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When I first met Shivendra Singh Dungarpur in 2014, he had just started his Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) in Mumbai. I was then the Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati in Delhi and he wanted archivists from Doordarshan to join his proposed workshop on restoration and preservation of films and audio visual materials. He had captioned it as the ‘first Film Preservation and Restoration School India’ which was to be held in February 2015.
Sri Aurobindo, the venerable sage of French Pondicherry, turned 75 on the very day British India – which he had quit after leading its first revolutionary war of liberation – attained Independence. The sheer coincidence was not lost then, though it is almost completely forgotten today, on the 150th anniversary of his birth.
On the 14th of August, 1947, Pakistan broke free from the erstwhile united India and that very night, India declared freedom. Amidst the euphoria and waves of support were doubts, doomsayers and opponents. This new India was not one entity but consisted of 14 British provinces and 565 princely states, with a mind boggling multiplicity of cultural identities, languages and ethnicities. Many were reminded of John Strachey’s jibe that “there is not and never was an India…no India nation, no people of India.”
Puri’s Ratha Yatra reminds Bengalis about Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who was known for his extreme demonstrations of piety and love for Jagannath. When he reached Puri after he took Sannyas in 1510, he was so overwhelmed with emotions that he rushed in a trance to embrace the image of Jagannath — and got roughed up by the priests who took him to be crazy.
As fire and protests rage across the country, one is reminded of the utter lawlessness that Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the three classical political philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries had referred to as the 'state of nature'. Things are not yet so bad, thankfully so, in spite of scenes of thousands of the unemployed young torching millions' worth of public property. They are up against the new Agnipath scheme that seeks to recruit some 45,000 short-time 'soldiers' into the army on a contractual basis. Modi's India has not seen such a worrisome breakdown of law and order, one that is so expressly violent and widespread in so many states.
The Sangh's mouthpiece, Swaraj, in its issue of June 23, 2019, insists that Syama Prasad Mookerjee had actually saved Hindu Bengalis from "imminent annihilation", and its powerful social media repeats this claim incessantly. The PM renamed Kolkata Port Trust in his name and there appears a renewed interest in Mookerjee — the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh that later metamorphosed into the Bharatiya Janata Party. As the son of the most powerful Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University — Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee — Syama Prasad's academic achievements were under a bit of a cloud in the 1920s.
We should strengthen the Archaeological Survey of India and lessen its burden of guarding thousands of sites. Only then can it be an effective custodian of the Places of Worship Act.
The Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) stand at the Qutub Minar that it cannot permit Hindus to pray there may have reinforced people’s faith in plural tolerance. But such a stand has been its traditional policy.
In 2010, there were concerted attempts by a section of Muslims to start namaz at the Qutub Minar and at other prominent Islamic monuments of India. But the ASI simply refused to budge and the culture ministry’s stand was supported by the Union cabinet. The government decided to confront the demand as a law-and-order problem. The section of fanatics gave up their tantrums in the face of such determination.
The ASI’s argument is simple — there are too many contested ‘non-worshipped’ monuments that Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists are raring to claim for their prayers and for de facto possession.
>These sites do not belong to any community and are the common property of India and Indians — hence no fresh worship should be allowed so that the delicate equilibrium is maintained. Such a stand could perhaps be studied by the judiciary.
The bulldozer style of saffron politics has provoked quite a few articles from different angles, but we may like to look at the juggernaut vehicle as the latest expression of toxic masculinity – something which was quite evident in its predecessors, the horse, the motorcycle and the speedster car.
So, let’s begin with the horse. From amidst the wealth of literature on the relationship between man and the horse, we zoom directly into Adrienne C. Frie’s report in the Oxford Journal of Archaeoolgy in October 2017, on an archaeological examination of burial ground culture at a site in Slovenia.
As a festival and a ritual, Charak definitely goes back to pre-Hindu roots that were later absorbed into Hinduism. Its rituals of self flagellation, inflicted-torture and endurance through pain can be seen in different parts of India even now, especially, in the South. In Tamil country, for instance, the same rites of self-torture go under the name of Thaai-Poosam. Where the Rarh part of Western Bengal region is concerned, Charak has been celebrated as an essential part of worship of Dharma Thakur, the primordial god of the indigenous people, throughout the month of Baishakh, that is in April-May.
Now that we are slowly getting over the shock and disappointment over the recent results of elections to five state assemblies, it may be time to stop fooling ourselves.
At the time of writing this, nine Chief Ministers have already opposed the Prime Minister’s proposal to amend Rule 6 of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Cadre Rules of 1954. More states are likely to join the chorus of protest, thereby triggering a fresh round of Centre-state bitterness.
I have always shied away from gurus and cults, and those who know me well would be surprised at the title that I have chosen. But it encapsulates a deep sense of gratitude to a person who, incidentally, would have roared with laughter had he read these words. When I look back at the seven decades that I have gone through and the many people I have come across, I have absolutely no qualms in acknowledging RP or Shantul Gupta, as a guru without whom the world around would not have been so enriching.
Despite the toxic atmosphere in Delhi and the gloomy darkness all around, Parliament is back to ‘business as usual’. Where its upper house is concerned, this means – rather sadly so – that everything shall be kept in a state of constant disarray.
Sorry to be a spoilsport amidst the widespread celebration at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to repeal the controversial farm laws and his ‘apology’ to agitating farmers.
“Little girl, are you lost?” asked a concerned lady who was observing a five-year-old moving around aimlessly at the airport terminal, with a teddy bear tucked under her arm. “No,” said the child rather emphatically, as she looked straight into her eye and added, “it’s my parents who are lost”.
It is usually believed that Narendra Modi’s surgical attack on the economy that he declared through the demonetisation of thousand rupee and five hundred rupee notes, exactly five years ago, was a disaster. Well, it surely devastated a large section of the economy but that does not really mean that Modi failed in what he wanted to achieve. Modi is too complicated to lend himself to a simple black and white analysis as much of what he says and does has several interpretations and objectives. An opportunist par excellence, he turns whatever he can, including his mistakes, to his own advantage.
There are several tales about Kali’s origin, the best known of which comes from the Devi Mahatmya. It says that when Durga was so enraged by demons that her anger burst from her forehead in the form of Kali. Once born, the dark goddess went on the rampage, killing demons and stringing their heads on a chain around her neck. Her dance of death and destruction was stopped only when Shiva lay on her path and she stepped on her husband’s chest by accident. She was terribly embarrassed and finally calmed down. Kali is thus associated with war, death and cremation.
Hinduism accommodates a lot of conflicting rituals. For instance, while Dusshera is celebrated as the defeat of evil force such as Ravan or as Asura, the two are, in fact, worshipped on this day at several places.
It’s a little difficult to say precisely — because Durga in her present form incorporates different streams, like Simha Vahini (the goddess who rides the lion), the Mahishasura Mardini (one who slays the Buffalo-Demon) and the Dashabhuja or ten-armed goddess. They evolved in different stages and ages.
Now that Pujas are almost here, and Corona notwithstanding, millions of Bengalis will hop from pandal to pandal — a few questions may be interesting.
I am in Delhi where Navaratri has just begun and people are either fasting or undergoing severe restrictions on food and indulgences for the next nine days. Most are surprised that Bengal does not go through such severities and are amazed to hear of our feasting on the chief days, from Maha-Saptami to Maha-Navami.