THE UGLY FACE OF HIMACHAL

For the last two weeks now the otherwise tranquil state of Himachal has been roiled in a vortex of Islamophobia, despicable politics, violence and opportunistic silence by those who should be speaking out. Right wing inspired crowds have been flooding the streets of Shimla, Mandi, Solan, Hamirpur and elsewhere, protesting against illegal mosques and "outsiders"(which is sanghi-speak for Muslims). The state government, as usual, has been caught on the back-foot and is scrambling to contain the trouble. Notwithstanding its ineptness, however, the Chief Minister has to be commended for taking an unequivocal stand against vigilante justice and mob violence, and for insisting that the issues shall be decided in the courts and not on the streets.

The sudden and simultaneous mushrooming of these protests at a dozen different places in the state is no coincidence or happenstance, it is part of the BJP's efforts to destabilise the Congress govt.: the BJP is not a party that espouses the Christian virtues of charity and it has neither forgotten nor forgiven the Congress for trouncing it in the elections in 2022. Ever since then it has been fomenting trouble for the Sukhu government- inducing defections, encouraging factionalism within the Congress, denying the state its rightful revenues in order to weaken it financially; the masjid issue is part of this despicable continuum. It is trying to do an Uttarakhand in Himachal, shamelessly and without any concern for the strategic location of a state which borders both Kashmir and Tibet.

The two main demands- instant demolition of "illegal" mosques and verification of "outsiders"- are both contentious and open to question. Firstly, the singling out of mosques alone is mischievous and gives the game away. According to the Town and Country Planning Deptt. there are more than 15000 illegal/irregular buildings in Shimla alone. Furthermore, in an article in the Tribune the ex-Deputy Mayor of Shimla, Tikainder Singh Panwar lists out four popular temples and one gurudwara in Shimla which too are illegal (there will be many more), but no one is making a song and dance about them. Quite clearly, then, what is under attack by these fundamentalists is not the building but the religion.                                                                          Secondly, the exact legal status of the mosques in question is not clear- are they encroachments on govt. lands, have they been built without the requisite approvals, or are the constructions violative of the sanctions ? These are questions which have to be decided by the courts, not the mobs, and in most cases the matters are already being adjudicated by the courts. The Chief Minister has already announced that the cases shall be fast tracked, and in at least two cases (Sanjauli and Mandi) the masjid authorities have either demolished the offending portions themselves or have sought permission to do so. This should have brought closure to the protests, but closure is not what these Islamophobic outfits are interested in- they want to keep the pot boiling, and so they have now shifted to their second demand, "verification" and detention of outsiders- shorthand for barring the entry of labourers, traders, vendors of a particular community into the state. This is something which has become quite common in BJP mis-ruled Uttarakhand but has so far found no traction in Himachal, which has just 2% Muslims.

This demand is straight out of a Nazi tool-kit. India is a democracy and the Constitution gives its citizens the right to live anywhere, practice any profession, and to live life with dignity and freedom. The mobs want these rights to be taken away from the Muslim migrants, and to give in to them would be to convert Himachal into a police state. "Checking" of "outsiders", as demanded, would mean stopping and verifying the papers of every person coming in at the border, something which cannot be done in an open society without specific inputs or cause. And to what purpose, since everybody these days has some ID or the other? And don't forget that Himachal is a tourist state, with almost 20 million "outsiders" visiting the state every year- that would mean checking 50000 people EVERY DAY at the entry points! Or should the police check only those who wear clothes of a particular type, or sport a particular kind of beard?

The Chief Minister has already announced that a comprehensive policy for vendors/ tehbazari would be formulated and only those who have a licence would be allowed to do business on the roads. This should have settled this demand as well, but what is being attempted here by the BJP/VHP is just another version of the economic boycott and exclusion of a particular community. It is no coincidence that the current protests and demonstrations are led by the various Beopar Mandals and the business community. Their real targets are the vendors and small street businesses, a large part of which is in the hands of Muslims. It is now evident that these groups make a significant dent in the earnings of businesses belonging to the majority community, so off with the formers' heads! There is nothing better than combining business with religion, is there- make a few bucks while earning a few brownie points with your Gods at the same time ?! 

