Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i The Caravan

Mitra was often frustrated by the tendency of certain attendees to treat Objectivism as a cult of personality, discussing “whether one should have cats as pets, or smoke, because Rand did that.” On a warm morning in February, I visited a windowless beige room in Delhi’s Apeejay School of Management, to see India’s largest collection of writings by the author Ayn Rand. On metal bookcases lining all four walls, antique editions signed by Rand stood alongside cheap pirated copies, once peddled on street corners. Audio and video cassettes also sat on the shelves, though more of them rested in a ceiling-high pile of boxes in a corner. I was welcomed by Barun Mitra, a 56-year-old policy analyst and the proud custodian of the collection. “I’m very lucky,” he told me,…

Savarkar faced many of the same problems that have bedevilled anyone trying to make sense of just who is a Hindu and who is not. His answer amounts to no more than saying that a Hindu is a Hindu. Across the country, it seems, among people with a small-minded definition of the Indian republic, the readiness to chant “Bharat Mata ki jai”—Victory to Mother India—is the new test of patriotism. In early February, the host of a panel show on the television channel India News shouted down two of his invitees—Kanhaiya Kumar, the head of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union, and Dinesh Varshney, a leader of the Communist Party of India—demanding that they recite the slogan. On 16 March, Waris Yusuf Pathan, an elected MLA from the All India…

ASSAM’S MAJULI is the largest river island in India. It might eventually lose that title. Ever since an earthquake changed the course of the Brahmputra in 1950, the river’s erosion of Majuli has intensified. Seasonal flooding, which has always been a problem, also contributes. Between 1917 and 2001, the island’s surface area shrank from 751 square kilometres to 422 square kilometres. The 170,000 people living on the island, which is home to dozens of Hindu monasteries, are in a constant struggle to protect their land and culture. This community, under threat from the forces of nature, forms the subject of “Majuli,” a photo series by the French photographer Dorian François. According to François, the work is not just an act of documentation with a conservationist agenda, but also an attempt…

No Parsi is an Island 20 MARCH TO 29 MAY NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, DELHI “No Parsi is an Island” celebrates Parsi history and culture through works by painters, sculptors and illustrators of Parsi origin, produced from the late colonial period to the present. Despite the shared roots of its contributors, the exhibition does not relate directly to the Parsi community or their concerns, but instead explores themes such as nationalism, globalisation, colonialism and modernity. The exhibit is curated with an eye for imagination and variety, incorporating works that include introspective, haunting paintings by Sudhir Patwardhan and Atul Dodiya; illustrations of regional dancers by Shiavax Chavda; and bold sculptures by Piloo Pochkhanawala. Across a sunlit courtyard, viewers can find a complementary exhibition called “Painted Encounters: Parsi Traders and The…

Across New York City this March, upper-crust galleries, museums and auction houses hosted the seventh annual Asia Week: a ten-day event to celebrate and promote Asian art. But these celebrations were soon tainted, when agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a federal law-enforcement body, raided Asia Week five times to seize artworks suspected to have illicit origins. In its first raid, on 11 March, HSI confiscated two Indian statues from Christie’s, a prominent auction house, just four days before they were to be sold. Of the handful of news stories that covered the seizure, none mentioned Vijay Kumar: the art enthusiast-turned-investigator who made it possible. A shipping manager in Singapore with no formal training in art, Kumar has spent his free time for the past six years tracking stolen Indian antiquities…

ON A BALMY FEBRUARY NIGHT, aware that things were not going well, I did what I rarely do. I put in earplugs and switched on the television. Even though I had said nothing about the spate of recent events—murders and lynchings, police raids on university campuses, student arrests, and enforced flag-waving—I knew that my name was still on the A-list of “anti-nationals.” That night, I began to worry that, in addition to the charge of criminal contempt of court I was already facing (for “interfering in the administration of justice,” “bashing the Central Government, State Governments, the Police Machinery, so also the Judiciary,” and “demonstrating a surly, rude and boorish attitude”), I would also be charged with causing the death of the eternally indignant news anchor on Times Now. I…

