When pride of being an Indian takes a beating

Often distance gives a different perspective. After what happened in the Indian Parliament on Thursday, I deliberately kept myself away from other colleagues at the place where I work. Some of them have links with India and others are fascinated by the tremendous strides made by the country which was once ruled by the British.

I was apprehensive that someone would ask me uncomfortable questions about what happened in the Indian Parliament. I didn’t want to be caught on the wrong foot on my country, which incidentally is the largest democracy in the world.

On second thought, it seemed that I was actually shying away from myself. The sheer shame of facing the reality about the transformation of Indian polity. Often our leaders and those of us who live away from home use words like pluralism, diversity, empowerment –  in one way or the other they all are related to democracy. We take pride in the fact that despite her deficits, India is a vibrant democracy. When Europeans, who are so used to homogeneity, raise eyebrows on the chaos in India, we tell them India is too complex a structure to be compared to Europe. At the end of a long discussion on how diverse, multi-dimensional and colourful India is, we add a footnote stating that despite all our problems India is united, proud and values its pluralism, diversity and democracy.

I wonder what some of my European friends having interests in India would say after what happened in the Indian Parliament on Thursday. Frankly speaking, I started feeling restless the very moment, an Indian television channel which beams here in the UK informed me about the use of pepper spray and knives in the temple of democracy, a term often used by Indians. To relieve me from the restlessness, I posted on the social media: “Indian lawmakers act as insurgents in the land of Mahatma.”

It was an instant reaction, but on reflection, I was swamped in depression. The significant strides that India has made in the fields of science and technology, software development, human resources, academia and services etc. are rated even more highly as we have been able to achieve them despite being a democracy where divergence of views and opinion are taken into consideration. Despite the high growth rate of China, India is preferentially treated because she is a democracy as compared to China being under a one-party rule. We know where our strength lies and yet none other than the lawmakers decided to tarnish India’s image. Our pride in democracy, pluralism and tolerance has all fallen flat with one stroke of an action.

Twenty years back as a young journalist, I had a chance to meet Hiren Mukherjee, the celebrated parliamentarian of CPI. As expected, I was mesmerised by his depth of knowledge and yet his patience to listen to somebody as inexperienced and naïve as myself. Despite his unflinching faith in Communism, the late parliamentarian told me that India’s strength lies in its multi-party democracy. “Our strength lies in the power of our patience and our readiness to absorb,” I remember him telling me.

Then he narrated instances from his parliamentary life when Nehru would often make it a point to listen to his speeches as well as those of other political adversaries like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.  “We were political adversaries but our friendship and respect for each other were still intact,” he told me. On hindsight, it seems that is the novelty of democracy and is now gradually disappearing from Indian polity.

Any sane person would support social mobility, especially in a country as complex as India and empowerment of people coming from different socio, cultural, ethnic and regional groups augurs well for democracy. Unfortunately, that has also contributed to the intolerance and impatience, and often the animosity between different social elements was reflected on the floor of the house. Even live telecast of the parliamentary proceedings couldn’t stop the lawmakers from behaving inappropriately.  They often take pride in the fact that such unruly behaviour made them more popular among their constituents and ensured electoral gains.

Does it imply that India as a nation is becoming impatient, intolerant and argumentatively perilous. Nothing can be more unfortunate in a country which takes pride in being the successor of great leaders like Nehru, Gandhi, Tagore, Netaji, Abul Kalam Azad and many more. None can deny the political differences between Tagore, Netaji, Nehru and the Mahatma, frankly they were quite stark, and yet not for once did they fail in publicly acknowledging respect towards their political opponents.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 

He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
All comments are personal.

Theorising Kejriwal's Muffler

Arvind Kejriwal is always seen sporting a muffler. Even when he was formally taking over as the chief minister of Delhi, his trademark muffler was seen hanging on the coveted chair. I wonder if this depicts a sense of strong determination and will power, without caring about what others may think or make out of it.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times

Generally, politicians are used to pulling out their best assets in the wardrobe while taking over positions of pride and power. For Kejriwal, however, taking over as the Delhi chief minister apparently made no difference, and he was sporting the same attire as he did on any other day.

One might argue that it was a well choreographed move to demonstrate that he was still an 'aam aadmi' or the proverbial ordinary man. A subtle analysis, based on a different context and a separate set of parameters, may lead to a different conclusion.

