Innholdsfortegnelse for August 22, 2016 i Open Magazine

FIRST THE COW jihad. Blessed are the nations where animal welfare is nothing short of civilisational ethos. Cursed are the nations where the animal instincts of man kill the ‘lesser man’ in the name of the Holy Beast. In India, even cruelties are steeped in paradoxes. A cursory look out of your car window will convince you that there are more homeless animals on the street than abandoned humans. A lazy glance through morning papers will make you shudder at the murderous madness of mercy: the gau jihadi is on a rampage, and the enemy on the run is the outcaste. Then the intifada in Kashmir. Two images linger. First, the stone-throwing freedom fighter, young and his face partially covered. Second, the marksman of the state, in military fatigues, vigilant,…

WOMEN SHOULD NOT laugh. That’s a bad omen. The house where a woman’s laughter rings—it won’t be long before it collapses,” says Thakuma to Chetana in my book Hangwoman. This is something I have heard all my life. Whenever I laughed at home, my father would call out my name angrily. It was through him that I learned the meaning of freedom. It is said that when I was born, my paternal grandmother was disheartened that her first grandchild was just a girl. But when she came to the hospital and glanced into the cradle uninterestedly, the magnificent baby girl looked straight into her eyes and her heart melted, transcending patriarchal confines. I remained her treasured one until her death. I don’t remember even a single instance when she reminded…

MY FIRST REAL encounter with Delhi was in the winter of 1966-67 when the family chose it as a holiday destination. I understand that my parents had taken me to Delhi once earlier, when we stayed with my maternal uncle who was then an Additional Solicitor General. But the memories of a five-year old remain hazy. This time, we stayed in the official accommodation of my grandfather’s formidable sister who was married to a Member of Parliament from Andhra Pradesh. They were away, busy with the election campaign for the fourth General Election and, consequently, we had the bungalow on Rajendra Prasad Road in Lutyens’ Delhi all to ourselves for the three weeks we spent in the Capital. Delhi fascinated me. Apart from the imperial buildings such as Parliament House…

“Pakistan is like Israel, an ideological state. Take out Judaism from Israel and it will collapse like a house of cards. Take Islam out of Pakistan and make it a secular state: it would collapse” –General Zia-ul-Haq, quoted in The Economist, December 1981 I IN OCTOBER 2008, I was invited for a meeting of historians in Lahore, to be held the following January. On 24 November, after weeks of trying, I finally got a visa from the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. Two days later, terrorists coming from Pakistan struck in Mumbai, attacking the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus (among other structures). Inevitably, tensions escalated between the two countries. My meeting was scheduled for the first week of 2009. Should I go? Must I go?…

What are the new initiatives being launched by your government to attract investments into the state? With the view to steer rapid economic reforms and to promote investment in the state, it is imperative to create an environment which is congenial to entrepreneurship development. Industry consultation, timely clearances, responsive administration and transparent government have been identified as the corner-stone for improving business environment and boosting investor’s confidence. To that end Government of Jharkhand is ready to provide both, pre and post-investment services and facilitation for rapid industrialization. Measures like, Jharkhand Investment Promotion Board, single–window clearance, online payments, online verification, third party certifications, self- certification, time-bound approvals, availability of information online, standard operating procedures for approvals, deemed approvals, etc. are being adopted by various departments and government agencies. Jharkhand is progressing…

SEVEN DECADES IS a long time. Surely long enough for anyone of that age to look back at their childhood with a measure of detachment. Yet, as we approach the seventieth year of India’s independence, our understanding of the context in which we attained freedom seems to be getting more warped. Instead of looking for newer ways to grasp and tell that story, we are increasingly eager to denude it of nuance. This is, of course, a direct consequence of the sharpening ideological turn in our politics over the past year or so. History, as always, becomes a handmaiden of political ideology. However, there is a salient difference between the current attempts to yoke history to ideology and similar debates in the past four decades. Whether it was controversy over…

Ever since the state of Telangana as the 29th State of Country was formed, the Government of Telangana is vigorously promoting different destinations catering to the needs of the visiting tourists. Our initial strategy is to create a separate identity and build a brand of Telangana Tourism and take the new logo to the public. Tourism is now one of the world’s largest industries and one of its fastest growing economic sectors. For many countries tourism is seen as a main instrument for regional development, as it stimulates new economic activities. Tourism may have a positive economic impact on the balance of payments, employment, gross income and production, but it may also have negative effects, particularly on the environment. Unplanned and uncontrolled tourism growth can result in such a deterioration…

