Bangladesh and its valiant people were in such a predicament for over three and a half years after their liberation when the fruits of freedom and independence almost eluded them and chaos and lawlessness reigned supreme. This raised doubts amongst many whether this was the summum bonum (outcome) of what they had hoped and fought for to achieve. Worse, it prepared the ground for the hatching of deadly conspiracies against those very leaders and people who were instrumental in bringing freedom, dignity, respect and opportunities to a people who had never enjoyed or experienced them before.

The case of Bangladesh was unique for certain ministers and senior officials of the government-in-exile in Mujibnagar, along with numerous sector commanders of the Mukti Bahini, were not prepared for such swift liberation of their land. They had never ever anticipated that the Pakistan military’s Eastern Command would surrender as early as on the 13th day of the Indo-Pak War. That the Pakistan military’s morale would reach its nadir and their soldiers would lose their will to fight and not defend Dacca—despite having 25,000 troops deployed in and around the city with ample fire power and armaments at their disposal to last several weeks—had seemed an impossibility to them.

The idea that the Pakistan military would meekly surrender was considered highly improbable due to another reason—the perceived aura of invincibility surrounding it. After all, there was a belief that the Pakistani military, in comparison to its Indian counterpart, was a superior and formidable fighting force with a rich heritage, fuelling expectations that it would staunchly defend Dacca and put up a fierce final stand, come what may.

In fact, following the outbreak of the full-fledged war on 3 December 1971, some of the sector and sub-sector commanders I had met told me that the Pakistan military machine would put up a staunch resistance to the Indian military’s swift advance towards Dacca. They thought that the Pakistan military would throw in all its might and resources to defend Dacca at all costs just as the Russians had done at Stalingrad. Moreover, the Indian Army, they believed, did not have the required wherewithal to make rapid advances towards Dacca as it would have to cross three mighty rivers (including the Meghna and Madhumati), in addition to numerous smaller waterways, giant water bodies and rivulets along the way. 

Thus, the general belief that reverberated like a silent murmur was that the Indian Army would get severely bogged down by fierce, intense and prolonged battles while overcoming the heavily defended Pakistani fortifications, which would further significantly slow down the pace of its advance toward Dacca.

 But their perception of the Indian generals’ strategic knowledge, depth and capabilities was flawed as many of them had not seen the operational virtuosity of commanders of the Indian Army—like Lieutenant General Sagat Singh, Major Generals Ian Cardozo, Nagra, Klerr and Lachchman Singh to name a few—leading their men from the front. And those who had seen them and had worked in close coordination with them in Sylhet and Comilla Sectors, like Majors Khaled Mosharraf and Chittaranjan Dutta, had just the opposite view; they were of the firm belief that the Indians would suddenly take the Pakistanis by surprise by making audacious moves, including airborne and heliborne operations, which would stun the Pakistani General Headquarter (GHQ).

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Mujib’s Blunder, Manash Ghosh, Niyogi Books, 2025.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The paradoxes of Shiva, in effect, incarnate destruction and creation, for which the disappearance of the old, of the exhausted, is necessary so the new and the rejuvenated can take its place. And nothing expresses this better than Shiva Nataraja! Yes, here in India, I always had Shiva in mind, he being the Lord of Change, the eternal dancer who renews the world, who destroys it and recreates it almost instantly, with each movement and the next. Yes, sudden and unforeseen changes, like the one that had just occurred to me, had much to do with him. Besides, we were at the beginning of the year!

Lord of Death, but also of life and birth, Shiva is the Hindu deity par excellence, of transit, who looks towards extremes. In the Mahabharata he is depicted as having three eyes, the third being the one with which he destroys desire (Kama), which tries strongly to tempt him and end his prolonged asceticism. Soon, the gods, unable to endure such a prolonged abstinence, manage to soften him so that he rekindles desire from the ashes he had consigned it to, in order that life may continue. To which he finally accedes.

Among the hundred or even a thousand names of Shiva, according to Linga Purana, and ten thousand according to Mahanyasa, he appears in mythology as the great Lord of the Gods, Maheshvara, the creator of the primordial sound OM, Omkara. He is indeed Mahabaleshwar, the immovable Lord, the immutable one, although he is also present, without there being any contradiction in it, as Nataraja, the perpetual dancer, who with his dance constantly recreates and transforms the cosmos. Among his almost infinite titles is Guheshvar, lord of the deep caves, although he is also known as Kedar, and as Girisha, being in both cases the sovereign of the summits. The deep and the elevated are not contradictory for him! The summit and the abyss constitute his very nature. He is, at the same time, the one who terrifies Bhishma, and the one who infuses serenity, Aghora. In the same manner that he is Maithuneshvar, the lord of intercourse, of endless sex even though he is Gambhiresh, the ascetic, the austere renunciate of lust. Likewise, he is known in this sense as Apamnidhi, the lord of the seminal fluids, even though he is also Kamanashe, the relentless destroyer of desire, and especially Yogesh, the lord of yoga and restraint. In one of his best known epithets, as the propitious, the benevolent, he is Shankar, but he is also Bhairava, the destroyer, the annihilator. Thus, Shiva is the head of the household, Grihapati, owner of the home, and at the same time he is Bhikshatan, the beggar. This immeasurable deity is Tamasopati, the lord of inertia, of passivity, while also of fire, and lava, Pavaka, besides being wind and storm, Marutta. He is all that and also the ever beautiful, Nityasundara. At the same time, he is the terrible, Rudra, and the annihilator, Sarvatapana. And he is the Supreme Reality, which transcends the apparent opposites.

Attempting to decipher these legends and epithets at the beginning of the 21st century with our Aristotelian and western rationality, governed as they both are by the principle of non-contradiction, is something that makes the most asserted certainties falter and seems to put everything into question. At a deeper layer of their meaning, we are not told that opposites are exact contraries at an identical point and place, but that Reality itself may have different manifestations and angles, which, although apparently “contradictory” to the senses, does not ultimately turn out to be so in transcendent consciousness. It is not an empty game of words! For at a higher plane, both opposites bend to touch each other, establishing a flow between them, intense as a ray. Seen from an integrative perspective, closer to the heart than to the mind, they are not exactly the affirmation and categorical denial of the same, but rather something which somehow complements each other. Intuition, not reason, in a cyclical dynamics, even in such different presentations, binds them and makes them interdependent as a natural continuity, such as the valley and the summit. Something like the burn caused by ice, “the opposites are reconciled without destroying.” Only thus can you be the lord of desire and renunciation. He is! He dances, and with him the whole cosmos does, achieving the infinite weight of its matter, it yet has the lightness of a swirl of his dance.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from City of Ravens: Paradoxes of Contemporary India, Carlos Varona Narvión, translated by Sonya Surabhi Gupta, Niyogi Books, 2025.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Having reached the court, we rushed to court of Justice K.B. Panda before whom the matter had been listed. The counsel for the petitioner was Mr Prabir Palit, who was also a member of Communist Party of India and a friend of Mr Patnaik. He argued that parole should be granted on humanitarian consideration. The court asked for my response. I began submitting about his Naxalite activities, which had been given to me by the government. Mr Palit then interjected that the state counsel should take instructions from the government. The court, therefore, adjourned the matter till the next day. I found the home secretary waiting in my chamber when I returned from court during mid-day recess. He further told me that under no circumstances could the government give instruction in writing that the petitioner should be granted parole but urged me to find a way for the sake of the CM and left my office.

In the evening, Mr Rath rang me up and requested me to meet him at his residence. It was possible that the CM had told him about this case. I took the file with me and met the advocate general at his residence. He went through the file for about half an hour and told me that I would have to submit the case without conceding in the matter. Returning home, I thought over the matter for quite some time and drafted what I would submit. I remember the same till today and my draft went like this: ‘Having regard to the past antecedents of the petitioner, he ought not to get parole. But since his son has died by suicide, on humanitarian consideration, the court may direct that he should be taken to his home in Gunpur and be kept in Gunpur jail till the 11th day. His family members can meet him in jail as per jail rule between 10 am and 4 pm, and family means his wife and children. On the 11th day, he would be taken to his home, which will be encircled by police force, and he would be made free to perform the rituals. Before 4 pm, he should be brought back to Gunpur Jail and then taken to the jail from which he had been brought.’ I asked my stenographer to make three copies of the same to be kept in relevant files.

On the next day, this was the very first case in the court. As soon as the case was called, I stood up and handed over one copy to the court and other to Mr Palit, and kept the third copy in my hand. The presiding judge went through the same and observed that it was a very fair submission. Mr Palit wanted some modification to which I did not agree. Ultimately, the court dictated the order but instead of the court directing it, the order was ‘Learned standing counsel submits and accordingly I direct.’ Possibly the judge did not want to take the sole responsibility on himself. I, however, did not protest. When I reached my chamber at 1 pm, I found the home secretary waiting in my room. He got up to congratulate me and convey his thanks and told me that the CM was really pleased with the outcome. Before leaving my room, as a token of thanks, he offered to arrange accommodation for me at the Utkal Bhawan at Calcutta or Orissa Bhawan at Delhi whenever I needed it. Getting accommodation in both the places was a really difficult job those days, and Mr Mishra delivered on his promise every time I approached him.

However, the matter wasn’t closed even after a court order for parole. That afternoon, I received at least 4–5 telephone calls from high-ranking police officers asking me as to why parole had been granted, for, according to them, Mr Patnaik was a dangerous man at risk of flight. Even the last telephone call I got from the inspector general of police was to the same effect, to which I replied, ‘If our police are so inefficient, better we should not have the force.’ The consequence of this reply was that the Intelligence branch gave a report against me stating, ‘Has strong leaning towards Naxalite, helped dreaded Naxalite leader D.B.M. Patnaik.’ This I discovered only in 1983 when my name was recommended for the position of a judge of Orissa High Court.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from The Gown and The Gavel: Life Journey of a Former Chief Justice of India, GB Patnaik, Niyogi Books, 2025.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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During the struggle, drops of the elixir fell on the four places on the earth. And the rivers there are believed to turn back into that primordial nectar at the climactic moment of each Kumbh Mela, giving pilgrims the chance to bathe in the essence of purity, auspiciousness, and immortality. The name Kumbh has been derived from this mythic pot of elixir but is also the name for Aquarius, the sign of the Zodiac.

The origin of Kumbh, like any other tradition in India, is shrouded in a strange yet fascinating mix of myths, scientific reasoning, and historical and astrological theories. Three mythological stories are often mentioned about the origin of Kumbh. One such popular tale includes Kashyap Rishi who had two wives, Diti and Aditi.

Diti gave birth to gods while Aditi gave birth to demons. They were in constant battle with each other, and once, the demons attacked the gods and defeated them. Led by Indra, the God of rain, the gods went to Brahma, the Creator, and narrated their ordeal.

Brahma then took them to Lord Vishnu, who suggested they collect various herbs and put them in the Kshirsagar (ocean of milk) and churn out nectar by using Mandara Mountain as a churning rod and the serpent king Vasuki as a neti (rope). And after drinking the nectar, gods would become immortal and strong.

The gods sought the help of demons for this sturdy task of Samudramanthan and agreed to give them a share the elixir of immortality.

Lord Vishnu took the avatar (incarnation) of a turtle to support Mandara during Samudramanthan. For 1,000 years the ocean was churned with the demons holding Vasuki’s head and the gods holding his tail.

During Samudramanthan, the first entity to appear was poison, which Lord Shiva drank. Due to this his throat became blue and he is called ‘Neel Kanth’ (the one with the blue throat). Apart from this, thirteen other opulent items, including the goddess of wealth Lakshmi, a gem Kaustubh, Parijat, Sura, the moon, Pushpak, the white elephant Airawat, a conch called Panchajanya, an apsara or beautiful dancing girl Rambha, a cow called Kamdhenu which could give unlimited quantities of milk, a white horse Uchaishrawa, and Dhanwantri, along with a pitcher (Kumbh) of the nectar of immortality, emerged.

As soon as the Kumbh emerged, Jayant, the son of Indra, took it away in the direction of gods, who did not want to share the nectar with demons. The gods thought that if it fell into the hands of demons then they would become strong and immortal. They would then rule the earth and evil would prevail.

Demons then chased Jayant and got him, but a battle ensued. The fight continued for 12 days and 12 nights. During this, Jayant kept the Kumbh at Prayag, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nasik and it is said that a few drops of nectar were spilt at these places. As one day of the gods is equivalent to 12 years on the earth, therefore the festival is celebrated at the interval of 12 years, as during this period rivers become pure and give the power of amrit to worshippers.

Then Lord Vishnu appeared as Vishwa Mohini to end the fight and lured the demons, and distributed amrit among the gods. Jupiter, the Sun, Saturn, and the Moon were entrusted with the responsibility of preventing the nectar (elixir of immortality) from falling into the hands of the demons. The Moon was assigned to prevent nectar from spilling; the Sun to protect the pot from breaking; Jupiter to safeguard Jayant, and Saturn helped Indra.

As all these planets played a significant role, the Kumbh is held when these four are in a particular astrological position in the almanac. The other mythological stories often mentioned in the context of the the Kumbh include a popular tale about Durvasa Rishi. He once gave a necklace to rain god Indra, who in pride gave it to his elephant Airawat. The elephant threw it on the ground and trampled under his foot.

When Durvasa came to know about it, he cursed Indra, which led to suffering and hardship to all over the world. Then the gods and demons came together to churn the ocean. But as soon as nectar was found, demons took it away and kept it in Naglok.

Then Garuda, a bird on which Vishnu flies, came to the rescue of the gods, and went to Naglok to bring the pitcher. On his way back, he placed the pot at the four places where the Kumbh is held now.

The third mythological narration about the origin of Kumbh is about Raja Prajapati Kashyap, who had two wives, Kadru and Vinta. They had an argument over the colour of the horses in the Sun god’s chariot. They made a bet and the stakes were that the loser would serve as a slave to the other. Kadru took the help of her son, the serpent king, Naga Vasuki, and temporarily turned the colour of the horses from white to black.

Vinta, as a result, lost, and served as a slave to Kadru. But Kadru promised that she would release Vinta from slavery if Vinta could retrieve the pot of nectar from Naglok. Vinta’s son Garuda took the task upon himself. When he succeeded in his endeavour, Indra tried to snatch the pitcher and a fight ensued. During this, nectar fell at four places, and Kumbh is celebrated at these places.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from The Divine Kumbh — Echoes of Eternity: Ganga, Shipra, Godavari, and Sangam, Deepak Kumar Sen, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The post The Divine Kumbh — Echoes of Eternity: Ganga, Shipra, Godavari, and Sangam appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Father visited Pakistan six times between 1958 and 1967 as their personal guest. During the years of Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s presidentship Father was able to speak to him, man-to-man. Their friendship first started in 1946 when they were in the North-West Frontier Province and Father was commanding the Bannu Brigade, with Col Ayub Khan as one of his battalion commanders. It was a relationship that endured despite the trauma of Partition. Ayub Khan agreed that the future of the subcontinent lay in the maintenance of peace and good neighbourly relations. He stated that in his mind there was no other method whereby the two countries could save themselves from impending dangers.

During one particular trip Father proposed some possible solutions that he had discussed with President Ayub Khan for resolving the Kashmir impasse that he wrote of to Pandit Nehru: maintaining the status quo with each Nation keeping what it has and foregoing all talk about a plebiscite, leaving the Valley as an independent entity under the UN, handing over the entire State so Pakistan but keeping strategic heights to control the area; both countries walking out, ‘lock, stock and barrel’ and forming a loose confederation with Kashmir as a third party.

The second suggestion appeared to be the most widely acceptable to the then Pakistan Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and the President. But, Pakistan wanted the Valley too. This was obviously unacceptable to India.

Father had expected a rocket from the Prime Minister questioning his right to make such suggestions. Instead, the reply he received suggested that the proposals could be worth considering. Father also discussed these with Sheikh Abdullah and other politicians most of whom appeared to favour the second option.

Due to the esteem in which Father was held, he was able to go wherever he wished, and talk to whomsoever he wanted in both wings of Pakistan. Every visit portended promise, but nothing fructified. His efforts were in vain. In April 1965, Pakistan initiated skirmishes in the Rann of Kutch, and later in August there were incursions into Jammu and Kashmir over which the two countries went to war on 1st September.

During that war I was flying missions out of Halwara and was shot down on 22nd September. I did not know it at the time, but it happened on the last day of the conflict. I ejected out of my aircraft and parachuted into a small area near Khem Karan in Punjab that had been occupied by Pakistan, and was taken Prisoner of War. Because of the personal bond between President Ayub Khan and Father, an announcement was made over Radio Pakistan for Father’s benefit that though I had been captured I was well. Within the hour the High Commissioner of Pakistan in Delhi is supposed to have spoken with Father who happened to be there at the time, with a message from his President. The President said that if Father so wished, I would be released forthwith, and reiterated that I was being well looked after. Father’s reply was typical of him: “They are all my sons, look after all of them.”

The Air Force Prisoners of War were repatriated on 22 January 1966. On arrival we were ushered into the office of the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Mshl Arjan Singh who welcomed us warmly

Ten days later, I went home to Roshanara where Father said how happy he was to see me looking well.

I gathered from Nalini much later how distraught and concerned he was on receiving news of my capture. Of course, things were not made any easier for him with well-meaning people calling to express their sorrow on hearing the news. Throughout, however, he maintained the proverbial stiff upper lip.

After the ceasefire Father visited troops in their frontline locations. During one such visit he is said to have crossed into no-man’s land. The Pakistani Commander ordered him to stop, or he would be fired upon. From the Indian side someone shouted out that it was Gen Cariappa Hearing this, weapons were lowered and the tension cased. There were smiles all around as the officer saluted Father who asked the Pakistani troops if they were well and whether they had received mail from home!!

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Field Marshal KM Cariappa, KC Cariappa, Niyogi Books, 2007.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The original designs for chikan embroidery reflected the trends of other decorative arts in Lucknow “with a distinctive style of lush floral imagery,” that was very different from earlier Mughal arts also inspired by nature.

Foliage and floral ornamentation are predominant in chikan vocabulary, with trailing curving stems, flower buds and berries. Despite their meticulous precision, the drawings belong to an imaginary botany. The identification of specific species is generally unsuccessful although the names of certain compounded stitches evoke the names of flowers like chameli. There are exquisite, dense compositions on rumals or handkerchiefs, and small table cloths, possibly for ceremonial use, on which it is possible to identify lotus flowers or grapevine creepers. The latter is a rather popular design in chikan also found on antique Kashmir shawls. According to some antique textiles dealers these shawls were made specifically for Lucknawi clients.

The borders with flowery scrolls, called bel, which are in hundreds of variations and sizes are often related to the decorative floral borders on Mughal miniature paintings, on Banaras brocades, as well as on other embroidered textiles. Some creepers, running diagonally across the width of the fine muslin attain a visual effect similar to the tercha buti or slanted creeper patterns on jamdani.

The imaginary botanical elements sets chikan embroidery apart from the romantic flowery depictions of other western white-works. More significantly, the very fineness of such imaginary botany draws a sharp dividing line between chikan embroidery produced for the general market, and chikan embroidery made for affluent patrons.

The typical motif in chikankari are the paan leaf, the konia also called turanj, and the keiri designs. All these are drawn in different sizes as matching sets for the various specific placements on the costume. Foliage and flowers are the compositional filling elements of the motif, which may have flowering branches with tiny buds, tendrils and leaves, all variously arranged to fit within the shape of the motif.

Similar intricate and luxuriant foliage, vines and floral compositions are common features in stucco work ornamentation on friezes and arches on old mansions and monuments such as the Imambaras of Lucknow, dating from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.

Older examples of choga, angarkha, achkan, waistcoat, kurta or a kurti, invariably contain a highly ornate heart-shaped motif called paan, a stylized leaf of betel, at the pusht or centre back of the costume.

The heart-shaped design points downwards on costumes for men but it is generally turned upwards on contemporary ladies’ wear, apparently for no other special reason than just a convention “much like the difference in the left or right buttoning on a man’s or a woman’s shirt.” The same paan motif, maybe in a smaller size, might be repeated on the top of sleeves, pointing downwards, or at the bottom and on cuffs, pointing upwards.

Paan leaf motif on the back of a kurta worked in miniature appliqué works Lucknow, late 19th or early 20th century, cotton muslin with cotton embroidery, Rajasthan Fabrics and Arts Collection, Jaipur.

The tambul or betel leaf is of great significance in South Asian cultures, and more so in India, where it is an essential offering in many religious ceremonies and rituals. At social functions, both Hindu and Muslim, offering a wrapped betel leaf containing lime, shaved areca nut and flavoured with exotic spices and silver foils, is part of basic hospitality manners. At Mughal courts, the royal gifts of paan were a sign of honour and imperial favour. The number of paan leaves offered marked the degree of the esteem in which the emperor held the visitor. The acceptance of the royal gift of paan was also a pledge of loyalty; it sealed the recipient’s acceptance of royal orders and his willingness to take on the assigned responsibilities.

In Lucknow particularly the offering of paan became an important elaborate social ritual, which furthered the creation of precious accessories for the keeping and the preparation of the tambul “jewelled boxes in which the paan leaves were stored, trays with compartments for lime, arecanut, spices, camphor or other substances applied to the leaves, elaborately decorated tools to cut areca-nut in small pieces, and, of course, spittoons.”

The paandan or betel box, became a significant status symbol in Lucknow, representative of the refinement and grandeur of its owner. The prepared betel leafs, fastened with silver pegs, were served during social gatherings on the khaasdan. The paan is believed to have beneficial medicinal properties in addition to digestive and aphrodisiac effects. Chewing paan produces a red juice and the lips stained by its crimson colour are regarded as very attractive, while producing a fragrance of the breath that would be particularly conducive to fulfilling love relationships.

The paan leaf “is the symbol of auspicious beginnings, the seal on alliances and invitations. It represents the deity in religious ritual; it is the inspiration of verse, legend and painting.” Thus placed on the back of the dress, it is considered, a protective icon, as essential as any other part of the costume, without which the garment would be incomplete. Sometimes the same motif, in different sizes is repeated on the sleeves and at the lower corners of the costume.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Chikankari: A Lucknawi Tradition, Paola Manfredi, Niyogi Books, 2017.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Monia bulbul akhrai gaan,

Khos poshaki yashomi daan,

Adighudi kanan bhojon,

Ei nobodha babur lakshan.

(The baboos can be recognised through their activities of keeping birds, listening to lewd songs, dressing up, charity, kite flying, and going for picnics.)

These baboos patronised prostitution, a profession embraced mainly by the Hindu womenfolk who were victims of the Hindu patriarchal social system. The British government considered prostitution a crime and through various acts, like the ‘Contagious Diseases Act’ or Act XIV of 1868, took an initiative to curb the profession. One such act was the registration of girls below the age of ten who resided with the prostitutes. As a first step, the government prepared a questionnaire for the district magistrates. The questionnaire pointed to the sources of supply of prostitutes and one of the sources were the child widows of Hindu families. Vidyasagar, driven by the sad plight of these children, had taken up their cause and had received the support of the government which passed the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act in 1856. After the Act was passed, several such marriages were undertaken by the initiative of Vidyasagar. However, in most cases such marriages proved to be failures. Here we shall narrate the sad plight of one such child widow who belonged to a well-to-do family residing in the northern part of the town of Calcutta.

The coroner of Calcutta, in a letter dated 14 December 1885, addressed to the secretary to the Government of Bengal, wrote a narrative about a woman named Kally Bewah, who had met with a violent death:

The deceased belonged to a respectable Hindu family of Calcutta. She is the sister of Baboo Koylash Chunder Mitter Chief Clerk in the office of the Private Secretary to His Honor the Lieutenant Governor. The deceased married when she was 10 or 11 years old to one Shome Baboo of No. 160 Musjid Baree Street in Calcutta. She became a widow three years after her marriage. She left her deceased husband’s house in 1863 on account of some disagreement with her brother-in-law who was manager of the house and property at the time…. After her husband’s death Kally lived with her uncle and subsequently with her brother Baboo Koylash Chunder Mitter. In 1876 the deceased was sent away by her brother on ground of some disagreement regarding monetary transactions and she was told not to return back again. Kally then went to stay with her maternal uncle…, and at his death … with one Baboo Kisto Churn Bose house no. 82 Sham Bazar Street…. She left the house on the 2nd or 3rd week of September last stating that she was going to her brother, Baboo Koylash Chunder Mitter, and she also told that she was suffering from some disease in the abdomen (goolmo) and wanted to know what was to be done. Baboo Kisto Churn Bose told her to take some physic and she left. But on hearing… from the maid servants of the house that Kally was Enciente 6 Months, Baboo K.C. Bose interdicted her return to the house.

The deceased instead of going to her brother went to the house of one Baboo Purno Chander Mitter. She was there on the 25th September and left that place on the 13th October, because it is alleged the inmates of the house believed her to be advanced in pregnancy 6 months, and according to Hindoo Custom she could not be kept in the house….

Kally next went to a place called Andool in Howrah… on or about the 13^th October last. She stayed there for 5 or 6 days. Then she went to Nuttipore to her sister Prosonno Bewah… They reached Nuttipore … on Wednesday the 21st October stayed there at night. Deceased returned again the next day Thursday 22nd October … to Alokasie’s at Andool.” One of the witnesses overheard Prosonno making a remark that “Since her daughter (Nitto) would not allow her (Kally) to stay at Nuttipore let us go to our house at Sham Bazar.”

Another witness, Soodheer Gangooly, saw Prosonno and Kally in 21 Santiram Ghose’s Street which was the ancestral residence of Prosonno, Kally and Koylash Chunder Mitter. There, Kally was not allowed in, though her clothes were stained with blood and she was in pain and was groaning. This took place at noon on 23 October. From there Kally was taken to 161 Musjid Baree Street to which she had legal right. She was however barred from entering there. Prosonno then took her to a dilapidated house at 11 Santiram Ghose’s Street, away from the prying eyes of the public. Next morning Soodheer and Prosonno found her dead.

The body was in the bare floor, with a bundle of dirty clothes under her head, and a small piece of cloth across her waist; otherwise the deceased was quite nude. These clothes were all stained with blood. There was nothing in the house to show that the deceased had any attention paid to her. There was neither food, water nor an ordinary country lamp. In fact the wonder is how the corpse escaped the ravaging attack of jackals…

Soodheer states further in evidence that Prosonno went to her people and returned stating that she was told to leave the country and had been frightened by them.

The coroner ended the letter with the remark that although it was,

… recently decided by the High Court that a Hindoo widow has a legal right to share in the property of her deceased husband, even if she led an unchaste life, this poor woman was literally hunted from house to house even from the ancestral dwelling of her father and the family property of her husband.

An analysis of the letter of the coroner reveals three things. In the first place, she was a child widow; secondly, though she was a legal heir to her husband’s property she was driven out from her husband’s house and economic issues prevented her from securing her brother’s patronage; and thirdly, she had to endure extreme social ostracism till her violent death.

The above account reveals the ruthless nature of the patriarchal social structure of nineteenth-century Calcutta, where its womenfolk were penalised for activities of which they were usually the mere victims. The socio-religious network was so strong that even administrative and legal efforts could not break it. In fact, the foreign rulers, who did not hesitate to take steps against activities which they felt might threaten their existence, kept themselves aloof regarding issues which might enrage the Western-educated but orthodox section of the society. This section of the society formed the major part of the lower administration and were the main supporters of British rule. This tacit agreement between the rulers and the orthodox members of native society, only encouraged such social maladies. And so the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 could merely legalise widow remarriage, but could progress no further to make the Act effective.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Calcutta in the Nineteenth Century: An Archival Exploration, Bidisha Chakraborty and Sarmistha De, Niyogi Books, 2013.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Calcutta in the Nineteenth Century: An Archival Exploration appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Among the many entries that poured in were two from the firm of G. M. Bhuta Associates – one by Vanu Bhuta, and the other by Charles Correa. Bhuta’s design was a landscape inspired project where the site of the memorial was centred in a sunken plaza, square in shape, which in turn had a simple square granite faced plinth at its centre and an eternal flame. The Mahatma’s last words ‘Hey Ram’ were carved on the plinth. This frugal design represented peace and simplicity, both ideals that the Mahatma strove for. Correa’s design integrated the site into a landscaped whole with an elevated cube along the axis of the samadhi. Jawaharlal Nehru, along with Rahman and Kasturbhai Lalbhai, an industrialist, philanthropist, and Gandhian, eventually chose Bhuta’s design for Rajghat.

