Innehållsförteckning för December 2015 från The Caravan

On a chilly morning this September, laughter rang through the Dalai Lama Temple, situated in McLeod Ganj, a town perched above Dharamshala. The Dalai Lama had just told a joke, and an audience of elderly Tibetans, seated in the temple’s brightly painted inner sanctum, were giggling. However, in the vast concrete outer hall that surrounds the inner sanctum, separate audiences of hundreds of listeners remained silent. Moments later, pockets of laughter broke out among them and rippled through the hall. Dotted among the listeners were roughly half a dozen figures who sat in intense concentration, cross-legged at low wooden desks, wearing headphones and talking quickly into microphones. While the Dalai Lama spoke from the inner sanctum, this group translated his teachings. Their voices were broadcast, live, to a number of…

On 17 March, about two months after the attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Gilles Platret, the mayor of the town of Chalon-sur-Saône in France’s Burgundy region, wrote a letter to parents, declaring that schools under his control would no longer offer alternative meals when pork was on the menu. A member of the right-wing political party Les Républicains, headed by France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy, Platret explained that substitute pork-free meals were a religious concession to religious sentiments, and that he was returning to the “French principle of secularism.” Shortly after, he was challenged in a local court by the Islamist group Muslim Judicial Defence League, who said that “secularism” was being used as an excuse to target and stigmatise Islam. On 13 August, the court ruled…

In the last ten months, Shirin Dalvi has had practically no paid work. She has given one talk on All India Radio and had one article in Urdu, on madrasa reform, translated and published in the Economic and Political Weekly. Dalvi has been a journalist for 27 years, of which she spent five in editorial positions. She was the editor of the Mumbai edition of the Urdu newspaper Avadhnama, which, on 17 January this year, ran the cover image of an issue of Charlie Hebdo to accompany a story about the satirical French magazine. Just ten days earlier, many of Charlie Hebdo’s Paris staff had been murdered in a horrific attack on their offices by Muslim fundamentalists. The attackers were believed to be upset with the magazine’s controversial cartoons, which…

About 45 minutes north of Ahmedabad, having passed under a sign that announces your impending arrival in “GREEN CLEAN GANDHINAGAR” and another advertising Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, you may or may not notice a small placard with the word “GIFT” printed over an arrow pointing east. Follow that arrow down a dusty access road, past a rusted-out advertisement for an amusement park called Gujarat Funworld, which looks decidedly un-fun. Within 15 minutes, you’ll reach Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, or GIFT—a place, a video on its website proudly proclaims, “where wealth breeds wealth.” GIFT is to be India’s first Smart City. Phase one of its construction is slated for completion by March next year. When the third and final phase wraps up in 2024, the “city” will run on an ambitious…

THE BROTHERS BIHARI Sankarshan Thakur Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar: one is a charismatic populist, the other a shrewd introvert. They have been heroes to some, villains to others, and yet both are champions of the underdog. For a quarter of a century, the two, by turns, have dictated the destiny of Bihar. This omnibus edition of the journalist Sankarshan Thakur’s previously published biographies of the two men— Subaltern Saheb and Single Man—captures their lives and the arresting recent story of one of India’s largest states. HARPERCOLLINS INDIA, 428 PAGES, R 550 UNIVERSITIES AT THE CROSSROADS André Béteille The sociologist André Béteille illuminates the current predicament of Indian universities, discussing the objectives with which they were set up, as well as the extent to which they have remained true to…

Zubin Mehta Live in Concert 30 AND 31 OCTOBER JAWAHARLAL NEHRU STADIUM, DELHI On his much-anticipated India tour, Zubin Mehta, a renowned conductor of Western classical music, performed in Delhi for the first time in a decade. The programme opened with Greta Bradman, a classical soprano, making the dramatic aria ‘Der Hölle Rache,’ from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, seem effortless. Her mastery set the bar for the evening, and, unfortunately, the pieces that immediately followed—more selections from Mozart, on violin and viola—were not as engaging. Mehta, however, conducted the entire programme with finesse and comfort. The grand finale in particular, when the Australian World Orchestra performed Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, filled the audience with awe.…

