Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i The Caravan

Ghosh said that, after joining Bhaduri’s class, “slowly, I began to enjoy the practice sessions and especially looked forward to the chance to go out of prison and perform.” In central Kolkata, on an evening in late June, a dancer parted the black stage curtain of the Satyajit Ray Auditorium and peered at the audience he was about to perform for. Beside him, a policeman stood guard with a service rifle. Moments later, that performer, along with nine others, trooped onto the stage and began an hour-long show. Wearing costume masks, pleated pyjamas and long-sleeved kurtas, they performed a dance that incorporated steps from Bharatanatyam, Kallaripayatu and Manipuri styles, enacting the plight of birds threatened by environmental destruction. The dancers spread their arms wide, like wings, and depicted the life…

Historically, whenever the Indian government has turned its attention to economic offences it has failed to examine its own role in creating the conditions that allowed the wrongdoing. During the telecast of the group-stage Champions Trophy match between India and Pakistan at Edgbaston in early June, a cameraperson picked out the beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya in the crowd, coolly sipping a drink. Mallya—whose brand, Kingfisher, was the tournament’s “Official Lager Partner”—promised in interviews after the game that he would attend all of the Indian team’s remaining Champions Trophy matches. Mallya’s appearance at the match created a media flurry, since he is wanted by Indian law-enforcement agencies for multiple alleged economic offences, including cheating and money laundering. He is also estimated to owe around R 9,000 crore to public-sector banks.…

Up until 2012, there was not a single biography of Macaulay by an Indian—an astonishing fact given the vast galaxy of Indian historians and intellectuals. THE COUNTRY’S SEVENTIETH INDEPENDENCE DAY is a fitting occasion to ask a simple question: which single individual in modern Indian history can be said to have had the greatest impact on our destiny? It is facile, and perhaps a sop to national vanity, to answer Mohandas Gandhi, for had Gandhi had such impact, then we would scarcely be in our current state. Gandhi did not decide the lingua franca of independent India’s public life. Nor did he conceive our education system, write the laws by which we live, or design the administrative services which run India. Gandhi wanted swaraj, or self-rule, not representative democracy, which,…

“At the referendum everyone voted against the mines, because the interest of the environment was greater than one’s own political ideological beliefs,” Delgado said. When Ana Dubón was 13 years old, she began to work at a local radio station, earning $2 a day. Contributing about $40 a month to the family made her feel like an adult. Her pride surged when she got to host her own show a year later. Dubón lives in Guarjila village, in the Chalatenango department of northwestern El Salvador. While other young radio jockeys played reggaeton on their programmes, she spoke about injustices she was witnessing in her community. “In 2005, at just 15, I found myself talking about something serious: mining,” Dubón, now 26 years old, reminisced when I met her last August.…

The Vedas include extensive details, such as of wealth measured in herds of cattle, which indicate a nomadic pastoral culture; they reflect little or nothing of the sophisticated urban civilisation of the Harappan people. As David Wesolowski, an Australian blogger who tracks research into genetic origins, has hinted, the ancient DNA from Rakhigarhi could well suggest a genetic linkage between the Harappans and the speakers of the Dravidian languages today. the upper reaches of the drying course of the Ghaggar-Hakra river (which, depending on preconceptions, may or may not be the Saraswati of the Vedas) were coming up. We also know that 2,600 years ago, the Indo-Gangetic region of north India was divided into 16 republics populated by Indo-European language speakers. But there is little clarity on what transpired…

IT WAS TO START OFF as a people’s protest. Hundreds, if not thousands, would take to the streets of the capital, Malé. “Vettinee,” they would roar—rebellion. The police were to join them, and, after a point, so was the army. Together, they were to storm the residence of Abdulla Yameen, the president of the Maldives, and take him hostage. Then they were to march him to the country’s supreme court and legitimise his custody with an arrest warrant. The court could pick which of Yameen’s alleged offences to charge him for—abuse of power, persecution of his political opponents, involvement in the country’s biggest ever corruption scandal, and more. All through August last year, the Maldives teemed with rumours of the impending ouster. For weeks, demonstrators defied new laws banning street…