Correa’s design would be the first of several that he would do as memorials for Mahatma Gandhi including the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya (1963), the Kasturba Gandhi Samadhi, Pune (1965) and the Gandhi Darshan at Rajghat (1969). These early designs set the stage for Correa’s architectural practice, where, unlike his contemporaries, Correa modulated his modernist training with the more ‘Gandhian’ principles of frugality, simplicity and a concern for resources. His method of pitting the expressionism of an international style with the sensibilities of the end user were always visible in his architectural choices.

Correa’s design for the Rajghat had caught the eye of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, Chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Fund. Lalbhai had worked closely with the Mahatma during the swadeshi movement. The philanthropist appreciated Correa’s design vision, and when the project for creating a Gandhi Memorial Library in Ahmedabad was mooted, Lalbhai turned to Correa for a design. With this commission in hand, and, with the active encouragement of his friend Vanu Bhuta, Correa left the firm of G. M. Bhuta.

On the 1st of June 1958, Charles Correa set up his independent practice, in the modest space of his aunt’s garage! Charles Correa Associates began on the ground floor of Clarke House, on Wodehouse Road in Bombay, not far from the Gateway of India and the Regal Cinema. This was for a short while, before he moved to the Thomas Cook Building on Dadabhai Naoroji Road for a couple of years, and then, to the ornately neo-Classical Erucshaw Building at 249 Dadabhai Naoroji Road, where his architectural practice would continue until the late 1970s.

Correa’s earliest completed works which brought his architecture into prominence were industrial exhibition spaces like the Handloom Pavilion at Pragati Maidan (1958) and the Hindustan Lever Pavilion, Delhi (1961). The Handloom Pavilion was the first project fully realised by Correa in his independent practice. Here, he explored the homegrown by creating a series of spaces using mud and brick, and providing a roof of wooden umbrella-like enclosures on a grid, covered with handloom and Ikat cloth. This brought a suffused light into the pavilion which enhanced the visitor’s experience. The Lever Pavilion took ideas from the Handloom Pavilion further. Correa designed this industrial display space using reinforced cement concrete (RCC) plates. The continuous interior created synergies with Delhi’s climate, forcing convection air-currents through roof funnels, or ‘cannons’ which brought the breeze into the exhibition spaces.

The Handloom Pavilion was a significant milestone in Charles’ life on a personal as well as a professional front. This commission led to yet another commission for the young architect, this time to design the interiors of the Handloom House in Bombay, not long after his work on the Handloom Pavilion. For microbiologist and teacher, Monika Sequeira, the Handloom House had become a regular haunt, for the sarees and other weaves from textile craftsmen all over the country, on display here. She also loved the place for its interior design. In September 1960, Monika met Charles at a mutual friend’s birthday party. She realised that Charles was, in fact, the designer of the Handloom House’s interiors, which she had liked so much. Brought together by their love of innovative design, Monika and Charles were married in 1961.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Charles Correa: Citizen Charles, Mustansir Dalvi, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Charles Correa: Citizen Charles appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Since first coming to India in 1993, I have considered India my second home after Israel and have continued to find emotional, intellectual, and spiritual connections there. While I did not have the opportunity to meet Mr. Ezekiel, I have encountered his work many times in my focus on Indo-Judaic studies and have always been deeply moved by his poetry.

I was privileged to receive two Fulbright-Nehru Scholar Awards which enabled me to live in two of the most vibrant cultural cities in India – New Delhi and Mumbai. In Mumbai, my husband and I participated in weekly Shabbat services at the Knesset Eliyahu Synagogue, as well as attending holiday events and celebrations at several of the city’s Bene Israel synagogues.

Kavita’s poem “Alibag” beautifully expresses the deep connection I felt with India’s Jewish history on our visit to the town and its remaining synagogue, as well as the nearby site of the Rock of Eliyahu, where the prophet Eliyahu Hanavi is said to have stopped in his chariot of fire as he ascended to heaven. We were privileged to participate in a Malida ceremony, also known as a Seder Eliyahu Hanavi or “Giving Thanks” ceremony, which was performed to mark an engagement. This ceremony is a perfect example of the blending of Jewish ritual and traditional Hindu Aarti. Reflecting about the diverse contributions of Jews to India, I also want to acknowledge our good friends Col. Oliver Hyam (ret) who served 35 years in the Indian Army, and his wife Sheila Hyam Kolet, leading members of the Bene Israel community in Pune, who graciously shared their Shabbat with us.

While in Mumbai, I taught a graduate course in comparative religion at the University of Mumbai and the Somaya Institute of Buddhist Studies. During my five months stay, I also researched the history of Jewish movie stars in the early years of Bollywood. Referred to as Sitaras (starlets), they negotiated and constructed their identities as women, as Jews, as Indians and as actors. In an article published in the Association for Jewish Studies journal, I claim that the Jewish Sitaras had a pioneering and groundbreaking role as actresses in the burgeoning film industry, despite Indian patriarchal taboos against exposing women’s bodies and women’s social power. They exercised their agency and consequently legitimized female empowerment, on and off the Indian screen, challenging existing social taboos and contributing to the redefinition of gender roles in modern India.

My scholarship in Jewish Studies expanded over the years to include chairing the Hinduism and Judaisms section of the American Academy of Religion, as well as co-editing Dharma and Halacha: Comparative Studies in Hindu-Jewish Philosophy and Religion. (). My work comparing the biblical Song of Songs and the Gita Govinda is featured in this volume, wherein I explore the parallels between the Hindu attachment to the land, flora, and fauna in India and the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel. The Indian-born Jewish artist, Siona Benjamin, contributed her art to the cover of the book.

As one of the few places on earth where anti-Semitism has never flourished, it is truly an honor and an inspiration to offer congratulations to Kavita for assembling this tribute to her late father, and to see Nissim Ezekial and his expressive poetry praised and recognized. Am Yisrael Chai Be-Hodu – The people of Israel Live On – in India!

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Nissim Ezekiel, Poet & Father: A Centennial Celebration (1924-2024), Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca, Pippa Rann Books, 2024.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Whether I had one package or more to send, the length of time was almost the same. Since it took so long, it seemed better to wait until I had several to mail. First, of course, boxes had to be procured. That might seem like a simple affair, but in the seventies, before India released its massive international trade restrictions, all commodities were highly prized, and almost everything was recycled. Durable boxes were hard to come by, and it took diligence to find just the right ones.

Let’s assume that I began the postal day with the necessary containers already in hand—otherwise, hours might be added onto the morning. The first place to visit with the boxes was the cloth merchant where bolts of strong white cotton were unrolled and examined, the sizes of the containers measured, and the appropriate lengths of cloth purchased and cut. Remember that all transactions in India at that time were accompanied by at least one cup of tea and all the necessary small talk. Things did not happen quickly. I had to locate a tailor, one willing to do such a menial job, and without delay. The cloth was hand-stitched into a wrapping for each box, leaving the top open for later examination. A needle and strong thread were bought, sometimes at a third shop, and taken with me to the post office.

It would have been foolish even to consider mailing a package at a town or small city. The time involved would have been quadrupled, and that package might never reach its destination. I would only mail in large cities. Of course, Indian urban centers are subdivided according to profession, as are most old-world towns. Tailors are in one street, cloth merchants in another. Neither was near my hotel, and both were almost always far from the main post office, which is usually in the business center. Carrying my increasing bundles, I would have to take a bicycle rickshaw to my destination. And until now, the whole process had been relatively easy.

The post office was another matter: a sea of people, all crowding into disorderly lines. Indians learned their love of queuing up from the British, but the demands of the hierarchy and inflammatory natures had altered the concept of the polite, straight queue. Many would stand patiently in line, but the sense of personal distance can be different in India, and people tended to push and jostle one another constantly. Others demanded seniority through a form of entitlement. They believed that they had the right to push directly to the front of the line, shouting for the clerk’s attention. This action may or may not have produced overt resentment from those others who have been standing for hours. Some just chalked it up to karma, others screamed in rage. A post office was rarely a quiet place.

Arriving amid this confusion, I had to first locate the queue for customs forms. This line might be relatively short. Once at the front, I would take five copies of three different forms for each package, and then retire to a dark corner of the building, or perhaps to the steps outside, and painstakingly fill out all the forms. Each was required to be written individually; carbon copies were unacceptable. I wrote and signed a list of all the contents and values, a statement that they were not antiquities, included my passport and visa numbers and their dates of issue and expiry, my address, and that of the destination: fifteen times for each package. Then on to the line for customs examination. That line might well take an hour or more. Remember that India is often hot and muggy. Standing in line, even for a young man in his twenties, was never comfortable. Once reaching the counter, I had to present my passport, open the box for examination to prove that the contents were not restricted for export, show my invoices, and give all the papers for proofing. One of each was kept by the customs official, who assigned a peon to accompany me to the sealer’s queue.

At this point, I had a choice. I could either return to my corner or steps to sew up the cloth, always under the watchful eye of the peon who made sure that I did not alter the contents, or try to juggle them while standing in line, attempting to complete the sewing by the time I reached the sealer. The sole occupation of this invariably aged bureaucrat was to heat red sealing wax over a candle flame and drip it onto all of the sewn edges of each box. He then pressed a brass seal into it at short intervals along the edge to prevent the package from being reopened. Once I paid the sealer for his services, I would tip the peon who could now return to his post. Now that the parcels were sealed, I used a ballpoint pen to laboriously print the destination and return addresses onto the white cotton of one side. For each box, I also had to roll eight of the remaining forms into a single tube, tie several loops of thread around it, and sew it to one edge.

It was now necessary to have the packages weighed. Of course, the clerk who manned the scales had his own long queue which might take an hour or more to wade through. Once reached, this clerk placed each package, one by one, in the left-hand dish of an age-old scale with various bronze metric weights added and subtracted from its counterpart until the needle was precisely centered. Then he counted all the weights and wrote the appropriate figures in ink onto the cotton cloth of each parcel. I could then move to the end of the postage calculator’s line. That clerk would read the weight amount of each and figure out the cost of sending the packages (we would discuss whether they would go by air or sea), and also mark that amount onto the cotton. The next queue was for the stamp vendor who, when paid, would hand out a collection of stamps for each box. Indian stamps never seemed to be in large denominations. Consequently, each box usually required several dozen stamps.

It might appear logical that the process was over at this point, but that conclusion would be based upon the assumption that Indian stamps were manufactured with glue already on them. They were not. It was always necessary to find a piece of scrap paper (often newspaper) and use my fingers to dig a dollop of white paste from the ever-present mound on the nearby counter. Then, precariously balancing packages, remaining forms, stamps, and glue, I would try to find an empty space at a counter (not an easy feat in such a crowded place). Paste smeared with my forefinger onto the back of each stamp allowed me to messily affix it directly to the cotton. Often the stamps covered more than one side. I took one of the remaining contents forms and similarly pasted it to the side opposite the address, difficult on small packages.

Finally, I was ready for my last queue: the canceler. Once reached, this man would take a large round bronze seal, pound it onto a red ink pad, and cancel all the stamps, tossing the package into a bin behind him. I had finished.

In general, it might take me between eight and ten hours to mail a group of packages. As I only had one set of arms, I could only manage between six and eight on any given day. In my first six months in India, I sent sixty-seven packages home: some handicrafts to be given as gifts to family and friends, others the basis of my first collection of Indian art. Because the itinerary of my second trip with Helene was greatly foreshortened, we mailed only thirty-two and shipped the rest in crates by sea from Bombay and Delhi (via Bombay). But on the upcoming third trip, we posted more than ninety.

India has modernized and significantly changed during the past five decades, and mailing packages is far easier. Boxes are readily available and are strong enough to endure rough handling without disintegrating. Cotton covers are no longer necessary. Packages are not sealed with wax, stamps are sold with glue on the back, and only three forms are required for each parcel sent. In most cases, customs inspections are far more manageable. Today I might only take an hour or two to mail a package and find it almost as efficient and reliable to do so in a town as a major city. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the people who filled all those minor jobs: the customs peons, the sealers, and the weighers. Perhaps they have graduated to much more exciting occupations? The Indian bureaucracy is still ingrained, and India still teaches me the lessons of patience, humor, and determination. Nevertheless, I am glad of the changes and, on mailing days, of the many free hours I now have to luxuriate in other activities.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Transformed by India: A Life, Stephen P. Huyler, Pippa Rann Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Transformed by India: A Life appeared first on 51�Թ�.

I am not a religious person in the common sense of the term. But I am not anti-religion either. I am like that hero of Manikbabu’s story, ‘Level Crossing’.

The friend persisted, ‘To see what? Lakhs of people blinded by faith?’

Blinded by faith! If lakhs of people are blinded by faith, then why not search for the reason? What is that celestial blinker which can blind lakhs of eyes? I remember an aging Bengali widow. She was sitting on the bridge over the Ganga in Kumbh-mela after finishing her evening ablutions and rituals. Dusk was setting down. I was also going towards the river. Inadvertently, my feet touched her body. I begged her forgiveness and extended my hand towards her. She took my hand, touched my cheek and kissed her fingers as a gesture of affection. Naturally, we talked. I would narrate here one part of that conversation.

She remained silent for a moment and kept gazing at the fair crowd with deep fascination. Then she said, ‘Look, the fair is of the people. When I think that I am also one of the lakhs of people here, I feel so ecstatic that tears of happiness roll down my eyes.’

I remember these words now. For, I had also told my friend, ‘I don’t know if they are blinded by faith, but I am going to see the gathering of people. Our desire for other things may be satiated, but the desire to see and taste humankind is insatiable. What is more strange than humankind in this world?’

No, no further delay. My mind is already on the move, now let me move my feet too. Let me dive in the Kumbh—ocean of a lakh of hearts.

I had a jhola, a large cloth-bag, on my shoulder and a regular bag on my back. But the sea of multitude at the Howrah station was overwhelming. Still, I managed to get in. The train also started at a point of time.

I turned my face from the window towards the compartment. Everyone was asleep. I was as if the sentry of the night.

Suddenly, I noticed that two skeleton-like hands were trying to peel off an orange with some difficulty. What I had so far thought to be a bundle of blanket at our feet was actually a man inside a blanket. Thin, emaciated body with a lean, bearded face. His deep-set eyes were unnaturally bright. A bunch of amulets were hanging around his collar bone.

As I caught his eyes, he smiled silently. His eyes were also smiling like a mischievous boy’s. Inclining his head, he said in Hindi, ‘I’ll also go, for sure.’

It was addressed to me. My surprised counter-question was automatic, ‘Where?’

‘At the Kumbh-mela. Why, can’t I go?

I was more surprised at the earnestness of his voice. Why could he not go? I became a little suspicious and asked, ‘Are you unwell?’

He did not reply immediately, but went on chewing the orange for some time. Then he started talking without my prompting. His monotone became at one with the drone of the moving train. His ancestral house was in the District of Balia in Bihar. He used to work in a factory at a Calcutta suburb. There, he had his wife and children. His wife also worked. No, I should not miscalculate his age by looking at his present appearance. He was just twenty-eight. His wife was a healthy young woman of twenty-two. She was a kind person and was looking after his need with care and concern. But—

An unbearable pain clouded his sick eyes. He said, ‘I cannot bear the agony of this disease any more. Hence, I am going to Kumbh-mela.’

‘But why?’

Now it was his turn to be surprised. Looking at me with those sunken eyes with disbelief, he said, ‘Don’t you know why? Why are you going then? Haven’t you heard that the gods hid the bowl of nectar at the Prayag-Sangam3, to deceive the demons?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard about it.’

He smiled sweetly and asked, ‘Why do people from the whole world go there? Why do saints and monks come there to take a dip? Haven’t you seen how bright they look? How well-built their physique? People are cured of their diseases and receive a hundred years of lifespan if they bathe in the Sangam at the auspicious Kumbh moment. This is why I am also going.’

While saying so, his skeletal face lit up. Perhaps the excitement of speaking so many words at a time made him breathless. He quickly covered himself with the blanket and lay down. From inside, I heard a rattling sound from his chest along with the rhythmic uttering of God’s name.

The compartment was asleep. It was dark outside. The stars in the sky were hazy. The train suddenly changed track with a jerky movement.

Even before I could begin to wonder about the man inside the blanket, he started coughing phlegmatically uttering in between in a choked voice,

‘Oh, unbearable pain! Oh God, not now, not yet. It is still far, very far.’

What is very far? I watched him writhing in pain with fear, and asked, ‘What are you saying?’

He said, ‘Open the door, please open the shackles. Oh God, I am dying. Still very far.’

How could I open the door? There was cold wind outside like whiplashes.

He kept coughing and shouting frantically, ‘Open it, Babu. Please open.’

Suddenly, a red stain shone on his blanket. Blood. There was blood on the sides of his lips also. So, it is tuberculosis.

And this man was a passenger in search of the bowl of nectar! He was a seeker of hundred years of lifespan! Oh God, had this train lost its way?

And what about me? I had been musing so many things about the Kumbh, was dreaming so many dreams. But now, the first thought that came to my mind was to run. Thousands of killer germs were swarming in front of my eyes. Run, run. O, the seeker of strangeness, the seeker of nectar, you have stepped on the threshold of Lord Yama by mistake.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from In Search of the Pitcher of Nectar, Samaresh Bose, translated by Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, Niyogi Books, 2022.]

The post In Search of the Pitcher of Nectar appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Benegal’s treatment of the subject suggests that the very idea of modernity and progress is at best incomplete and at worst shameful hypocrisy, if it does not take into account how women are systematically oppressed across all levels of Indian society. It was a question of equity, and through these films he questions the idea of equality enshrined in the Constitution in the light of how women were actually treated. Cinema for Benegal was a politically serious affair, and both Bhumika and Mandi are intellectual engagements with very relevant sociological issues. He remained true to his broader approach and placed these issues within the context of intersecting social, economic and political concerns. For Benegal, questions of oppression cannot be understood in a vacuum separated from everything else. It is a matter of how culture has evolved, and culture at any moment is made up of a great number of different factors. His treatment of gender is therefore within the framework of other related factors that make up a cultural background. That he believes this cultural framework as central to India’s identity is quite clear in his films. Whatever idea the audience might have about India and its progress post-Independence, it needed to be analysed and the truth had to be sifted from the lies. Benegal believed that it was his responsibility as an artist to expose what is false or hypocritical in these beliefs.

As a film-maker, Benegal starts a subtle shift away from the stark, realistic aesthetic that he used in his firstthree films. The technique was of minimal interference. The story would progress in a linear way. This would then create the illusion that a story is unfolding in front of us, as it would in real life. In Bhumika, we have repeated flashbacks, and the use of different colour palettes to signify different time frames. He is thus moving away from the realism of his trilogy into something more stylized. This is true for Mandi as well, which on the surface seems a return to a realistic approach in terms of setting, dialogue and a linear plot. However, the story is told in broad comic strokes that sometimes borders on the farcical. Mandi is a more literary work and owes a lot to theatrical comic genres. It wasn’t experimentation for its own sake, but finding out more effective ways to communicate his themes with greater intellectual honesty and insight.

Bhumika is superficially based on the autobiography of Maharashtrian actor, Hansa Wadkar, whose tell-all autobiography Sangtye Aika (loosely ‘You Ask, I tell’) created quite a stir when it was published in 1970. It was a tragic story of exploitation told by a woman who was forced to start working in films while still a child. It recounts with brutal honesty her affairs with multiple men and her determined efforts to have her way in a male dominated industry. It was a struggle that took its toll on her and drove her to alcoholism and an early death when she was only 50 years old. Benegal never meant Bhumika to be a biopic, and critics who lambasted him for deviating from the facts of Hansa Wadkar’s life were missing the point.

For Benegal, Wadkar’s life was a template through which he could explore issues related to the autonomy of women and their curtailed rights in society. He deliberately chose an actor working in the early years of the industry because he found it very interesting to capture the different phases of the first decades of Indian commercial cinema. At the time Benegal had his office in the same place where Jyoti Studios, the oldest studio in Bombay was located. The kind of films he shows in Bhumika were mostly shot there, and there were many of the old props and sets still lying around. It was too good an opportunity to let go. Furthermore, the nascent film industry, its treatment and representation of women, and the extortionate relationship between economics and female bodies were fertile grounds for Benegal to look at issues which were prevalent everywhere.

The protagonist of Bhumika is Usha, played by Smita Patil in her first major role in a Benegal film. In giving her a voice to tell her story, Benegal makes us see the events of the story from her point of view. The central point of the film is made early when we are first introduced to her as she is performing a typical songand- dance routine meant to titillate the audience. She is meant to be an object of desire, and everything from her movements, her clothes, and her expressions is meant to highlight that. Soon after, when one of the dancers hurts herself, the routine is revealed to be a scene being shot in a studio. Benegal points out that the manner in which women are presented in commercial cinema is a fake, constructed image, a role that she has to play according to what is expected of women. The contrast between the smiling, gyrating figure and the individual waiting for her car outside the studio is stark. She is dressed plainly, and looks impatient and irritable. One can see why the profession of acting is something that appealed to Benegal when it came to this subject. The roles women are meant to play in cinema parallel the roles they have to play in society. The title of the film takes on greater significance in this light. This struggle between subordinate roles and desire to assert oneself comprises the primary conflict of the film.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Shyam Benegal: Film-maker of the Real India, Arjun Sengupta, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Shyam Benegal: Film-maker of the Real India appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Always there would be the darkness and the mist, like coils of smoke in a room, and they would blot out the scene, leaving only a deep, meaningless void. When finally the mists cleared and I opened my eyes on 15 October 1965 – that was the date as I discovered later – there were three people at my bedside. There was my mother who was in tears, HC Sarin who was closely connected with the Everest expedition and Narinder Kumar who had been the deputy leader of the expedition.

I was puzzled to see my mother crying. Not yet aware of my own serious condition, I wondered if there had been some tragedy in the family. Sarin, his chin cupped in his palm was looking at me thoughtfully. I could not understand why he did not speak to me. When I tried to speak to them, I found that I could not utter a word. I then tried to signal to them but discovered I could not lift my right arm. Terribly frustrated and not knowing how to communicate with my mother and friends, I closed my eyes to black out everything around me and to give myself time to think.

When I reopened my eyes a few minutes later, my visitors had gone but a nurse stood above me. Soon I realised that there was a tube fastened to my nose and that the nurse was pouring a liquid into it with a syringe. I could feel the liquid pouring through my nose into my throat, and as I swallowed it I had a feeling of renewed energy. But I could not understand why I was being fed in this novel fashion.

A full awareness of the situation slowly dawned on me. The nurse had left but another group of friends and relatives were in the room. I dimly recognised them but could not recall everyone’s name or relationship with me. I did recognise my two sisters and my fiancée who was wearing a white sari and sobbing quietly. I had a strong desire to hold my fiancée’s hands but all I could do was to nod my head in a vain attempt to reassure her that I was all right. More visitors now came into my room. They talked to one another in whispers. Now and then some people would ask me how I felt. This was rather a pointless question since I could not reply.

During the night I attempted once more to recall what had happened to me. The events of the last few months when I had climbed the Everest were still clear in my memory. I could see the faces of the friends who had climbed with me and I vividly recalled the view from the summit of Everest and the sense of exhilaration and achievement which filled them. But nothing more recent came to my mind. It was only during the long and lonely days of slow and painful recovery which followed that I was able to recall what had happened to me since that fateful evening of 30 September 1965, when I had stood on that dark road in Kashmir.

The Indo-Pakistan was had just ended and a cease-fire had been declared. I was on the battlefront in the Sonamarg area with other officers. Captain Jal Master from the Parachute Regiment was the first face that flashed before me in those drowsy days. He had a very pleasant personality. Although I came to know him only when I joined the school, his cheerful disposition was always a welcome diversion in those gloomy days.

Major Surat Singh, Captain Jal Master and I were returning to our base late one afternoon. Suddenly there was the crack of a bullet and I fell down. As I discovered later, the bullet had hit me in the neck. Following my collapse, I was put on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to the Base Hospital in Srinagar. I recalled that the journey to Srinagar was a nightmare. Dr Roy, Major Vasudev and my batman, Sher Singh, rode with me in the ambulance. I kept lapsing into unconsciousness from time to time, and, whenever I was conscious, I felt my body burning with fever and a great thirst. I shouted in Punjabi, ‘Pani! Pani!’ (water) and Dr Roy or Sher Singh would dip a piece of cotton-wool into water and press it into my mouth. During the bumpy ride in the ambulance and in my semi-conscious state, I would also occasionally shout a warning against enemy infiltrators into the area.

During the five-hour journey to Srinagar I had lost an immense amount of blood. Dr Roy and Major Vasudev said later it was a miracle that I survived. When I regained consciousness in the Srinagar hospital, blood and glucose were being pumped into my veins. I was breathing hard and the bed rocked to and fro with my laboured breathing. Among my visitors was an aunt of mine who produced a picture of Guru Nanak which she placed under my pillow. ‘The Guru will look after you,’ she said, as she burst into tears. At this time I may have been able to speak a little but the effort was painful and the doctor warned me not to speak. I was in the Srinagar hospital for two days although it seemed to me at the time that I had been there for only a few hours.

Among my other visitors was Narinder Kumar who brought a friend of his to see me. The friend said he had been very sorry to hear about my accident and asked Kumar if my faculty of speech had been restored. This irritated me and wishing to avoid further questions I merely smiled and kept quiet. When Kumar said that I could speak, the friend enquired if my brain was damaged. This annoyed me even more and I felt inclined to ask the inquisitive gentleman if he had any mathematical problem for me to solve. It has always seemed to me that to bestow sympathy and pity indiscriminately on those who do not want it does more harm rather than good. Such sentimental platitudes carry very little sincerity or conviction and are often counter-productive.

In contrast, there was my batman, Sher Singh. He is not educated and I expected him to utter the usual trite phrases of sympathy. But he did nothing of the kind. ‘You have not lost anything,’ he told me. ‘A Sikh is alive even after his head has been cut off.’ He narrated to me the story of Baba Deep Singh, one of our Gurus, whose head was cut off during a battle. Undeterred, he took his severed head in one hand and fought on with the other. He won the battle and returned to Amritsar where he fell at last in the Golden Temple. This story left an indelible impression on my mind and provided inspiration in the difficult days that lay ahead.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Higher Than Everest: Memoirs of A Mountaineer, H. P. S. Ahluwalia, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Nathdwara became a unique centre, its rituals and traditions remaining virtually unchanged for over 300 years. Until recently it was in a time capsule, maintaining artistic traditions that had vanished from the Rajput courts. It was the archive for the styles and techniques of the courtly painting studios of Rajasthan as well as the home to its own unbroken artistic tradition for over three centuries. There were hundreds of artists from the Jangir and Adi Gaur castes dedicated to serving the temple and providing painted icons for the pilgrimage trade.

Until the seventeenth century Nathdwara (Door to the Lord) was only a remote dusty village called Sinhar in the state of Mewar. It soared to fame when Shrinathji and his followers, threatened by the rise to power of the iconoclastic Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, fled Krishna’s sacred homeland of Braj and sought refuge in Rajasthan. It is said that the Maharana of Mewar with a retinue of 100,000 warriors went out to escort Shrinathji personally to his capital of Sesodias but that the bullock cart carrying Krishna became bogged down in the mud in the small village of Sinhar. It was taken as a sign that Shrinathji had selected this spot along the Banas River as a haven.

It is debatable whether the Vallabhacharis, so named for their guru Vallabhacharya (VS 1535-1587; 1478-1530 CE), fled the area out of fear of persecution or whether they made a judicious decision to resettle in Rajasthan. It is possible that the uncertainty caused by Aurangzeb’s threats reduced the pilgrimage trade and affected the temple revenue. The Shrinathji ki Prakatya Varta records that Aurangzeb’s messenger delivered an ultimatum to Vallabha’s grandsons that ‘either the fakir of Gokul show some miracle or leave the Mughal Empire. This rude warning must have come as a shock. Prior to Aurangzeb’s reign the Vallabhacharis had enjoyed Mughal favours and were protected by several firmans issued by Akbar and Shah Jahan that gave them grazing rights over the land stretching from Gokul to the whole district of Mahaban. In addition, they enjoyed the privilege of being exempt from taxation. It is debatable whether they fled or simply decided to reestablish the sect in the land of wealthy Rajasthani maharajas whom they had cultivated as devotees. E. Allen Richardson argues that Maharana Raj Singh of Udaipur, beginning in 1665, with the gift of the village of Asotiya in Mewar to two goswamis, was preparing a place for the Vallabha Sampraday and that Maharana Raj Singh foresaw the economic and social benefits of bringing the popular sect to Mewar.