Down a narrow, winding lane off Lal Chowk, an iconic square in central Srinagar, stands the decrepit Hotel Ash. Past a reception desk with no attendant, and up a rickety flight of stairs, is room number 5, which serves as an office for three local newspapers. Inside, on an October evening, I found Malik Rafi, the 37-year-old owner of the Urdu weekly Kashmir Manzar, peering fixedly at a computer screen. Rafi is the publisher, editor, designer, and sometimes even distributor of the newspaper, which boasts a staff of exactly one. Beside him, two men typed away frantically at their keyboards—one the owner, and the entire staff, of the Kashmir Glacier, and the other of the Daily Nigahban. Rafi, like dozens of other newspaper owners working out of Hotel Ash, begins…

In late May this year, scientists at Ecuador’s Geophysics Institute detected a fivefold increase in sulphur dioxide emissions from Cotopaxi—one of the world’s tallest active volcanoes, a looming presence 60 kilometres south of Quito, the national capital. On 17 June, the volcano’s vent began spewing plumes of gas and steam a kilometre into the sky. Two months later, on the morning of 14 August, it erupted. The eruption continues today. In 1877, Cotopaxi’s last major eruption killed over 1,000 people, causing desolation that a government press release described as “terrible and complete.” Today, at its current intensity, the eruption has already disrupted surrounding areas. Thousands have fled their homes, as rumours of impending mudslides spread through vulnerable communities. Falling ash, which can harm respiratory health, threatens Quito’s population of more…

On 11 November 2015, Pakistan’s most prominent English newspaper, Dawn, ran a front-page story on the military’s criticism of the government for its apparent lack of progress on a counter-terrorism plan. The story typified the Pakistani armed forces’ ability to shake up the political structure by throwing their weight around. On the last page, another story appeared, just as characteristic of how the state functions. It reported that a journalist, Mohammad Afzal Mughal, was detained by a law-enforcement agency from his home in Quetta, Balochistan, at 2.30 am. He was questioned by several officials, and then dropped off near his house. Journalists in Pakistan have to navigate these two norms: they must report on and engage with the Pakistani military, but the state inevitably controls the message. Over the past…

IN A SCENE FROM THE SIX-MINUTE FILM Asylum of the Birds, the photographer Roger Ballen adjusts the limbs of his subject: a man holding a squirming bird in one hand, and wearing a mask with a dead bird pasted to the mouth. “Look at me, turn your head around, down, down, down,” he mutters, framing his shot, and it’s unclear whether he’s addressing the man or the bird. In 2014, Ballen released the film alongside a photo series of the same title. Both works were shot in the same crumbling house on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and feature the kinds of highly staged images typical of the photographer’s recent style. Ballen’s composition process has not always been so complex. An American who has lived in South Africa since 1982, he…

Jazzmandu 4 TO 10 NOVEMBER KATHMANDU, NEPAL In the week before Diwali, musicians from across the world converged to perform at the thirteen edition of Jazzmandu, Kathmandu’s international jazz festival. On Friday night, bands played at four small venues across the city. At a bar in the centre, the local outfit Cadenza Collective blended together jazz, Nepali folk, and Afrobeat, and were joined by the Cuban singer and flautist Yaite Ramos, who played a selection of boleros and rumbas. At the “Jazz at Patan” concert on 9 November, the festival’s large assembly of visiting musicians performed alongside Nepali musicians from the Hindustani classical tradition. Manmohan Thapaliya impressed with his somersaulting vocals, as did Rabin Lal Shrestha on sitar and Prince Nepali on the sarangi with their ricocheting musical exchanges. It…

Chitrakatha 2015 14 TO 18 OCTOBER NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DESIGN, AHMEDABAD This biennial animation festival celebrated the world of moving images. In addition to a student short-film competition, whose screenings occurred in daily installments, participants could join presentations and workshops hosted by experts from all over the world. Memorable presenters included Mohammed Ghazala from Egypt, who gave a retrospective talk on African animation; Maral Mohamedian from Canada, who delivered a centenary tribute to the animator Norman McLaren; and Rafiqun Nabi from Bangladesh, who spoke about his creation of the street-urchin character Tokai, perhaps the country’s most loved cartoon figure.…

