Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 i The Caravan

It was 10 am, which meant that the time for transactions had officially begun. On a weekday morning in mid June, Anjum, a 42-year-old jewellery seller, arrived at the Al-Khair Cooperative Credit Society’s Delhi branch, in a tall building in Okhla. Clothes-lines ran through the small office, which doubles as a makeshift guest house for visitors from far-off places who need a place to stay. With 13 branches across India, Al-Khair is an Islamic-finance organisation; it operates according to an ethical framework inspired by Islamic texts and values. Anjum had arrived at the Delhi branch in search of a small loan of R 15,000, to purchase raw materials for her jewellery business. She chose to approach Al-Khair instead of a conventional bank, she told me, because conventional banks “take much…

The Central Bureau of Investigation’s raids on 5 June on the residences and offices of Radhika and Prannoy Roy, the founders and promoters of NDTV, are troubling on many counts. For one, there are the technical flaws in the CBI’s justification for its actions. According to the agency, it was responding to a complaint regarding an alleged loss to ICICI Bank on the repayment of an old loan to the Roys. NDTV’s many regulatory and financial travails have been well documented, including in an extensive report published in this magazine in December 2015, but the foundation of the CBI complaint in this instance is conspicuously weak. The news channel swiftly published a letter from ICICI Bank, dated from 2009, which stated that the loan had been repaid in full. Even…

IN MID DECEMBER OF 2011 , Agnes Kharshiing received information that a 16-year-old girl had run away from Radhamadhab Road—a red-light area in Assam’s Silchar town—and returned to her home in Shillong. Kharshiing, who had been working for women’s rights for about six years, decided to seek the girl out. She found her in a Shillong slum, where the survivor was living with one of her siblings. She told Kharshiing about the horrific three years she had spent in Silchar—she had been sexually exploited, and put through physical and mental torture by clients, brothel owners and police officers. She also told Kharshiing of how common the trafficking of minors was in Radhamadhab Road. Soon after, Kharshiing resolved to organise a rescue mission to Radhamadhab Road, and asked the girl if…

IT WAS THURSDAY, and Ashok Shahane was in south Bombay at his weekly katta—the Marathi version of an addatelling a story. It was about a mermaid statue in the Byculla neighbourhood whose spirit used to haunt the mother of the poet Namdeo Dhasal. Everyone weighed in on the story’s veracity, arguing over whether it was Dhasal or his mother who had made it up, or whether the mermaid really was possessed. Shahane and his companions were eating brun maskas and drinking chai at the Stadium restaurant near Churchgate station, the last stop for the suburban trains that pour into the city on the Western Line. For the last 50 years, they have been meeting every Thursday afternoon, in one cafe or another. What is the agenda of these meetings? “No…

On a hot and sultry evening in May, accompanied by a friend, I visited the Nauchandi fair in Meerut—a month-long annual fair with music programmes, poetry recitations, performance arts, and stalls for food and handicraft. Held inside a roughly ten-acre ground, the carnival often sees massive crowds. But one particular area was exceptionally thronged, with people lining up in rows to get inside a tall cylindrical structure of colourful wooden planks, precariously held together by aging iron rods. Tickets were being sold from a makeshift loft attached to the structure: R 40 for a half-hour show. Two people sat on the loft—one of them handed out tickets in exchange for cash, while the other carried a portable microphone-speaker. “Aao aur dekho maut ka manzar!” (Come and see the scene of…

If the reports that Mukherjee defied the home ministry are accurate, he acted in violation of Article 74 of the constitution, which obliges the president to follow the advice of the council of ministers in the use of her powers. This is something unprecedented—or at least never before publicly documented—in the history of capital punishment in India. On the first day of this year, President Pranab Mukherjee accepted the mercy petitions of four death-row convicts found guilty of participating in the Bara massacre, in which 34 dominant-caste men were murdered by Maoist militants in 1992 following several massacres of Dalits in Bihar. In doing so, Mukherjee commuted their death sentences to life imprisonment. Reports in the Indian Express and on the website The Wire cited unnamed official sources as saying…