Among the Vallabhacharis there is a story that explains the situation without tarnishing their relationship with the Mughals. On one of his missions, Vitthalnathji (VS 1572-1642; 1515-1585 CE), the son of Vallabhacharya, had visited Sinhar where he initiated into the sect one Ajabkurivar, the sister-in-law of the legendary Bhakti poetess Mirabai. Ajabkunvar became so passionately attached to Shrinathji that she asked him to visit her every night. Shrinathji granted her wish and came every evening, traversing hundreds of miles from Braj, to play with her his favourite parcheesi-like game of chaupar. Finally, seeing him red-eyed and exhausted from his travels, Ajabkunvar requested Shrinathji to settle in Mewar permanently. Shrinathji replied that it was not possible for him to do so now but that he would in the future after the time of Vallabhacharya and Vitthalnathji. In 1669 when the persecution grew acute, Vitthalnathji and Vallabhacharya had both passed away. It was time for the promise to be fulfilled. The bullock chariot carrying Shrinathji reached Sinhar in VS 1728 (1671 CE) and it came to rest beneath a pipal tree where Ajabkunvar’s house had been located. It was to be Shrinathji’s new home. Tradition holds that Shrinathji’s shrine is the only one in the sect with a tiled roof in imitation of Ajabkunvar’s house.

Interestingly the account of the move in the Shrinathji ki Prakatya Varta records none of the pomp that James Tod describes in his Annals of Rajasthan. According to Harirai (b. 1590), author of the Shrinathji ki Prakatya Varta, and a member of one of the thirty-six families that accompanied Shrinathji to Rajasthan, the move was done as quietly as possible. Perhaps it was the Maharana of Mewar who wanted to make a great show of Shrinathji’s arrival whereas the Vallabhacharis wanted only safety for their svarup.

No doubt the flight was a major disruption for the Vallabhacharya Sampraday. When the upheaval occurred in 1669, the sect had been established well over 150 years on Mount Govardhan, the location where Shrinathji first appeared, It was a shift not taken easily for this was Krishna’s birthplace, the playground for his lilas (sports) and most importantly the site of Shrinathji raising Mount Govardhan as an umbrella to protect his people from the punishing deluge sent by the storm god Indra. Even though the teenaged Tilakayat Damodarji (VS 1711-1760; 1654 -1703 CE) was supported by his uncles, Gopinathji and Balakrishnaji, it must have been an emotionally trying decision for him to make. The sect had strong roots in Braj.

After Shrinathji’s arrival in Sinhar a shrine was erected in VS 1728 (1671 CE) which was purposefully designed as a haveli (mansion) instead of the traditional shikara-style (towered) temple. The architect of the new temple built on the pattern of an aristocrat’s mansion was Gopaldas Ustad under the supervision of Hariraiji, the author of the Shrinathji ki Prakatya Varta. Every part of the new structure was to recall the sacred topography of Braj, Krishna’s homeland.

Today pilgrims throng the halls of the haveli for every ceremony, jostling each other to reach the Nij Mandir where Shrinathji resides. The viewing periods are short, and thousands seek his darshan (viewing). Although the seva (service) is done with the utmost respect the crush of pilgrims tries the patience of those attempting to feel at one with their Lord. Outside in the streets there is almost a carnival-like atmosphere. Entire lanes are dedicated to outfitting the private shrines of pilgrims. There are shops filled with embroidered fabrics to embellish the sacred chambers and glittery brocade dresses fashioned for every size and shape of image as well as a profusion of painted, printed and sculpted images of Shrinathji. Prasad, which is made in the haveli kitchens in great quantities, is available for purchase. There are piles of ghee-laden laddus, pots of thick sweet rabri and mounds of savoury besan sev—all Krishna’s favourites. Nathdwara fosters an entire industry dedicated to the worship of Shrinathji.

Since the founding of Nathdwara, artists have been drawn to this sacred place to fulfil the needs of the haveli and to provide pilgrims with painted devotional images for their shrines. While the other schools of Rajasthani painting have died out for lack of royal patronage, Nathdwara has continued, fed by the passionate desire of devotees to serve Shrinathji and to be one with their Lord.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Nathdwara Paintings from the Anil Relia Collection: The Portal to Shrinathji, by Kalyan Krishna and Kay Talwar, Niyogi Books, 2021.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Nathdwara Paintings from the Anil Relia Collection: The Portal to Shrinathji appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Richard Head and Tony McClenaghan in their book, The Maharajas’ Paltans have said that the armed forces of Marwar were formed from the feudal contingents provided by Jagirdars (nobles) when needed, until Maharaja Vijay Singh’s reign (1753-1793). However, the growing power of these nobles and increasing menace of the Marathas led Maharaja Vijay Singh to raise a small force of his own, chiefly composed of the foreign mercenaries—Rohilas, Afghans, Nagas and Purbias. At the time when the Maratha power was in the ascendant and the Pindaris were ravaging India, the Jodhpur forces numbered some 12,000 men, of whom 4,000 were Jagirdar Sowars. The latter, were called out to aid in time of war, whilst the remainder were a mixed force including guns, cavalry and infantry. These mercenaries were more unscrupulous and less faithful than the indigenous force. Thus, the Marwar army degenerated into a heterogeneous, indisciplined and poorly equipped force till conclusion of the treaty of 1818, whereby the state was freed from all fear of external attack, the necessity of maintaining a large standing army for the defence of the Raj disappeared.

Some of these men were habitual consumers of opium, which they consumed just before going to war. The Rajputs always fed some to their horses as well, so as to make them immune to fear and to permit them to better endure the fatigue of battle. Opium, which made the warriors fearless and oblivious to danger and increased their force and courage tenfold, worked as a cure-all for their soul. This excessive consumption of opium at the time of war led to a habit of daily consumption. Sanctioned by its usage, comes the Rajput expression of ‘sharing of opium,’ to ratify a solemn engagement, an inviolable promise. (The consumption of opium was not illegal and it was consumed openly and distributed to users while on active service even during the Great War. This practice was, however, completely eradicated during the inter-war period of 1919 to 1939).

On 6 January 1818 a treaty was signed with the British at Delhi, thereby bringing the State fully under British protection. Under article 8 of the Treaty of 1818, the Jodhpur Maharaja was required to furnish a contingent of 1,500 horse for the service of the British Government whenever required. This proved unsatisfactory and it was revised on 07 December 1835 by substituting the payment of 1.15 Lakhs annually for the obligation to furnish a contingent of 1,500 Horse.

This sum was at first devoted to the formation and maintenance of a Corps known as the Jodhpur Legion Cavalry and stationed at Erinpura. Recruitment for this force started in January 1836 at Ajmer, but in November of the same year the force moved to Erinpura, about 78 miles south of Jodhpur. The Jodhpur Legion was a composite force of cavalry, infantry and artillery.

The Panjdeh incident in March 1885, when the Russians attacked an Afghan force on the North West Frontier, led to fear of an impending war with Russia. This led Viceroy Dufferin to announce on 17 November 1888, the scheme of Imperial Service Troops (IST) i.e., the troops held for the support of the Imperial interests. He asked the Indian Princes to locally recruit their troops, train and equip them at their own cost, to a standard of regular army, so as to be available to the Government of India in times of war. Great care was taken that these troops should be the real state troops and not resemble the old contingents of foreign mercenaries. It was hoped, incidentally, that these troops would furnish interesting and more active employment for young nobles and gentry to whom the life within the State might fail in affording a career, and to a certain extent it had these results.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from The Story of the Jodhpur Lancers: 1885-1952, by Mahendra Singh Jodha, Niyogi Books, 2018.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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According to her daughter Primavera, Hilde struggled in Bombay. At first she had no place to stay and slept on the therapy table in the consulting room of a South Indian doctor. There she met a young Parsi homeopath, Dr A.K. Boman-Behram. Wartime regulations required foreigners to register daily at the police station; the young doctor took Hilde there on his motorbike every single day. Romance flourished and they married in 1940. They lived in Queens Mansion in the Fort area where Hilde turned the large hall into her dance studio. Hilde’s first performance in India was at the Taj Mahal Hotel.

She soon began to absorb the vibrant forms of Indian classical dance and art, and to strike up friendships with other artists in the city such as Uday, Menaka, and Sachin Shankar. The dancer Ram Gopal taught at her studio. Magda Nachman, the Russian artist, was her closest friend. In 1941, two ballets (The Selfish Giant and Russian Fairy Tale) with music by Russian composers and with costumes by Nachman were presented by the Excelsior Theatre. They were written and choreographed by Holger using her female dance students, many of whom were Parsis.

Hilde’s dance studio was quintessentially cosmopolitan. An unconventional choreographer, she had her dancers perform under the open skies on the beach at Juhu with the waves rolling in the background and their orchestrated movements reflecting the rhythms of the cosmos. The young Parsi, Avan Billimoria, captured these performances in timeless photographs. The sea and the dancers, each mirroring the strength and energy of the other, the sun flashing on both—nature and art blending together by way of stunning movements sculpted in time. Hilde always stressed the line—the center of balance that passes through the center of the body. But the forms she created were always unconventional.

Hilde had met and admired Gandhi, treasuring till her last days the photograph he signed for her. On the fateful day of Gandhi’s assassination, Hilde recalls that she was directing a dress rehearsal and “a dreadful sadness came over all of us, Indians and Europeans” alike. The theatres shut down as the country mourned. Continuing communal riots in the country in the wake of the partition of India compelled Hilde and her family to leave for London, where she started the Hilde Holger School of Contemporary Dance.

However, there were new difficulties. In 1949, her son Darius was born with Down’s syndrome. Determined to help him live a meaningful life, she created a form of dance therapy for those with disabilities. Darius enjoyed music, played the drums, and contrary to expectations, lived to be almost 60. Primavera herself learnt dance initially from Hilde, performed in her productions, and designed costumes; she has worked in theatre and film, and also designed jewelry. She has made a film titled Hilde—Her Legacy on her mother’s fascinating journey.

Primavera directed me to one of her mother’s students, the charming Feroza Seervai, who grew up in a westernized milieu and whose husband H.M. Seervai was the Advocate General of Maharashtra. Feroza animatedly recollected how “Hilde taught free movement and the importance of the line in dance.” The artist Shiavax Chavda would sit in at the rehearsals, sketching. Feroza danced in several performances at the Excelsior and St. Xavier’s College Hall. Feroza recalled Hilde’s playful wit. On a trip to South India, when someone asked her where she was from, Hilde replied, “I’m made in Vienna!” So she was. But I cannot help thinking that perhaps she was made by Bombay too, and that figures like her hint at a different Bombay whose history is yet to be written.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Jews and the Indian National Art Project, edited by Kenneth X. Robbins and Marvin Tokayer, Niyogi Books, 2015.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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jaa tan ki jhaaim paraim syaama harit duti hoi.

Sri Radha, Krishna’s soulmate and paramour, is a unique phenomenon in the religious and spiritual history not just of India but of the world. In no other tradition is there a female character quite like her, a humble milkmaid elevated to the supreme status of the erotic and holy beloved of the Supreme Godhead. What makes her story unique is that she is not mentioned in the classical sources or scriptures. Even later, during the medieval period, while the name of Radha occurs in various places, her rise to prominence as an important goddess alongside Krishna is actually a comparatively recent phenomenon. According to Charlotte Vaudeville, ‘her emergence in the cultic and devotional sphere of Vaishnavism as Krishna Gopala’s beloved and Shakti is known to have taken place rather late, certainly not much earlier than the sixteenth century’(7).

In the Bhagavata Purana, the source of much of the later Krishna cult, there is no reference to Radha. The only clue to her identity is the single, unnamed girl with whom Krishna disappears in the Tenth Canto, which celebrates Krishna’s amours in the forest on the night of the full moon. While all the gopis cavort with Krishna in that scene, there is one he takes aside, much to the consternation, even dismay, of the others. Perhaps, that exceptional partner gave our medieval myth-makers the germ of the story of Radha which Jayadeva narrates in Gita Govinda. As Guy L. Beck notes:

Within the entire Sanskrit canon that is accepted by normative Vaishnava traditions, Radha is actually never mentioned by name. In the earlier canonical texts there is only the suggestion of Radha’s character, not her actual name, as one of Krishna’s favorites among a number of ‘unmarried’ (Harivamsa) or ‘already married’ (Bhagavata Purana) cowherd girls (gopis) who nonetheless seek his attentions during his childhood life in Braj. (Beck 72)

Thus it is to Jayadeva and his remarkable Gita Govinda that the real credit for creating Radha goes. As Valerie Ritter says:

The Gita Govinda, a highly popular and influential Sanskrit poem by Jayadeva, thought to have been composed in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries CE, was the first to focus extensively on Radha, in a manner evocative of the courtly nayaka and nayika (hero and heroine) of Sanskrit poetry. (Ritter 180)

But when Jayadeva makes her a full-fledged nayika or heroine of his most influential poem, Gita Govinda, it seems as if we have always ‘known’ or at least craved for Radha’s presence, nay, predominance in the love story of Krishna.

Once created by Jayadeva, Radha steadily rose in importance as Krishna’s chosen paramour, partner, spouse (as she was later in the Radhavallabha sect), and thus the supreme Vaishnava goddess. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), who gave the Krishna cult its decisive form, at least in much of northern India, contributed a great deal to the character and theology of Radha:

Radha’s presence in poetry and her theological importance increased with the growth of the Caitanyite sect of Vaishnavism in Bengal, which saw the integration of poetic theory of the sringara rasa (the erotic sentiment) and its taxonomies of the nayaka–nayika with theology concerning the love of Radha and Krishna. (Beck 180)

But we cannot forget Jayadeva’s fundamental contribution to this apotheosis. According to Barbara Stoler Miller:

The compounding of Krishna with Radha into a dual divinity is central to Jayadeva’s conception of Krishna, not as an incarnation (avatar) of Vishnu, but as the source (avatarin, dasavidharupa, dasakrtikrt) of all the incarnate forms he himself assumes in order to save the world. (Quoted in Beck 73)

While the Gita Govinda institutionalised and legitimated Radha’s centrality in Vaishnavite Bhakti literature, her character, persona, and role was further embellished and moulded by eastern Indian poets like Chandidas and Vidyapati, who created the platform for the great devotional and political upsurge marked by the advent of Chaitanya. But others, notably Nimbarka closer to the Jayadeva, and Vallabha around the same time as Chaitanya, also played a crucial role. Later, most of the great Krishna-worshipping poets such as Surdas also exalted Radha till she became almost secularised and universalised in the Ritikal with poets like Bihari (1595–1664).

With the beginnings of modernity, Radha the goddess, underwent another drastic modification, now coming more often than not to represent illegitimate sexual desire. In the new puritanism fostered during the socalled Indian renaissance, Radha and her dalliance with Krishna, proved an embarrassment to the agenda of social reform that the proponents of Hindu modernity espoused. Yet, Radha persisted in folk songs and, later, in many popular art and craft traditions. The final twist in the Radha tale was added by twentieth century feminists who began to see in her a victim of the patriarchy or, even the special symbol and voice of a male poet, as in Ramakant Rath’s celebrated Sri Radha. Sometimes, Radha became a symbol of the degraded and exploited woman or she was even depicted as a fallen or abandoned woman, her tale a cautionary reminder of what happens to such women in our society.

All told, the story of Radha is extraordinary, not only in itself, but in the larger context of the history of Indian art, culture, religion and spirituality.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Radha: From Gopi to Goddess, edited by Harsha V. Dehejia, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Similarly, ‘Dalit literature’ has been equated with texts produced by writers with a ‘Dalit consciousness’ (Muktibodh 1992: 267). What, then, determines this Dalit consciousness? How do you develop it? Is it different from simply being Dalit, i.e., can non-Dalits have Dalit consciousness? Are there Dalits who do not have it, and why not? Finally, how do we judge the authenticity of it, either its experience or its expression?

Limbale goes so far as to suggest that the character of Dalit consciousness is univocal. He writes, ‘The experiences narrated in Dalit literature are very similar. Untouchables’ experiences of untouchability are identical’ (2004: 35). This is precisely challenged by Navaria, who separates groups and classes within Dalits. He emphasises ‘Worlds within Worlds’. The key concept, as Brueck (353) points out, around which most Dalit authors and critics—Limbale, Valmiki, Naimishray—rally is the idea of ‘Dalit consciousness’. There is a sense in their work of a singular ‘consciousness’ that for them underlies the emergence of Dalit literature. Further, it is a gauge to test the authenticity of any given work. ‘The function of the theoretical concept of Dalit consciousness is articulated in the expressive and interpretive practices of writing and reading. Dalit consciousness has emerged in recent years in a large body of Dalit literary criticism as a theoretical tool with which the architects of Dalit literary culture are able to set boundaries for the growing genre of Dalit literature as well as launch a distinctly Dalit critique of celebrated works of Hindi literature’ (Brueck 353).

In many ways, Navaria echoes mainstream Dalit consciousness. He shows Premchand in a dream sequence, and refers to him in other places in a critical vein, similar to other Dalit critics. He speaks repeatedly about Ambedkar as the beacon light for Dalits from whom they derive, or should derive, their primary energy. However, in the same dream sequence, he shows many sleeping homes who do not respond to a call to rise in the name of Ambedkar. His constant comparisons with gender and feminism, class conflict and Marxism, and global inequality and postcolonial thought, all serve to argue further the point about internal differentiation, and the utter and total lack of any unity of consciousness.

Navaria must have worried about this:

…arbiters of Dalit literature are constructing a critical framework based on the rhetorical practice of strategic essentialism. Dalit consciousness is the Dalit literary sphere’s rendering of this practice for the political purpose of making an intervention into the mainstream literary-cultural sphere and claiming there a small space of their own in which they have the power to determine, by means of this essentialist concept, what authors and what texts may also share that space. (Brueck 355).

Brueck’s invocation of Gayatri Spivak’s 1985 piece on strategic essentialism is reminiscent of Marx’s emphasis on the singularity of the working class, which many subsequent Marxists challenged. Similarly for feminists, there is always a negotiation between the politically expedient one-ness of women, and by implication, men, and the existential and artistic reality of plurality, easily recoverable in research (see Kumar 1994, 2001.)

My own experience as a translator of this novel may contribute to the discussion of Dalit consciousness. If I am not a Dalit, should I feel diffident as a writer in translating and speaking for Dalit consciousness? I have never hesitated to write about the West (though from the East), about men (though a woman), about lower classes (though privileged), and about disabled or otherwise disadvantaged people while personally sharing none of their disadvantage.

Partly, I have treated ‘difference metaphorically. Thus, for me, the ‘wretched of the earth’ are not only the materially or politically dispossessed, which I am not, but the otherwise victimised as well, such as those who suddenly, unaccountably, lose their beloved, as I did. We, all the hurt and abandoned who experience that loss, are the true and authentic ‘wretched of the earth’. Partly, I have achieved an intellectual self-confidence where I can justify speaking for the ‘Other’ precisely because no one is essentially fixed in ‘one’ identity or category, either ‘the self ’ or ‘the other’. Imagine my surprise, then, to discover myself responsible for a novel in which all the characters are Dalit and everyone is judged by their caste, and no savarna voice can speak for lower castes or Dalits.

Really?

But if I plead the case that mine is as authentic a voice as anyone’s, am I saying that the author Ajay Navaria has not succeeded in depicting the existential suffering of Dalits but, once again, shown caste to be merely a discourse, a category, a weapon used differentially?

To some extent, yes. The author, just like the narratorprotagonist in the novel, is himself privileged. Not only is the narrator-protagonist educated, well-off and sophisticated in his consciousness, he is fair and good-looking. He has rich and successful friends. A Dalit is by definition downtrodden. Once you are not downtrodden, you are not a Dalit. It is analogous to my weeping of the woes of ‘women’ without acknowledging that, along with me, many women are, in fact, supremely privileged and powerful. And if the privileged insider can speak of their downtrodden communities, so can the intelligent, aware outsider who is not of the same blood lineage but shares the politics.

The author questions it all. One could wish that he would question yet more, or less, depending on one’s perspective.

There is, however, another dimension of pain. ‘I had not asked his caste,’ he says. ‘I had understood by now that people with my non-casteist thinking were in a tiny minority in our society.’ There is this tiny group that one may belong to. One may then feel marginalized and misunderstood by the majoritarian groups. To have no voice is painful no matter where you stand.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Worlds Within Worlds, Ajay Navaria, translated by Nita Kumar, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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I have been fascinated by all things handcrafted, especially textiles. Since the last few years, I have been trying to identify the exceptional qualities, beyond heritage value, of handloom fabrics to differentiate these products from machine-made textiles, and to emphasise their uniqueness for these fabrics to continue being relevant in present times. These deliberations led me to Gandhiji’s writings to understand how and why he chose khaddar, the coarse handspun and handwoven cotton worn by the common man, which he named ‘khadi’, as a symbol of India’s Independence.

During India’s struggle for freedom from British rule, social and political activism reached new heights under the visionary leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. He saw the revival of the local village economy as the key to India’s spiritual and economic regeneration and he envisioned homespun khadi as the catalyst for India’s economic independence. Khadi became the fabric of the freedom struggle, and the charkha, the spinning wheel, the symbol of India’s Independence Movement. Rahul Ramagundam in his book, Gandhi’s Khadi, mentions that ‘Gandhi’s khadi movement, in many substantive ways, was the first social movement in modern India that brought poverty to the centre stage of Indian consciousness and made livelihood rights an issue of mass mobilisation’.

Soon after Gandhiji returned to India from South Africa in May 1915, he established the Satyagraha Ashram with 25 residents at Kochrab, Ahmedabad, and in July 1917, the ashram was shifted to a new location on the banks of the river Sabarmati. It was collectively decided that all the members of the ashram should wear khadi. Their objective was to stop using the imported mill-made cloth, which benefited the British at the expense of the Indian artisans, and clothe themselves in fabrics created by their own hands.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) had caused a shortage of American cotton, and Britain started buying raw cotton from India. Indian cotton was exported to Britain, starving its own looms of raw material, and cheaper British machine-made yarn and manufactured cloth were sent back to India taking away the livelihood of millions of men and women who earned a living by spinning yarn manually. Before the Industrial Revolution, Indian fabrics had been in great demand in Britain and comprised almost 70 per cent of the East India Company’s exports, but later, Britain had imposed restrictions on their import, and the multitude of people involved in the production of cotton textiles in India had been affected.

Everyone at the ashram was willing to learn to spin and wear the khadi fabric produced from their own handspun yarn but they could not find either a spinning wheel or someone to teach them how to spin. Around this time, Gandhiji was invited to preside at the Broach Educational Conference where he met Gangaben Majmundar, a remarkable woman with an enterprising spirit. Gandhiji requested her to look for spinning wheels, and after a long search she found what she was looking for in Vijapur, in what was then Baroda State. Many in this region had spinning wheels stored in their lofts as there was no demand for handspun yarn since the market was flooded with the imported yarn from Britain. They expressed their willingness to resume spinning if they were assured of a steady supply of cotton slivers, and that the yarn they produced would be bought back.

Gandhiji mentioned the need for a regular supply of cotton slivers to Umar Sobani, a textile mill owner, who willingly sent the sliver ropes from his spinning mill to Gangaben, and soon, vast quantities of yarn began to pour in from Vijapur. Gandhiji could not take Umar Sobani’s generosity for granted, and he also realised that it was morally wrong to use mill-made slivers. Once again, Gandhiji requested Gangaben to find a person who would be willing to teach a few youngsters to clean and card cotton by hand and make slivers. She went a step further and also found weavers to weave the yarn that was spun in Vijapur, and soon, Vijapur khadi gained a solid reputation.

While these developments were taking place in Vijapur, the spinning wheel gained a strong footing at the ashram. Maganlal Gandhi, who was closely associated with the Satyagraha Movement, was able to make some improvements in the traditional spinning wheel. He developed a new model of the box charkha with a double-wheel drive, which helped control its speed, and was an improvement as far as comfort, productivity and portability were concerned. Gandhiji led by example and spun for an hour every day. All ashram inmates started wearing khadi and were encouraged to spin daily for a minimum of one hour. They realised that apart from creating the yarn for their clothing, spinning calmed their minds, helped to increase their focus and was a meditative experience.

Gandhiji wore Indian mill-made dhotis but was impatient to start wearing only handspun and handwoven cotton khadi, but the coarse khadi produced at the ashram and at Vijapur was only 30 inches (76 cm) in width. He asked Gangaben to find a weaver who could weave a khaddar dhoti in 45 inches (114 cm) width for him. She managed this within a month and, soon after, there was a full-fledged weaving centre at the ashram to weave sarees, dhotis and running yardage. This was the beginning of the Khadi Movement. Soon after, spinning and weaving were elevated to an ideology for promoting self-reliance and self-government. To identify with the poor, in 1921 Gandhiji changed from formal Gujarati clothing to a simple, short dhoti and a shawl from formal Gujarati attire.

In the past, the charkha had supplemented agricultural income. It was a friend of the poor, the solace of the widow who was shunned by society, and kept the villagers from idleness. Every village had a family of weavers who wove coarse cotton fabrics without any patterns for use by the local communities. The weavers were supported by the women in the family who, in their free time, spun the yarn and created the bobbins for weaving. They had all lost their livelihood to the machine-made fabrics from Britain that were flooding the markets. The new demand for khadi provided them with regular work and rescued them from abject poverty. Gandhiji did not just revive India’s flagging handloom industry, he made the humble handspun khadi fabric the symbol of the Swadeshi Movement. He wrote: ‘Swaraj (self-rule) without swadeshi (goods made in the country) is a lifeless corpse and if swadeshi is the soul of swaraj, khadi is the essence of swadeshi.’ Through his initiative, khadi became not only a symbol of resistance but the face of an Indian identity, ‘The message of the spinning wheel was much wider than its circumference.’

Gandhiji saw khadi as a tool for reviving the village economy but he never suggested that ‘those, who are more lucratively employed should give up their employment and prefer spinning’. As he clarified to Charlie Chaplin in 1931, ‘The return to spinning did not mean a rejection of all modern technology but of the exploitative and controlling economic and political system in which textile manufacture had become entangled. Machinery in the past has made us dependent on England, and the only way we can rid ourselves of the dependence is to boycott all goods made by machinery.’ He continues ‘This is why we have made it the patriotic duty of every Indian to spin his own cotton and weave his own cloth.’

When Gandhiji encouraged people across India to boycott clothes made in Britain, spin their own yarn and wear khadi, he was encouraging them to rediscover their heritage as well as to support handloom production in rural centres. This understated masterstroke took the Freedom Movement beyond the rarefied circles of the social elite and out to the masses.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Crafting a Future: Stories of Indian Textiles and Sustainable Practices, Archana Shah, Niyogi Books, 2021.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Crafting a Future: Stories of Indian Textiles and Sustainable Practices appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Nampūtiri men of Perinchalloore were acclaimed for their scholastic eminence. Their intellectual engagements included debates and discourses, especially on the Vedas, literature and grammar. Scholars from far-off places came to partake of them, gauge their own erudition and earn fame and recognition if they triumphed in debate.

At some point, the spectre of barrenness came to loom over a reputed Nampūtiri family in Perinchalloore. To avoid the family line ending thereupon, the elders sought to offer special prayers to propitiate their deity, Rayaramangalathu Bhagavati, in the hope of being blessed with a baby boy. But a baby girl was born instead. The parents and even other family members accepted her as the family goddess’s gift. Thus, she was named Daivakanya, meaning both god’s own girl and a young and virgin goddess.

Devi was exceptionally bright. She was given the best possible education in those times. As per the custom, her family members counted on her to preserve the family’s legacy, even though she would become a member of her husband’s family upon wedlock. She utilised the rich library of her family and forebears to enhance her scholarship and was soon considered a child prodigy. Her fame spread like fragrance in the breeze, sweet and swift.

Nonetheless, the other scholars of Perinchalloore refrained from recognising her scholarship because of her gender. Many of them tried to shut her down in public debates. But all of them routinely failed, resulting in their ego and reputation being bruised. Devi’s renown for her scholarship and beauty spread far and wide.

As a practice among the then Nampūtiri clans, she was to be married off when she turned twelve. Devi’s stipulation that she would marry the one who defeats her in a debate was accepted by her father. The wedding was scheduled. Aspirants from around prepared to compete, starting to reach the venue a couple of days before the scheduled date. But none could defeat her in the first two days.

