BURMA VJ is a movie shot as part of the Democratic Voice of Burma’s mission to capture and highlight the brutality of the Junta and the bravery of the people willing to stand up against their oppressors making sure their voice is heard in spite of the various attempts to suppress any dissent or raised voice.
May 19, 2009
For a country that prides itself on winning independence through non violent means enabled by a man who valued the human dignity and life above else, India seems to have fallen a long way down in the past 60 odd years since independence. To boast of being the only long lasting democracy in the South Asian region is perhaps laudable but the fashioning of democracy as an institution that is independent of the people who make it possible and an institution whose primary concern becomes power itself is appalling . The lack of a strong Indian response be it regarding the Sri Lankan issue, or the Tibetan protests before the Olympics, or the Burmese protests last year or the Junta’s response to Cyclone Nargis or even its own disquieting human rights record only underline the complete disregard for the values and the principles that the nation and its democratic institutions were built upon. The silence of the government in face of the arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on May 13th, even when western governments were quick to make their displeasure known is just further evidence of how low the government and its foreign policies have fallen. By not responding or showing a strong negative response to the detaining of a women who has for the last two decades fought on the principles that were made popular by the Mahatma, the Government of India has shown clearly where their interests lie.
The placement of economic interests and economic growth above all else does not come as a complete surprise. India, after all is just following in the footsteps of the west who have repeatedly turned a blind eye towards human rights issues in the Middle East, China, Latin America, Africa and in many other places if that blind eye meant an increase in their economic status, an move to the top of the developed nations list and the recognition of being on par with the first world. Globalization and global capitalism has shown to be two faced again and again. The human cost of it has been increasingly whitewashed with figures of people who have profited from it. The bigger hoax has been the UN Human Rights council which this year boasts a list of who’s who amongst the world’s worst Human rights offenders. For an institution which boasts its mission as being to strengthen, protect and promote human rights issues around the globe, the inclusion of United States, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Russia, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India would be funny if it were not so depressing. The absolute lack of concern, the mind numbing indifference, and feigned ignorance of the status of the human rights situation in these countries and amongst the countries that relate to these countries is frightening. The double standards of the United States, the United kingdom and many of the Western developed countries when it comes to dealing with the nations that have poor or no standards of human rights just sets the tone for how an international organization that depends on the support and economic support of these countries will behave and how countries that aspire to become democratic and members of the free trade consortium will behave. None of the countries have a right to be appalled by Daw Suu Kyi’s detention until they show the same degree of concern for the minorities who suffer through the communist regime of China, or the degrading status of women, and minorities in the Middle East, or the status of immigrants in their own countries. Secretary’s Clinton’s show of friendship and her dismissal of human rights as an issue in her first visit to china show the priority of the Obama administration. Neither the US or the UK have any right to criticize the Burmese Junta until they can convince India and China to stop trading with Burma, supplying it with Military equipment and build roads and ties with the Junta in a never ending one-upmanship competition.
The new incoming Indian government needs to set its foreign policy priorities straight. It cannot stand up in the international stage and claim to be a voice for democracy and boast of its history of preserving human dignity until it takes concrete measures to stop the massacre along its borders. It cannot support the military junta in Burma while talking about non violence and value for human life, it cannot support the Sri Lankan government with arms and money while talking about complete rights for all minorities, it cannot maintain a cordial relationship with china while sheltering the Dalai Lama and talking about respect for all religions. Above all, it cannot claim to be a democratic, secular country with equal rights for all its people and act as a beacon for the downtrodden while ill treating the refugees who come to its shores. A system has to be put in place in coordination with the UNHCR to make sure the refugees who come are not left to die in under prepared camps or sold off into prostitution and trafficking. There has to be a concerted effort with the western nations to bring governments like the Burmese Junta or even the Sri Lankan government to task and to highlight the violations of minorities, tribes and other people in those countries. There has to be an awareness that the responsibilities of a rising power extend far beyond its shores and far beyond providing food, water and shelter to its people. It’s high time the western countries were made accountable too. There needs to be a better system to bring violators of human rights and justice to task than just closing one’s eyes, and there needs to be a better international system that is just and equal in bring countries to task not based on their relationship to the west but rather on their history of trying to suppress the human will to be free.