SUBIMAL MISRA is a retired schoolteacher who lives alone in a flat on Kolkata’s southern edge. For the past five decades, he has written stories for Bengali little magazines, including Kabitirtha, Bigyapan Parba and Jari Bobajuddho. He has also written and self-published over 20 works of fiction, which, for decades, he sold himself from a stall in the little-magazine section of the annual Kolkata Book Fair. His works have no copyright, and are free for anyone to reprint. He has repeatedly said that he is against the commercial use of his work, and that he is “protishthan birodhi”—anti-establishment—meaning he opposes not just the political establishment but also the formidable publishing and media establishments in West Bengal. Despite his prodigious output in little magazines, he has never won any awards, is…

Thoda Dhyan Se 21 MARCH PRIVATE HOME, DELHI On a Monday night in a living room in Vasant Kunj, the Delhi-based theatre artist Mallika Taneja performed her original one-woman show, Thoda Dhyan Se, for a private audience of about 30 people. Taneja walked onstage naked, affecting an ironically lighthearted tone to proclaim: “You have to be a little careful. You know, na, times are bad. Zamaana kharaab hai. When you know that times are bad, just be a little careful!” In the first act, which lasted about 15 minutes, Taneja delivered a searing monologue in this vein, satirising the patronising advice women are often given on how to remain safe from violence. As she spoke, she put on articles of clothing until she was covered in a bulging tangle of…

In April 2015, when the Indian soap opera Banoo Main Teri Dulhann—“I Will Be Your Bride”—appeared on Ariana TV, a channel in Afghanistan, something was amiss. As the title song rang out, women in bright salwar kameezes danced onscreen, and the lead character, dressed in shiny, red bridal wear, ran into the arms of her lover. The characters spoke Pashto, and “Ram” had been changed to “khuda.” The actresses’ uncovered shoulders and midriffs appeared blurry and pixelated. In another scene, a man held a plate full of candles in front of something, but it was not quite clear what. The Hindu idol he was worshipping had been censored from the episode. Banoo Main Teri Dulhann is not the only programme to receive such treatment. Indian soap operas, often criticised in…

ON THE EVENING OF 16 JANUARY, the mood on the campus of the University of Hyderabad was mellow. For around a month, there had been protests against the administration’s decision to bar five young Dalit men from using their hostels and the university’s public spaces. But support for the protests was flagging. Two days earlier, the students had tried to step up their demonstrations by occupying the administration building. But they were outmanoeuvred by the vice chancellor, or VC, Appa Rao Podile, who rallied some of the university’s staff, including mess workers, against them. These employees warned the students that they would shut down the campus messes if the blockade continued—a threat which forced them to back down. That evening, a group of students gathered at the main site of…

[1 ] ON 2 NOVEMBER 2014 , Shah Rukh Khan’s forty-ninth birthday, a horde of his fans gathered outside the front gate of Mannat—the film star’s six-storey mansion on the Bandra seafront, in Mumbai. By early afternoon, many had been there for hours, hoping that Khan would make a brief appearance—so they could wave at him, and shout his name, if just for a few minutes. Raju Rahikwar arrived at half past one. The crowd, stunned by the wait under a strong sun, stirred. Raju wore a shiny brown jacket and matching trousers, a red shirt and black sunglasses, with straight black hair parted down the middle and bangs covering his forehead—all meant to mimic the look of Khan himself. He looked convincing enough that many in the crowd, deprived…

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL INDIAN POLITY AND CULTURE THE DELHI SULTANATE AND ITS TIMES Mohammad Habib Edited and with an introduction by Irfan Habib Mohammad Habib, who died in 1971, was one of the foremost historians to write on medieval India. In this collection of his works, he examines the legacies of statesmen who lived during the eleventh through fifteenth centuries, such as the Turkic ruler Mahmud of Ghazni and the historian Ziya Barani. The book also showcases Habib’s attention to the histories of the oppressed, in essays that discuss the lives of common people such as peasants, weavers and artisans. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 517 PAGES, R 1,150 THE LIVING Anjali Joseph Anjali Joseph’s third novel follows two protagonists: Claire, a young single mother working in one of England’s last surviving…