Ten years ago, in his last year at college in Nagpur, Vinayak Razdan opened his local newspaper and learned that the actor Parveen Babi had died at the age of 55. Growing up, Razdan had idolised her. He was troubled by the manner of her death. The Times of India headline that day read: “Parveen Babi dies, alone in death as in life.” In her final years, Babi, battling mental illness, had confined herself within her home in the Mumbai suburb of Juhu. She suffered fatal organ failure in her apartment one day, but no one had realised this for a while. Milk deliveries piled up at her doorstep for days before her housing society had the police check up on her. The young Razdan had had a rough year…

Living donation accounts for the majority of the renal grafts in India. The graft harvesting procedure (donor nephrectomy) requires a long flank incision, often accompanied by rib resection. This is associated with significant morbidity. Introduction of Laparoscopy Donor Nephrectomy (LDN), or keyhole surgery, in 1999, proved to be a major improvement in organ harvesting. LDN, with the advantages of less pain, early ambulation and shorter hospitalization has had a profound effect on the renal transplant programs. In some centers, LDN has almost doubled the live donor transplant rate. Currently, kidney donors can expect to make full recovery and return to their livelihood within a few weeks. Kidney recipient surgery typically involves a 20 cm long lower-lateral abdominal incision, through which the graft is placed inside the body and ureter and…

IN DECEMBER 2002 , weeks before the announcement of state election results in Gujarat, MJ Akbar, then the editor-in-chief of the news daily the Asian Age, published a column. That July, Gujarat’s legislative assembly had been prematurely dissolved, and its chief minister, Narendra Modi, had resigned, following criticism of his Bharatiya Janata Party government for widespread anti-Muslim violence under its watch earlier in the year. Akbar’s column, titled ‘Congress is BJP’s B-Team in Gujarat,’ chided the opposition party for a campaign strategy centred on “soft-Hindutva,” a watered-down version of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist ideology. “It is chicanery to claim outside Gujarat that you want to destroy the evil of communalism by defeating Narendra Modi,” he wrote, “and to indulge in a variation of his communalism inside Gujarat.” But he had…

IT WAS 2002 , four years before the Jaipur Literature Festival kicked off in Diggi Palace, when I was picked by the British Council to be a part of a small band of Indian reviewers and authors invited to see what the fuss was over the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the writers who massed at Charlotte Square Gardens. Most of us book-lovers had spent the 1990s with our noses pressed up to the thick-glassed window that separated home and abroad, knowing that, since we lived in India, we would rarely meet the foreign writers whose books we loved so much. As a fledgling book-reviewer at the newspaper Business Standard in Delhi, I couldn’t believe my luck when the British Council offered to cover the cost of air tickets and…

Delhi Photo Festival 2015 30 OCTOBER TO 8 NOVEMBER INDIRA GANDHI NATIONAL CENTRE FOR THE ARTS, DELHI The third edition of the biennial Delhi Photo Festival was held on the lawns of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. The Nazar Foundation, a not-for-profit trust, started the DPF in 2011, with the aim of bringing together an international community of photographers. This year, the festival showed more than 80 projects from around the world. Highlights included the Sochi Project by Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen, a documentary study of the Russian city’s preparations for the 2014 Olympics; the series Humanae by Angelica Dass, which uses chromatic measurements to question racial categories; and Nomads of Changthang by Rahul Dhankani, an intimate look at a nomadic people living in Tibet…

Indigenous Terra Madre 3 TO 7 NOVEMBER NORTH EASTERN HILL UNIVERSITY, SHILLONG Over 600 delegates, from 145 cultural communities and 58 countries, attended the second edition of the Indigenous Terra Madre conference, hosted in Shillong this year. The theme for the gathering was “The Future We Want: Indigenous Perspectives and Actions.” On the sprawling campus of the North Eastern Hill University, attendees, many dressed in traditional regalia, participated in discussions on such issues as land rights, small-scale farming and climate change. There were also workshops, on topics including beekeping and fermented foods. The conference ended with a food festival, and a closing ceremony featuring diverse cultural performances.…