SUPERFAST PRIMETIME ULTIMATE NATION THE RELENTLESS INVENTION OF MODERN INDIA Adam Roberts In this work of reportage, The Economist’s former South Asia correspondent, Adam Roberts, who spent five years travelling across India, cuts through the hype of the nation’s purported economic boom and its fantastic superpower ambitions. His journalism provides a grounded picture of the current Indian economy and the barriers it faces in providing prosperity to most of the country’s people. PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 336 PAGES, $28 THE COLOURS OF MY HEART SELECTED POEMS Faiz Ahmed Faiz Translated by Baran Farooqi This volume features a new set of English translations of the works of the revolutionary Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. It includes an introduction that discusses Faiz’s life, as well as fresh translations of some of his classic ghazals…

ON 5 AUGUST 1991 , Leila Seth was named the chief justice of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh, making her the first woman in the country to hold the senior-most judicial position in a high court. Seth broke many gender barriers over her legal career, during which she also became the first woman to top the London Bar examination, in 1958, as well as the first female judge of the Delhi High Court, in 1978. As a jurist, Seth defended the rights of women and minorities. For example, while a member of the Law Commission, she helped recommend an amendment to the Hindu Succession Act to ensure equal succession rights for daughters in Hindu families. She was also heavily critical of the Supreme Court when, in 2014, it issued…

“The disqualified men were openly attending BCCI meetings, claiming to represent their state association,” Guha wrote. In an interview he gave to ESPN Cricinfo in July, Vinod Rai, the chairman of the committee of administrators—the CoA—appointed by the Supreme Court to implement sweeping reforms in the administration of Indian cricket, said “disruptive elements” were stalling the group’s work, including the implementation of a new constitution for the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The court, he said, had not succeeded in persuading the BCCI’s members to pass the reformed constitution. “Then the court asked us to do it,” he continued. “We have tried our best to persuade them, build the consensus. Now that they have not agreed, I have sought the direction of the court.” Rai’s account was disingenuous—a…

IN THEORY, it should have been an easy match for Pusarla Venkata Sindhu. It was March, and the first round of the India Open, one of the Badminton World Federation’s elite Super Series tournaments, was underway. Sindhu, the world’s fifth-ranked player and an Olympic silver medallist, was pitted against the one-hundred-and-fifty-second-ranked Arundhati Pantawane. Twenty-seven-year-old Pantawane had won the gold medal at the Indian National Games in 2011, and her world ranking had peaked at number 40 in 2014, before a knee injury forced her to take 18 months off. She had made a comeback in July last year, and was playing well, but the 21-year-old Sindhu was fitter, six inches taller, in better form and a technically stronger player. Yet, it was Pantawane who first opened up a lead. Sindhu…

 ON 13 JANUARY, in Recife, a coastal city in north-eastern Brazil, 35-year-old Carol Calabria threw a big party for the birthday of her one-year-old daughter, Lis. She rented out a space in a chic district, decorated it with balloons, invited many children and their mothers, and even hired a professional photographer. birthday girl enjoy the day as Carol hoped she would. Throughout the party, Lis was nervous and agitated, as were many of the other children in attendance. One reason for their discomfort was that they have microcephaly—abnormally small heads and associated neurological defects, such as intellectual disability and poor motor function. The children were all born to women who had been infected with Zika: a mosquito-borne virus that can cause pregnant women to…

Photography In The Shadow of the Pyramids 25 AUGUST TO 20 SEPTEMBER ART HERITAGE GALLERY, DELHI Art Heritage Gallery is presenting an exhibition that documents the Egyptian photographer Laura El-Tantawy’s intensely personal nine-year journey reporting on the Arab Spring in northern Africa, especially the events at Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Originally showcased at London’s Photographer’s Gallery in 2016, the exhibit opens in India in the month that marks the country’s seventieth year of independence, posing the question: “Have we achieved the kind of freedom that we fought for?” For more information, write to tariqallana@artheritagegallery.com . Theatre Journey into Malgudi 11 TO 13 AUGUST JAGRITI THEATRE, BENGALURU R K Narayan’s fabled collection of short stories, Malgudi Days, will be recreated as a drama by the directors Ananthakrishnan Narasimhan and…