May 14, 2009
| Raza Rumi describes the launch of Fahmida Riaz’s novel and how it turned into an occasion for introspection |
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| Barricaded Islamabad enveloped by the ghosts of national gloom has one little corner of hope. The Pakistan Academy of Letters, under its dynamic and committed Chairman, Fakhar Zaman, continues to weave narratives that still inspire. Even when the bitterness of our grim present affects us all, Fakhar Zaman was forthright in his views on Pakistan, its future and most importantly, its literary tradition. The venue was the book launch of Fahmida Riaz’s novel Godavari that has been translated into English. Fahmida Riaz is better known as a poet but her unique prose is lesser known. Her short stories and novels are extraordinary pieces of literary works rendered into sheer poetry. Often it is difficult to determine the genre of her ‘prose’ works as the lines between watertight compartments blur and fade away, only to reappear as a gentle reminder to the readers that our author is experimenting in her inimitable style.
Godavari was published last year by the Oxford University Press and Fakhar Zaman organised its launch under the aegis of PAL only to ensure that there are many indigenous, native voices in English that have yet not caved in to the pressures and inducements of Western publishing houses. Godavari is a deceptively simple story of a few characters visiting a holiday hill resort in Maharashtra a little before the communal riots that shook Bombay and India in the 1980s. But deep within its lines, sub-textual connotations and shifting moods lie tales of discrimination, communal hatred and the unfettered spirits of its universal female characters. The heartening aspect of this book launch was that there were a few dozen enthusiasts present on the occasion, and a few powerful intellectuals who spoke of Fahmida’s life and her works as symbolic of contemporary Pakistan. The most forceful of voices at PAL was that of Dr. Tariq Rehman, the eminent linguist who was quick to clarify that he was neither a literary critic nor a connoisseur but had only come there in support of relentless fighters such as Fahmida Riaz who had devoted their lives to the cause of a progressive Pakistan. Dr. Rehman spoke of the challenges that Pakistan faced, and reminded everyone how these had been subtly and deftly handled by Riaz in her novel. Of all these challenges he cited the two-fold menace of snowballing Talibanisation; and the silence that had gripped those – mentally exiled – who ought to rise and confront it. Dr. Rehman was deeply worried, forceful in his presentation and sincere in his warnings that we all facing certain dangers together as a nation that has been betrayed time and again by its ruling elites. Dr. Mujahid Barelvi, the eminent journalist, reminisced about the younger Fahmida in Karachi of the 1970s, and how she inspired younger writers. Her infinite charms made a whole generation fall in love with her. He cited the upheavals of the 1970s and the onset of martial law, Fahmida’s exile and how the dreamers saw their ideals crashing one after another during General Zia-ul-Haq’s monstrous rule. Godavari was written when Fahmida Riaz was in exile in India during the 1980s. This was the time when she had a relatively safe environment, for she had been booked under the sedition law in Pakistan. However, this was also a time when Fahmida was not at home in the promised secular land because of its deep-seated casteism, its roving communal demons and above all, its typecasting of Pakistanis. Therefore, Godavari also emerges as a tale of an exile as much as it is about the marginalisation of women and India’s lower castes. Salman Asif read an erudite paper, almost a literary tribute to our greatest living poet. He spoke of the inherent lyricism of Fahmida’s prose and its overt feminist stance and intonations. He quoted verses from Dara Shikoh and ended his paper with moving lines from Forugh Farrokhzad, the legendary Iranian poet who was also castigated by the prophets of chauvinism and ignorance. Alamgir Hashmi spoke about Godavari’s plot, its characters and genre, and raised numerous questions about the difficulty of categorizing it. Shabnam Shakil and Kishwar Naheed also attended the ceremony as guests and reaffirmed their solidarity with Riaz. There was nothing more endearing than hearing the sari-clad and reflective Fahmida Riaz, speaking in English about her novel and answering many questions. She also set its context, and mentioned how Sir Sayid’s message on education and modernization was still relevant and perhaps the best counterweight to the growing extremism in the country. Fahmida was also emphatic in affirming our South Asian identity as the founders and creators of Pakistan were themselves “Indians” and not foreigners. Thus she lambasted the insidious efforts of the Pakistani state to impose a foriegn identity on us, basing it on alien regions and cultures. In spite of such realities, she emphasized, we were distinctly Pakistani and this was the beauty of our country’s pluralism, which is now at the mercy of fundamentalist obscurantism. She looked calm and satisfied at the translation rendered by Aquila Ismail, not to mention an excellent introduction by Pakistan’s gifted bilingual writer Asif Farrukhi. In his eloquent background to the novel and its author, he cited the incident when Fahmida’s house was searched during Zia’s era and the house “begins to appear in a new light as she begins to hear, for the first time, heartbeats reverberate through the four walls:” All these tribulations over a book – Search Warrant’ translated by Patricia Sharpe The chair, Fakhar Zaman, was the most unconventional speaker I have ever heard at such literary events. He delivered