The ongoing protests are specious and nothing but an expression of religious hatred and intolerance. But, equally disturbing is the near silence of other sections of society- members of the Congress itself, other civic associations, the media, other political parties, retired govt. officials who are busy Whatsapping banal and vapid greetings to each other but will not raise their voices on such a core issue. (It is, however, heartening to note that some formations like CITU, Himachal Kissan Sabha, DYFI, AILU and Janwadi Mahila Samiti and others have held a meeting on the 16th and have decided to hold a public peace and unity rally on the 27th of this month.) One of the problems of Shimla is that it has no civil society to speak of, which is why the right wing fundamentalists can fill up the vacuum so easily with their hate and Islamophobia. It is encouraging that the Chief Minister has taken a resolute stand against these elements, but he needs the full support of his own party and high command, the state administration, the common citizens and all those who still value the principles of the Mahatma. At stake is not only a government, but the only secular, inclusive, multiculturally sensitive, law abiding state in north India. It is something worth speaking up for and fighting for. 

THE UNLEARNING AND THE NEW LEARNING

 India is going through another great Renaissance, as ordained by a gentleman whose own educational qualifications are shrouded in doubt and about which RTI questions will never be answered. All our learnings of the past two thousand years have to be discarded and a new learning, as enshrined in the NEP (New Education Policy) and prescribed by the UGC, CBSE and NCERT will re-enlighten this land. I must confess that, having already forgotten most of what I had learned in the last 70 years (which wasn't much to begin with) I am excited at the prospect of being educated again. And I have been making some progress, and as evidence of that, would like to share some of these nuggets with my long suffering readers.

Remember that phrase "carrying coals to Newcastle" coined by John Graunt in 1661 ? It denoted a meaningless action, to take something to a place where it's not needed because there's plenty of that stuff already there. Well, in Amritkaal that phrase has been replaced by "carrying coals to Godda". Godda is the place in Jharkhand where Mr. Adani has set up a 1600 MW thermal power station which exports all its power to Bangladesh (or used to, till Hasina was given a one-way ticket to exile). Now, Jharkhand has the largest coal reserves in the world, so  you would expect that the millions of tonnes of coal required for this power station would be mined in Jharkhand itself, right? Wrong. Here is where the gaps in your education become visible- for Adani does not mine the local coal, instead he imports it from 6000 kms away, from his Carmichael mines in Australia! And still manages to sell the power at four times the usual price to Bangladesh, thanks to getting his plant declared as an SEZ by amending the rules, liberal loans from banks, and environment clearances to bring river waters from 100 kms away. Management schools across the world are still trying to figure out why the coal was not sourced more cheaply locally, how a totally unviable project became so profitable, not realising that the answer to that question lies in politics, not economics. But, in the meanwhile, the English language has been changed forever, and John Graunt banished- "carrying coals to Godda" is the new phrase, and don't let anyone tell you that you can't make a handsome profit by doing something conventional wisdom tells you is stupid.

Most of us will remember the haircut from our childhood days, that monthly visit to the barber when we were cut to size. I now go just once a year, for old times' sake, because the ravages of time and shouldering the brown man's burden for 35 years have ensured that my hair raising days are now firmly behind me. Which is a good thing too, because a haircut is no longer what it used to be. It is now a euphemism for fiduciary castration of banks, which is usually you and me because it is our money, after all. This is how it works in New India:

