Innholdsfortegnelse for 20 March 2017 i Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK The elections in Uttar Pradesh have certainly got everyone excited and on the edge (‘The War He Cannot Afford to Lose’, March 13th, 2017). In no other state do the politics of caste, community and class make a greater appearance. This has been evident in the rallies of all leading political formations—the BJP, SP-Congress and BSP. The biggest challenge that Modi faces in the state is to secure the Muslim vote, which Mayawati is hoping to exploit to her advantage. Also, there is immense pressure on Rahul Gandhi to make the Congress alliance with SP work, and he too is going all out to ensure that those sections of society who won’t vote for the BJP take a chance on his party instead. It is,…

THE DEMOLITION OF the Babri Masjid on December 6th, 1992, is considered a turning point in Indian history. It was more than just the physical razing of a structure, but a signal of the crumbling of the country’s Nehruvian order. One byproduct of that event was the trial of political leaders of the time which included, among others, LK Advani and Uma Bharti. A quarter century has elapsed since then and the criminal proceedings against these politicians are yet to conclude. On March 8th, the Supreme Court took the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to task for laxity in trial proceedings that led to charges being dropped on technical grounds in one particular case. There are two cases being tried in two different courts in Uttar Pradesh that relate to…

The annual ritual around Women’s Day becomes more cringe-worthy every year. If the surfeit of messages on social media weren’t bad enough, it has now become institutionalised soppiness. Like all ‘Days’, this too has its importance in some places, in certain contexts. In rural areas, it is often used sensibly by local bodies and NGOs to give women a ‘day off’. But in our cities, it is only used as an occasion to ‘sell more stuff’ (roses, especially). Public Relations agencies are often the biggest culprits, as they feel that on this day suddenly stories around ‘women’s issues’ become all the more relevant. We don’t need a day. We need equality. WORD’S WORTH ‘Women’s rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is…

IT’S BEEN A two-and-a-half-month long rollercoaster ride for Dev Patel with many stops along the way, including an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Lion. The ride came to an end on Oscar night; the golden statue was not to be his, but he did win a BAFTA, the British equivalent of an Academy Award. Lion is the story of five-year-old Saroo from a village in India who suddenly finds himself on a train headed thousands of kilometres away from home and is hurled into the arms of bustling Kolkata. He must now learn to survive on the harsh and cruel streets of the city until he is picked up and taken to an orphanage. His life takes a turn for the better when he is adopted by an…

The Unknown Boss Aditya Chopra and his famed reclusive personality have spawned many a joke, but at least on one occasion the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge director must’ve regretted the fact that he keeps such a low profile. An insider at Yash Raj Films recounts an incident when Adi (as he’s affectionately referred to by everyone) hopped into an autorickshaw from his home in Juhu on a day that he was having driver issues. On reaching the gates of YRF Studios in Andheri, Adi reportedly realised he wasn’t carrying any cash, and asked a security guard manning the entrance to pay the auto driver on his behalf. The security officer’s reaction was priceless: “Aap kaun hain, aur main aapka bhaada kyun bharun?” (Who are you, and why should I pay…

THE INDIA International Centre (IIC), regarded as the capital’s premier intellectual and cultural hub, is in the throes of an election. Every two years, full members elect one representative to its Board of Trustees and two to its Executive Committee (EC). This time, four are in the fray for the Board seat while ten candidates compete for the two EC seats. Though no pecuniary or career gains are on offer, the contest has become fierce over the past few years. The IIC, a nongovernmental body funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, might frown upon canvassing of any sort, but it is not hard to spot some candidates campaigning openly. For instance, yours truly has been spoken to on behalf of a contestant for the EC by a leading Delhi High Court…

MILLENNIALS OFTEN GET bad press. The lazy narrative about them tells us that they are hooked to devices and have the attention span of a gnat. But in many ways, millennials are proving to be smarter than their predecessors. For one, they have turned their noses up against the diamond—that harbinger of commitment, that rock which (supposedly) says ‘I do’ like no other gem. Their snobbery towards the diamond ought to be noted, for it shows that they’ve caught onto the marketing gimmick that it is and have realised that when it comes to courtship and ‘love’, cliches ought not to do. Of course, one could also speculate that they simply don’t have the money—in this economy and at this time—to spend so much on mere bling. Without a doubt,…