an insightful, self-exploratory speech. Tired of hearing about Iqbal’s religiosity, Zaman complained of how desperadoes were searching for religion in Faiz too. He was quick to confess that he was a political worker, but his primary identity was that of a writer. Through this curiously hybridized identity, he understood Fahmida’s works, related to her anguish and shared her concerns for Pakistan’s past and its uncertain future. He also spoke of the ludicrousness of visa barriers in South Asia and the demeaning immigration forms that placed writers, poets and intellectuals in a category titled as the “other”. The audience laughed and also ruminated as he spoke extempore without fear and without cavil. Fakhar Zaman is a rare breed of intellectual, and it is good to see the Academy thriving under his leadership despite the turbulent environs of the mighty capital. It is a separate matter that we have learnt to sit in comfortable zones of apathy concerning our writers. Thousands of employees recruited by the past PPP governments have been reinstated, but Fahmida Riaz stays in her Karachi apartment without a vocation or decent livelihood that would enable a litterateur of her towering stature to create more art. For all its other acts of omission, the present government will not be kindly remembered if it fails to honour the progressive artists who struggled against dictatorships and lost their homes, dreams and moorings. Perhaps this is why we are condemned to be haunted by the ghosts of authoritarian rule and the shadows of anti-human ideologies. Fahmidaji, keep on writing: posterity is all yours. This is what your predecessors Mir and Ghalib and many others faced. We are incapable of breaking the callous circles of indifference. Raza Rumi blogs at www.razarumi.com and edits Pak Tea House and Lahornama e-zines |
May 13, 2009
Education can open a lot of doors, sometimes these doors are the ones that are within our minds. Growing up through years of history classes I had always had the impression that it was only the era of the Guptas and tales about the 9 gems in Chandragupta Vikramaditya’s court that Sanskritic learning was at its peak. And when it came to the history of the Mughals a lot of us held the notion that it was only the persian arts that they encouraged. Sometimes, within the ramparts of our own definitions of what constitutes culture we often forget that history presented in a school textbook is only a small snapshot and that other snapshots exist. I would go on to say that text book designers have a great responsibility on their hands and in a lot of cases they fail to satiate the young minds that are in need of wider basis.
In the course of reading a history of Sanskrit literature, I stumbled upon a very interesting text in an area where very little work has been done or an area where there is more prejudices and notions than introspection and a discerning analysis of history. To me, this shows that history is not at all what it seems or what you are taught to believe in.
The fact that many moslem rulers of India liberally patronised Sanskritic culture and learning is not generally known. Their courts were adorned with Sanskritic scholars and writers of high repute who got every encouragement monetary and otherwise from their royal patrons. Of the Sanskritic poets who adorned the courts of the Moslem rulers, three of the greatest are BhAnukara, AkbarIya kALidasa and Jagannatha Panditaraja. Of the Mohammedan rulers who liberally patronised Sanskrit poets and scholars the foremost are Shahabuddin, Nizam Shah, Sher shah, Akbar, Shah Jahan, Muddalar Shah, Burhan Khan and others. Some of the other poets patronised by them are AmrtaDatta, Pundarika Vitthala (the same person who has written musicological treatises such as Ragamala, SadrgaCandrodaya), Harinarayana Misra, Vamshidhara, Lakshmipati and so on. When this is the case with history within a nation divided across religious lines, I am sure there are so many such blurring borders between nations if only we care to look
Read the full downloadable text here..
http://library.du.ac.in/dspace/bitstream/1/7321/1/Muslim_Patronage_To_Sanskritic_Learning%20%281942%29.pdf
April 28, 2009
The Dome
(A Short Play)
By Kali Hawa
[The stage is a blank rostrum set in coal black background and foreground. There is absolutely nothing visible to the spectators due to dull diffused lights facing them from the stage edge. Abruptly the lights causing illusion of darkness to the spectators, begin to dim. Simultaneously soft white light slowly submerge a human form. Bang in the middle of the stage are two long solid blocks. Due to completely black furnishings only silhouette of the man and the two blocks are visible. The man stirs and appears completely baffled]
Man: [Whispering in soft voice] Its pitch dark here. I can’t see a thing. Looks like it wouldn’t have mattered if I was completely blind. [Now a little laud] Blind! Am I blind? [He broods over this for while] No I don’t think so. Certainly not, I am not blind. There is a difference in seeing dark and not seeing at all. Where is this? Who am I? I don’t seem to remember anything. Am I dead? [Again broods over this, then feels his body with his hands] I have limbs; I have form like human being. I am not dead after all. [Softly, as if afraid] Hello! Anybody here? [Nothing happens, emboldened, he walks around in a small circle trying to feel for solid contact with his hands and feels the presence of blocks. His footsteps echo in with short trailing sounds.] This place appears familiar, at least the milieu is familiar. Yes I am inside a dome like structure. [Shaking his head, sits down on one of the blocks] Yes definitely inside a massive dome. The short trailing echo, indeed this a dome. [Now loudly] Hello! Anybody here? Can any one show me the way out?