A haircut, in today's parlance, is the money the banks lose (forego) when a company becomes insolvent by siphoning off the bank loans to Bermuda or St. Kitts, and someone else takes it over by paying the bank a fraction of the money owed, say, 10% or 20%. The apotheosis of rogue Capitalism, an ingenious way to transfer public money to private individuals, isn't it? Especially as the new owner is just a proxy for the original, defaulting owner: he gets to keep both the bank's money and the company! The bank takes what is called a haircut, while the barber gets a facial in Monte Carlo. The country has had Rs. 6 lakh crores worth of haircuts in the 612 cases resolved so far under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. which is why we now have more billionaires than Anupam Khair has hair fallicles on his polished nationalistic pate, or Kangana Ranout can count on her manicured fingers (when she is not pointing them at the farmers, that is). Nowadays fat cats don't laugh all the way to the bank, they laugh on their way back from the bank. Which is why the Indian banking system is now on its knees, waiting for something worse than a haircut.

Most people of my generation grew up priding ourselves on India's policy of Non-alignment. It gave us and the third world moral stature in the company of stalwarts like Sukarno, Nkrumah, Tito and Nasser. No more. For our Prime Minister non-alignment is now a dirty word, to be trashed abroad, its meaning completely changed because history has to be distorted to suit, and justify, his personal predilections and hubris. In a brilliant article for The Wire on 28th August, SN Sahu explains that the essence of Non-alignment was "active engagement with all countries with a spirit of friendship, equality and reciprocity.... and neutrality towards military alliances." Speaking recently in Poland, however, Mr. Modi has deliberately distorted and misconstrued it to mean (in his own words) "to maintain distance from all countries". He went on to boast "Today India's policy is to maintain close ties with all countries. Today India wants to connect with everyone." 

Sure. Ask the Palestinians, Srilanka, Nepal, Ukraine, Iran. By all means, if it's in our national interest to refuse to vote at the UN against the genocide and atrocities by Israel and Russia in Gaza and Ukraine, to continue to bolster the Russians by buying their oil, to keep on the right side of a Zionist state so we can buy Pegasus from them, sell them drones or get lucrative contracts for some cronies- if that benefits us, embroider it in gold in the tatters of our foreign policy. But for God's sake, don't misinterpret the concept of non-alignment or denigrate an enlightened policy India followed right up till the time of Vajpayee. It was because of non-alignment that we were the leader of the South, looked up to by the Muslim nations of the world, a role model for other decolonised nations, secured the independence of Austria first and Bangladesh later, were successful in obtaining the Civil Nuclear Cooperation deal with the USA even while most of our weapons came from Russia. We were much better connected with the world in pre- Modieval times than we are today. In comparison, today we are shunned by the global South, distrusted by the West and considered a bully in our own backyard. Nehru's non-alignment has served this country much better than Modi's neo-alignment has.

Don't criticize what you can't understand, said Bob Dylan in his song The Times They Are A-changing. To which one may also add that distorting history or changing its vocabulary is not history, as Ed Koch observed, it's psychiatry, and a bad case of that too.

BEAUTY AMONG THE BEASTS

 Kangana Runout is all over the news these days like a bad rash , there's just no getting away from her interviews, statements and tweets. I find her very refreshing in these morbid days of rapes, lynchings, bridge collapses, encounters, defections and states going bankrupt. What is enlivening in her utterings is the novel perspective she brings to bear on whichever subject she decides to take on. Someone once said that we are all born ignorant, but we have to work hard to be stupid. And no one can accuse the Himachali belle of not working really hard at it. She is a bit like the IAS- an expert on any subject; she has spoken on the US election, history, Manipur, the farmers' protests, the Delhi riots, the 2002 Gujarat carnage, nepotism, Bollywood, sexual exploitation, the caste census, censorship, the freedom movement, among other weighty subjects. And, in keeping with thebest practices in the IAS these days, she is also a lateral entry into Parliament!

She has even started dropping hints about her marriage, and our vacuous media, with no exit polls on the horizon, has started speculating about the wicket keeper who might be responsible for the run-out. It's a bit late for me to throw my hat into the bull ring, having already chucked my towel into another one, but I do have a piece of advice for the gentleman- if you have the Encyclopedia Britannica, sell it to the kabariwallah; you won't be needing it any longer, for your wife knows everything. Ditto for Google Search.