People generally tend to avoid using mufflers or monkey caps (also known as balaclava) on the presumption that they tend to infuse a sense of image to the user which is construed as not so smart (or unsmart in common parlance). Since most of us are interested in showing and seeing ourselves in good and smart light, we tend avoid attires which don't do so.

There is a general feeling that those who use muffler or monkey caps are either elderly or more concerned about their health or are risk-averse or are not (so much) bothered about worldly style. The flamboyance that is synonymous to charisma and is very important in politics in a country like India, doesn't go very well with mufflers, especially if it is worn in the style that Kejriwal does. But he is neither elderly, nor risk averse or too concerned about his health. In fact, very few people are as risk-prone and less concerned about himself as Kejriwal.

So the obvious conclusion is that Kejriwal is strong on determination and is least bothered about what others may think or make out of him. Probably, this flows from his Haryanvi genealogy. Kejriwal is from Siwani in Haryana. I am not sure whether he is a Jat, but Jats are credited with dogged determination, with a clear sense of purpose. This might be the reason behind him getting into the IIT, one of the premier institutes in India or the Indian Revenue Service. No wonder, Kejriwal left a coveted job to venture out in a life of uncertainty and risk

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
All comments are personal.

Many Shades of Identity

My nine-year-old daughter often asks me whether she is British or Indian. Being born in the UK and growing up here, her national identity centres around this country, but often she is reminded about her Indian/ Bengali roots, as was done on 26 January - India's Republic Day. To arrive at an argumentative equilibrium my daughter is told that she is British of Indian origin.

Going by the diplomatic jargon, I too hold the same status so does my wife. But when it comes to description we define ourselves as Indians.

I was born in India and spent three decades of my life there before moving to the UK. So technicalities apart, I consider myself only as an Indian and nothing else. Lord Norman Tebbit, famed or ill famed for Tebbit Test, might not be pleased but that is the reality.

But when my daughter comes up with the same argument, we settle only after attaching an adage i.e. British Indian and not only British.

The moot question though is whether a national identity is important in a globalised set up.

For the sake of argument, we often say that the current phase of globalisation, which is more technological, has produced a global village and being world citizens do we really need a national identity.

Sociological analysts see the ideological demise of nation state with the advent of globalisation. Keynesianism which was the hallmark of nation state in the post war era, has taken a back seat and despite a flurry of  crises caused by the selfish behaviour of the proponents of Neoliberalism, the state has taken a supplementary role, through quantitative easing etc., rather than positioning itself as the leader as was the case during the post-war reconstruction.

When statism was the dominant discourse one could understand the rationale behind the significance of national identities. However, when state as an intellectual idea has taken a back seat and the market force has taken over, even then national identities are quite predominant. Imagine the rise of the Neo-Nazis in Germany or the British National Party in the UK.

Technology they say is a great leveler and it has often obscured national boundaries and geographical contours and yet it couldn't get away with national, ethnic and other identities. When it comes to 15 August or 26 January, I am a proud Indian. I keep on telling my daughter how freedom fighters made India free from the clutches of the British. Similarly, during Durga Puja my Bengaliness takes precedence. Undoubtedly, they all are part of my identity.

Do these forms of identity come into conflict with one another or do they co-exist?

Or is identity too complex a phenomenon and it is not easy to decipher all its shades!

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
All comments are personal.

Suchitra Sen redefined stardom

In a school exam we were once asked to write an essay on our favourite movie. I had written about Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’. I hadn’t seen Ray’s landmark movie then, nor did I have a chance to read the epic novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. The essay book at hand bailed me out then.

Many years later, I had to write the same essay again. This time, however, I was in the look-out for a job. By that time I had watched ‘Sat Paake Bandha’  - a film on a dignified lady’s love for a modest earning professor against the wishes of her ambitious mother - several times. Each time I watched the movie, I wished the marriage between Archana (the role played by Suchitra Sen) and Sukhendu (Soumitra Chatterjee) had survived.

Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ may have ushered in a new era in the history of Indian films, yet I, as a middle class semi-urban Bengali, couldn’t relate to it. On the other hand, Suchitra Sen’s ‘Sat Pake Bandha’, which fetched her the award of the best actress at the Moscow Film Festival – first by an Indian actress in any foreign film fest, portrayed the emotions and aspirations of the middle class. What made Suchitra Sen unique in the film was the multi-shaded dilemma between the emotions she had for her husband and the aspirations of her mother. And it is this uniqueness which won the hearts and minds of thousands of cine-goers and made her an epitome of romanticism.