Voice [A tired but gruff irritating voice] Stop that racket, you fool! Be quiet.
Man: [Perplexed, now speaks in a soft and friendly tone] Sorry! Old chap, if I bothered you, but you see I am lost here and need help. Who are you? What is this place?
Voice: How dare you ask that? Who am I! Yes indeed, Who am I? Oh! It doesn’t matter any more, does it? Why should I help you, I don’t care what miserable piece of shit you are. By the way I am miserable for God knows whence. I am Khurram.
Man: Some luck I have. I run into a badmouthed guy with a queer name. Khurram is it. That’s a violent abrasive name.
Khurram: [Exasperated] you are an extremely insolent person aren’t you. Another time another place you would have paid dearly for this. What is the big deal about Khurrum? You have no familiarity with Arabic-Persian names.
Man: [Trying to make up] I am sorry if I have upset you. You appear to have been around here for sometime while I am a confused stranger here. I don’t even know who I am, what I am doing here. I don’t think I am dead I have physical form. This place seems like a massive dome. Why isn’t there any light……
Voice: You are not the only one baffled [Sounding philosophical]. What makes you think you are not dead?
Man: I told you, I have physical form. If I was dead and assuming dying is just not the end, it is unlikely that existence will continue in the same form. By the way what is this place, Khurram!
Khurram: [Annoyed] Oh! What impudence! This is the Taj Mahal. Can’t you see?
Man: I can’t see, its pitch-dark here.[Then realizing slowly] Taj Mahal! Is it? And you, what are you doing here [waits a few seconds and then excitedly]. You mean! You mean you are the Shah Jehan?
[ There is silence for a few seconds]
Khurram: It doesn’t impress me anymore. All the veneration, awe and fear matters no more. I spend time in complete oblivion siting over judgement on my own doings. I am nowhere near a satisfactory judgement, which angers me even more. What did I do wrong?
Man: You made the Taj Mahal. You are one shinning example of everlasting love and devotion. That should be a fair judgement.
Khurram:You think so. That’s what people think. I hate Mumtaj. I hated her most of the time. I didn’t make the Taj Mahal, I ordered its construction. An army of very skilled artisans made this magnificent monument. I merely ordered its construction in a fit profound loss, just the loss a deep sense of insecurity and loss. Later I wished I hadn’t ordered its construction but then somehow I couldn’t stop its construction. I had become a zombie. My love for Mumtaj was infatuation. Later it is was just a magnified public perception because of the massive construction lasting a lifetime. I was like a zombie not interested in any thing. I watched its construction in state of complete detachment. I saw laborers falling from the high scaffoldings to their death, their heads opening like crushed pumpkins. The rasping sound of whips peeling the skin of workmen for making mistakes did not make me wince in horror. I saw despairing families breaking their back to complete the construction. Supervisors whipping tired workmen to hurry up with raising marble blocks, bringing in heavy materials etc. Scores of them were dying like fleas due to my perceived urge to complete the monument at the earliest. The state was left to flounder and hurtle freely from a prosperous to near bankrupt kingdom.
Man: That is a very harsh judgement. Remember you were the king, that was your destiny. We are partly creatures of our circumstances. Since everything came to you as a matter of right, your behavior was molded in that fashion. Death and misery meant statistics to you as concerns of mere statecraft; therefore you did not realize true significance of a personal tragedy. You were surrounded by some indifferent, some power-hungry people, some good advisors and may be perhaps some well-meaning well wishers too. But they all had their own personal world to attend; besides a king is something unique therefore he has no benchmarks or role models to look for parallels. The King is center of an unreal microcosm where ostentatious behavior over-shadows everything else. Much of his decisions are spontaneous, even though these decisions have far reaching consequences, the king is helpless in that.