Now, I'm no fan of Ms Ranaut's brand of politics, and I do wish that  she would be less forthcoming with her muddled thoughts on everything under the sun and a little less toxic, but one can't but doff one's hat at her candidness, the courage to call a spade a shovel, and the audacity to call out the power brokers in the world of politics and film making. Among the current crop of female "influencers" she perhaps is the only one of note to say F**K YOU ! in a man's world which is getting more parochial with every successive election. And, sadly, she is paying the price for that.

The hounding of her film Emergency is a case in point, though the malaise it depicts is much larger, for the same thing is happening with the Netflix series IC 814. Taking offence has become a full time, and rewarding, profession in India. It's not something new either- remember Kissa Kursi Ka, Aandhi, Rushdie, A Suitable Boy, Sacred Games, Tandav and the enforced exile of MF Husain? This "hurting of sentiments" is a very dangerous trend in a country with 6 major religions, 3000 castes and 25000 sub-castes, 22 official languages, 121 other languages and 270 mother tongues, 2000 registered political parties and hundreds of millions of morons. Any aspiring or misguided idiot can claim to be offended by anything in a film. In the case of Emergency it is allegedly the "unfavourable" depiction of Sikhs and in IC 814 it is the Hindu names of terrorists and their "humanizing", whatever that means.

Both films are loosely historical, and there are always different perspectives on history, which is the way it should be. In a liberal democracy a writer or director should have the freedom to present his version of any historical event, without any jingoist, communal or political obstructions. If the SGPC does not like the way Sikhs are shown by Ms Ranaut-fine, go and make your own version of it, God knows they have the money to do so. If the fake nationalists have the opposite grouse-whereas the Sikhs are demonised in Emergency, the terrorists are humanised in IC 814- don't watch the film, or ask Vivek Agnihotri to make another film called the Hijack Files.

Lumpen elements one can understand- stupidity is part of our DNA. What one is most shocked at, however, is the way our governments and courts become part of this regressive process. The courts these days will do everything except their jobs, which is to dispense justice in a timely manner. Why, one wonders again and again, do they even admit petitions for banning/ witholding the release of films on grounds of distortion, defamation or hurting of sentiments? Leave it to the Censor Board, and if this august body fails to do its job then haul it over the coals. But why become the court of first resort for any dissatisfied idiot? I am constrained to observe, with great respect and regret, that both the Bombay and Madhya Pradesh High Courts, have not served the cause of free speech by failing to facilitate the scheduled release of Emergency.

The central govt., as is to be expected, has conducted itself with its usual duplicity. Though it found nothing wrong in the dubious representation of facts and tenor with its own propaganda films- Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story-in the case of Ms Ranaut's film it has arm twisted the Censor Board to delay its certification because of the "sensitivity" of the subject- read: possible adverse impact on the BJP in the impending Haryana elections. One would have expected the two High courts to have seen through this dumb charade, but possibly the blindfold over the eyes of  the statue of Justice is tighter than we would have imagined.

Coming on top of the ever increasing restrictions on print and televised media,         social media platforms and OTT channels, the legitimacy now accorded to communities, self appointed "nationalists" and religious groups to block any film, and the reluctance of the judiciary to stop them, is turning India's creative pastures into intellectual deserts. Soon, no one worth his salt will write books or make films except the propagandists of whichever party happens to be in power at the time.

There are two lessons in this for Kangana Ranaut. One, the wheel has come full circle for her, and she has become a victim of the same toxic and intolerant ideology that she supports. Two, she has been betrayed by her own party which has cast her aside for a few seats in Haryana. Her free-roaming and independent spirit does not correspond with the confining and suffocating ethos of the party she belongs to. Time for another battle for the Rani of Jhansi?