she would ask, referring to the alcohol brewed in these parts. And almost immediately they would clam up. “I would have to explain that I meant no harm. That I was not from the government. But it was no use. They would say, ‘Madam, we don’t even eat meat here.’” The trick, she soon learnt, was to catch hold of someone familiar—the best candidate was the local school teacher—who would guide her to the local speakeasies. And then suddenly those very people would re-emerge with bottles of mahua. Dias, a…

I ASKED AN ARYA Samaj priest who had come to officiate at a death anniversary what he had in his fridge. He looked discomposed and said “a vegetable”. He muttered that they cooked the next day’s lunch the previous night, and stored it in the fridge. “My wife teaches in a school, so she is not able to cook it fresh,” he explained in an apologetic tone. I could understand his sense of guilt at eating stale food. I sometimes eat chana or pasta the next day but I don’t feel good about doing so. The source of our guilt lies in how our cultural or religious upbringing treats leftover food. In my case, it was upbringing: if the food was cooked in the morning, my father refused to eat…

Craving for Normal Shahid Kapoor and his wife Mira Rajput are Juhu junk food junkies. The pair has been spotted dining out at a different restaurant in the suburbs practically every day, frequently surprising other diners by turning up in popular places. When I asked Shahid cheekily, “Kyon ghar pe khaana nahin banta?” he reminded me about pregnant cravings. “Left to me, I wouldn’t step out of the house. But Mira likes to do ‘normal’ things, and she loves making instant lunch plans,” he revealed. The couple, who is expecting their second baby anytime now—Mira may well have delivered by the time you’re reading this—has been gently introducing the idea of a new sibling to their two-year-old daughter Misha. “She sees her old crib back in the room, so she…