SEVENTY YEARS ON and the wounds of 1947 still sting for so many, including director Gurinder Chadha. Her personal history, as a descendant of a family caught up in the horrendous events of that year, has driven her to tackle the epic subject of India’s Partition in her latest film, Viceroy’s House. But how she was persuaded to make the film is perhaps even more interesting than the film itself. In a radio interview with the BBC, she revealed that her grandmother, who lost a child to starvation while trekking across Punjab, had brought her up to believe that “somehow Partition was our shameful fault” and that “the mischievous English did some kind of black magic on us”. This view was different from the history she learned at school, which…

MISSION OVERSEAS: DARING OPERATIONS BY THE INDIAN MILITARY (UNTOLD TRUE STORIES) Sushant Singh Juggernaut 193 Pages | Rs 299 THE ‘SURGICAL STRIKES’ against Pakistani targets conducted last year touched off a discussion on the role of force in Indian foreign policy. While some commentators emphasised that such operations had been carried out in the past, others pointed to the scale and coordination of the latest strikes. Others still underscored the need to avoid overestimating the strategic— as different from operational—effects of such operations. Interestingly, much of this debate was conducted with scant reference to history. After all, this was hardly the first time India had used force outside of a regular war or insurgency. Part of the problem is that Indian historians have seldom been interested in military matters. Worse,…

ONCE IT BECAME clear that Rangoon was a flop, actor Shekhar Suman tweeted about an ‘actress carrying the burden of her non existent stardom’ falling flat on her face. He termed it poetic justice. His son Adhyayan Suman, who had a relationship with Kangana Ranaut in which he alleged that he was relentlessly abused, also gloated over the flop. Some months back, filmmaker Rakesh Roshan, reinvigorating a controversy that was thought to have died down, said that Kangana had spread lies about his son Hrithik, the ‘lie’ alluded to being the revelation of her affair with Hrithik. The actress is not on good terms with a number of other prominent male stars. Most recently, Karan Johar, smarting from being called a flag-bearer of nepotism in Bollywood by Kangana on his…

‘But who so shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea’ —Matthew 18:2-6 POPE FRANCIS’ RECENT call for zero tolerance towards child offenders within the Church seems to have had little impact in Kerala. The recent arrest of a priest in Kannur for raping and impregnating a 16-year-old girl has thrown the issue in sharp relief again. Father Robin Vadakkumchery, the Parish priest of St Sebastian’s Church in Kottiyoor in Kannur district was taken into custody under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code; he faces charges under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) and Juvenile Justice (JJ) Acts as well.…

THE ELEGANT CAMONDO steps in Galata leading to the Bankalar Caddesi, the street of banks, which the Camondo family developed, still stand. But the Camondo family, along with tens of thousands of other Jews who fled from major Ottoman cities in 1943 (such as Thessaloniki, where 54,000 were rounded up by German soldiers just a stone’s throw from the location of that dreadful massacre ordered by Emperor Theodosios I more than 1,500 years before), were eradicated, entirely, in Auschwitz. As the Second World War made its ugly progression, the Turkish Embassy in Paris—hearing that Jews were being put on to trains heading for concentration camps—opened an office where Ottoman Jews were given the passports of young Muslim students so that they could escape France to travel back to Istanbul. It…

HAVING GROWN up in the city of Lucknow and spent most of my adult life in the plains of northern India, I dread the summer season, when the temperature soars to over 45. Celsius. One of the attractions that makes the scorching summer tolerable, even exciting, is the availability of numerous varieties of juicy summer fruits that delight the taste buds and cool the insides. Mango, of course, continues to be the king of fruits, but for me, as for many others, the luscious berry called litchi is high on the list too. The litchi originated in southern China. The first descriptions of its cultivation dates to the 11th century, although it is believed that it was consumed in China as far back as 2000 BCE. Litchis reached India in…