It is a well-known fact that Ray wanted to direct ‘Devi Chaudhurani’ – a novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee where a charismatic lady led the struggle against the oppression of the British – with Suchitra Sen in the lead role. However, it didn’t materialise as Suchitra Sen didn’t have dates which matched Ray’s schedule. Ray also wanted Suchitra Sen to act exclusively for him (i.e. she wouldn’t act in any other film till the shooting of Devi Chaudhurani’ was over). Suchitra Sen, however, refused the offer, stating that she couldn’t overlook those directors who made her the star that she was.  This only proves that her path to stardom was not guided by intellectual fame alone, and she knew how to pull the right chord to sway popular imagination.

Such was her glamorous screen presence and influence on people’s mind that every young male lover in the 1960s and 1970s desired to see Suchitra Sen in their fiancée. Obviously, the socio-historic context was important. India was a young nation, mired with numerous problems, including poverty, unemployment and the toiling middle class looked at her as a respite in the midst of the struggle that they had to undergo.  Her fans thronged the matinee shows in large numbers only for a rendezvous with their favourite screen idol. 

With Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen formed one of the formidable on-screen pairs in the history of Indian cinema. Their on screen presence was epitomised by films like ‘Sare Chuattor’, ‘Harano Sur’ ‘Pathe Holo Deri’ and ‘Saptopadi’, only to name a few of the 30 films they acted together. Yet some believe that Suchitra Sen performed even better in those movies where she wasn’t opposite the thespian. 

Apart from ‘Sat Pake Bandha’, ‘Uttar Falguni’, where she acted in a double role of a courtesan mother and a lawyer daughter, ‘Dwep Jele Jai’, where she played the role of a  nurse hired by a psychiatrist to develop personal relationships with male patients, ‘Bhagaban Shree Krishna Chaitanya’ are some of the films where Suchitra Sen was sophistication and dignity personified. And this sophistication and dignity were also her off-screen hallmarks. In a way, Suchitra Sen changed the way the female actors were seen in the cinema industry, especially in Bengal.

Bharati Devi, Chaya Devi, Kanan Devi, Sandhya Rani, Sumitra Devi - veterans to Suchitra Sen in the film industry, were undoubtedly gifted actors. However, they were submissive in their personalities and their on screen presence was subdued by playing second fiddle to the heroes. This male domination was in a way challenged by Suchitra Sen, when she shared the screen with Uttam Kumar as equal partners. 

In some of the films which she did with Uttam Kumar, her name got precedence in the title cards, posters and banners. And in films like ‘Uttar Falguni’ and ‘Dwip Jele Jai’ it was Suchitra Sen who led the show. It was the same with Gulzar’s ‘Aandhi’, where Suchitra Sen was cast in a character, believed to be profoundly influenced by the persona of Indira Gandhi.

‘Aandhi’ was banned during the emergency, later on when the ban was lifted and the film was screened at Kolkata’s Nandan, we were college students. I remember many of us had thronged to watch ‘Aandhi’, not expecting anything else but only to watch Suchitra Sen on the silver screen. 

Her Hindi accent in the film was pathetic to say the least and that she was aging when the film was shot was evident, yet people thronged to have a feel as to how Suchitra Sen looked like. By that time she had already retired into recluse, which made the cine-goers all the more curious.  

Her feminine charm and emotive force definitely strengthened the idea of feminism, but such was her grace that Suchitra Sen never had to shout out loud to make herself heard. She challenged the patriarchy by her on and off screen presence but probably never defied it. Even after separating from her husband Dibanath Sen, Suchitra Sen took up the responsibility of bringing the body to Kolkata and carrying out his last rites after he died abroad. 

No one knows why she retired into recluse after her last film in 1978, yet it is widely believed that she took to spiritualism. While her illusive retirement retained her image as a star in the hearts and minds of thousands of cine-lovers, it also redefined the idea of stardom and demonstrated that it was not only confined to the screen. 

(A version of this write up was first published in DNA)

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 

All comments are personal.

Sen-Bhagwati Debate: When Social Contract is Imperative

The recent war of words involving two leading luminaries of modern day economics - Jagdish Bhagwati and Amartya Sen - reminds me of a story we were told during the very first lecture on Economics. The story goes like this: A physicist, an engineer and an economist were taken to an empty island and shown a sealed container. They were asked to open the container but no tools or devices were available.