1 MAY 2011 Bilal Town, Abbottabad, Pakistan After eating dinner and clearing away the plates, Osama bin Laden’s family prayed, before he and Amal—his fourth and youngest wife—went to bed. Amal carried two-year-old Hussein, their youngest son, while Osama cradled his Quran. By 11 pm, the emir of Al Qaeda was deep in sleep in his compound nestled in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad. Outside, the streets were plunged into darkness as the electricity went out all over the city. Power shortages were so common that no one in the “Waziristan Palace” noticed. Locals had given Osama’s house the nickname, gossiping that the high-walled compound into which no one could see must have been erected by wealthy tribal merchants, living by a writ of purdah preferred in conservative tribal…

MAID IN INDIA STORIES OF OPPORTUNITY AND INEQUALITY INSIDE OUR HOMES Tripti Lahiri The journalist Tripti Lahiri’s new book takes us into the upstairs-downstairs worlds of affluent households in Delhi and Gurugram, as it follows both the wealthy “sahibs” and “ma’ams,” as well as the ayahs, maids, cooks and other domestic workers who serve them. Lahiri spends time on both sides of the service divide, travelling across the country to West Bengal and other states to visit the homes of many of migrant workers who serve the elite in India’s capital. Her book is an important contribution to our understanding of how globalisation is changing power relations in contemporary India. ALEPH BOOK COMPANY, 328 PAGES, R 599 BENGALI COOKING SEASONS AND FESTIVALS Chitrita Banerji This slim volume will be of…

On a downtown street crossing in Berkeley, California, a group of about twenty people listened intently as Barnali Ghosh made a request: “Think of something you’re really angry about.” Recent news cast a long shadow across the sunny morning. It was 26 January, the day after US President Donald Trump announced a travel ban against citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. One by one, Ghosh’s companions spoke up. “I’m angry at ‘reasonable Republicans.’” “I’m angry at the ‘us versus them’ mentality.” “I’m angry at all the anger.” When it came time for Sriharsha Jayanti to speak, his cheeks flushed slightly. “I’m angry at myself because I’ve never taken direct action,” he said. Jayanti, a lanky 29-year-old, later told me he had felt embarrassed to make such a confession in front of…

EVERY CULT or organisation typically carries forward the legacy of its founder, and it is rare for those who build upon that legacy to exercise the same influence—let alone exceed it. But the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, has never been a typical organisation, and, in this regard too, it stands out. It was founded in 1925 by Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, but it bears the far more emphatic stamp of his successor, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar. While Hedgewar is referred to as Doctorji within the RSS, Golwalkar is known as Guruji. Golwalkar took over as the RSS’s sarsanghchalak, or chief, after Hedge-war’s death, in 1940, and held the post till his own death, in 1973. When he assumed charge, the RSS—also known as the Sangh—was still establishing itself, and did…

“ I wish I could wake up one day only to find that I have become a woman. I am so soft and tender! ” “I feel like a mermaid. My body tells me I am a man and my soul tells me I am a woman.” “I like it when guys are attracted to me like they would be attracted to any other woman.” “We had a pen but no ink.” “I am giving an exam; the result is unknown to me.” NAYAN WORKS AT A GARMENT FACTORY in Dhaka, where she spends her days dressed as a man. But when she goes home in the evenings, she changes into a sari, puts on makeup and waits for her boyfriend to arrive. In 2012, the…

Photography Remains of the Day The photographer Shahid Datawala’s exhibition Remains of the Day will look for the idea of the uncanny in everyday objects. The work was inspired by his travels to the Konkan coast, and makes use of the objects that get washed up on the shores. 6 JULY TO 5 AUGUST TARQ, MUMBAI For more information, write to kaveri@tarq.in . Art Celestial Whisper 27 JULY TO 31 JULY INDIA HABITAT CENTRE, DELHI Modern Art Gallery will present the artwork of Ramesh Gorjala, Dibyendu Ukil, and several other artists—mainly mythological portrayals of various Indian gods and goddesses and their narratives, done in the Kalamkari technique, which involves painting on cotton textile. For more information, write to dilpreetbhullar@indiahabitat.org . Dance Rorschach Touch 22…