Innehållsförteckning för September 2019 från The Caravan

Karam Sain led the way through the narrow paths of the temperate forest near the tribal village of Lippa, located in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. The cool May air was filled with the scent of dried chilgoza pine cones, which crackled under his surefooted steps. Sain, whose fellow villagers save his name as CM—short for chief minister, reflecting his leadership role in the community—in their mobile phones, entered the small gompa—Buddhist religious structure—at Dakchompa. Located at an altitude of ten thousand feet, the site is said to house the spirit of the eighth-century Buddhist teacher Padmasambhava, who is revered by the Kanauras, the indigenous people of Kinnaur. The people of Lippa trek even higher up, to a holy lake called Ronnam Sorang, to celebrate the festival of Dakhrain.…

As I walked past the barbershops and dimly lit bars on the right bank of the Seine, young men, mostly Malian and Ivorian, called out, offering manicures and haircuts. The east-central boroughs of the tenth and eighteenth arrondissements of Paris are a haven for African touts, Turkish cafes, Pakistani shops, migrant tenements, hipster joints and a few shady ones too. But when I reached the Comédia, a concert hall built in 1858, the crowd queuing on the pavement was posh, fashionable and as mixed race as it can get in Paris. The audience of over six hundred people was here to watch Fary Lopes, a 28-year-old comedian who is one of the biggest stars of the French stand-up scene. “We have a problem here in France,” Fary said during his…

Docked in the choppy waters of a Venetian canal, along the warehouse architecture of the Arsenale—one of two venues of the 2019 Venice Biennale—is the ruin of a 90-foot fishing boat. Titled “Barca Nostra”—Italian for “our boat”—it forms part of a project by the Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel. On the night of 18 April 2015, in waters between Libya and the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, this boat capsized, and nearly eight hundred passengers drowned or were lost at sea. Each passenger was a migrant fleeing war or famine, hoping to seek refuge in Europe. On board were people from Syria, Gambia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali, Libya, Eritrea and Bangladesh. Only 28 people survived. A year after it was wrecked, the boat was brought back to Sicily, where forensic experts…

ON 31 JULY, I spoke at an event titled, “An Enigma called Nation & the Question of Identity,” organised in Delhi by the Hindi literary publication Hans to mark the birth anniversary of the writer Premchand. Among my fellow speakers was Makarand Paranjape, the director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, in Shimla. In the course of his lecture, Paranjape referred to various inequities created by provisions of the Indian constitution and invoked Adivasis who do not have to pay taxes. When the time for questions came, an irate member of the audience asked what taxes he expected from those who did not have an income. Paranjape clarified that he was only referring to tribal government servants in the Northeast. When the audience member confronted him with the enabling…

Earlier this year, Muhammad Raees, a 57-year-old resident of Jamia Nagar, began looking for a new house for his family. In his years of living in Delhi, he had never found a house that suited his requirements, a secure locality being top of his list. In May, a fortnight before Eid-ul-Fitr, he found a lead. “Festivities before festivity for Muslims who wish to live in Noida,” an online advertisement read. It offered residential towers “exclusively for Muslims” at ₹ 4,200 per square foot. Jamia Nagar, the predominantly Muslim neighbourhood where Raees has lived for the past fifteen years, lacks several basic facilities, such as clean drinking water, schools, parks and dispensaries, like most other Muslim localities in India. Nevertheless, it provided Raees “a sense of security,” he told me. “The…

THE SENSE OF SIEGE HIT EARLY, in the air, long before seeing the barbed-wire barricades and security forces armed to the teeth blocking the way. Fifteen minutes before the plane touched down at Srinagar, an announcement was made asking the passengers to close the windows. The staff went around making sure all windows are shut—“An order from the DGCA, sir,” one of the flight attendants said upon enquiry, referring to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. First there was mild disbelief, then there was mocking. A Kashmiri passenger next to me laughed and said, “This is nazarbandi”—house arrest. Others repeated the word as if they were adding it to their vocabulary. Some of them, curious, opened the windows halfway to peep out, but closed them in a hurry. It was…

FLOOD AND FURY ECOLOGICAL DEVASTATION IN THE WESTERN GHATS Viju B The author looks closely at the devastation brought on by floods and landslides in Kerala and Karnataka in 2018. Drawing on his documentation of the regions at the time, he lays out the havoc wreaked in certain regions, such as the district of Idukki and the town of Aranmula, and argues that the calamity needs to be examined in the context of the larger ecological crisis facing the Western Ghats. PENGUIN, 296 PAGES, R 399 LOOKING FOR MISS SARGAM STORIES OF MUSIC AND MISADVENTURE Shubha Mudgal A debut work of fiction by the acclaimed musician Shubha Mudgal, this collection of stories features classical performers navigating their profession. Among the obstacles they face are quirks of the industry, including longstanding…

Under the dilapidated ceiling of the Taji Khan Hazara Sports Complex—its white paint now grey and peeling—72-year-old Habibullah Jaferi practised punches with a young student. A spot of sunlight lit the cold, concrete ground. The two danced around it. As his narrowed eyes followed her movements from behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, she positioned her gloves close to her face, swung a left, then a hurried right. He parried the blows, before shifting his focus to the next student. For six days a week, Habibullah holds free coaching classes at this club on Quetta’s Alamdar Road—one of four boxing clubs in the neighbourhood. A washed-out poster of the “father of boxing,” as he is known here, standing next to his star student, Syed Asif Shah Hazara, was plastered on…

“While we should not be worried, there is some anxiety after reading news reports,” AK Abdul Momen, the foreign minister of Bangladesh, told a television channel in July. He was speaking of the National Register of Citizens, the Indian government’s project to define and identify legal residents of the state of Assam—and, more importantly, to identify and make stateless those who it claims are illegal immigrants. Last year, the NRC provisionally identified around four million supposedly “illegal” people—almost exclusively Muslims—who in the official Indian narrative have been branded “Bengali” infiltrators, from across the border in Bangladesh. Momen’s cautious statement was reported as the first public admission of concern over the NRC by the Bangladesh government. Those the NRC had singled out, he said, had been living in Assam for over…

AS INDIA CELEBRATES her seventy-third year of independence from British rule, ragged children thread their way through traffic in Delhi, selling outsized national flags and souvenirs that say, “Mera Bharat Mahan”—My India is Great. Quite honestly, it’s hard to feel that way right now, because it looks very much as though our government has gone rogue. Last week it unilaterally breached the fundamental conditions of the Instrument of Accession, by which the former princely State of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India in 1947. In preparation for this, at midnight on 4 August, it turned all of Kashmir into a giant prison camp. Seven million Kashmiris were barricaded in their homes, internet connections were cut and their phones went dead. On 5 August, India’s home minister proposed in parliament that…

Dance The Platform WEEKENDS IN SEPTEMBER SHOONYA CENTRE FOR ART AND SOMATIC PRACTICES, BENGALURU This event features the works of 12 young dancers from across the country, spanning a variety of dance forms: contemporary, folk and classical. Scheduled on Saturdays and Sundays beginning 14 September, it aims to showcase Indian dance, as well as educate and raise awareness about its various forms. For further information, write to masoom@shoonyaspace.com Exhibition Satrangi: An Exhibition of Warli Art 5 TO 25 SEPTEMBER GALLERY OJAS ART, DELHI The Warli tribal community evokes its ancestral culture through ritualistic paintings—also known as Warli art—made as murals on walls using soil, cow dung and rice paste. Satrangi will showcase this indigenous art form, featuring artists such as Rajesh Chaitya Wangad, Tushar and Mayur Vayeda. For further information,…