Realising that it was nearly impossible to win over Devi in debates and that she would be a significant threat to them in the future, some of the influential Nampūtiri scholars conspired to disparage her. As planned, the next day, they steered the debate to the nine basic rasas (feelings), asking her about the most significant among those. Shringara (that exudes the kama rasa or eroticism), she replied promptly. Their following query was on the most intense suffering. The pangs of childbirth, she responded. She had won, but all those astute men assembled sniggered, ‘How can a virgin answer these questions so accurately?’

There were many takers for this line of slander and character assassination. The ‘wise’ men unanimously decreed that she wasn’t a virgin. She was insulted publicly. She had experienced the elation of sex and undergone the throes of labour in secret, was their ruling. Her father’s pleas fell on deaf ears since nobody wished to displease the hardliners in the community, whose decisions were interpreted as ‘God’s dictum’. Loose talk about her self-esteem spread quickly, amounting to her being ostracised and the wedding cancelled.

Profoundly distressed and determined that she would establish the truth, Devi walked away. She politely declined to accept the landed properties¹ that her father wanted to assign her to take care of future expenses. Nonetheless, he arranged for a ������ⲹ���ٳ󲹲�² to provide her with essential facilities such as food and clothing.

Devi moved forward, undeterred. On the way to the Eachikkulangara Srinarayana temple, she prayed as if she were doing penance. On the fortieth day, Devi was driven by the desire to leave her body. She wanted to jump into the fire to prove her innocence. The next day, Devi woke up at the Brahma muhurta,³ walked away after praying at the temple, and shortly reached Karivellur. She thought it was the ideal place to end her life on earth.

She made a pyre, lit it and, praying all the while, leapt into it. She kept aside one of her anklets before leaping in. To achieve her goal, she needed a much bigger fire. A Thiyyan⁴ was passing by carrying bundles of dried coconut. She pleaded with him to empty it into the flames, as Agni (fire) was scared to touch her. The man, realising the enigma, fled. (It is believed that Thiyyan is later deified as Kaikkōlan Theyyam.)

A stoic Devi continued waiting. After a while, she saw a Muchilōṭan⁵ coming with coconut oil needed at the Rayaramangalam (also known as Dayaramangalam) temple at Pilicode. This time Devi’s entreaties for help worked. Sensing her divinity and praying, ‘let the fire be put out,’ he poured the oil onto the pyre. Blessing the Muchilōṭan, Devi disappeared, engulfed by flames. Shocked and terrified, the Muchilōṭan searched the pyre in vain and returned home instead of continuing his journey. He saw his empty thuththika (pot for carrying oil) moving fast and the fuel flowing out of it after a while.⁶ He realised that Devi was Goddess Bhagavati herself, incarnated. (This Muchilōṭan was later deified as Thalachchiravan Daivaṃ, worshipped by the Vāṇiya as the foremost Muchilōṭan.)

One morning, the ������ⲹ���ٳ󲹲� deputed to follow the ostracised Daivakanya got worried upon not seeing her at the Eachikkulangara temple. In search of her, he reached Kottaparambu in Karivellur, owned by Panikkassery Nambi. There he saw an extinguished pyre and one of her anklets nearby.

The mystified ������ⲹ���ٳ󲹲� returned, reported the matter to her parents, and handed over the anklet. They prayed for her salvation. Soon, the Brahmin scholars instrumental in ruining her reputation, and their kin, faced many tragedies and succumbed to illnesses such as smallpox, leprosy and insanity. Nobody knew what happened to that anklet; most likely, it was passed on and destroyed in the annals of time. During the Theyyam festivals nearby, rituals are conducted adjacent to the spot where the incident was believed to have occurred, subsequently known as Theekkuzhichchāl. During the night of the pooram day, the ��ō��������ṃs of Muchilōṭṭu Bhagavati and Rayaramangalathu Bhagavati meet at this spot as a part of the ritual. This original site is now taken over by the newly constructed national highway.

Subsequently, Muchilōṭan’s wife, while drawing water, happened to have an apparition of Muchilōṭṭu Bhagavati in full attire inside the well.⁷ Astrological deliberations that followed pointed towards the deceased Devi’s divinity and suggested that Daivakanya be deified as Bhagavati Theyyam at the places of worship in their Muchilōṭṭu community. Muchilōṭṭu Bhagavati thus became the consecrated deity at all the entailing annual festivals of Muchilōṭṭs, beginning with Karivellur, the foremost one.

It is one of the positively gorgeous Theyyams that attracts a vast throng, irrespective of caste or religious differences.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Theyyam: Indian Folk Ritual Theatre—an Insider’s Vision, K. K. Gopalakrishnan, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Theyyam: Indian Folk Ritual Theatre—an Insider’s Vision appeared first on 51�Թ�.

One often asked quibble, for instance, has been whether the course of history would have been different had the nose of Queen Cleopatra been an inch longer. Or, from Cowley’s example, if the Persians had beaten the Athenians in the historic Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, or nearer home, if the first war of independence in 1857 had a different outcome. Such instances are plenty and juxtaposing them with the actual happenings is apt to give a new insight into many of the long-held assumptions on men and matters that shaped the course of mankind.

The contextual relevance to Cochin can hardly be missed. The fame and fortune it came to acquire over decades, even centuries, would not have possibly come about had the massive tsunami of 1341 not destroyed the then booming port town of Muziris and opened up Cochin as a major port of call on the west coast of India. What enabled the latter were the bounteous quantities of mud that got deposited off the Cochin coast, creating in the process a long stretch of mudbank which subsequently helped build one of the finest all-weather, deep-water natural ports in the world. Thus began the saga of Cochin.

Arguably, the port was just the trigger that set in motion a slew of facilitating support systems-broadly understood as infrastructure-which together hastened the transformation of the cluster of fishing villages into a teeming metropolis. Indeed, it was the indomitable will and determination of a few men like Sir Robert Bristow, His Highness Sir Sri Rama Varma of Cochin State, Dewan Sankara Warrier, Sir Shanmukham Chetty and a few others who worked on their shared dream that finally made it actionable.

Bristow’s vision did not stop just at the port. He knew it well that without matching support systems-good road and rail connectivity to bring cargo from near and far, well. equipped warehouses to store outgoing and incoming cargo and a township with all the necessary amenities to house the workforce and their families, to name the more important- the port would not only be unviable but purposeless. It was with this in mind that he insisted on extending the mainland railway network to the port area, aside from improving road connectivity with both the mainland and neighbouring Mattancherry. This inevitably meant roping in official agencies like the railways, civic bodies and a host of major and minor departments. In the event, it wasn’t easy and often proved tauntingly tricky just as the detractors’ manipulations to stall the port project were challenging.

Not that these factors had not been factored in while planning for the port and the support systems. If Bristow had been able to overcome most of them, it was only because he had anticipated most of them and strategised his responses. A close reading of his ground-breaking work, Cochin Saga, will vouch for it. 

But overall, neither the East India Company nor the British Empire was averse to investing in infrastructure. Both knew that in the long run it was necessary to serve their larger politico-economic interests. The general impression in England was that improving and modernising inland communications-roads, railways, ports, etc. would eventually open up new areas of investment for enterprising Europeans. The optimism was not misplaced as India did emerge as a major source of enrichment of the British Empire. No wonder, it earned the sobriquet ‘the brightest jewel in the British Crown. All other colonies, by comparison, remained far less lustrous.

There was, however, a short interregnum in economic activity in the aftermath of the First War of Independence in 1857, largely, if not wholly, out of pique over what happened that, more than anything else, deeply hurt the British pride. ‘The Rebellion, as it was also termed by British historians, was a watershed in the 200-years-long British rule. It marked the end of the East India Company as the sole dispenser of power and pelf and the beginning of direct rule by the British Crown. The then reigning queen, Victoria, became the Empress of India. It was a major shift in the fortunes of the British Empire in every sense of the term.

Indeed, the change of guard was more in form than substance. The colonial mindset of the new rulers was no different from that of the East India Company, and it became clear at the beginning itself. In a seemingly knee-jerk reaction to the events of 1857, the new rulers decided to put all development projects in abeyance just to teach the natives a lesson. Many prime projects-the Cochin Port and allied works, the coffee and tea plantations that later became the leitmotif of British entrepreneurship and few rail and road projects were among the casualties,

But it did not take much time for the rulers back in London to realise that neglect of infrastructure-bridges, rails and other communication networks was one reason why the British army took a bloody beating in the early days of the native onslaught, as the army could not be moved in time to contain the movement. It, therefore, called for early rectification. In the event, projects that had been put on the back-burner were taken out and dusted off for quick implementation. The 250-km-rail track that had been laid down by 1856, for example, was stretched to 6400 km by 1870 and further to 16,000 km by 1880. Similarly, construction on inland and overland telegraph links was revived, taken up on a war footing and completed by 1870. That, in sum, opened up new vistas of development. Incidentally, the first telegraph link in India, commissioned in November 1850, was between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour, a distance of about 50 km.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Cochin: Fame and Fables, M. K. Das, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Cochin: Fame and Fables appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Less than a decade ago, British Viceroy Lord Elgin had said, “India was conquered by the sword and by the sword it shall be held!” Now, in an ironical turn of events, the youth of Bengal seemed to be returning Elgin’s comment. Many genuinely felt that violence was the only language the foreigners understood. Armed terrorism thus became closely intertwined with the fight for swaraj. In 1907, Aurobindo’s brother Barindra Ghose, began using his family home in Maniktola (then a suburb of Calcutta) as an arsenal-cum-school for revolutionaries. His compatriot, Hem Chandra Das from Midnapore, went to Paris to learn bomb making and understand revolutionary politics. As Bipin Chandra Pal, Ashwini Kumar Dutta, Aurobindo Ghose and others took control of the militant movement, the police files of the British became thicker and thicker with the names of young ‘suspects’ and ‘preventive detainees’. The same files now also had a name for this movement—’Bengal Terrorism’!

‘Bengal Terrorism’ was at its peak between 1908 and 1910. It was an organised movement that did not approve of individually motivated acts and secret murders. The objective was to stage a popular uprising and revolution that could bring down the edifice of British imperialism. This they hoped to do by forming secret societies that could enthuse the youth with higher values of bold action and sacrifice for the country, train them in the manufacture of bombs and explosive devices and the use of arms and also arm them for the fight.

Through the assassination of British officials they hoped to demoralise the British, paralyse the administration and uproot all enemies of India’s freedom—Indians or foreigners! Guerrilla warfare, inciting the army to revolt, arranging arms supplies from nations hostile to Britain—these revolutionaries were open to following many paths.

An official report of the time mentions about 210 revolutionary outrages and 101 attempts involving hundreds of revolutionaries in the decade between 1906 and 1917 in Bengal. This includes several failed and aborted attempts on the lives of high officials between the announcement of partition in 1905 and the Muzaffarpur bombing carried out by the Jugantar revolutionaries Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki in April 1908.

These were times when the Criminal Intelligence Department (CID) could hardly afford to lean back and take a moment’s rest. Swamped with work, all its attention was now focused on tracing the web-like threads of revolutionary activity to their points of origin. All attempts to force a breakthrough had proved futile. On a more specific note, the CID was also aware of an assassination plot building up against the former Calcutta Presidency Chief Magistrate, Douglas Kingsford (now posted as District Judge in Muzaffarpur), but had not been able to unearth it. And then suddenly, the Muzaffarpur bombing happened!

A turning point in India’s revolutionary history, the incident created a sensation in British India. The blast was followed by deafening silence in stunned British circles. Young, impassioned, 18-year-old Khudiram Bose was arrested for the bombing. Through the incident and the investigations that followed, the British were able to unravel the functioning of a wellspread network of secret societies and the people associated with it. The Muzaffarpur bombing became the starting point of the famous trial known as the Alipore Bomb Case or the Alipore Bomb Conspiracy. The Muzaffarpur incident was the first real eruption of a volcano that had made many attempts to surface in the recent past. Before the bombing, several unsuccessful attempts had been made on the lives of high-profile British officials. In 1906, Bampfylde Fuller, the Lieutenant Governor of the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, was trailed from Guwahati to Rangpur, but no attempt was made. On the night of 6 December 1907 an attempt was made near Narayangarh in the Midnapur district to blow up the train in which Andrew Fraser, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, was travelling. Another attempt was planned on the Lieutenant Governer’s train near Chandernagore in which Barindra Ghose was accompanied by his close associate Ullaskar Dutt and Prafulla Chaki. The attempt failed because the special train did not come that way on the appointed night. December 1907 also saw a group led by Narendranath Bhattacharya carry out a dacoity in Chingripota (24 Parganas) and the shooting of B.C. Allen (District Magistrate, Dhaka) by members of the Dhaka Anushilan Samiti. On the night of 11 April 1908 an attempt had been made on the life of the Mayor of Chandernagore who had incurred the wrath of the revolutionaries for stopping a swadeshi meeting from taking place. The police, therefore, had enough reasons to keep a close watch on the activities of some people in Calcutta, whom they suspected of having links with the revolutionaries.

Events had been in motion for a while, but deep in their hearts the revolutionaries were getting impatient for that one big bang that could shake the British to their foundations. It is in this context that the Muzaffarpur bombing assumes great historical importance. When Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at what they presumed to be the carriage carrying Douglas Kingsford on 30 April 1908 in Muzaffarpur in Bihar, they brought matters to a head. Instead of assassinating Kingsford, the bomb, however, killed his bridge partners Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Grace Kennedy, the wife and daughter of Mr. Pringle Kennedy, Advocate-at-Bar at Muzaffarpur. But even though it missed the desired target, the bomb that was hurled that fateful evening blasted the myth of British invincibility and shook the empire at its roots. Indeed, even a century later, the modest bomb remains one of the loudest explosions in Indian history.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from The Alipore Bomb Case: A Historic Pre-Independence Trial, Noorul Hoda, Niyogi Books, 2008.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Alipore Bomb Case: A Historic Pre-Independence Trial appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Nao Jr was seemingly always busy, either ‘on duty’ in the only medical unit that Strait Island had, distributing medicines in case there was a need for anyone on the island, or fishing in the early morning or late evening, or just sleeping, which was his favourite pass-time. He agreed to help me record the folk tale only after 9 at night and I agreed to his terms, as I was excited to find at least one person in the entire habitat of eight households who claimed to remember a tale. He promised to visit me in the guesthouse. I was very anxious to receive him at the stipulated time.

I remember distinctly that it was 21 January 2006. Nao came to the guesthouse, thinking that he would finish the job in one evening. Little did he know that linguists have the bad habit of checking each and every word and phrase that is uttered. In the first sitting, he tried to narrate the story in Andamanese Hindi. He would halt in between, groping for the right words or phrases. When he was not satisfied with the Hindi version, he would suddenly revert to the appropriate Andamanese word. This was rather exciting and educational for me. The long-lost language was getting revived gradually in an ancient tale. I never expected this!

The loud choruses of the crickets and frogs had begun in the tsunami-created marshes and swamps behind our guesthouse; the power had been switched off and we were all sitting in the dark. We knew it was past 11 pm. We used to get electricity only for two hours. Nao wanted to retire. I extracted a promise from him to visit us the next day, at his convenience, but with the Andamanese version and not the Hindi one. He said he had forgotten it all. When I insisted that he could attempt to remember it at night while going to bed, he agreed to try but was sure that his memory would fail him. ‘Chaaliis saal se sunaa nahiin, kaun bolega? (It has been 40 years since I have heard it; who can narrate it?)’ He was sure he would disappoint me.

Then came the next day. I was making some grammar notes sitting on the wooden bed in the afternoon. I saw Nao standing at my door with an expectant look on his face. The moment I looked up, he said in Hindi, ‘Kuch kuch yaad aataa hai (I can remember a little).’ I invited him in and then we sat around the bed, turning it into a makeshift table. He started narrating the same story in short Great Andamanese phrases, not very fluently, but mixed with Hindi. Narayan, my student, assisted me in recording and transcribing the story. This is how our long journey of the Great Andamanese narration started, a journey into the past. I would interrupt him to get Hindi equivalents and he could, with a 90 percent success rate, render them. It took us several days, to get the full version of the narration of ‘Phertajido’ and the subsequent word-for-word translation. Sometimes, we would have our sessions in the afternoon and sometimes after 9 pm, as he was always busy fishing by the Strait Island jetty after sunset. This was a great story and I could see he loved narrating it.

The translated version of this story had some gaps, which I realized only after coming back to Delhi. I decided to go through the entire process again during the next trip. I was lucky enough as Nao obliged me during my next trip to Port Blair in December 2006, almost 11 months after our previous visit.

On reaching Port Blair in December 2006, I discovered that Nao was in Strait Island and not in Port Blair as I was informed by a tribal friend on the phone before I left Delhi. The AAJVS officials not only failed to honour my already sanctioned permit to visit Strait Island but were also on the lookout to catch and arrest me if I pursued my research. No one in the mainland would believe that a researcher could be arrested for hearing a story from the Great Andamanese tribes for work. Under the pretext of safeguarding the protected tribes, the concerned official would disregard the sanction given to us by the Home Ministry and would expect us to grease his palms. I neither had the means nor the inclinations to oblige him.

There was no way of informing Nao of my arrival in Port Blair. Unfortunately, Strait Island had no phone connections. The only wireless communication that the island had, was in the hands of the government officials. I had no option but to visit the Port Blair jetty and take a chance and see if I could run into any of my tribal friends on the ship. Ships for Strait Island leave very early in the morning at about 5:45 am. It was 19 December 2006; I reached the jetty much before the stipulated time. A crew member from one of the ships recognized me. By then, many local officials, especially those who worked on ships and boats, had started recognizing me as a friend of the Great Andamanese tribes. As soon as this man, a ticket checker at the departure gate saw me, he indicated towards the next ship moored in the distance and said, ‘Go and see Reya. She is going to Strait Island.’ This was a girl from the Great Andamanese tribe, whom I knew very well and who had married a Bengali man. I ran towards her, lest I lose her. She immediately recognized me and greeted me with a namaste. She introduced me to her husband. She asked me in Hindi, ‘Kab aayaa (when did you come)?’ Reya is one of those Great Andamanese tribal girls, who loves to amalgamate herself into our society and is happy to forget her heritage language. I told her that I desperately wanted to see Nili (the pet name of Nao). She informed me that Nao was on Strait Island and had no plans of visiting Port Blair. My world was falling to pieces.

I knew requesting the administration to transport Nao Jr to Port Blair would not help. I knew that getting permission to travel to Strait Island will be equally difficult, as some officers-in-charge were against any research on these tribes. It is a shame that the members of these tribes are kept as captives in their own land and are restricted from meeting other Indian citizens. Had it not been for the initiative of the Great Andamanese themselves, they would have never befriended locals and visitors like us. I immediately fished out a piece of paper from my purse, wrote a note in Hindi in bold letters, and gave it to Reya to pass it on to Nao. I told her to ask him to have it read out to him by one of the school-going children. I also told her that the sole purpose of my trip to the Andamans was to meet Nao and my other tribal friends, but Nao in particular. She promised to deliver the message.

[Listen to a song included in the book: .]

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Voices from the Lost Horizon: Stories and Songs of the Great Andamanese, Anvita Abbi, Niyogi Books, 2021.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Voices from the Lost Horizon: Stories and Songs of the Great Andamanese appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Nepali Proverb

(Those who live in a place from where the Himalayas cannot be seen may not be trusted.) 

At the time of writing, the monkey menace is a lightning rod for a great deal of public anger in the hills. Everyone seems to be perpetually persecuted by them. At the old Charleville, guards armed with airguns stalk the campus to scare off the simians, especially after one of the aggressive rhesus monkeys lunged at one of the Deputy Directors, completely disregarding his seniority, forcing him to take immediate evasive action. He jumped over the railing straight into the defile down below. Result? A broken arm!

Or you could say that Mr Obtuse, a college professor was to a certain extent responsible for the sudden explosion in the rhesus population. Don’t jump the gun and get me wrong. It all goes back to the winter vacation when our dear teacher went off to his home in the plains.

On meeting an old friend, he jokingly complained of a flagging libido. ‘I’ll fix that!’ promised the friend. Later, he gave him some specially concocted sweetmeats put together by a renowned herbalist, who’d made a minor fortune peddling cures for all kinds of sexual ailments, near the Clock Tower in Moradabad. Fortified with a box brimming with aphrodisiacs, our professor came home to his flat in the narrow lanes of our bazaar. On the very first day, he ate one, leaving the box near the window. The rest, as they say, is history— not his, theirs! A pesky monkey grabbed the box, spilling the contents on the ledge below. In the ensuing free for all, the sweets were gobbled up by a troupe of monkeys. Now don’t ask me if it worked. Honestly! I don’t know. But you have my word for it—there was an immediate jump in the population of simians. I hear there were rumours that one of these red-bottomed rhesus’ had a big grin on his face whenever he peeped through the barred windows of the learned professor’s abode looking for fresh supplies!

And grinning were the langurs too at one of the town’s best walkers, a certain Miss Crabbit who, having retired from a girl’s school settled here and has not stopped walking since. Given to the belief that those who walk sixteen kilometres a day are blessed with an eternal life, she sets off on her walk after a frugal breakfast, returns home for lunch, and takes off again to stagger home at dusk.

Things went well for years, that is until one of her nieces brought her a silvery fur coat to keep her warm through the cold winter. Hardly had she stepped out of her flat, when she noticed that she was being trailed by a troupe of amorous black-faced langurs marching in step behind her!

Now! That’s real monkey business.

Up until the 1960s, we had a tradition of doctors who made their way to the mountains from the sultry Ganges delta of Bengal. Foremost among these was a Dr Mitra, who ran a private clinic near the Old Theatre. On retiring, he passed on his practice to Dr Bagchi who, for some weird reason, always wore a monkey-cap. You could tell that summer had come when the good doctor removed his cap and little kids on the road went around yelling: ‘Papu ki topi uttar gayey!’ (Old man’s taken off his cap!)

Dr Bhaduri though had no cap fetish, he specialized in sex problems. Right next to the Electric Picture Palace cinema, he had a garish hoarding that showed an exhausted lion lying flat on its face before imbibing his magical aphrodisiac, while on the other side there was that magnificent pride of Africa, roaring at the tourists much in the manner of the MGM lion. Things were going well for the good doctor, up until the day police came knocking at his door.

What could he have done? He wondered. His medicines were not that bad!

The warrant stated he had certified as dead a man who was alive and kicking, and mad and angry too, because meanwhile his estranged wife had run off with the proceeds of his insurance policy. Off to the police station they marched and into the lock up he went for the night. The barred metal door clanged shut only to be opened the next morning when he was produced before a magistrate.

Lo and behold! As luck would have it, the doctor recognised Mr Tormented, the duty magistrate, as the errant youth whom he had a long time ago treated for venereal disease. Now, seated on his august chair, memories of another day came flooding back, he could still remember the burning sensation every time he had to visit the loo. Bashfully, he now remembered approaching the doctor, and managed to mutter: ‘Doctor Sa’ab, I think my thing has a cold.’

Dr Bhaduri had taken one look, smiled and said: ‘Till it sneezes, may be I’ll treat you with penicillin.’

On this fated day, their eyes met again. Time’s relentless sand papering had weathered them both as the clock rewound to twenty years ago. What mattered was that at the decisive moment, they were partners in crime again.

‘Doctor Sa’ab! What are you doing here?’ asked the judge.

‘Police say I’ve certified the living as dead! And his wife has taken off with his insurance!’

‘How did that happen?’

‘These men dragged me out of my bed at night and into a hotel room,’ he recalled, almost as in a dream. ‘Yes! There was a body. I wrote the name they gave me. Can you ask a dead man his name?’

‘True! Very possible!’ nodded Tormented, saying: ‘A case of mistaken identity. Bail granted.’

For the rest of his days, I am told Dr Bhaduri stopped taking house calls. The word was out that he would break out in hives if you so much as phoned him to take a house call.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Gupp and Gossip from the Hills, Ganesh Saili, Niyogi Books, 2012.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The essential tenets of education as propounded by Gandhi can be summed up as follows:

1) Education must serve the nation’s needs consistent with the philosophy of freedom, truth and non-violence.

2) Equality of all religions and all men.

3) Equal importance to intellectual training and manual work, which should be socially useful and productive.

4) Mother tongue as the medium of instruction at all levels along with the compulsory teaching of Hindi.

5) The curricula and other arrangements should aim at serving the needs of villagers.

It was a basic principle of all Gandhian institutions that teachers should regard untouchability as a blot on Hindu society and should strive for its removal and should never exclude a boy or girl for reasons of his being an untouchable, nor treat him or her differently after admission.

Manual work was an integral part of Gandhian education. There is no point, he used to say, in developing the brain only. One has to develop one’s brain through one’s hands.

Gandhi had been engaged in the work of rural reconstruction, harijan uplift and political regeneration and therefore, his fingers were constantly on the pulse of the common people. He realised that unless education was given a new orientation, it would not be possible to build the social order that he cherished. He placed before the nation a scheme which he had been evolving for 40 years—a scheme popularly known as the Wardha Scheme of Education, which he called ‘Nayee Talim’ or New Education. He defined it as education for life and through life.

Gandhi’s educational ideas grew out of his experiments in education with his family and in his ashrams in South Africa and India before they were formulated and publicly announced. By education he meant an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man—body, mind and spirit.

‘That education alone is of value,’ he said, ‘which draws out the faculties of a student so as to enable him or her to solve correctly the problems of life in every department.’

‘Nayee Talim means teaching through craft. That basic craft has to be selected in the light of the conditions and produce of the region.’

According to him, self-reliance was the most important characteristic of Nayee Talim. The knowledge that this system imparted could not be had from books. It was from nature that this knowledge had to be obtained. ‘Knowledge directly derived from anything was much better than knowledge derived through a written lesson or through symbols. That was the essential basis of Nayee Talim.’

Basic education discarded bookish learning and aimed at an all-round development of the child so that he could become a useful and productive member of the society. In his last talk on Nayee Talim on 14 December 1947, Gandhi said, ‘Basic education is generally interpreted as education through craft. This is true to a certain extent, but this is not the whole truth. The roots of Nayee Talim go deeper. It is based on truth and non-violence in individual and collective life.

The Wardha scheme left out teaching of religion because Gandhi held that religions as they were taught and practised led to conflict rather than unity. Truths common to all religions could be taught. No denominationalism or factionalism was to be encouraged specially between Hindus and Muslims.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Gandhi’s Vision: Freedom And Beyond, Aparna Basu, Niyogi Books, 2018.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Long before the Emperor’s entourage set out, astrologers and wise men were consulted to determine the most auspicious time for the Emperor to enter Kashmir. Nothing was left to chance. Over 3,000 stonecutters and labourers were hired to improve the condition of the road, while officials headed to the hills to determine the location of the huge camping areas fit for an Emperor and his court. The arrival was a sight to behold. Bystanders watched in disbelief while wide-eyed ragamuffins scurried for cover as their village was transformed into a camp city packed with merchants and vendors, astrologers, men of arms and men of letters accompanied by a huge retinue of advisors and attendants

Leaving the heat and humidity of Lahore far behind, the Emperor’s party gradually ascended the Himalayan foothills. The trails through the forests and verdant meadows became increasingly attractive. The spring flowers thrived at the margins of the snowmelt, shepherds lead their flocks to the summer pastures, while golden eagles glided on the thermals. It was a world away from the bustling markets of Lahore or Agra. In such alpine splendour Akbar relished the prospect of undertaking an extended tour through the enchanted Vale of Kashmir.

It took the best part of a month for Akbar to reach the base of the Pir Panjal. It was the last week of May 1589 and rumours were rife of snowdrifts blocking the pass. Akbar’s advisors met late into the night, mindful that the decision to advance could not be taken lightly. While the Pir Panjal Pass (2,830 m) is not high by Himalayan standards they were acutely aware of the ferocious pre-monsoon storms that could descend on the pass for days on end. They might also have been aware that the ancient sages had cast spells on the pass so that whenever a foreign force attempted to cross the pass, ‘black clouds soon gather and rain and snow pour down’. The next day would determine who was right, the court astrologers or the ancient sages.

Reaching the camp beneath the Pir Panjal Pass the weather seemed perfect. As darkness fell, no one read the ominous signs in the night sky. Whether the Emperor’s entourage were equipped to withstand the elements was soon to be put to the test. When Akbar set off the morning was clear and the day was full of promise. Within the space of an hour gale-force winds slowed his advance to almost a standstill. When he finally set foot on the pass his view was totally obscured in a maelstrom of deep swirling clouds. The distant claps of thunder were a further portent not to linger. Any chance of Akbar savouring his first spectacular view of Kashmir was vanquished in the storm. It was not the most auspicious start to Mughal rule over Kashmir.