Khurram: That’s very well articulated but unfortunately it does not pass the test the morality and responsible behavior. If we accept what you say then no one shall be responsible for his acts. Everyone will blame his circumstances for his failures or acts of omissions and commissions. As you said we are partly creatures of our circumstances but only partly. We have within each of us a sense of judging right and wrong, therefore only part of the blame for our acts can be attributed to circumstances, rest we have to own up.
Man: You speak well your Majesty, but wouldn’t you consider your incarceration in this dungeon for all these centuries enough atonement for your failings? Eventually what counts is sum total of our actions in a lifetime. Surely you were good to your queen and your children and also many other in the multitude constituting your realm.
Khurram: Your are not correct when you say I was good to my queen and children. Perhaps I was for a brief period but as you say it is the sum total that counts. After a while, a long while I hated them all, the cloying closeness made me even more remote and disdainful. Public perception though is quite the contrary. Yet, you are right about the sufficient atonement for my failings. I can say that now with all the earnestness. Goodbye! Young man. You will wake up soon. Good bye!
[Briefly the faded lights, fade even more until it is completely dark. When the lights again come up the stage has metamorphosed in to ruins of an ancient tomb. A man is slumped on the floor his head has slight injury and blood oozing in a light trickle. The man stirs and crawls up, rubs is head and notices the injury]
Man: What a fall through the stairs. This is a tricky ruin, hope ASI does something about it. Wonder how long I had been here unconscious.
[Curtains]
Kali Hawa
April 19, 2009
Washington Post Article on Indian Muslims Facing Bias
Posted by Sujatha under Newspaper ArticlesLeave a Comment
The sunny apartment had everything Palvisha Aslam, 22, a Bollywood producer, wanted: a spacious bedroom and a kitchen that overlooked a garden in a middle-class neighborhood that was a short commute to Film City, where many of India’s Hindi movies are shot.
She was about to sign the lease when the real estate broker noticed her surname. He didn’t realize that she was Muslim, he said. Then he rejected her. It was just six weeks after the November Mumbai terrorist attacks and Indian Muslims were being viewed with suspicion across the country. He then showed her a grimy one-room tenement in a Muslim-dominated ghetto. She felt sick to her stomach as she watched the residents fight over water at a leaky tap in a dark alley.
The entire article is here.
March 8, 2009
Spirals of Contention: Why India was partitioned in 1947
Posted by onesouthasia under Books, Newspaper Articles | Tags: History, India, Khaled Ahmed, Pakistan, Partition, Satish Saberwal |Leave a Comment
BOOK REVIEW: Partition with nationalist goggles off —by Khaled Ahmed in the Daily Times
Spirals of Contention: Why India was partitioned in 1947
By Satish Saberwal
Routledge (2008);
The distraction for Deoband was British Raj; the distraction for the state of Pakistan in 2009 is America. It didn’t work before 1947 and it is not working in 2009, to the annoyance of most Pakistanis living under the pan-Islamic narrative of anti-Americanism which splices with Pakistan’s India-driven nationalism through the ‘divine untruth’ of an Indian-American-Israeli nexus
March 2, 2009
The Hindus of Peshawar
Posted by onesouthasia under Videos | Tags: Hindus, Pakistan, Peshawar |Leave a Comment
Global Post has some interesting footage of the Hindus who stayed in Peshawar, Pakistan.
February 19, 2009
NDTV.com Video: Is peace possible between India and Pakistan?
Posted by onesouthasia under Videos | Tags: India, Mumbai Terror Attacks, Pakistan |Leave a Comment
Dialogue Across the Divide: Some well-known Indians and Pakistanis engage in conversation:
more about "NDTV.com Video: Is peace possible bet…", posted with vodpod
Many politicians and their disciples in the media nowadays seem to have the least interest in promoting positive peace. Why should they promote peace, when defending their countries to the last drop of someone else’s blood pays such rich dividends for them – at least temporarily? The politicians are able to grandstand, and the media enjoy good circulation as their columns reverberate with the patriotic thunder of polarized opinion. Even though one can detect the influence of right-wing nationalist ideas on public opinion, it’s clear from this discussion that the Indian government has not acted, as the US government did after 9/11, out of fear and rage. Indeed, it is constantly attacked in the press and media for showing restraint in the face of the gravest provocation. Perhaps this restraint is a virtue born out of necessity, as it comes from a sober assessment of our capacity to sustain a military confrontation with Pakistan. Army commanders in India apparently were wary of the battle readiness of the armies they command. But the restraint has actually allowed for a more successful and calibrated reaction to the Pakistani involvement in 26/11 than would have been possible if we had gone in for a precipitate military reaction.
