The Trickledown Revolution

The law locks up the hapless felon
who steals the goose from off the common,
but lets the greater felon loose
who steals the common from the goose.
                                                             -- Anonymous, England, 1821

In the early morning hours of the 2nd of July 2010, in the remote forests of Adilabad, the Andhra Pradesh State Police fired a bullet into the chest of a man called Cherukuri Rajkumar, known to his comrades as Azad. Azad was a member of the Polit Bureau of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), and had been nominated by his party as its chief negotiator for the proposed peace talks with the Government of India. Why did the police fire at point-blank range and leave those telltale burn marks, when they could so easily have covered their tracks? Was it a mistake or was it a message?

They killed a second person that morning—Hem Chandra Pandey, a young journalist who was traveling with Azad when he was apprehended. Why did they kill him? Was it to make sure no eyewitness remained alive to tell the tale? Or was it just whimsy?

Full report here Dawn

Under the boot

Growing up in the 1980s in small town coastal Andhra Pradesh, I often played cricket with children who had conspicuous Tamil names. I didn't know much about them except that they all loved cricket and lived in a humble 'Lanka colony'. Later I realised that they were Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.

After reading Shobasakthi's Traitor, I hoped that their stories weren't remotely similar to that of the book's protagonist, Nesakumaran. The story begins and ends in an unknown European city where he's taken refuge. But the civil war that began in 1980s Sri Lanka, with the minority ethnic Tamils fighting for a separate state, gives the story it's flesh and blood. Literally.

It is written as a memoir where the personal and the political and the minute details and the big picture merge. It is about Nesakumaran's journey out of the tiny Palmyra Palm Island through various army camps, interrogation chambers and a nightmare of brutalities with its Shawshank Redemption-like moments. Anushiya Ramaswamy has done a brilliant job of translation.

Full report here Hindustan Times

The twin guide to Telangana

The Telangana issue has been in the news for some time, and the recent byelections have just brought the focus back on the matter. While writings on Telangana are multiplying, there is considerable need for understanding the basic aspects of the problem. This needs information, as well as the point of view of the people of the region. In addition, there is also the need to fill the gap on economic, socio-cultural and historical aspects of Telangana. The two books reviewed here attempt to provide such a backdrop against which all the contemporary political commentaries could be understood to some extent.

The first book, written by Rao, is a collection of essays written over a long period of time on the question of regional disparities in India, their economic reasons and the rationale for smaller states in India in general and in case of Telangana in particular. Rao covers a vast canvas in the limited pages in an extremely impressive manner. The canvas includes Leh and Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir to Uttarakhand to Bastar regions. The canvas is wide and rich, with description and economic analysis of how the extremely vast stretches of Indian states ignore geographic, topographic, natural resource-based particularities of sub-regions and how these could be remedied through creation of smaller states. There is a clear and lucid stream of reason flowing all through the book in support of these views. He, for example, says, “It is significant that most of the states with less developed regions, eg, UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, HP and J&K, are either large in terms of area or very sparsely populated.

Full report here Financial Express

V V: To Andhra Pradesh with love

David Shulman, professor of humanistic studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an expert on South Indian languages and cultures has written Spring, Heat, Rains: A South Indian Journey (University of Chicago Press, $25/Special Indian price, Rs 1,004) which is not just a travelogue but a long meditation on Telegu literature with reflections on Andhra history. As a journey across space and time, it is rather like a genre without rules, free from precept or precedent: part travel writing, part literary appreciation but above all, a philosophy expressed in images. Shulman is also a scholar in Sanskrit and classical Hindustani music, plus much else besides, and brings to bear his formidable learning to this book, which he admits to “a restlessness that rules me, so the landscapes shift like the languages and the texts”. All of which makes it difficult to write about it in this limited space!

As you might expect, the diary is lyrical, sensual but more than anything else, it is introspective. Just about everything becomes a part of the huge canvas Shulman builds his story on. There are reflections on daily happenings and the life around: “Rocks. Goats. Dry shrubs, Buffaloes. Thorns. A fallen tamarind tree.” Simple observations of the daily lives of ordinary people of Rajahmundry, on the banks of the river Godavari which like all rivers in India are sacred and determine the life styles of millions around. Shulman has been bitten by the metaphysical bug:

“How did I happen to find myself in Rajamundhry in the early spring of 2006? The answer would be the river called me. She — the Godavari — is imperious, also infinitely seductive. Rajamundhry is her town. When I saw her, she extracted a promise that I would return:….”

Full report here Business Standard

Intolerant India

Free speech is increasingly under attack in the world's most populous democracy. The distribution of "Crescent Over the World," a book including contributions from Salman Rushdie, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, and a cartoon from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Mr. Narisetti is out on bail now; Mr. Laxmaiah remains in custody.

Indians boast of living in the world's most populous democracy, and rightly so. Regular elections and vigorous public debate are a rebuke to anyone who thinks that liberty can't flourish in a large, largely poor, culturally and linguistically diverse country. But in one area of life officials' concerns for keeping peace between various religious and ethnic groups is threatening a core freedom: speech.

In a little-noticed case on Feb. 26, police in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh arrested Macha Laxmaiah, an author who writes using the pseudonym Krantikar ("revolutionary"), and his distributors, including Innaiah Narisetti, president of the Hyderabad-based nonprofit Center for Inquiry, for "hurting the sentiments of Muslims." Their alleged crime? The distribution of Crescent Over the World, a book including contributions from Salman Rushdie, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, and a cartoon from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Mr. Narisetti is out on bail now; Mr. Laxmaiah remains in custody.

The works of Maqbool Fida Husain have been attacked by Hindu nationalists.

Then there are the continuing attacks on Ms. Nasreen and her supporters. Last week, masked men broke into the offices of Kannada Prabha, a local-language newspaper in the southern state of Karnataka. Its weekly magazine had published a piece allegedly written by Ms. Nasreen that criticized the burqa, the veil that many Muslim women wear. Muslim groups had protested the article—which was three years old and republished by the Kannada newspaper without her permission—and violence in two towns ensued, leading to two deaths and dozens arrested. Ms. Nasreen, who fled Bangladesh in 1994 after Muslim fundamentalists threatened her life, currently divides her time between Sweden and the United States, but says she wants to live in India. The government stands in the way, not permitting her to stay in Kolkata, where she prefers to live, and keeping her at an undisclosed location in New Delhi under security surveillance during her last extended stay in the country ostensibly for her own safety.

The sensitivity doesn't just concern Islam. Last week, India's foremost painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, who is 94, decided to give up Indian nationality and became a Qatari citizen. Mr. Husain is a Muslim, and among the many themes he has painted are a few paintings of Hindu deities in the nude. These works were completed and first displayed decades ago, but since the mid-1990s Hindu nationalists have campaigned against him, saying his work insulted their faith. They attacked galleries exhibiting his works, threatened him with violence, and filed lawsuits against him. The state attached some of his property and police officers issued arrest warrants against him, even as the Delhi High Court (and later the Supreme Court) ruled in his favor and officials publicly praised him. Unwilling to trust the state to protect him, Mr. Husain, who has lived abroad much of the past decade, gave up his nationality.

Full report here The Wall Street Journal