Akbar had been Emperor for over 30 years before he visited Kashmir. By then Kashmir had been secured by his army. After crossing the Pir Panjal Pass they encountered little resistance before making a triumphal entry into Srinagar in the first week of October 1656. The Mughal Empire now extended from Kashmir as far as Kabul and Kandahar, a vast territory that had not been governed by a single entity since the times of Kanishka and the Kushan Empire in the first century. The groundwork was now in place for Akbar’s arrival.

Akbar’s three visits to Kashmir offered a welcome escape from the prosaic demands of ruling his empire. Kashmir was to be known as his private garden, a retreat from the rest of his empire. A popular yet in some ways misleading reference, for it was his son, Jahangir, and grandson, Shah Jahan, who were responsible for commissioning Kashmir’s famous Mughal gardens.

Akbar spent five weeks on his first tour of Kashmir. The countryside with its meadows dotted with spring flowers, the scented pine forests and the temperate climate, a world away from the soaring heat of the Indian plains, exceeded his expectations. Yet, if this was a paradise on earth no one had informed the people. Court officials forewarned Akbar that the people were forever subject to famine and abject poverty. The country was in dire need of sound administration, but where to start in a land where ‘there is an abundance of futile talks and concealers of the truth’. It was fortunate that the Emperor could turn to Todar Mal, his acclaimed Finance Minister, who proposed wide-ranging land reforms including an equitable tax system that was not too onerous for the villagers.

As the Shahenshah—the King of Kings—Akbar assumed an almost god-like status. In his exalted position he encouraged debate between Muslims, Brahmins, Christians and Jains, while his Court facilitated freethinking, granting patronage to poets, writers and artists. Not surprisingly, he made time to seek out pious men and hear their version of the divine. Less than a month after his arrival he sought out Wahid Sufi, who lived in solitary existence in a cave deep in the countryside to the south of Kashmir. The highly regarded Sufi led a life ‘gathering happiness on an old mat … Concerning himself little with men’s customs, some called him mad and some called him an atheist. He lived apart from joy and sorrow and took nothing from anybody except broken bread’ .  It is a testimony to Akbar that he acknowledged how the humble Sufi taught him how he could, ‘keep his soul always well pleasing to God as far as his power would allow’.

The Emperor made his third tour of duty to Kashmir in 1597. By now the Mughal army needed to secure its presence and an order was given to build a fort at the base of the Hari Parbat hill. To ensure the army did not place undue strain on the local economy, the precincts of the fort were made into a cantonment. High-ranking government officers were quick to acquire the most prestigious blocks of land to build opulent houses with uninterrupted views across Dal Lake to the ridges of the rugged Zabarwan Range. The huge walls encircling the cantonment were completed later during the reign of Akbar’s son Jahangir. Sections of the masonry remain intact, including the Kathi Darwaza—the main entrance— where an inscription remains in place commemorating Akbar’s reign.

Well before his father’s death in 1605, Jahangir was enamoured with Kashmir. He returned briefly two years later but it was not until 1620 that he came back and spent the best part of nine months in the valley. It was a heaven-sent opportunity to experience the full change of seasons. Little of beauty escaped his notice and like his father he was enthused with the natural wonders of the valley.

Kashmir is a garden of eternal springs or an iron fort to a palace of kings—a delightful flower bed and a heart expanding heritage for dervishes. Its pleasant meadows and enchanting cascades are beyond all descriptions. There are running streams and fountains beyond count. The red rose, the violet and narcissus grow of themselves; in the fields there are kinds of flowers and all sorts of sweet scented herbs, more than can be calculated. In the soul enchanting spring the hills and plains are filled with blossoms; the gates, the walls, the courts, the roofs are lighted up by torches of banquet adorning tulips.

Jahangir took particular delight visiting the mountains. He recounts the beauty of Toshamaidan close to Gulmarg, where he identified over 50 varieties of wildflowers. He describes the flowers with all the passion of a man temporarily removed from the tedious life of day-to-day politics. Indeed the retired British administrator H. Beveridge who edited Alexander Rogers’ translation of the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir (also known as the Jahangirnama) from Persian to English, asserts that ‘had Jahangir been the head of a National History Museum (rather than an Emperor) he would have been a better and happier man’.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Kashmir: A Journey Through History, Garry Weare, Niyogi Books, 2020.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Kashmir: A Journey Through History appeared first on 51�Թ�.

From his udukkai was born waves of sound

From that sound was born music

From that music was born the different dances

From dance was born the form of koothu

From that koothu was born the grammar of dance

From that was born the style of drama

(Saathanar in the Kootha Nool, p.189.)

Dance has always been associated with Shiva, the one who is called Adavallan, or expert dancer, and worshipped at Chidambaram as Nataraja or the king of dance.

Everywhere is the holy form

Everywhere is Shiva and Shakthi

Everywhere there is Chidambaram

Everywhere there is the sacred dance

Since He is everywhere, everything is the manifestation of His dance.

(Thirumoolar in Tirumanthiram, verse 2674.)

This dance, at the behest of the gods, was codified and given to humans so that they may offer it as worship to them particularly to Shiva as Nataraja. The dancer experiences through her movements, the sublime heights of emotion, the pleasure of the divine consciousness, and leads her audience to the same state.

Amongst the most ancient dance forms in India, Bharatanatyam can be called the child of Thanjavur for it was here that it was systematised as we know it today, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally called Sadir, it was in the preserve of the devadasi community and was later adapted and rechristened as Bharatanatyam. As mentioned earlier, dance, drama and music were closely linked in ancient and medieval India and were seen as offerings to the divine.

Indian dancing is not a mere movement of arms and legs but one where every part of the body from the little finger to the eyes has a significant role. All poses have been codified centuries ago and the greatness of the artist lies in how she uses her entire body to capture that pose and how she makes the audience feel the emotion conveyed by that pose.

Dance has two primary elements—nritta and natya. Nritta are rhythmical and repetitive elements of thirty-two body parts, such as head, hands, heel and eyebrows, which are used by the dancer to dance to the beat and are interspersed with natya. Natya is the dramatic art, and is a language of abhinaya, mudhra and poses using the limbs. The dancer uses both nritta and natya to tell a story that is sung to music. Abhinaya could, for example, be facial expressions to show various emotions. Mudhra could be the using of fingers and hands to denote animals or attributes of gods. Since mudhras and abhinaya in general cannot be seen from a distance as in a large hall, dance was meant for small groups.

There are nine main or primary emotions, also termed rasas or moods in Indian aesthetics: shringara (love), hasya (mirth), veera (heroism), roudra (anger), bhayanaka (terror), bibhatsa (disgust), adbhuta (wonder), karuna (compassion), and shanta (tranquillity). Incidentally, Bharata’s Natya Shastra and Tholkappiyam (most scholars date this to the pre-Christian era) mention only eight rasas; shanta rasa was introduced in the 9th century by Udbhata.

Like music, dance is also an ancient tradition in Thanjavur. One of the earliest inscriptions on dance is in Arachalur which dates to circa 250 CE and is written in the Brahmi script. It contains a set of syllables that creates a rhythm or sollu kattu in today’s parlance of Bharatanatyam. The syllables ‘tha’, ‘thai’, ‘thi’ are still in use in Tamil Nadu. Paintings from this period in the Sithanavasal Jain temple also depict dancers. Silappadikaram written around the same time has dancers as protagonists—Kovalan the hero is smitten by Madhavi, who was able to dance eleven different types of dances.

Texts like Kootha-nool (koothu means dance and nool refers to a book) by Sattanaar need special mention for their rich content on dance. This work was written in the 12th century or earlier and talks about various aspects of dance. Suvai nool is about the aesthetic aspects of dance; togai nool describes different dance forms including the 108 Tandavas (or dance routines) of Shiva; vari nool celebrates folk dances including the aka vari dances which deal with love and human psychology,pura vari dances which deal with natural phenomena and mukha vari dances or the acrobatic and exhibitionist dances; vachai nool is about ludicrous dances; kalai nool is the largest of the nine nools and deals with the anatomy of the human body; karana nool talks about dance sequences; tala nool deals with time measurements and rhythm; isai nool explains the thirty pann; avai nool describes the architecture of the stage, rules for lighting, costumes, makeup and so on; kan nool describes dance as a form of yoga and advises the dancer to maintain her mental and physical form to keep her performance at the highest level.

Koothu indicates a close connection between dance and drama in the 12th century and earlier. Dramas were probably composed of several units of dance with appropriate music. The word natyam does not appear to indicate dance in any of these ancient texts. Unfortunately, no Tamil treatise on dance has survived; however, we have some of their names. Dance had taken two forms by the 14th century—one was more rigidly defined by the Sanskrit Natya Shastra and the other one, the koothu, became a more popular dance form confined to the villages and patronised by commoners.

By the Chola times there were dancers of both sexes and the position became hereditary, provided the new entrant had the right credentials. The dancers were called devaradiyar if they were dancing in the temples of Lord Shiva and emberumanar adiyar (adiyar literally means slave, here it means devotee) if they were dancing in the temples of Lord Vishnu. Dance became one of the shodasha upachara or sixteen important offerings to the deity.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Thanjavur: A Cultural History, Pradeep Chakravarthy, Niyogi Books, 2010.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Thanjavur: A Cultural History appeared first on 51�Թ�.

On 17 October 1947 my father returned with the tidings that a special train for government servants would be leaving for Amritsar the next day. We packed our meagre belongings in no time. We had expected reserved seats in the train. However, when we reached the Chaklala railway station we saw a sea of surging humanity with all sorts of baggage already there. There was no question of reservation; it was free for all. An unusually long train could be seen at some distance.

There were very few coolies and they demanded fifty rupees a piece to carry the baggage. My father, Vijay and I carried the trunks. My sister and mother managed to drag the bedrolls till I was able to come back to carry one. We made for the nearest compartment. The first batch of occupants tried in vain to block entry to newcomers saying there was no accommodation. Those outside first begged and then became abusive and aggressive. The occupants had to relent more out of fear than sympathy. More families arrived by the minute. They did not ask, did not care and shoved their baggage through the door which had been half-barred by the pressure of baggage of the occupants. ‘There is no space,’ someone shouted from inside. ‘Never mind, we will go and sit on the roof. Just let our bags in.’ Soon there were more people on the roof of the train than inside. A large number of men clung to the doors and windows of compartments.

Our compartment carried a notice in English and Urdu: ‘To seat 17 persons only.’ I counted thirty men, women and children.

Soon the small compartment became a mound of trunks, bedrolls and all sorts of packets, big and small. Children clambered up the heaps of baggage and made a sport of rolling down, going up, and rolling down repeatedly.

We were relieved to notice that platoons of Gurkha soldiers mounted guard in front of the engine, in the middle of the train, and behind the last compartment of the train. They were protected by sandbags and armed with machine guns.

Having settled down in the safety of the compartment, all of us heaved a sort of collective sigh of relief. Across from us a newly married young couple sat snuggled together, the woman still in her bridal finery and forearms covered with ivory and multicoloured glass bangles. An old woman sat next to the man, probably his mother. Looking at the young couple, Vijay and I exchanged mischievous, knowing glances about what they might be feeling. Armed Gurkha soldiers patrolled the length of the train on both sides a number of times before they gave the all-clear. Then we heard the guard’s whistle. The engine hooted in response and the train started moving slowly. Soon it was dusk and the compartment was only lit dimly. Passengers began opening their packets of food — stuffed parathas and other snacks for the evening meal, some offering to share their food with others, a tradition of railway journeys in the country.

We were in the middle of our meal when we heard the sound of gunfire. The train came to a sudden halt and then began to reverse. After what seemed to be a long time, the gunfire became sporadic and then stopped. After that there was nothing to do except to try and sleep. But there was no place to even stretch our limbs. I dreamt I was sleeping on a plush bed in a palace. A jolt of the train woke me up and I found that I was lying on a heap of luggage. Such dreams came in repeated short snatches. Everyone was probably having similar dreams. It was indeed a long night. My father pulled out his pocket watch off and on and announced the time for general benefit. At long last, dawn peeped through the window shutters. Some people starting going to the toilet, the door of which was somehow kept free from any obstruction. Someone announced that we should be reaching Lahore soon. My father lifted the window shutter to check the name of the station the train was passing by. We were barely halfway to Lahore. He saw a crowd at the platform waving for the train to stop. Presumably they were refugees like us waiting to be evacuated. But the train did not stop. It was already overloaded and there was a risk that there might be an ambush. Those were not the times when people were bothered much about others.

About an hour later the train stopped again. Again there was the sound of exchange of fire. Someone climbed down from the roof and said that a burning tree had been laid across the rails and a crowd, shouting slogans and firing shots, had surrounded the front of the train not knowing that the train had a Gurkha escort. Instinctively, my mother stopped distributing whatever was left of the stock of our parathas. She whispered to us that we had to make do till we reached Lahore. ‘There we can buy something more to eat,’ she offered by way of reassurance. We understood.

But the whole day passed and there was no sign of Lahore. The train stopped twice more for extended periods. The sound of sloganeering mobs and the sight of distant arson accompanied by exchange of fire between the rioters and Gurkhas made us down the window shutters, keep quiet and hope for the best. For the time being hunger and thirst were kept at bay.

The train picked up speed and Vijay, still ‘Aslam’, started reciting chal chal fata fut, chal chal fata fut – a children’s rhyme mimicking the sound produced by wheels of an express train. That lifted the tension in the compartment.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from A Bonsai Tree: An Autobiography, Narendra Luther, Niyogi Books, 2017.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The inception of Chandigarh began with the trauma of partition of the country in 1947 and the urgent need to build a new capital city for the now truncated state of Punjab apportioned to the Indian side, as well as the pressing need to shelter millions of homeless refugees. Besides the great healing touch that Chandigarh imparted to the traumatised refugees by accommodating them in the new city and giving shelter, its aesthetic landscape perhaps too played a soothing role with its mantle of greenery clothing its built form of brick and concrete.

Before one delves deeper into Chandigarh’s landscaping, it is essential to address the question as to what landscape really is? Whenever we experience a building in an urban setting, there is either a foreground or a background comprising some component of vegetation or built-form. So cities are experienced in motion as one continuum of images: both built-up and landscapes. This underscores how critical is the role of nature in cities for a holistic and humane experience of urban areas.

In the Indian tradition knowledge was always transmitted by the guru/teacher to the disciple beneath a tree as was the occurrence of spiritual enlightenment. Trees were always planted around temples and worshipped, signifying their importance. In the medieval times in the walled cities of India, because of the fear of invaders, the built-form grain was very dense with winding narrow alleys and self-shading courtyards. The community focal point called chaupal usually had some big tree or a grove of shade giving sacred trees like banyans or peepuls where people congregated. As the structures were small and low, people could easily connect with the elements of nature and cosmos with everyday use of roof terraces and courtyards. So there was always a connection with the elements of nature and an experience of surrounding distant landscape, unlike in the present clutter of high-rise, densely spaced blocks in the cities mushrooming all over the country.

When the Mughals came they brought to India the great tradition of ‘Formal Gardens’ that basically originated from the Persian Gardens with their core elements of symmetry, the quadrant charbagh and use of water for cooling. Le Corbusier often visited the nearby Mughal Gardens at Pinjore located close to Chandigarh to observe and sketch copiously for possible solutions to deal with the challenge of climatic issues for his proposed buildings. With the advent of the British Raj in India about 200 years ago, it was decided to use the tools of architecture and landscape to make a political statement of imperial assertion. The grand Central Vista at New Delhi between the Viceroy’s Palace (Rashtrapati Bhawan) placed atop the Raisina hill and India Gate is a grandiose, monumental language of landscape. The British civil lines and army cantonments spread all over the country located outside the old, native cities too had Edwin Lutyens’ kind of layouts with beautiful, neat tree-lined avenues, gardens and parks.

When the Chandigarh project came up, the ruling elites of the post- Independence India steeped in the hierarchal social structure inherited from the British, too wanted to get away from the unhygienic narrow alleys of the old, traditional cities. The old bazaars might have been very picturesque and exotic for the visitors with their aromas and colours, but if one wanted to live there it was not all that romantic for the haves and neo-rich of the country. When A.L. Fletcher, an important bureaucrat tasked with the preparation of the brief for the new city for the future architect, began his work, there were a lot of uncertainties. Basic questions like a city for how many people, what should be the budget, etc., needed to be addressed. What will be the nature of the city: administrative, commercial or mixed? Fletcher, who was widely travelled and familiar with the Garden City movement in Britain was very impressed by the Ebenezer Howard’s concept for green towns. Though such experimental towns in Britain were much smaller settlements as an inspirational model for the Chandigarh project, it was nevertheless decided that Chandigarh should have the core attributes of a Garden City. Dr M.S. Randhawa, a distinguished senior bureaucrat and a qualified agricultural scientist at that time, too, had an enormous contribution in the landscaping for the city. He exhorted that the new city would urgently require a ‘mantle of greenery’, as the buildings in the city would come up much faster than the time taken by plantations to take root.

The original team of American architects and planners comprising Albert Mayer and Mathew Nowicki who were initially assigned the Chandigarh project had to be soon replaced by Le Corbusier, owing to the tragic death of Nowicki in a plane crash and Mayer’s inability to continue in his absence. However, the Americans too had shown a strong predilection for weaving in a lot of landscaping components in their conceptual master plan proposed for the city. Many of the seed ideas underlined by them in this regard, became precursors of what Corbusier too developed later on, including the alignment of the city plan towards the mountains.

During Corbusier’s training in an art school in his home town La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, his brilliant and inspiring teacher Charles L’Eplattenier, made the students go out to the mountains to vigorously sketch pine trees there. They left a great mark on him as he used them as motifs in his early residential projects as kind of modern decoration on their edifices. He was always collecting a repertoire of possible ideas and forms from his observations of nature for future application, and the pine tree became one of those motifs. So his training as a landscape painter influenced him towards establishing a special relationship between landscape and architecture.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Le Corbusier Rediscovered: Chandigarh And Beyond, edited by Rajnish Wattas and Deepika Gandhi, Niyogi Books, 2018.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Her grief into joy. 

Her rejections into approvals. 

If no one believes in her 

It does not matter. 

She believes in herself. 

Nothing stops her. 

No one can touch her. 

She is woman

Sita, born of the earth, raised among sages, the non-uterine daughter of King Janak of Mithila, devoted wife of Lord Ram, and single mother of twins Kush and Luv, is the central female character of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Sita, as an integral part of the Indian psyche, has been venerated by Valmiki in the first chapter itself,

Sita, the best one among ladies, a possessor of all best qualities befitting an ideal lady, the one who is as though fashioned by a divine marvel, born in Janak’s fany and became Dashrath’s daughter-in-law and she who is the loving wife and an ever-amiable alter ego of Ram, even she followed Ram to forests, as with Lady Rohini following the Moon… 

A paragon of beauty, intellect, dedication, and sacrifice, Sita, the ideal woman, struggled with maintaining her dignity, her identity, and her rightful place in a patriarchal society. Worshipped throughout India, she is considered a symbol of chastity, the wife who stayed unwavering in her devotion and loyalty towards her husband Ram, like Ruth who, swearing eternal fidelity to her husband, said, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God.”

It is believed that Sita’s birth preordained the elimination of evil forces, and that she was the link between the opposing forces of righteousness and evil, symbolised by Ram and Ravan respectively. Her sense of dharma or duty was superior to that of her husband, the most perfect of men, the maryada purush Ram, who sacrificed his conjugal life at the altar of ‘higher’ duties, first to fulfill the expectations of him as a son, and subsequently, that as a king. Sita’s devotion and love for Ram, her firmness of purpose in upholding the truth, even at the cost of her own life, are all put to the test. Ram, her beloved husband, publicly declares that he rescued her to save his own honour, and Sita is made to prove her chastity multiple times. She passes each test and wins hands down, like the devotee who triumphs over the god he worships.

Fiercely independent, Sita dared to challenge social norms and break loose from the shackles of patriarchy, while making her own choices with courage and dignity. She did not allow her life situation to choose for her, nor did she let the abuse dishearten her. Finding strength in the knowledge of her own uniqueness—self-confident, self-disciplined, and selfless—she chose to uphold her self-respect, thereby exemplifying the power of womankind. Sita’s offer of agnipariksha (after the battle) was not an act of self-annihilation, nor that of surrendering to the whim of an unreasonable husband. On the contrary, her emerging from the fire unscathed was proof of her defiance in challenging her husband’s aspersions, showing him to be so flawed in his judgement that the gods had to come and pull up Ram for his foolishness. When a pregnant Sita was abandoned deceitfully in the cruelest manner, placing her and her unborn child’s life in jeopardy, she demonstrated to the world that it was possible for an abandoned single mother to not only survive, but successfully raise two outstanding and fearless sons. Sita loved her husband wholeheartedly, and sacrificed a life of luxury to be exiled with him in the forest; but when her honour was repeatedly doubted by her beloved for what he considered his kingly duty, she chose with supreme dignity to reject her husband and return to Mother Earth. Rightfully so, people perceive Sita’s steadfastness as a sign of emotional strength, because she refused to forsake her dharma in upholding the truth, even though Ram forsook his dharma as a responsible husband.

Often underplayed is the fact that Sita had a mind of her own; she stood her ground and remained determined not to give up even if the odds looked daunting. She even went to the extent of rebuking her husband that he was not man enough to take his wife along into exile. During their exile in the forest, Sita envisaged the danger in Ram’s decision to eliminate the rakshasas of Dandaka forest without any provocation, and felt it was her role as a wife to remind the maryada purush of his dharma when she perceived he was straying from the path of righteousness.

Delivering a powerful discourse on non-violence, she reminds Ram that duty always pairs with privilege, and since he had renounced his Kshatriya powers, he should avoid involving himself in activities that run contrary to forest life and its norms Sita, not one to be cowed down, proudly proclaimed that since she was Janak’s daughter and Ram’s wife, she could not refrain from free speech on observing dharma retreating. Graciously Ram responded to her words of caution and said ‘Oh, graceful Sita, you are the co-pursuer in dharma with me, hence you are loftier to me than my own life…’ When Hanuman had come to Lanka searching for her, she could have easily made her escape. But, not wanting to steal her husband’s glory, she chose to wait for Ram to rescue her from Ravan’s captivity. When Ram wanted her to testify to her own innocence for the second time, instead of complying, Sita prayed to Mother Earth to take her into her recourse

Sita epitomizes the struggle of women throughout the world.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Sita Returns: Modern India Through Her Eyes, Charu Walikhanna, Niyogi Books, 2018.]

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—John Berger, Ways of Seeing

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many British landscape artists arrived in India to sketch and paint its imposing forts and richly decorated palaces, temples, pagodas and mosques. They captured the grandeur of the Mughal cities in decline, the new colonial settlements in growth and, of course, the Himalayas with the flow of the Ganga and other rivers from the hills to the oceans and bays. Besides these topographical views, the appearance, attires, culture and customs of the diverse people of India were fascinating subjects to paint and share with Europeans back home, filling in their curiosity of this far-off land. The fabled flora and fauna continued to be painted till much later, taken up as a popular subject by the Englishwomen arriving in India by the late 19th century. Pioneer landscape artists like William Hodges, Thomas and William Daniell, Charles D’Oyly, William Simpson and James Baillie Fraser travelled across India exploring and sketching remote regions. Their work created a sensation in Europe, being much in demand between the years 1770–1880. This pushed the emergence of new picture printing techniques towards mass production, beginning with Prague based Alois Senefelder’s innovation in lithography in 1796. The original paintings were multiplied as engravings and lithography prints for sale in the European markets and, over the years, numerous “illustrated travelogues of India”, which included these engravings and lithographic pictures, were published, becoming extremely popular.

In 1768, the English artist and writer William Gilpin in his book Three Essays: on Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscapes defined the term “picturesque” in so many words:

Disputes about beauty might perhaps be involved in less confusion, if a distinction were established, which certainly exists, between such objects as are beautiful, and such as are picturesque, between those which please the eye in their natural state; and those which please from some quality, capable of being illustrated in painting.

The landscape artists who travelled across India focused exclusively on the picturesque. They even used a pre-photography gadget, the camera obscura, as a tool to edit, alter proportions and facilitate capturing the picturesque. The accompanying text and travel narratives to these picturesque paintings, published as books, further created an enigma of an Oriental wonderland.

With the invention of the camera, early photographers of India from the 1850s, such as Robert Gill, Felice Beato, R.B. Oakley, Linnaeus Tripe, Captains T. Biggs and E.D. Lyon, to the prominent photographers of the 1890s, such as John Burke, Lala Deen Dayal, Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd, Johnston and Hoffmann and T.A. Rust, began replacing the landscape artists, but their emphasis continued to be on the picturesque. Felice Beato, who had reached Lucknow and Kanpur just after the 1857 War of Independence, even stage-managed his war photographs using actors to create photos with the right aesthetics, not too different from the way many photographers use the Photoshop software today.

Often financed by the East India Company, the early European photographers in India replaced not just the landscape and the portrait artists (Company School) but extended their role to support colonial designs through documentation and propaganda. Many of them were English army officers and surgeons living in India. The picture postcard started recording everything from 1910 onwards, not just the picturesque. The photographers took up ethnographic studies of the local population, capturing their everyday life, their religion and mythology. Famous personalities were photographed and photographic cataloguing of Indian antiquities was undertaken. The photographers travelled with the British Army, photographing the wars and the cantonment life with its club and sports facilities. They reported the news, were involved in land surveys and photographed the development of the railway network and other new technology or infrastructure and urban planning efforts undertaken in the large cities. Postcards featured the newly built town halls, high courts, universities, clubs, boulevards and gardens.

Images of the old modes of transport were one of the favourite subjects on early picture postcards, sent home by Europeans living in India. Horse-driven carriages (ticca garhi), tongas, recklas, bullock carts, palanquins, camel and elephant rides continued as the favoured modes of personal transport for both Indians and Europeans.

Today, anyone working on the social history of that time can find an ocean of information in these picture postcards. There are even picture postcards about postcards, post offices and their processes, of stamps, coins and flags of that time. Often, postcards were used as a medium of commercial advertising, or as invitation for events or by shops and establishments to reach out to customers.

The colonial perspective comes out most clearly in the ethnographic subjects of the picture postcards which documented, at times mockingly, the “types of native people” of India and their “jobs or occupations”. Coupled with books like Behind my Bungalow and Inside the Katchery, the lavish lifestyle of the colonial European with an army of servants became a popular subject of picture postcards sent back home by the Europeans.

Many years later, the granddaughter of Babu Jagjivan Ram, a Dalit leader and freedom fighter of India, came across such postcards being sold on the streets of London, when she relocated there for her studies. Devangana Kumar, who grew up in elite Delhi bungalows as a politician’s daughter, was so taken aback by the social inequalities of colonial India that she brought some of these picture postcards to India and created an exhibition showcasing them in 2012. Today, these picture postcards are an important reminder of India’s past and not mere nostalgia of a time gone by.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Picturesque India: A Journey In Early Picture Postcards (1896–1947), Sangeeta and Ratnesh Mathur, Niyogi Books, 2018.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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One of them was Kodandapani, the research creamery’s caretaker, accompanied by a short, thin man, popularly known as ‘Barot Kaka’. Barot Kaka, on seeing Kurien, flashed a smile at him and extended his hands to take hold of the luggage. Kurien shook his head and politely rejected, saying, ‘No, no. I’d carry them myself.’ But Kaka would hear nothing of it and snatched all the luggage from Kurien.

Kurien shrugged his shoulders, smoothed his dishevelled hair, and kept checking the time. Kodandapani, almost bursting with joy, thought to himself, ‘Thank God, Kurien is here! Now I can return to Bangalore on the next available train. Anand has just tired me out!’

While they were still talking to Kurien, he started walking in search of a parked vehicle that he assumed they had come in to pick him up. Instead, he saw a bullock cart with two handsome bulls swishing their tails, waiting for them. Barot Kaka threw the luggage in and jumped into the driver’s seat. A perplexed Kurien clambered into the cart, and the cart carriage lurched forward. Kodandapani also hopped in, winking at him. Kurien asked the bullocky to take them straight to the research creamery. That was Kurien’s first rickety, bone-rattling ride to take them to the neglected research creamery under the National Dairy Research Institute.