The physicist said he would apply heat but no source was available to generate it. The engineer suggested that he would use a lever but there were no tools in the island. With no chances of opening the sealed container, the economist retorted, "Let us assume that the container is open."

It might seem like a warming up joke, but assumptions are very important in Economics. Unlike natural sciences controlled experiments are rarely possible in social sciences and hence the importance of assumptions. The much talked about book written by arguably the most influential economist of the 20th century John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, is considered a seminal work because the author's assumptions regarding the traits of human behaviour turned out to be very close to reality. Similar is the case with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. How one analyses and interprets an issue depends on the inherent assumptions being made.

Whatever I have understood from the verbal duel, apart from the personal acrimony, is that Bhagwati is all for higher growth with the basic assumption that the increased income will then be utilised, among many other things also for the social sector (Trickle Down Hypothesis). Sen on the other hand argues, as he has been doing for quite some time, that growth in itself is not enough, and countries like India should also focus on areas like health and education.

Those who understand the arithmetical terminology of 'average' will very well recognise the inadequacy of growth (change in national income and also per capita income) as an indicator of social well being as it doesn't ensure equitable distribution of resources and stops short of identifying people's entitlements. Here the significance of allocating resources for social areas like health and education becomes important. Sen has been harping this issue ever since he formulated "Sen's Poverty Index P (also referred to as the Poverty Gap Index)", in place of the usual "Head-Count Ratio" used for measuring the intensity and extent of poverty.

The responsibility of allocating resources for the social sectors lies mostly with the government of the day. The inherent argument behind such redistribution, as I understand, is that it will work towards creation of a more egalitarian society and restrain social instability. However, such redistribution can only take place when a certain level of growth is achieved, which justifies Bhagwati's argument. At the same time Sen is also correct in saying that one should not be complacent only with the growth figures. So I am not surprised when one of Sen's many students Dr Kaushik Basu argues (Dr Basu is quoted in the attached link) that both the scholars are actually saying the same thing but from different points of views, which I think are guided by their underlying assumptions and political philosophies.

So the bottom line is that growth is necessary but in a country like India it is not sufficient for balanced and equitable social development. If read between the lines and beyond the egotist rhetoric one will find that both Bhagwati and Sen are arguing the same thing but from their own standpoints. The irony is that the Indian media is making a big fuss out of it, by linking it with the real politics of the day, and the reason being that social issues are less 'sexy', if I may borrow the word from Manu Joseph of the OPEN  magazine, than the animosity between the BJP and the Congress and its unsophisticated manifestation. The other reason being that it is much easier to get away from the intellectual aspect of the debate by linking it with the worldly politics.

However, this over simplification by (half-baked) journalists overlooks a much bigger issue which poses an equally bigger threat to India as a nation, and that is the failure of the government in redistributing resources in an equitable way. Some would blame it on Neoliberalism, while others would put the onus on failed governance, lack of accountability of the politicians and others at the helm, and indifference of the middle class towards social and economic menace gripping India. One would argue that rising social tension and increase in heinous crimes like rape, murder, gender violence are a fall out of the deficits in equitable redistribution and the failure in making the people aware (and also ensuirng) of their entitlements.

While the media and its consumers are talking with much interest about the Bhagwati-Sen tussle, they are totally indifferent on this issue and it points towards a dangerous trend as far as social sensibility is concerned. One could argue that a social contract is essential to get the Indian society out of this mess. By social contract I mean that the relatively well off in the society will take collective responsibility for the social and economic betterment of the impoverished. After all, one has to accept that even if the middle class confines itself within the walled and guarded compounds they can't remain totally insulated from the outside world.

One can expect that the social contract will have multiple benefits. Firstly, it will relieve the government from the arduous task of redistributing resources, and hopefully this will act as a detriment to rampant corruption in public life. Secondly, the relatively well off will realise for themselves the danger of unilateral concentration of wealth, and thirdly, it will develop a sense of belonging for the impoverished.

If we consider the classical definition of civil society as the intermediary between the state and the individual, then they can play an effective role in introducing the social contract and sustaining it. However, a majority of the current breed of civil society activists are so partisan, following favours dished out by the powerful, and here I don not refer to only the politicians, that they often fail to distinguish between the good, bad and the ugly. So the members of the civil society should be made aware of their pivotal role at a time of serious political, economic and social predicaments.

Without a viable social contract, neither Sen's nor Bhagwati's prescription will be effective in bringing about any positive change in a complex society like India.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 

All comments are personal.