The historian Sunil Khilnani coined the phrase ‘the idea of India’—using it as the memorable title for his second book, published in 1999. On the prompting of the editor of this magazine, I offer you 70 Indian ideas, by which I mean, loosely, ideas that were either dreamt up in India, or which came into their own in the hands and minds of Indians. I use the word ‘idea’ loosely, too: Many of the things listed here might be seen better as traits or perceptions. In any case, all 70—the number represents our years of independence—are thoroughly Indian notions. They are offered as a jumble, in no particular order, for the idea of a jumble is the most Indian idea of all. 1 MILK In no other country is there…

RADICAL POLITICAL thinking is more often the byproduct of a crisis rather than its cause. In Europe, it was several centuries of traumatic social upheaval that produced the brilliant run of thinkers from Bodin to Marx, all of whom addressed aspects of the birth of modern society and its new economic relations. A similar moment arrived in India at the crisis of the colonial state, which was not in 1857—a bad year for British rule, though not fatal—but through the 1870s, as famine struck, the rupee fell, global recession hit, and investment in public works failed to produce the expected profits. This left the Raj cash-strapped and devoid of ideas. ‘High’ imperialism— full cultural supremacism—then appeared as a strategy to legitimise British rule that side-stepped elections, required no public spending,…

THE AGA KHAN,’ the College of Heralds in London once noted, ‘is held by his followers to be a direct descendant of God. English Dukes take precedence.’ The British ruled nineteenth century India with unshakeable self-confidence, buttressed by protocol, alcohol and a lot of gall. Stalin found it ‘ridiculous’ that “a few hundred Englishmen should dominate India”. He was not arithmetically accurate, but in principle he was right: it was remarkable that the British Raj was operated by so few people. There were only 31,000 Britons in India in 1805 (of whom 22,000 were in the army and 2,000 in civil government). The number increased substantially after 1857, but still, in 1931, there were just 168,000 Britons living in India (including 60,000 in the army and police and 4,000 in…

HER BEST FRIENDS A 61-year-old ragpicker, Pratima Devi was married off to an abusive family at the age of seven. She eventually ran away and has been living in a tin shack near PVR Cinemas in Saket, Delhi, for the last 30 years. It was here that she found her true calling—looking after 400 stray dogs. She calls them her “adopted children” and adds that they have helped bring out the best in her. Inspired by her, several neighbours have chipped in and Devi is now able to give her dogs a daily meal of milk, stew and mutton IT BEGAN ONE morning many years ago. Rina decided to put out a bowl of water on the windowsill of our bedroom for the noisy pigeons who woke us up at…

GURU DUTT’S CLASSIC Pyaasa (1957) was released ten years after Independence, and has now achieved classic status, one of the most discussed of all Hindi films. It was released the same year as Mehboob Khan’s famous Mother India, which is seen as a great nationalist epic, and BR Chopra’s Naya Daur, films which had overt political overtones connecting them to Nehruvian visions or Gandhian views. Pyaasa does not directly engage with issues that are associated with Nehru and the post-colonial period. Set in Calcutta, it is a world of the salon and the poetry recital, of the street and the ordinary people, worlds which mostly passed each other by, but which come together through poetry and love, rather than through politics. Yet some of the film’s songs have a great…

No Laughing Matter Diana Penty doesn’t like it when you joke about her name. The Cocktail star wasn’t amused when enfant terrible Mika Singh referred to her repeatedly as ‘Diana Panty’ during a music event for her new comedy Happy Bhaag Jayegi recently. The Punjabi singer reportedly got carried away while performing the song Gabru Ready to Mingle, and thought it was funny to address her as Diana ‘Panty’, while referring to himself as Mika Kachcha. But the actress was not amused. She reportedly stormed off the stage and continued to sulk for the rest of the evening. The tantrum, however, didn’t end there. Diana is believed to have demanded that the publicists not release any photographs from the event of her with Mika. Furthermore, she insisted that all pictures and…