Kurien kept ironing out his wrinkled shirt with his palm, and there was dirt on his pants which he probably got from the long journey on the train. His hair was also caked with dirt and looked shabby. Kodandapani took a good look at Kurien. ‘You need to rest first,’ he warned Kurien, adding an afterthought, ‘Today is Friday the 13th. Don’t start your new duty on an unlucky day. Why don’t you wait a day more and join tomorrow?’

Kurien frowned, shook his head, and said, ‘No. I don’t like what I see here. Let me take charge today and allow things to go wrong. I’m not interested in staying here too long.’

Riding in the bullock cart was new for Kurien, and his entire body started rattling at the same time simultaneously. He frowned and sweated profusely, though it was early winter. The trees were bare, and the path deserted. There was not even a shop in the vicinity. This was worse than he had imagined. He couldn’t see a single automobile, and people were walking or hitchhiking on bullock carts. Most of them chattered away in either Hindi or Gujarati; they gaped when they heard English. Everything about Anand made him miss the thriving New York nights. He closed his eyes and tried to erase the memory of the roaring automobiles that passed through the crowded streets in America. His heart skipped a beat when he thought of his friends and the lively parties all night, laughing and enjoying themselves.

Picture courtesy: Ministry of Railways/Wikimedia Commons.

Kurien took a deep breath and was determined to fit in, though he knew it was not an easy task. To make matters worse, he was a non-vegetarian and a Christian. The people of Anand stared at the young gentleman who came to their village with strange and foreign habits, and they stifled a laugh. Some also went to the extent that they were reluctant to rent him a house. He went knocking at every door to find suitable accommodation. Barot Kaka also tried talking to the villagers in favour of his boss. The villagers averted their heads and barely acknowledged him. It bothered him that they could hardly accept him as part of their lives. Moreover, him being a Malayali bachelor added to his woes. In 1949, the orthodox and vegetarian Gujarati community was too prejudiced to welcome an outsider like him.

Finally, Kurien managed to rent an untended garage owned by the research creamery’s superintendent. The garage was next to the creamery. It was a dingy place with no windows or bathrooms. To top it all, the floor had a pit filled with grease. Kurien thought to himself; perhaps the hole would have been used by the mechanics to stand and repair the car. He gritted his teeth in frustration, but suddenly, the engineer in him awakened, wasting no time. Soon he made a temporary bathroom by partitioning the room with a piece of canvas. He burrowed a hole and made windows on the wall. He threw some mud into the grease pit and levelled the ground. Kurien was all ablaze. This zest in Kurien to solve anything life throws at him led him a long way in the future.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Verghese Kurien: The Man Who Brought Milk to a Million Homes, M. S. Meenakshi, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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There are stories to explain the presence of a particular stone (The Story of Kamhua Noknu village; The Story of the Stone), tree (the banyan tree at the centre of the village, in the Kamhua Migration Story) or the origins and characteristics of various animals and plants, mankind and his institutions. Two narratives, How God Settled on Earth and The Story of the Two Gourds, recount the activities of semi-divine heroes. In the former story, the lower world becomes the human domain but there is no description of a glorious heaven as in the Christian traditions. We are told instead that the upper and lower worlds are close and that it is possible to move from one to the other by a ladder. Topa, who is the hero of the latter story, is claimed as an ancestor to a family that currently resides in the village and by the melding of fiction and fact, the story is anchored to specific territory which makes it personal and meaningful. For the Wancho, life after death was imagined to be a natural continuation from life on earth and in one story a boy undertakes a journey with his mother to the world of the dead, and he is sent back to earth.

Illustration by Tara Douglas accompanying The Story of the Two Gourds.

Wancho fables that ascribe human qualities to animals sometimes enclose a moral message, although it is not always explicitly stated. The Wancho people are fond of anecdotes that are based on sharpness of wits and the interest of stories that show the cleverness of one animal and the stupidity of another, lies in the humour of the deceptions. Clever Tortoise (Mongman Khunkhalo) is a variation of a familiar story about a race that was popularised by Aesop, and appears in cultures from eastern Asia to Native America. In the local version, it is the tortoise and the tiger that are competitors and the story meanders beyond the conclusive deception that secured the race to relate how the tiger’s desire for revenge was repeatedly foiled by the clever tortoise. In contests with stronger opponents, the weak hero always enjoys the favour of the storyteller. For instance, The Story of Tiger, Man and Cicada shows weak but clever Ajusa (who, as a human being, is the hero of the story), defeating the strong tiger in a series of contests by seeking alliances with smaller creatures: the cicada and the bulbul. In another tale, the deceptive boasts by the small (but cunning) Porcupine (Odee) makes him thoroughly intimidating to the elephant. The archetypal mischief-maker, who features in the myths of Native America and Canada, appears in The Story of Flying Fox (Loakla): this flying fox is a liminal being that is not easily categorised, and acting as a double agent, he becomes the instigator of conflict between species. Trickery is a recurring theme of the historical recollections and if the pranks appear unsophisticated to the newcomer, the presentation is easy to recollect.

The spoken memories of the Wancho storytellers convey realistic, fluid portraits of reality and human nature: of lived experience, its textures, sights and senses at a particular period of history. Territorial rights are the common cause of bitter disputes, and covenants or pacts are drawn between villages over land, as recalled by The True Story of how Lonu (Ogamaan) Jing was given to Kamhua Noknu by Mintong Village. In the separate account of The Story of our Village and the Village in Myanmar the kinship relations of Kamhua and Kahdan (a village in Myanmar) are exposed in the extraordinary alliance that had been considered necessary for the security of the village at the time. Hence these memories shed light on historical relationships between villages: the social hierarchy between paramount and subsidiary villages and the resilience of the Wancho people during volatile periods that were sometimes characterised by immense physical hardship.

Some Wancho stories are recollections of the journeys of migration from specific villages and the subsequent establishment of new villages. The storytellers of Kamhua Noknu summon vivid details of the strategies that were mobilised by the people of nearby Nyinu to outsmart the rival villagers and lay claim to the land. Chailai Pansa also reported that Nyisa had once been comprised of inhabitants from Nyinu and from Wakka, the two powerful villages on either side. The notorious villagers of Nyinu had succeeded in outsmarting their rivals who were compelled to relocate to another place.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Myth, Memory & Folktale of The Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh: The Stories of Our Ancestors, Tara Dougals and Jatwang Wangsa, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The canal Ali Mardan Khan built was the extension of an older canal built during the 14th century. In its modified form it transported water from the upper reaches of the Yamuna River, some 75 miles upstream, to the new capital. The canal was 25 feet wide and 25 feet deep for much of its course. It was presumably a somewhat narrower, shallower channel by the time it entered the city at its north-west corner, through the Kabul Gate, which no longer stands.

It was soon realised that as it traversed the ground outside on its way to the city, the canal’s water could be used to good effect. One of the first people to lay out a garden next to the canal outside the city wall was the princess Roshanara, Shahjahan’s daughter. Her older sister Jahanara, who was her father’s favourite, had been given a garden inside the city walls, and next to it she had developed a large sarai and a market square known as Chandni Chowk, or ‘Moonlight Square’. Roshanara was less favoured, but nevertheless, like most women of the Mughal royal family, she had independent means and considerable resources. Out of these resources in 1650 she commissioned the garden which is named after her. The garden lay midway between the canal and the highway that stretched all the way from Bengal to the north-western provinces of the Mughal empire and which later came to be known as the Grand Trunk Road. We have little evidence of what the garden would have looked like in Mughal times. It was probably surrounded by a wall, since a brick gateway with traces of coloured tilework on the exterior survives on the eastern side. The wall is now a modern one.

At some distance inside the gateway lies a building. In form it is a large pavilion, or baradari, standing on a platform in the middle of a shallow pool. The pool, which no longer contains water, has a decorative edge. In the middle of the baradari is a small roofless chamber supported on pillars. The pillars are of the style called ‘cypress-bodied’, evoking the cypress tree in their tapered shape. They are covered in a pattern of leaves. The plaster surfaces above the pillars are painted with botanical motifs, among which the sita ashok trees with their bunches of flowers figure prominently. In the centre of the chamber lies a patch of earth which marks Roshanara’s final resting place.

Painted limestone plaster and intricately carved stone jalis are seen at the tomb of Roshanara Begum (1617–1671). Photograph by: Prabhas Roy

The princess had lived through some ups and downs. She grew up in the shadow of her older sister Jahanara, and there is likely to have been some rivalry between the two. Jahanara was not only her father’s favourite, she was also close to her brother Dara Shukoh, who had been nominated the heir apparent by their father. Roshanara was closer to another brother, Aurangzeb, and she actively supported him when he rose up in rebellion against his father and seized the throne. Roshanara was rewarded for her support. When Aurangzeb had his formal coronation in the Red Fort on 5 June 1659, she had been given presents worth five lakhs of rupees, which was a huge sum in those days.

With the accession of Aurangzeb, Roshanara became the head of the palace, a position Jahanara had earlier occupied. Within a few years however she fell out of favour with Aurangzeb, who suspected her of political intrigues. Then in 1666, when Jahanara returned to Delhi and Aurangzeb made her the head of the palace, Roshanara again retreated into the shadows, where she died in 1671. She was buried in this pavilion in the garden she had created.

After Roshanara’s death her garden remained royal the garden was confiscated, along with other royal property, with members of the Mughal royal family using it as a retreat from time to time. As the power of the Mughal emperors declined, particularly in the first half of the 19th century with the coming of the British to Delhi, they did find it difficult to exercise complete control over these royal properties. In 1853 some people went to the extent of building a house in the Roshanara Bagh, driving away the emperor’s guard when he tried to intervene. In 1857, after the revolt had been suppressed, the garden was confiscated, along with other royal property.

Red powderpuff (Calliandra haematocephala) flower in full bloom at Roshnara Bagh. Photograph by: Prabhas Roy

Then in 1874 it was handed over to the city’s Municipal Committee, which turned it into a pleasure garden for public use. The baradari was repaired, and creepers were grown so as to cover its walls. Goldfish were introduced in the pool. The character of the garden at large was altered by the building of motorable roads through it.

A landmark in the history of the garden came in 1922, with the establishment of the Roshanara Club, which was founded, as an official letter of the time put it, ‘to provide for the opportunity of sporting and social intercourse among gentlemen in Delhi irrespective of politics, caste and creed.’

Topiary work enlivens the green lawns of Roshanara Bagh. Photograph by: Prabhas Roy

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Gardens of Delhi, Swapna Liddle and Madhulika Liddle, photographed by Prabhas Roy, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Knowledge of supernatural and divine powers and their local manifestation

Goddesses, gods and ghosts are transcendental powers with particular qualities that become powerful at specific moments of time and at specific places and then can interfere in the life of the community or an individual. These powers may be classified in the following manner:

1. Divine powers with sacred places

These are “Mother-goddesses” like Devli-madi, Gumai-mata, etc. and male gods like Ahindro dev, Govaldev, Kalakad dev or Kavadiyo dev. All these divine powers have a local character, i.e. they are worshiped mainly by the people living in the direct environment of their main sanctuary.

2. Divine heroes

Several narratives speak of male and female “creator-heroes” like Koldabio and Kuntarani, who are considered to have been powerful personalities of the past, responsible for introducing new techniques or customs, who, however, don’t receive much worship nowadays and who are by many thought of as being no longer active in this world. But their names appear often in invocations along with deities.

3. Powerful animal gods

The most dreaded animals are tigers, crocodiles and probably also poisonous snakes. They are considered to be spiritual powers with a strong influence on human welfare. They are not only directly destructive with their teeth and claws through attacks on humans and cattle; they can in addition send misfortune, cause but also prevent disaster.

4. Field and disease gods

There are strong supernatural powers whose activities are specialized, i.e. who are like Kakabalio, tough disease-bringers and at the same time healers or, like Himariyo, helpers in agriculture but also destroyers of crops. Contrary to the goddesses and gods with well-known sanctuaries open for worship to everyone, these “local” gods are worshiped everywhere nearby the farm houses and hamlets.

5. Souls of the dead

Because the souls of the deceased are considered to be active powers that can harm the living, they, too, are looked upon as supernatural powers, which need to be given regular attention – at least for some time until they have quieted down and are no cause for disorder anymore. 

6. Hindu goddesses and gods

Since the 1950s, Hindu gods and goddesses like Shiva and Ganesh, the Devi, Krishna, Rama and Hanuman replace more and more traditional divine powers. Several bhagats, priests, included in their stories names of gods like Ram, Mahadev (Shiva) or Bhagvan, replacing the ones of local traditions with these names of impressive Hindu gods.

Indigenous voices on divine powers

When a bhagat, a priest and healer like Honio bhagat of Ranveri spoke of an “unspecific deity”, he used the word dev, god, for the divine male and devi, goddess, mata, mother, or the diminutive madi, small mother, for the divine feminine power. Only one bhagat preferred the Hindu term bhagvan and another one used Ram for any male deity in narratives.

Most of these deities, whether they are connected with a well-known sanctuary or are animal gods, field gods or disease gods and goddesses, are present for everyone in the form of stones or natural rocks.

Likewise, Honio bhagat of Ranveri (near Valod) says:

Pathar no dev chhe, pan pathar nathi, god is of stone, but is not the stone.

It is likely that specific stones and rocks stand for divine powers, i.e. mark the spaces where these deities can become manifest; these gods and goddesses, however, “look” different. For them, the rock, where the goddess or god “lives”, is a golden palace, visible only to the devotee during a ceremony. The deity can move at her own will and becomes visible in human form.

Worship site for Himariyo Dev, marked by a terracotta horse offering. Via the Eberhard Fischer Photographic Archive, Museum Rietberg, Zürich.

Religious narratives

Whatever we heard from the bhagats were unconnected bits of knowledge about their own divine powers and their accomplishments, but we are not aware of any well-structured body of sacred knowledge. The stories recited were more entertaining than containing beliefs substantiating moral standards or cultural values.

Creation myths

How the earth had come into existence is told by Radatia Jethia, bhagat from Jamkhadi:

The sun (or Ram) asked karchelo, crab (or Mahadev, Shiva): ‘This flood and water is everywhere. So, what should we do?’ Mahadev-karchelo dug holes all over and the water seeped through these holes and thus the land came into existence.

How human beings and animals were created, Honio bhagat narrated:

(Once) Bhagvan sent two legs, two feet and one nose to the earth. They arrived separately. And he combined them here. One man and then one woman were made, in the same way. Both of them got together. By this the family grew, it became larger and larger.

Mulji Khura, bhagat from Khumbia tells another version:

Raja Bantol and Balvindhan made two statues of clay and gave them life. That is how we (humans) came into existence. Balvindhan and those people painted dots on stones and by that Ahindro (dev) and Kavadio (ghosts) came into existence. The first rain fell on Kalakakad.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Art for Tribal Rituals in South Gujarat, India: A Visual Anthropological Survey of 1969, Eberhard Fischer and Haku Shah, Niyogi Books, 2021.]

[ edited this piece.]

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Commenting on the complex intersections between medicine and literature, Jane Wood notes, ‘medicine and literature [have] looked to each other for elucidation and inspiration’. In their article, ‘Literature and Medicine: Contributions to Clinical Practice,’ the authors focus upon the relationship: ‘Narrative accounts of patients’ experiences of illness are regularly considered in medical school courses and in professional reflections on the patient-physician relationship, aging, death and dying, disability, and women’s health’ (Charon et al.). They also claim that the acquaintance with literary works and ‘writing in narrative genres allow physicians and students to better understand patients’ experience and to grow in self-understanding, and literary theory contributes to an ethical, satisfying, and effective practice of medicine’ (Charon et al.). Fictional depictions of epidemics, diseases, and other health conditions can create awareness about health and hygiene. Literature can play a crucial role in generating awareness about health and society and may persuade readers to contemplate important questions on the intersections of health and humanities.

In the European as well as American literary histories, some of the prominent authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, William Somerset Maugham, Anton Chekhov, Robin Cook, and William Carlos Williams hailed from medical disciplines. Similarly, doctor-writers such as Rashid Jahan, Kalpish Ratna, Punathil Kunjabullah, Guruprasad Kaginele have made their mark on the literary map of India.

Across the globe, India is identified as the birthplace of Ayurveda and Yoga, the ancient systems of medicine and health, and is also known for ancient medical texts such as Sushruta Samhita and Charaka Samhita produced by early medical practitioners. Other classical systems of medicine such as Siddha, Amchi, and Naturopathy have also been prevalent in different parts of India for centuries. Apart from the indigenous systems of medicine, the country has also nourished foreign systems of medicine such as Unani (Graeco-Islamic), homeopathy, and allopathy on its soil by adopting and adapting them. Medical pluralism has existed in India for centuries but, as Khatri and Joshi claim, ‘the healthcare of the masses was always dependent upon the more informal and un-institutionalized sector’. In early times, it was difficult for the common folk to get access to Ayurvedic and Unani practitioners. The practitioners ‘easily invariably catered to the needs of the kings, lords, and the elites. There has always been a divide between the folk and professional sectors of medicine, with folk medicine catering to the masses’. As an alternative system, folk medicine has also been existing along with other systems. The presence of magico-religious healers, bone setter pahalwans, street-dentists, snake-bite healers in both urban and rural localities underscores how even in contemporary India, folk healing is a popular alternative system of cure and healing for the masses.

The roots of the modern/western system of medicine can be traced back to colonialism. It is believed that the Portuguese introduced western medicine in India in the sixteenth century. In his book, Projit Bihari Mukharji comments on the presence of ‘western medicines’ in the region: ‘South Asia had been exposed to ‘western’ medicine for at least two centuries before the term daktar emerged as a socially significant entity. Numerous European medical travellers such as Francois Bernier, Niccolao Manucci, Garcia d’Orta, and John Ovington, visited Mughal South Asia’ (Mukharji 1). The East India Company brought medical practitioners with them and established medical departments in various parts (Bengal, Madras, and Bombay presidencies) of colonial India to look after the health and the welfare of their military personnel and civilians. Commenting on the medical system in colonial India, David Arnold notes: ‘Nineteenth-century India presents us with a medical system that attempted not just to function for the benefit of the colonial rulers themselves (though that was undoubtedly one of its priorities) but also, often ineffectually, to straddle the vastness of a peculiarly colonial divide’ (Mukharji 7). The advent of modern medicine (allopathy) in India appears to have created a dichotomy in the medical landscapes of India—a binary between traditional systems of medicine and modern medicine.

Though scholars of medicine have been writing manuals, treatises, and other medical texts on health and hygiene from ancient times, it won’t be wrong to say that the genre of fiction provided authors to reflect upon the issues on health, hygiene, and cure. Thus, from the beginning of the twentieth century—when the genre of short fiction was still in its early phase—several celebrated and less-known authors, wrote short stories dealing with the issues of illness, trauma, health, and medicine. Their writings demonstrate the ethnomedicinal wisdom of different communities, home remedies, plural cultures of medicine, and issues of biomedicalization amongst others.

Medical Maladies: Stories of Disease and Cure from Indian Languages focuses on various contexts of health, illness, patient care, and medical ethics. Stories in the collection deal with different facets of disease and cure in India: How are the different systems of medicines depicted in the genre of short fiction? How are traditional practitioners (vaids, hakims, folk healers, midwives) as well as modern doctors and surgeons represented in Indian short fiction? How do doctors incorporate medical knowledge into their narratives? How are the spaces of hospitals, nursing homes, health clinics depicted in short stories? In what ways are the ethics of care and empathy dealt with in the genre of short stories? Who has the right over the patient’s body? How are issues of medical paternalism portrayed in Indian short fiction? How do authors narrate the doctor-patient decision making process in their stories?

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from Medical Maladies: Stories Of Disease And Cure From Indian Languages, Haris Qadeer, Niyogi Books, 2022.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In the twelfth chapter, Krishna elaborates on the visible versus the invisible in response to Arjuna’s question. One of the shortest chapters of the Gita, the stress here is on devotion and dedication. People dedicate themselves to different missions and each one of us has a unique way of being devoted. While some may work for the needy by actually visiting their homes, others may raise funds for them, sitting in their own homes. Doctors cure patients by prescribing medicines but scientists help in the process by researching on drugs. People from varied cultures have their own way of praying, and follow different protocols for worship or offering prayers. All paths of bhakti, or devotion, that are adopted lead to the same destination; the routes, however, may be different from one another and thus give way to misconceptions about the goal of the journey.

Some of the areas Krishna throws light on in the conversation here are:

• the significance of focus

• visible vs. invisible

• degrees of devotion

• devotees and devotion

• meditation as a tool

• deliverance as a reward

• restraining the mind

• striving for perfection

A phrase often used in translation is ‘surrendering of the intellect’. It may be useful to clarify here that, this by no means implies taking leave of one’s senses or indulging in mindless devotion. What surrender here stands for is complete acceptance and confluence of thought processes to focus on one idea, or reality.

Human beings are favourably inclined towards creating symbols for ideas. We go to the extent of personifying abstractions and emotions and like to keep photographs of loved ones close to us as we find this reassuring and heart-warming, especially so in case of those who may be far away, and, over a period of time the once familiar faces may start to become hazy in our minds.

A case in point is the ever-growing popularity of audio-visual learning for children. Present day learning outcomes are a considerable improvement on the days of yore when a black and white textbook was the only source of learning for children. Does the same hold good for keeping faith, and focusing on the greatest abstraction of them all—God himself? Probably yes. This explains the tendency to hold sacred a stone, a river or a mountain—indeed sometimes entire cities. Humanisation of the gods seems to work for us because that is the only form we can identify with and make our own.

So far so good. But trouble starts when we want our neighbour to also see divinity in the same tree as we do, or to feed the same animal that we do. We frequently forget and fail to understand, that others could be having their own symbols that could be as sacred to them as ours are to us.

Creating symbols for the purpose of better focus and identification is an innocuous activity per se. But it can become problematic when we try to convince the world that our symbol is better than theirs. If each devotee were to nurture a particular image of God and keep it strictly personal, the world might be a better place to live in.

Reverting to the narrative, by now Arjuna has recovered from his state of nervousness and despondency, and wants to know more from the fountain of knowledge, Krishna.

12.01: Arjuna enquired: Which is preferred—those who are sincerely devoted to your worship or those who worship the unmanifested form? Who do you consider to be more perfect in yoga?

In the previous chapter, Arjuna sees the cosmic form of the Lord, which encompasses the entire universe. Fascinating though the sight was, Arjuna is overwhelmed and he voices his preference for the more human form of the Lord and his wish is granted. Regaining his composure and accepting the reality that his friend Krishna was much more than what he appeared to be, now Arjuna wishes to know about the kind of devotees Krishna looks at more favourably. Some individuals worship the visible form of the Supreme Power as he appears on earth. As an extension of this, they may also see God in everything around them. Belief in idol worship, offering prayers to trees, rivers and nature as a whole are well-known phenomena.

There are others who do not follow this path and focus on the invisible, the unmanifested form of God. Such devotees may create their own image of the Lord, or simply pray to the invisible Force and chart their own path of devotion.

Arjuna is curious to know which of these devotees Krishna prefers, and subsequently bestows his blessings on. God has both aspects—the omnipresent and omniscient power, as also the incarnation in human form on earth. The latter has a specific palpable form which for mere mortals might be easier to relate to, while the former is invisible and thus for some might be difficult to focus on. 

This duality could well be compared to our own existence. While no one has ever seen or felt the soul, the human body is tangible and can be seen, felt and heard and so appears more real than the soul. But the reality is that both exist, the body and soul.

[ has given 51�Թ� permission to publish this excerpt from The Bhagavad Gita: A Life-changing Conversation, Vandana R. Singh, Niyogi Books, 2022.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Bhagavad Gita: A Life-Changing Conversation appeared first on 51�Թ�.

I turn to Gaurav. ‘And what’s your name? Rabbani, my sister, wanted to know who gave up their ice cream for her.’

‘Gaurav,’ the brother answers gruffly.

‘The jail was heartbreaking, right? I saw you guys there.’

‘It was boring,’ he answers impatiently.

It’s cute that Gaurav thinks I’m interested in his opinion.

Aanchal shakes her head. ‘It made me furious,’ she replies.

‘Why are you talking to him?’ Gaurav protests.

‘Because your mother is not here so we can talk and choose not to be bored,’ I answer Gaurav. I turn to her. ‘Furious? Why did it make you furious?’

She digs her toes into the sand and turns her gaze towards it. ‘It seemed so . . . pointless. So much pain and suffering for independence. And for what? The best-case scenario for any Indian is to get settled in the country that ruled us. It seems like we wasted all those lives.’

‘Happiness comes from freedom of choice too. Now, we are free to go to the country of the gora even if it’s on illegal boats or whatever. Is that what you plan to do? Move abroad?’

She and her brother look at each other and share a soft chuckle. She turns back to me. ‘We can’t afford it,’ she confesses.  ‘We can’t even afford this resort. We are only here because we won a lucky draw.’

‘We should go, Didi,’ urges Gaurav, pulling at his sister’s arm. Gaurav, half-scared, half-angry, looks towards the resort building as if someone has trained binoculars on us. He then looks at me with a creepy smile and says, ‘If you want to stay, give me your phone.’

‘No,’ Aanchal warns Gaurav. ‘You have played enough games.’

‘You can talk to a random guy who’s trying to hit on you, but I can’t even play a game? How’s that—’

I interrupt him. ‘I’m not trying to hit on your sister, Gaurav.’

‘Of course you will say that!’

‘I have a girlfriend back in Dubai. I mean, I did before I came on this trip. Now I’m not too sure where we are at,’ I answer and, just to poke him, I add sincerely, ‘You would know, right, how tricky relationships are? You look like someone who’s a bit of a . . . playboy?’

Aanchal turns to me. ‘You live in Dubai?’

‘Who cares!’ whines Gaurav. He tugs at her arm. ‘Didi, please, can I have your phone? What’s the point of a vacation if I can’t have fun? I will play just one game and give it back to you!’

‘The point of a vacation is also so you can meet new people,’ I offer an answer. ‘Did you guys notice there’s literally no one young in our group except the three of us?’

Gaurav stares at me blankly. ‘New people aren’t more interesting than Call of Duty.’

‘You’re not entirely wrong,’ I concur. ‘The guns in the new version are legit. The new camo skins are a little expensive, though.’

Aanchal gives her phone to Gaurav. ‘Five minutes,’ she warns him. ‘And don’t hold the phone too close to your eyes. And not 100 per cent brightness, okay?’

He takes the phone, walks gleefully to the nearest sunbed and sits down. I hear the faint sounds of Call of Duty: Mobile.

‘You’re right about the young people . . . everyone’s old,’ says Aanchal.

‘Your brother’s cute in that annoying way that boys are. Never wanted a brother, though,’ I lie.

Her brother’s not cute. He’s skinny and shrieky and nervous-y, and the way he leapt at the phone reminded me of Gollum. But the new Call of Duty has been making boys of all ages behave that way.

I continue, ‘To be honest, I never wanted a sister too. But it’s cool now. So, you like it here?’

‘I’ve never been to a place like this,’ she remarks. ‘When I read about the Cellular Jail, I never thought one day I would get to see it. All this is new . . . exciting. And I have definitely not met anyone who lives in Dubai.’

[Excerpted from World’s Best Girlfriend by Durjoy Datta with permission from Penguin Random House India]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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It seems odd to think that Krishna would urge anyone to actually kill people. In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to go ahead and fight, and persuades him that he would not actually be killing anyone, because they are all already dead, and ‘that which has the body’ is immortal. (Arjuna does not ask—if I am really not killing anyone when I kill them, why kill them at all?) Moreover, Arjuna is asked to fight his friends and relatives, people with whom he has grown up and people he cares about. Arjuna’s refusal to fight tells us that he is a sensitive human being who values life and cares for relationships.

The first (and obvious) response to this problem is to recapitulate the narrative context. In the backstory, there has been much injustice. Peace talks having failed, the only way to restore righteousness is to go to war. Arjuna has to fight his own family members—and this is also a way to illustrate that we must stand up for righteousness even if it means going against people who are dear to us. Another response to the problem is to think of the war as an allegory. Gandhi had such a point of view: he saw the war of the Mahabharata as the war going on in our selves between the forces of good and evil.

My own solution has been to look at what Krishna recommends when he speaks more broadly, and to look for his assessment of violence. What is the sleight of hand that allows Arjuna to fight in battle and yet follow an ideal path? Chapter 16, where Krishna describes divine and demonic natures, provides clues. Stanzas 16.1 to 16.3 are one unit:

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abhayaṃ sattvasaṃśuddhirjñānayogavyavasthitiḥ |
dānaṃ damaśca yajñaśca svādhyāyastapa ārjavam || (16.1)

This translates to: Fearlessness, goodness, purity, steady with knowledge and yoga, charity, self-control and yajnas, self-study, austerity, uprightness…

ahiṃsā satyamakrodhastyāgaḥ śāntirapaiśunam |
dayā bhūteṣvaloluptvaṃ mārdavaṃ hrīracāpalam || (16.2)

This translates to: Non-violence, truth, lack of anger, renunciation, pacifism, non-slander, compassion for all living beings, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness…

tejaḥ kṣamā dhṛtiḥ śaucamadroho nātimānitā |

bhavanti saṃpadaṃ daivīmabhijātasya bhārata || (16.3)

This translates to: Radiance, endurance, courage, purity, non-betrayal, not too much pride—these are the assets/wealth of those who are born to a divine destiny.

It is clear from the above stanzas that the Gita considers non-violence divine, and violence, demonic. How, then, is it possible for Arjuna to be asked to go to war? Is he being asked to be demonic? Krishna spells out the duties of each varna, and says that kshatriyas do not flee in battle.

śauryaṃ tejo dhṛtirdākṣyaṃ yuddhe cāpyapalāyanam |

dānamīśvarabhāvaśca kṣātraṃ karma svabhāvajam || (18.43)

This translates to: Heroism, radiance, courage, skill, not fleeing in battle, charity, and the spirit of being in charge—these are the natural duties of kshatriyas. Arjuna is a kshatriya, a warrior, and participating in a war is his duty. However, he is also told how to participate in battle. The answer to this is throughout the Gita, in the idea of conducting one’s duty without attachment.

niyataṃ saṅgarahitamarāgadveṣataḥ kṛtam |

aphalaprepsunā karma yattatsāttvikamucyate || (18.23)

This translates to: The action that is controlled and detached, done without desire or hatred, with no wish for results, that is a sattvic action. An elaborate system of ‘gunas’ (qualities) is presented in the Gita. The material world is made of a combination of the qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas. People’s characteristics depend on which guna is predominant in them—and everything from diet preferences to kinds of rituals and charity are governed by these gunas. Among the gunas, sattva leads to happiness. Krishna asks Arjuna to leave aside feelings of hatred and violence, to not seek the fruit of action, and to do his duty. These are sattvic according to Krishna’s own exposition, even though Arjuna was born in the kshatriya varna.

A reader may be troubled by these concerns and choose to reject the Gita entirely. However, considering the depth of wisdom and the range of ideas contained in the Gita, I believe, such a rejection would be a colossal loss. Especially because Krishna says that his message is not a commandment or decree.

NOT A DECREE

At a public forum, once, someone in the audience asked me if I thought Gita was authoritative, and if yes, how did I reconcile the statements about varna. I explained my reasoning, and finally added—if you think God gave us an authoritative Gita, did he also not also give us the intelligence to think? Reason has a respectable place in the Gita. There are many words for the mind in Indian conceptions—buddhi, chitta and manas are some of them. ‘Buddhi’ is typically associated with reason, the rational mind, and with commonsense. Gita also mentions samkhya, which is one of the schools of Indian philosophy. Stanza 2.39 first introduces the term ‘buddhi’ as part of ‘buddhi-yoga’.

eṣā te’bhihitā sāṅkhye buddhiryoge tvimāṃ śṛṇu |

buddhyā yukto yayā pārtha karmabandhaṃ prahāsyasi ||

This translates to: This is declared in samkhya to you. But listen to this, about buddhi-yoga, Arjuna: When you are joined with buddhi, you avoid the bondage of karma.

Here, the reader may jump to the conclusion that everything that has been said up until then refers to samkhya, and that now Krishna is about to impart something about the path of ‘buddhi-yoga’. A quick review of samkhya philosophy, however, reveals that it does not really seem to have much to do with explaining the nature of atman. Instead, it is a dualistic system that explains the material world as the result of the interaction of ‘p�ܰ��ܲ���’ and ‘p����������پ�’—and this concept is, in fact, covered later in the Gita. Moreover, samkhya does not call for the presence of a divine entity, Ishvara, and that again seems at odds with the Gita. A simple way to understand the reference is that it could have been an early form of samkhya philosophy, or simply a more generic word that means ‘philosophy’, one which Arjuna would have studied. Understood this way, we are no longer caught up in the specifics of the reference. Instead, we begin to understand it as an official and formal system of philosophy or doctrine, and by contrast, ‘buddhi’ becomes an active application of Arjuna’s own intellect. This also works within the context of the next few stanzas, 2.42 to 2.46, in which Krishna speaks about the limitations of vedic information. This section ends with:

yāvānartha udapāne sarvataḥ saṃplutodake |

tāvānsarveṣu vedeṣu brāhmaṇasya vijānataḥ || (2.46)

This translates to: As much use there is for a well when water is plentiful everywhere; similarly, in all the vedas, for a brahmin who knows.

‘V������Բ��ٲ�ḥ’ is also derived from ‘jñ��’ (to know), and here, Krishna has pointed out the difference between samkhya and the application of one’s own mind, and Vedas and the person who already has knowledge. Simply put, Krishna is asking Arjuna to think for himself. Krishna then proceeds to talk instead about a focus on action without the desire for the results of actions. Those who think for themselves ought to figure out that the consequences and results are not in their control anyway.

DO AS YOU WISH

Finally, despite all of Krishna’s exhortations and recommendations, he gives Arjuna the choice to accept or reject them in 18.63—‘yathecchasi tathā kuru’ (do as you wish). The Gita is not a decree or a commandment.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On a breezy October day, a kite-flying day, my cousin Kader surprised me with a visit. He looked much older than I remembered, his hair thinner, his once smooth face now lined with worry. He was a well-known political writer who had worked for the Ministry of Education before the Spring Revolution. He was also known for his short stories.

For generations, his family had been one of the most important families in Kabul. Kader looked at me with his deep-set black eyes and spoke in a frantic voice, ‘Bar, you must leave immediately. The National Security and Russian soldiers are now searching house to house. They’ve already searched half of your neighborhood and they won’t stop.

You must come to my house immediately. It’s the only place that will be safe for you now.’

I did not know what to think. Things were so bad now, I wondered if I could trust my own cousin. He could have given in to the Communists, or he could be telling me this because they were holding someone in his family hostage.

I hated the Russians for making me doubt him, and I hated myself for doubting him.

‘Tashakor (Thank you). I’ll be okay,’ I assured him. ‘I have a hiding place that the National Security will never find.’

But he was adamant. ‘You must come to my house. It’s the only place that will be safe for you now.’

‘I need time to think,’ I said, deflecting his request.

‘There’s no time!’ he said.

I told him, ‘I have to think of my wife and children, my father and mother. I’m the only one who can take care of them.’

‘You won’t be much use to them dead,’ he said.

‘That is true, Kader. But before I leave my family and go to your house, I must speak with my father.’

Kader just sighed. ‘God be with you.’

That night I lay on the floor, unable to sleep. I could hear the National Security guards in the street outside my house shouting at people, ‘What is the password for tonight?’ If there was no response, there would be the sound of gunfire and I would flinch as if the bullet had ripped through me.

As soon as the sun appeared, I went up to my father’s bedroom where he spent most of his time since losing his leg years before. I told him about Kader’s visit. ‘Things have changed,’ I said. ‘Every house is being searched now. They will even search the general’s house. I can no longer hide from these crazy people.’

‘So, you think you should go stay with Kader?’ Baba asked.

‘We don’t know who’s honest anymore,’ I replied. Then the words I had dreaded saying for so long escaped my lips.

‘The time has come for me to leave.’

Baba didn’t say anything at first. This unsettled me because my father was never at a loss for words. When he finally did speak, his voice was weak. ‘I was afraid it might come to this,’ he said. ‘I’ve spoken with Abbas. He agreed that when the time comes, he would go with you. I will get word to him. You can leave tomorrow at first light.’

When I told my mother, who I called Babu, her body shuddered, but her lips were silent. My mother had a habit of never sitting still when she was nervous. First, she paced back and forth in the room. Then she walked from one room to the other. Then from one house in our compound to another.

She returned to our living room and continued pacing back and forth until I could take it no longer.

‘Sit!’ I told her. But she never sat. My wife Afsana was asleep in another room with our two children. I couldn’t find the tongue to tell her. But I knew I must.

‘Afsana?’ I called, waking her.

‘Baleh? (Yes?)’

‘It’s not safe for me here anymore…I must leave tomorrow.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, panic rising in her voice.

‘Kader came to see me. Things have become too dangerous now. Abbas is coming for me in the morning. He’ll make sure I get out safely. I’ll send for you and the children as soon as

I can.’

A painful silence followed. Afsana started to speak, but stopped. She knew there was nothing she could say or do now. We both lay awake all night.

As dawn approached, I went to say goodbye to my father.

He was sitting up in bed staring at nothing, his books and newspaper lying next to him, unread.

‘Ah, the time has come,’ he said. He seemed to be searching for something else to say; some last words of wisdom, some final advice from father to son. When he finally spoke, he spoke slowly, the words sticking in his throat, ‘Take care of yourself.’

I could not do this. ‘I won’t leave without taking you and Babu. I can’t leave without Afsana and the children,’ I said.

‘We’ll all go together!’

He was silent for a moment, his eyes never leaving my face. ‘Nay, you know that’s not possible,’ he said.

‘I can get friends to help us. They can take all your things.

We’ll go to Jalalabad. Everything will be all right.’

‘Nay, Bar. It is not practical. I’m too old and weak to be moved. The Russians won’t bother Babu, or Afsana, or the children. We’ll be safe here. If we try to leave, none of us will survive. Things are very bad, but I still have my house and my writings. But it is true, you are no longer safe here, so you must leave to save yourself. Let’s pray that in a few months, things will change.’

‘If that is your wish,’ I gave in.

‘Say goodbye to me now,’ Baba said. ‘I’m afraid you won’t see me again.’

‘How can you say that?’ I protested, feeling the pain of those words as though he were already dead.

He looked at me with sad, knowing eyes. ‘My father said the same thing to me just before I left for Paris,’ Baba said. ‘It was the last time I saw him.’

[Extracted from Red Sky Over Kabul: A Memoir of a Father and Son in Afghanistan by Baryalai Popalzai and Kevin McLean. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Portugal, although puny with a population of just over a million and nothing noteworthy about her ocean-going traditions, was the first European nation to chart a sea route to Asia.

The fall of Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the Ottoman Turks on 29 May  1453 made Portugal feel the need to open a new battlefront with the Ottoman Empire by joining forces with the mythical Rei Preste  João (King Prester John of Abyssinia, today’s Ethiopia), for which naval power was a prerequisite. Until then, Portugal only had half-decked sailboats and sailors who were unable to navigate out of sight of land and into the oceans.

A far-sighted Portuguese prince, Dom Henrique, better known as Henry the Navigator, invested some of his own wealth and that of the templars into shipbuilding and navigation. He launched a maritime school at Sagres on Portugal’s southwestern cape of São  Vicente facing the Atlantic. (Modern historians call Sagres a myth. In 1960, the Portuguese in Goa built a monument—a sextant with a  mariner’s globe—to commemorate 500 years of the Sagres School for navigation at Campal in Panjim. Portugal’s vessel to commemorate  the fifteenth-century voyages of discovery was named Sagres—she docked at Mormugao, Goa, in the mid-1990s amidst howls of protest  by local freedom fighters.) 

At Sagres, or some such place, Portuguese sailors were trained in cosmology, cartography, math, medicine and shipbuilding by hired Arabs, Jews, Genoese and Moroccans.

Henry the Navigator sponsored annual maritime expeditions to explore and map the west coast of Africa, to establish provisioning points en route and to constantly modify and improve the sturdiness of his sail ships. He died in 1460. After a lull of two decades, his nephew, King João II (1481–95), picked up the threads in 1480.

In 1487–88, Bartolomeu Dias made the historic rounding  of the much-feared Cape of torments, where Adamastor, the  tempestuous sea devil, was believed to swallow sail ships and turn white men black. With Portugal’s maritime conquest, the Cape of torments became the Cape of Good Hope. It was then that King  João II conceived the Plano da India, a plan entailing the search for a sea route to India. the fall of Constantinople to the ottomans had closed the land route to Asia and the trade of spices, silks and other Asian merchandise was now a monopoly in the hands of seafaring Arabs and Venetian merchants, who profiteered at the cost of Europe. Portugal would soon emerge a European leader in maritime discovery—and of the lucrative Asian trade!  the Portuguese were the first to arrive in India. Discoverer Vasco da Gama dropped anchor near Calicut in May 1498, long before the Mughals stepped into India. Calicut was, coincidentally, the hometown of India’s future defense minister, Vengalil Krishnan Kurup Krishna Menon—the principal backstage actor in the  1961 operation Vijay, which evicted the Portuguese after more than four-and-a-half centuries in India.

The Portuguese discovery of a sea route to India was an epoch- defining moment in the history of mankind. It would open the gates to an ‘Age of Discoveries’, lead to lands hitherto unknown to
the European world—in Africa, Asia, Australia and, accidentally, the Americas—and spur a commercial revolution, the initial indicators of globalization and a world economy. It was to change the world’s history, economics and politics. It had an underbelly too: it would  lead to colonialism and spur slavery.

Interestingly, Portugal’s prideful narrative of the ‘Age of  Discoveries makes no mention of the burgeoning and highly  profitable African slave trade that continued well into the nineteenth
century. Film-maker and journalist Ana Naomi de Sousa writes: ‘Until now, there has never been a single explicit reference, memorial or monument in Portugal’s public space to its pioneering role in the transatlantic slave trade, nor any acknowledgment of the millions of lives that were stolen between the 15th and 19th centuries. there is also a deafening silence on the cruelty and brutality that the Portuguese inflicted to achieve the domination of their trading posts and colonies.’

When it arrived at the shores of south-west India, Portugal was barely out of the late Middle Ages and on the threshold of the early Renaissance. Lisbon, established circa 1200 BC, was the oldest European capital city—older than Madrid, Rome, Paris and London. The Indian civilization was far more ancient, second only to Mesopotamia and Egypt, older than the civilizations of Maya/Mexico, China and Andes (Aztec, Inca); and all of those, much older than Europe.

The Portuguese set up spice-trading bases in Cochin (Kochi) and Cannanore (Kannur) on the Malabar coast. They raked in such giddy profits that the envious European royalty nicknamed their king, Manuel I, the Fortunate. Their Asian capital, initially in Cochin, was shifted to Goa in 1530, fifteen years after he died, thanks to Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese governor in India from 1509 to 1515. Albuquerque had conquered the Cidade de Goa (City of Goa) in 1510, and it appeared as though he had fallen in love with the place because he wanted it to be Portugal’s Asian capital.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Yes, she’s standing there, at the eastern end of Level 3 of Franz Josef Strauss airport beside a little-used revolving door, hidden behind a rental car counter, to which her craving for nicotine has blindly led her. A plastic duty-free bag pokes out of Asta’s shoulder bag, a stained pigskin monstrosity, and out of the plastic bag pokes a carton of Camels. Her suitcase, they told her at the Iberia airline counter, must have got stuck somewhere during transfer, either in San Salvador or Madrid. This was fairly common, but it would definitely arrive, maybe tomorrow or the day after, next week at the very latest.

In her right hand Asta is holding a newly opened Camel soft pack, the first of ten packets of 20, and a box of Nicaraguan matches, in her left a smouldering cigarette; she draws on it, hard, like someone who hasn’t been allowed one for ages, puzzling: Which is accurater: I’m standing in front of the door, or I’m standing behind the door? In front of, behind, accurater . . . One by one, the words, trapped in gas bubbles, seep out of the muddy terrain of the past, gradually filling the pitch-black firmament of my brainpan; and they are floating around up there as sedately as fluffy clouds, semi-transparent but their contours as clear as balloons. I can study each individual word at my leisure, interpret it, possibly understand it. —Accurater? Not all adjectives have a comparative form; this piece of wisdom from her distant school days now pops up on Asta’s horizon. What is accurate is that she’s outside, between the revolving door and a hip-high chrome ashtray brimming with brownish water and soggy cigarette butts. Not a pretty sight, but she doesn’t mind. She’s having enough trouble getting her bearings; the afternoon summer sun is dazzling her. And what she sees if she doesn’t look up into the painfully bright light but to the side, forwards or down, is virtually identical to what she saw as she smoked a couple more farewell cigarettes at Managua airport shortly before take-off: flagstones, concrete pillars, baggage trolleys, the glass front. Here though, thinks Asta, there are a few puddles, from which the sun is guzzling with all its rays, as if through infinitely long straws, as thirstily as a Bedouin camel; the puddles are shrinking before her eyes.

She lights the next cigarette and takes a few steps. Through a high window in the outside wall of the larder and changing room of the Chinese restaurant she passed on her way to the revolving door, she spies a young Asian man in jeans and a somewhat grubby white chef’s jacket done up to the chin with black knot buttons, fast asleep in his uncomfortable position across a line of four chairs. His flat, pale face is utterly calm; there’s only the occasional twitch of his protruding eyelids and at the corners of his slightly parted lips. He’s probably in the middle of a pleasant dream, thinks Asta, and she feels attracted to him precisely because she feels so safe behind the blue-tinted glass, out of reach of the sleeper on the other side. It’s not just his dream, she thinks, that sets him apart from me and from this place where both of us find ourselves . . .

Another image slides across the sight of the chef in the larder of the airport’s Chinese restaurant. That other man, thinks Asta, was Asian too and, if I guessed correctly, also a chef. When I met him back in the 1970s, I’d just graduated from my nursing course and already signed a contract with that clinic in Leipzig. I was about to leave my tiny flat in the city of my birth, Berlin, which I had never called my hometown, let alone the capital. My move to Leipzig-Plagwitz was dependent only on when my room was vacated at the retirement home for Saxon restaurateurs, which was honestly called Fading Light; the current occupant, a former headwaiter at the Interhotel Astoria, was breathing his final breaths at his daughter Elke’s, a nurse I knew from college.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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A pity, if your answer is no! If only because the soul experiences a tremendous release in that

moment. Instantly, body and soul part ways within your living self. They take wing on their

separate paths. One thing, however, is certain. It is better to die at an assassin’s hands than

escape. If you do escape, then say ‘swaha’ to the rest of your life, which is gone forever, like an

offering to a sacrificial fire. Every face you see after will be suspect. Even your own shadow

won’t seem to belong to you – but to the assassin. You will feel something piercing right

through your chest; you will squirm in sudden bursts of pain.

I have been in such a state since 16 November, the night on which I was attacked. The whole of

that day was spent standing in a queue in front of the bank. Just eight days earlier, one-

thousand- and five-hundred-rupee notes were banned in the country. The government was still

making mutually contradictory statements; the new notes were not yet ready. People camped

in front of banks day and night. News of them collapsing and dying in queues kept piling. I had

reached my workplace looking limp and wilted. I was on the fourth shift. The attack happened

when, after work, I was dropped off at the rusted gate of my rented house, just as I had started

to push it open. It was past midnight. The company vehicle that had dropped me had not even

disappeared from sight when a motorbike came up noiselessly from the dark. Someone who’s

lost his way inside the housing colony, I thought, and turned. I saw his hand slink between his

legs. Ah, an exhibitionist, thought I – a member of that eternal race, sure to outlast us all. Then

he pointed something at me. I did not peer again to make sure that it was a gun. I ducked; the

sound of a windowpane shattering rang terrifyingly. My consciousness was dripping away but I

saw him take aim again. I fell flat on my face. A bullet hit the ground, and the sand and dust got

into my eyes. I did not see him aim a third time, but I could foresee it. Clutching on to my life, I

rolled towards the road. My good luck or bad – a wild-looking young man, a neighbour whom I

had not yet met, arrived there on his hulk of a motorbike after a late-night movie. He braked

suddenly and honked repeatedly. The gunman’s vehicle sped away, and I escaped.

The young man helped me up. But body and soul had already parted. I am dead, I continued to

believe. My limbs stiffened. Still holding me up, honking, and shouting for help, he roused the

neighbours. I heard his voice as if from across a river. Death was the bluish-red-tinged bank of a

river – such things were revealed to me. I was crossing it, seated atop my bullet-ridden body as

a canoe. The river was the colour of flames. The ripples rose as cool tongues of flame towards

the sky, the spray of sparks scattered all over.

Some people ran up to us and carried me to the house of our neighbour, Dr Fernandes. The

doctor shook me awake gently, splattered water on my face. I was reborn into the disquiets of

life with great reluctance.

Completely exhausted, I lay still for about an hour, still craving for the violet shores of death.

Akhil Gupta, a Superintendent of Police and a resident of our colony, came up to me in between

and asked some questions. I could only babble. He told me that men from the local police

would be protecting me. I spent the rest of the night in the house of that ‘freaken’ young man. I

couldn’t but help a laugh even in my terrible state when I heard that his name was Mrityunjoy

Sen. His mother, Dr Sandeepa Sen, was a teacher at the university. She received me very kindly.

Dr Fernandes had given me a sleeping pill; I slept like I was rehearsing death. In the morning,

Sandeepa told me that I had screamed twice in my sleep. By the time I bid her goodbye and

staggered towards my house, my body had become a damp sheath of leather with soggy flesh

hanging inside. A sheath like the one Gurkhas use to keep their knives in. One used to conceal

the sharpness of the dagger and to protect the world outside from that sharpness.

The SP and the president and secretary of our Residents’ Association were waiting outside, in

front of the gate of my house. They were chatting about the wedding of an ex-minister’s

daughter. I overheard the inspector say that the bride’s sari was worth seventeen crore. The

optimism around black money vanishing was dimming, it seemed. I led them inside. The broken

shards of glass had fallen on the sit-out too. The inspector was observing the premises keenly.

He loosened the bullet that had broken the windowpane and pierced a wall. He frowned like a

great crime investigator, pressed his fingers on his lips, bent, craned his neck and stretched to

examine closely all of the 750 square feet, including a drawing-cum-dining area, a bedroom, a

study, a small living room, a kitchen, and a small work area outside, enclosed with an iron grille.

He asked me to describe what had passed. The president of our Residents’ Association H.H.

Reddy and the secretary Atul Shetty encouraged me to speak. Shetty recorded all of it on his

iPhone. Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity? Reddy expressed his doubt. A senior scholar

had been murdered this way. I, too, remembered the image of the blood-splattered pieces of

his round spectacles. Not surprising he died that way, said Shetty. He wrote false stories against

the government. Sandeepa Sen also writes such things, Shetty added, lowering his voice. He

shot the wrong person, the SP said to himself. For a split second, Samir’s face flashed in my

mind. But my voice did not rise. The three continued to ask questions which they themselves

answered. Gandhis are gone, said Shetty, now the contract killings are going to go up. But only

the ordinary folk are bereft of Gandhis, Reddy countered. They were talking about the five-

hundred-rupee notes, of course. The SP assured me that soon a detailed statement would be

taken from me. He promised Reddy that security in the colony would be increased. Soon, all of

them were gone. The house was now empty. My heart was still pounding. I was swamped with

guilt and the fear of humiliation. Intense darkness rolled and thrashed about inside my head.

After some time, in came a sub-inspector with swarthy cheeks and eyes that looked as though

sorrow had congealed in them forever, accompanied by a pot-bellied head constable and a

young woman constable who was at least five feet ten inches tall. They were to record my

statement. They asked me the following questions, and these were the responses I gave them:

‘What is your name?’

‘S���ٲⲹ������ⲹ.’

‘How long have you been living here?’

‘Sixteen months.’

‘Aren’t you afraid to live here alone?’

‘The woman who used to live here earlier was also alone.’

‘But you could have found a flat or a hostel room?’

‘Simply can’t put up with hostel wardens on top of everything at the age of forty-four.’

‘Where were you before you moved here?’

‘In Odisha.’

‘Why did you move here?’

‘Because I found a better job.’

‘What is your job?’

‘It is in the HR department of a software company.’

‘Do HR employees work at night?’

‘This is an American company.’

‘At what time did you go to work yesterday?’

‘At five, in the evening.’

‘Where were you until then?’

‘I had gone to the bank at ten in the morning.’

‘To deposit or withdraw?’

‘To withdraw.’

‘How much?’

‘The ink to mark those who change notes ran out. So I couldn’t change any money.’

‘Do you think that the motive was robbery?’

‘N��.’

‘Aren’t there security arrangements in your company’s vehicle? Shouldn’t they make sure that

you are safely inside your house before leaving?’

‘That’s the rule.’

‘Why have you not complained against this breach of rules?’

‘Have not really felt insecure here. The SP’s house is just past the bend down the road.’

‘All right. What is your educational qualification?’

‘Double MA, MBA.’

‘Double MA?’

‘In Communicative English and Malayalam.’

‘You have no relatives?’

‘My parents live in my native place.’

‘Are you married?’

‘N��.’

‘What does your father do?’

‘Nothing nowadays. He is fully paralysed.’

‘S���������Բ���?’

‘A sister. She died in a car crash.’

‘A car crash?’

‘On the road. Her scooter collided with a lorry.’

‘Was it an accident?’

‘That’s what the police said.’

‘Do you have any enemies?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘Anybody in the office?’

‘There have been disagreements.’

‘About what?’

‘Work-related matters.’

‘Why are you not married?’

‘Because I haven’t found anyone suitable.’

‘Didn’t you try putting out a matrimonial ad?’

‘No luck.’

‘It is difficult to imagine that no man ever fell in love with a good-looking woman like you.’

I thought for a moment and then said, ‘Luck in love is directly proportional to submissiveness,

not beauty.’

The SI frowned. The woman constable gaped, her eyes filled with disbelief. To change the topic,

the SI asked for my identity card. I gave it to him. The head constable copied down the address

carefully. The questions continued.

‘Have you seen the man on the bike anywhere?’

‘I didn’t see his face. He was wearing a helmet. All I saw was the pistol in his hand.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘The truth is that I saw only the pistol.’

‘Did you note down the bike’s registration number?’

‘No, but I think it ended with 25.’

‘So you have no suspects in mind?’

‘No. At least for now.’

‘That means?’

‘My mind feels numb. Can’t focus.’

‘All right, we will come again. Do let us know if you recollect anything else.’

The police left.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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(Chagga, Tanzania)

The woman who has a storehouse beneath the navel, will never die of hunger or cold.

(Sephardic, Spain/Portugal)

A Storehouse Beneath The Navel 

In Congo, I asked my all-male first-year students to write an essay about ‘the purpose of life’. They agreed almost unanimously that having children was far and away the most important part of life. During our discussions it turned out that their biggest fear was that their future wife’s storehouse would be locked. Men can of course be infertile too, but the blame was firmly laid on the women.

Fertility and pregnancy are praised in all cultures. In proverbs, a childless woman is harshly compared to a tent without tent pegs (Ladino), a day without sun (Czech), a cow without a bell (German), a tree without birds (Thai), a solitary flower on a mountain top (Vietnamese), and so forth.

In stories, childless women desperately look for a solution to their disastrous lack:

‘[They] fell pregnant as soon as they were in the vicinity of certain places: rocks, caves, trees or rivers. The infant souls entered their bodies and they fell pregnant. Whether these infant souls were the souls of ancestors or not, one thing was certain: they had been waiting all this time to become human, hidden in crevices or cavities, in pools or forests. They had already led some kind of embryonic life in the womb of their real Mother, the Earth.’

The Earth was where children came from, which is why nineteenth-century Europeans believed children were brought by aquatic animals—fish or frogs—or by birds, especially storks.

Miraculous pregnancy

Miraculous conceptions are of all times and cultures. Storytellers explore human anatomy and life-creating powers with curiosity. A Baniwa story from Brazil has the first woman falling pregnant when she gently pressed a stick against her cheek. In their desire to fall pregnant, some women look for help in extraordinary places, others in certain drinks or food. Or they meet a spirit or an angel, before a child comes to life inside them. Unusual conceptions reflect the enduring human wonder at the coming into existence of new life.

Sometimes the stars are invoked, or the sun or the moon, the wind or lightning, ancestors or symbols of power. Offerings are made to a wide range of entities. Sometimes it’s a question of coming into contact with a special footprint in stone or rock, supposedly from Adam or Buddha, from Ali (Muhammad’s son-in-law) or the Christian Saint Thomas.

A Chinese woman who saw a huge human footprint wanted a son of the same impressive proportions:

‘The woman stood still where the Supreme God had left an imprint of his big toe and at that moment, at that spot, she felt how her core was seized and—filled with deep religious wonderment—she realised she was pregnant.’

There are innumerable stories about people connecting with the powers of stone: stones are solid, they do not die, whereas mankind is mortal. No wonder young women let their bodies slide over stones or must jump over a whole row of fertility stones to fall pregnant. In the French city of Rennes there are stones known as pierres des épousées or pierres marieuses that are sought out by brides-to-be for their powers of marital bliss. Near Verdun there is a rock known as the ‘Armchair of Saint Lucie’, where the saint was said to have left an imprint of her body, and women who wish to become pregnant should simply sit on the chair.

Amongst Muslims a similar idea is found near Tunis, at the famous tomb of Sidi Fethalla. Childless women go there, risking their lives as the climb is steep and slippery. Some even do so repeatedly. On Saturday, this holy man’s day, they first invoke him and then rub a flat stone on their belly.

‘As well as stones enhancing fertility, there are rivers, lakes and springs endowed with the same effect. You can drink their special water or immerse yourself in it. A spring can make women fall pregnant after a benevolent god has added a few drops of sperm to its waters.’

The importance of fertility is magnified in impressive shrines, for example, in Hindu culture. Infertile women pray mostly to Shiva, the god of creative power and fertility. His emblem is the lingam, which can be found on street corners or in temples, in the form of a standing stone. In the southern Indian city of Thanjavur, a famous temple dedicated to Shiva, more than a thousand years old, boasts an 8.7-metre-high lingam, one of the largest in the world. Lingams come in all sizes, they are rubbed with special oil, covered with flowers and perfume, offered sacrifices, and people prostrate themselves in front of them. Infertile women spend a night in the temple in a special room reserved for them. There, in the dark, they are visited by Shiva. The inner part of the temple, the holy of holies, is called karuvarai, the Tamil word for ‘womb room’, with karu meaning foetus. In many rituals a simple touch suffices. In short, there are a striking number of stories about pregnancy in which men play no role at all.

In several origin stories there were just women at the beginning of time, or countries where only women lived and managed fine without men, and we are told how pregnancy came about in these communities. In India and Taiwan, it is said that the women were fertilised by hornets or by the bulging navels some women had, or they pleasured themselves or each other with wooden organs.

The wind was also believed to be a powerful fertiliser, although some variants specify that only a storm could have the desired effect. It happened this way—the woman who wanted to fall pregnant climbed a mountain or stood on a roof, bent over, lifted her skirt, and the wind blew around her vulva, causing a child to spontaneously grow in her belly.

Prevailing male perspectives commented with clear disapproval on such imaginary female communities. Their accounts are tinged with fear—not least of being superfluous to the impregnation process. These women were said to be man-haters, they wept whenever a baby boy was born instead of a girl; or they would immediately kill all male babies they gave birth to. Those poor little boys were torn apart or had boiling water poured over them. And these are just a few of many more dreadful scenarios.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Despite the interconnectedness of individual and systemic variables in shaping our health care, ‘health’ has not gained the public salience to merit collective thinking or mobilization on an appreciable scale. Health care is still relegated as an area for individuals to muddle through as best as they can when they are ill. Additionally, it is considered too technical, and therefore not engaged with by most Indians as a serious policy issue.

When down with an illness, we choose from the health services available and manage with whatever is best suited for us. In such a time of crisis, firefighting is the priority—not deciding on ways to improve and strengthen the various choices in health care or generate public pressure for the same. Later, we get busy with other things. Or we scapegoat individual doctors, rather than underscore the limitations that ail the system. This ignoring of systemic and collective causes of ill-health is certainly at our own peril, as individuals and as a society.

Dilemmas and Dreams for a Healthy India: Systemic Innovations

India is set to be the biggest and youngest nation on the planet in the remaining three-quarters of the twenty-first century. With the largest number of young people, India could provide the workforce for the global economy and reap demographic dividends. However, the opposite is also likely—that India will have an aging population that struggles with chronic illnesses while the children and workforce age-group struggle with a lack of access to early diagnosis and care for acute health conditions, ending up with an earlier onset of chronic illnesses. Ensuring that India is on track to being healthy, happy, and productive will require a serious consideration of the current situation and putting in place a series of measures to enable the realisation of this dream.

Health policy concerns, articulated in pre-COVID times, will now additionally have to contend with the need for preparedness to deal with future pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that we have primary-level public health services in all states and union territories that can be mobilised at the ground level—visible in efforts at contract tracing and testing and following up on people testing positive, and the extent of vaccination that was accomplished once adequate vaccine stocks became available. But it was only in some states that this primary-level care could be considered reasonably satisfactory in coverage and quality. It was again public hospitals that provided a major part of the hospital care required for moderately or seriously ill COVID-19 cases. Doctors, nurses, paramedical and support staff all performed a humongous task over the two years we experienced the pandemic, going well beyond their call of duty. Yet, even in normal times, our public hospitals are not the most patient-friendly of places.

Is it that we are so resource-constrained that we cannot develop an adequate health-care system for all Indians? Is it that the inequalities in access to incomes, material goods, and services are so wide that most Indians remain deprived, while only the better-off get good quality, trustworthy health care? Or is it also that the kind of system we have attempted to develop for ourselves has been unsuited to our context and to the provision of a societally affordable, inclusive, caring, and humane service system?

Is a doctor- and hospital-centred imagination of health care the only one we can aspire to? Or should we view them as essential but partial components of what ‘health care’ is about? Can medical services be effective in improving a population’s health if basic conditions of life are unhealthy?

COVID-19 has reminded us that human health is closely intertwined with ecology and economics. Whether the virus came from a laboratory or the wet market in Wuhan remains a matter of controversy. But in either case, it points to the breaking down of ecological barriers between viruses, which nature cloistered in remote niches, and the human species. The pandemic was the result of an interplay of factors: human initiatives focused on global chains for esoteric food, megalomaniac notions of investigating such natural virus niches to generate technological solutions to pandemic control before the infection reaches us, and the natural dynamics set up by the decreasing biodiversity. Clearly, human-centric and technology-centered approaches alone cannot protect human health. A healthy human environment requires a healthy ecological system, which includes the physical, biological, and social. Can we envisage what can be called ‘health-care habitats’—our living and working spaces as places that enhance rather than detract from our health and happiness? The post-COVID world will have to decide what is to be the central focus of future development—economics or health.

Health requires a balance of economic, technological, and social development that caters to the well-being of humans and the planet.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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‘So you hardly go online and you don’t know what your son, who’s online all the time, might be up to. Do you have any idea what interests a teenager?’ asks Ganesh. ‘Look in on him once in a while, yaar. Don’t neglect your fatherly duties just because you can’t tell the difference between a motherboard and an ironing board.’

Alif says, ‘Tahira watches him like a hawk, so I don’t need to. We just chat.’

 ‘What about?’

Alif clears his throat, sips his drink and chews on a leg of chicken. ‘He is teaching me about the world these days. Which start-ups make money. How champion league football is organised. What the South Delhi restaurants cost. I am teaching him about the world as it used to be. Not that I can claim to have succeeded there . . . yet. He can’t see a practical use for history and he is a child of a practical age.’

‘Where is he heading, this baccha?’ asks Ganesh suspiciously. ‘Does he have a girlfriend?’

Alif shrugs because he doesn’t really know. ‘Wherever he’s heading, he doesn’t want us to buy him the world or even burn our savings to educate him. He understands money, he says.’

‘He’s right,’ admits Ganesh. ‘The way it works now is you do a short-term course online, you get hired for some years. Your skillset gets obsolete. You get fired or downgraded. You study again so as to move up the ladder or switch tracks completely.’

‘Tahira knows all about it. Even if I don’t.’

His wife is taking classes in some place out in Pitampura whose degree is not cheap but the only one they could afford. Alif tries his best to help with her course work but he is too taken with the fundamentals and only ends up hindering. Uneasy, each time they sit down with her books, at how oblivious they seem of the dark roots of capitalism, he asks the wrong questions which she fends off with gossip about her robotic, if not moronic, lecturers and with pictures she shows him of the glass-and-chrome facade hiding the empty library shelves, the abandoned canteen, the broken toilets. So ponderously silly it would be to say to this, brilliant in her own way, wife: resist becoming a tool of the ruling classes. When this is her resistance – sales strategising. So Alif stops, then starts, then gives up altogether.

Meanwhile, Tahira, as soon as she is home, composes herself as if to pray, then opens her homework and starts to whisper a litany of business-like and business-related facts to herself. Sometimes she will break off to actually pray, but hurriedly and without the same intensity. All the same pray she must, if for no other reason than habit, if for no other reason than that her God may just have a hand in the workings of the brave new world in which she so longs to succeed. And she has the history of the religion to back her, for was not the Prophet himself a merchant, and hadn’t traders done the work, along with kings and Sufis, of disseminating Islam in this land and, much later, in the nineteenth century, didn’t puritan reformists of the religion, some fomenting rebellion against the British, rely on the age-old trade networks between India and Central Asia to further their cause even as they bought weapons from European arms- dealers? The business and the faith, the bread and the butter . . .

‘That’s the thing,’ Ganesh is saying. ‘The world changes, you try to change with it. Do you know what the half-life of a skill is today? Max five years. The twenty-five-year-olds in my company know more about all this new shit – ethical hacking – than I will ever do, and in five years they’ll be overtaken. As for me . . .’ He looks deep into his glass before taking a draught. ‘How much do you think a single minute of downtime costs a company?’

He mentions a figure of several thousand dollars which Alif gasps at, then promptly forgets. ‘I think our very conception of time has changed,’ he says, speaking over the group of Sadar Bazaar businessmen doubling up drunkenly at the next table, their talk peppered with that profuse invective sans which no spirited Hindi male exchange is possible.

‘When we were Salim’s age the horizon was out there, solid but distant, like that space mission of the 1980s, remember? We, that is the common people then, had little stake in the future. But for a teenager now the future is already here.’

Ganesh shrugs. ‘Last week they fired a dozen customer care folks. Why? Because they’ve got someone to develop a chatbot-based app that can take care of customer queries. The sister-fucking future’s here and do you know what it looks like? An hourglass.’

He explains the image. The specialised jobs that earn the most money are at the top. This is where the big thinkers are lodged – those who can design the systems, make the apps, break down the data, crunch the numbers.

‘You and I,’ he tells Alif, ‘and all those others with average skills are in this constricted middle that’s getting further squeezed every day. It’s a wonder we can still sit here breathing. And down below are the millions of losers who just push the buttons, real or supposed, crank the handles, keep the lines running, the services operational, the mills grinding, the goods delivered.’

Alif is touched that Ganesh has put them in the same neck of the bottle, considering he earns three times Alif’s schoolteacher salary.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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At the time, I was a self-declared student of sustainability, learning as much as I could about the complexities of climate change and how I, as an individual, was contributing to it. It was so that I happened to come across a ground-breaking documentary co-directed by my now dear friend, Keegan Kuhn. An incomparable narrative chronicling the harsh realities of animal agriculture, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret17 is a documentary that changed the way I looked at food forever.

Over an hour and thirty minutes, I learned things that I would never have even considered possible until this point. Suddenly, an intricate web of unsustainable practices unfurled before me—a web that I found myself caught in, along with so many others.

For instance, the dairy industry emerged as one of the leading sources of GHG emissions due to foraging, which requires hectares upon hectares of deforested land. Methane, which accounts for approximately 25 per cent of global warming18, and whose CO2 equivalent is approximately 84×19, is also produced in vast quantities on dairy farms through the cattle’s natural bodily functions, fermentation practices and manure storage.

I learnt about palm oil, a standard ingredient in a wide range of food and beauty products, which accounts for the loss of 300 football fields worth of rainforests every single hour.20 Even my seemingly innocent morning coffee became almost sinister in its implications.

The more I researched, the further the web stretched.

This was just the tip of the iceberg, but it is also the unfiltered reality of our times.

Director Keegan Kuhn, who has directed films such as Cowspiracy and What the Health, says:

‘No other industry has a further reaching impact as animal agriculture. Raising animals for their flesh, milk, eggs and skins, is the leading driver of deforestation, water consumption, water pollution, ocean dead zones, ocean plastic (fishing nets), topsoil erosion, species extinction, desertification, habitat destruction and a primary contributor to climate change. Virtually anything you can care about in the world, animal consumption plays a major role in its destruction. Never in the history of the planet has there ever been 8+ billion megafaunas of a single species existing at once. We have a right to be here, but not everywhere at once. We need to allow the wild ones to have their own space. I have dedicated most of my life to promoting environmental knowledge. I think people need all the information to make informed decisions.’

It was almost too much for me to grasp, and accept, over the course of an hour and thirty minutes. Over the next ten days, I watched the documentary seven times. On the eleventh day, I pledged to adopt a plant-based lifestyle, giving up the vegetarian diet I had inherited from my childhood.

Going plant-based is not easy, but I found that it was harder for those around me to accept this step I had taken. My friends teased me, saying I had abandoned flavour in exchange for dry wisps of half-baked nutrition. My friends and family cautioned me against it, claiming it was an impulsive decision that would impact my health long-term, leaving me weak and of fragile disposition.

However, five years later, my relationship with food, and with consumption overall, has transformed into one that is healthier, and more sustainable for the planet. I run, cycle, trek, kayak and push my body to its limits every day, and I have never once felt the need to return to my old diet.

Since then, I have transformed my lifestyle completely to live in the most sustainable way possible. I do not consume products that cause harm to any living creature anywhere along the supply chain, and I only shop from brands that prioritize ethical sourcing, manufacturing, production and sales—I live closer to nature and am grateful for the many gifts it has given me.

Over the last five years, I have grown from a student of sustainability to an advocate of it, and I owe much of my drive and conviction to my plant-based lifestyle.

As an advocate, I believe it is my duty to share what I have learned, so that my words and actions may inspire someone in the way Keegan was able to inspire me.

Let me tell you a little bit about my journey, and how, over the years, I have managed to keep the integrity of nature central to my plans.

–          Excerpted from I’m a Climate Optimist by Aakash Ranison with permission from Penguin Random House India

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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From the Innsbruck lawyer Enderer, our guardian, we received the following (verbatim) account . . . for twenty years, mainly in the Saggengasse and mainly at about noon, I have been crossing paths with this person without knowing who this person is; complementarily, for twenty years, mainly in the Saggengasse and mainly at about noon, this person has been crossing paths with me, without knowing who I am . . . moreover, this person hails from the Saggengasse!, albeit from the upper Saggengasse, whereas I hail from the lower Saggengasse; both of us grew up in the Saggengasse and in fact, I think, I have always seen this person without knowing that he hails from the Saggengasse and without knowing who he is; complementarily this person has known nothing about me . . . now it occurs to me that there is something about this person that I should have noticed years ago, that I should have noticed his weatherproof cape . . . reproachfully I say to myself, we cross paths with a person for years, decades, without knowing who this person is and if we ought to notice anything about the person, we notice nothing about the person, and we could cross paths with such a person over the course of an entire life without noticing anything about the person . . . suddenly we notice something about this person with whom we have been crossing paths for two decades, we notice something, be it his weatherproof cape, be it something else entirely; suddenly I noticed this person’s weatherproof cape and in connection with this I suddenly realized that this person lived in the Saggengasse and was partial to taking walks along the Sill . . . a week ago this person accosted me in the Herrengasse and the man went up with me into my office; as we were climbing the stairs I realized, you have been seeing this person for two full decades, always the same person, always the same ageing individual in the Saggengasse, at about noon in this weatherproof cape, in this quite ordinary but quite definitely worn-out weatherproof cape; still, as we were climbing the stairs it was not yet apparent to me why the person’s weatherproof cape in particular was arousing my attention; suddenly, at close quarters, the man’s weatherproof cape was arousing my undivided attention . . . but it really is quite an ordinary weatherproof cape, I thought; there are tens of thousands of such weatherproof capes in these mountains; tens of thousands of weatherproof capes worn by the Tyrolians . . . no matter who these people are, no matter what they do, when they come here they all sport these weatherproof capes; some of them sport the grey ones, and the rest of them the green ones, because they all wear these weatherproof capes, and the numerous loden factories in the valleys just keep thriving; these weatherproof capes are exported to every corner of the world, but there was something quite distinctive about the weatherproof cape of my new client: its buttonholes were trimmed in goat leather! I have seen these goat leather-trimmed buttonholes only once before in my life, namely, on the weatherproof cape of my uncle, who drowned eight years ago in the lower Sill . . . to think that this person is wearing exactly the same weatherproof cape as my drowned uncle’s, I think as I am walking up to my office with the man . . . suddenly I recall that when they pulled my Uncle Worringer out of the Sill, opinion had been divided over whether his drowning had been an act of desperation or an accident, but I am firmly of the belief that it was with so-called suicidal intent that Worringer threw himself into the Sill; for me there can be no doubt about it; Worringer killed himself; everything in his life and ultimately everything in his business life points to suicide . . . by the time they were looking for the drowned man upstream of the glass factory, he had already been washed up onto the riverbank downstream of Pradl; the newspapers devoted entire pages to the incident; our entire family was hauled into public view by the press; the phrases a ruined business, ruined timber, the death of a sawmill, and finally financial and social ruin haunted the journalists’ sensation-mongering minds . . . the funeral in Wilten was one of the biggest there has ever been; I remember thousands of people in attendance, writes Enderer . . . it’s remarkable, I say to the man with whom I was climbing the staircase leading to my office, that I can’t get your weatherproof cape out of my mind; several times I’ve failed to get your weatherproof cape out of my mind . . . your weatherproof cape, believe it or not . . . I could not help thinking but did not say, there is the most intimate connection between your weatherproof cape and my uncle; who knows whether the man knows what I am talking about, I thought and I invite the man to step into the office; step inside! I say, because the man is hesitating; next I am in the office and taking off my coat and the man is coming in . . . it very much looks as though the man was waiting for me in the front doorway of the building; today I am running twenty minutes late, I think, and then: what does this man want? I was alternately irritated by his taciturnity and his weatherproof cape; as soon as we were both inside the office, I saw even more clearly, more distinctly, after I had turned the light on, that the buttonholes of the man’s weatherproof cape were trimmed with goat leather, with black goat leather, and I discerned that my new client’s weatherproof cape had been tailored exactly like the weatherproof cape of my Uncle Worringer, tailored in the simplest style. I tell the man he must take a seat, that first thing of all I must see to the heating of the office, that I am alone, that my secretary is ill, influenza, I say, the flu; I must light a fire, but last night I got everything ready in advance, I say, so that getting the office heated won’t present the slightest difficulties now; I tell the man he must take a seat; he takes a seat; this dreary fog-saturated atmosphere, I say, everything is obscured in gloom, this time of the year exacts the utmost discipline, one must master oneself and get through it; the sentence was rapidly uttered, for all its weightiness; at the same time I thought, what a preposterous sentence, these superfluous, preposterous matutinal sentences, I thought; everything is subjected to a colossal test of its endurance, I say, the body, the intellect, the mind, the intellect, the body. Quite naturally when people come in here, they keep their coats on, and my new client is likewise keeping on his weatherproof cape; now in the office he seemed to feel even colder than in the doorway; it won’t be long before it warms up, I say; once the heat is on, I say, the warmth spreads quickly; I made a point of emphasizing to him the excellent quality of American cast-iron stoves; I made a remark about the insalubriousness of central heating; I kept saying, it’s much too dark for office work; one can part the curtains, but it doesn’t do any good, turn on more lamps, but it doesn’t do any good; there is, I thought, a certain uncanniness about this situation, about being in my gloomy office in the morning with a strange person, a person who is completely wrapped up in his weatherproof cape, but when one considers, I say, that the shortest day of the year is only four weeks from now; I said this to no effect; I spoke about every possible thing while I was standing at the stove, but I was exclusively preoccupied with my new client’s weatherproof cape.

[Published by Seagull, translated by ]

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The spread of brands and branded products within a community requires coordination among its members. This coordination typically happens without the direction of an authoritative figure or a drum major who leads the group. Rather, it happens through collective judgment (people deciding whether something is “good” or “bad”) and shared acceptability (people deciding whether something is “in” or “out”). In sociology, these processes are called evaluation and legitimation, respectively. Harvard sociologist Michèle Lamont asked, “How does an art object, a literary work, or a scientific theory gain value to the point at which it is consecrated and integrated into the canon?” How does a product gain value to the point that it becomes integrated into the cultural zeitgeist? To find out, we need to look at the relationship between evaluation and legitimation and how they, together, help us collectively give something meaning.

Evaluation is exactly what it sounds like—a judgment about the value of something. And every community does it. Whether it’s a physical object, a behavior, an institution, or even other people, we are constantly assessing value to answer a simple question, albeit subconsciously: Does this fit within the cultural characteristics of people like me? Are these sneakers cool? Does this jacket look good? Is this an “old person’s” car? Is this a good school? Does this dance look silly? The answers to these questions, and many more like them, are subjective in nature and based almost entirely on the meaning that the community attributes to them. Though individuals engage in the evaluation process, evaluating an object is a collaborative effort in which the whole community decides whether that product is cool based on the social facts of the community.

Like meaning making, evaluation is socially constructed, as my opinion of a company, product, or movement is biased by the opinions of others, especially other people like me. We all have a desire to fit in and a need to belong. The coordination of opinions helps us do just that. Therefore, my opinion of a brand is influenced by the accumulation of opinions from my tribe—even if someone offers a different opinion as an opportunity to distinguish themselves from others in the community, considering the human paradox of wanting to fit in but also stand out. This person’s judgment is also informed and influenced by the judgment of others. Evaluation is a social process, as is legitimation.

Legitimation happens when we, as community members or members of society more broadly, decide what is okay. For instance, thirty years ago, the idea of having visible tattoos was reserved for the rebellious—rock musicians, biker gangs, and other fringe groups. It was deemed unacceptable by society, so much so that if you had tattoos, you’d likely try to cover them up for a job interview because of what they might mean in the mind of the interviewer. Today, however, people wear visible tattoos freely and are not seen as degenerates for doing so. Over the years, having tattoos went from meaning “outcast” to being “normal,” generally speaking. This is a by-product of legitimation.

Athletic apparel was once suitable only for workouts and yoga classes, never to be worn in public or at social functions. But now we have athleisure, through which yoga pants and tapered joggers have become acceptable in many different settings. The legitimation of athleisure drove this industry to become a $411 billion market in 2021, and it’s expected to grow to over $793 billion by 2028. The companies that were early to capitalize on this phenomenon—like the Canadian based athletic apparel retailer Lululemon—experienced an economic windfall, while the athletic brands that did not move so quickly, like Under Armour, missed out. These late movers, unfortunately, placed their strategic bets elsewhere despite the shifts in cultural consumption, and these brands are still paying the price.

Online dating is another great example. The idea of meeting a potential romantic partner online was considered a sign of desperation twenty years ago. At the time, the conventional wisdom was that meeting someone online meant you were unable to meet someone in the “real world.” But that perception has since changed. By 2020, prepandemic, 30 percent of all initial dating encounters happened through online dating, which was up from 3 percent in 2010. Over the course of ten years, we completely legitimated online dating. What once meant “loser” now means “normal.”

“Do people like me do something like this?” This is the question we ask ourselves as we navigate our day-to-day lives. The theoretical framework for understanding how social structures—like norms and practices—are established as guidelines for social behavior is referred to as institutional theory. According to this theory, the process of legitimation is shaped by imitation. We observe others who we think are like us to decide what is acceptable behavior for us. The world-renowned scholar of social psychology and influence Robert Cialdini referred to this phenomenon as social proof, where we copy the actions of others to fit in. Social proof provides a signal of what is deemed acceptable behavior among our people, and, subsequently, we receive the behavior as acceptable and act in concert to promote social solidarity.

Legitimation is socially constructed and plays a critical role in the process of meaning-making. Every time a community is introduced to something new (an exogenous shock to the system like a new product, new music, or any breaking news that comes through our news feeds and across our screens), members of the community collectively make sense of it (make meaning) and decide whether and how it will be integrated into their culture. Once your brand has been legitimated by the congregation, you’re set!

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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King Ashoka was the third king of the Mauryan Empire, and the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya. He took the Mauryan empire to its greatest heights by usurping many kingdoms using his vast military forces. In his conquest of Kalinga, a coastal kingdom in eastern India, now known as the city of Bhubaneshwar, his army slaughtered lakhs of people.

Although he was victorious, he was seized by remorse and filled with horror at what he had done. He renounced violence and turned to Buddhism.

Carnage, destruction and death caused so much trauma in King Ashoka that it resulted in a profound transformation in him from cruelty to humanity. His kingship was then devoted to nurturing his sprawling empire through non-violence and dharma. His vision of a just society and his rules for virtuous behaviour were carved into rock walls throughout his kingdom. He treated his subjects humanely and even sent delegates beyond the Indian borders to spread his vision of peace.

King Ashoka’s restructuring of values and priorities was an example of post-traumatic growth. Following a calamity, people have been known to grow their appreciation for life, become more spiritual, develop new skills and discover new possibilities in life. While the adversity is temporary, the learning is permanent.

Of course, post-adversity growth does not dawn on everyone. In fact, we all have a different threshold or tolerance for adversity. Psychologists have coined the term, Adversity Quotient (AQ), a measure of the capability of an individual to face difficult situations in life. The greater your AQ, the greater your ability to survive and thrive. Let us then discuss how we can increase our adversity quotient and tap into the potential for post-adversity growth.

What We Can Consciously Do to Be Happy during Adversity

Accept adversities as an inevitable part of life. The Universe is full of dualities—day and night, hot and cold, rain and drought. The same rose bush has a beautiful flower and also an ugly thorn. Life too brings its share of opposites—happiness and distress, victory and defeat, fame and notoriety.

Hence, irrespective of the event, the first step is to acknowledge and accept the incident rather than deny or run away from it. Once you make peace with adversity as an integral part of life, only then does a positive reinterpretation of the situation become possible and this in turn paves the path for post-adversity growth.

The Bhagavad Gita states:

mātrā-sparśhās tu kaunteya śhītoṣhṇa-sukha-duḥkha-dāḥ āgamāpāyino ’nityās tans-titikṣhasva bhārata (verse 2.14)

Shree Krishna explains that the fleeting perceptions of happiness and distress arise because of contact between the senses and the sense objects. These come and go like the winter and summer seasons. We must remember they are not permanent. Thus, we must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.

Stop imagining greener grass in others’ lives. Everyone has their share of problems—no one is spared. Yet, we bring more misery on to ourselves by comparing, as the following story illustrates.

There was a famous sage who lived high up in the Himalayan mountains, far away from civilization. Once, a group of people approached him with their problems. The sage was wise and wanted to teach a lesson. He asked each person to write down their biggest problem on a piece of paper and put it in a common bag. Next, he circulated the bag and asked everyone to pick up one slip. He then calmly stated, ‘Read the problem to yourself. You have a choice to own that problem or take back your originally stated problem.’

One by one every person in the group picked out a paper chit, read the other’s problems and was horrified. Each concluded that their problem, no matter how bad, was better than the next person’s.

While we think happier people have less problems, the reality is quite different. Happy people remind themselves of others who have bigger problems and do not take their own too seriously. So, it is a matter of perspective. Most problems are small in the grand scheme of things. Let that be our mindset!

Be solution-oriented. We spend more time agonizing over a problem and less time on finding a solution to it. Once you have spotted a problem, you must solve it. Many of us get overwhelmed in adverse situations. We fall prey to anger, anxiety or stress, whereas they could easily be avoided if we simply focused on solutions.

A deer in the forest was pregnant. It found a spot by the river to deliver its baby. However, as the labour pains began, she noticed lightning had set the forest on fire. To her left was an even more fearful sight—a hunter was taking aim at her. But then she noticed even more danger looming. A hungry lion had spotted her and was getting ready for the kill.

The poor deer was cornered from all sides and had nowhere to run. Besides, the labour pains had already begun. She gathered herself together and focused on giving birth to her fawn. In the meantime, lightning struck and blinded the hunter as he released his arrow. He missed his target and the arrow hit the lion. The heavy rains doused the forest fire, and the deer succeeded in giving birth to its fawn.

What is the moral of the story? When overwhelmed with challenges, remain calm. Focus on what is in your control. Put your best efforts in that direction, leaving the rest in the hands of God. As the saying goes: ‘Do your best and leave to God all the rest.’

–          Excerpted from The Art & Science of Happiness by Swami Mukundananda with permission from Penguin Random House India

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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