Innehållsförteckning för December 2019 från The Caravan

The year is 1972. From a poppy-red podium, Indira Gandhi, then the prime minister of India, addresses a large crowd in Srinagar. She cuts an imposing silhouette against the void separating her from an audience of thousands. A few metres behind her are the reporters. Nestled among them, an American photographer in her forties captures the scene using a 35-millimetre camera. Marilyn Stafford never set out to become a photographer. Trained in acting as a child, she was destined for a life in front of the camera, not behind it. Through a series of chance encounters, she found herself drawn to the storytelling potential of photography, championing the form’s power as both witness to life and catalyst for change. Stafford, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, was 23 years old…

On 8 June, around noon, four people in ordinary clothes abducted me from the front of my house in Mandawali, on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border. “You had tweeted against Baba ji,” they said, referring to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath. “Now face the consequences.” On hearing this, the first thought that entered my mind was that these people must be from the Bajrang Dal or the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Out of them, two had worn chappals, which made it difficult to confirm whether they were from the police. The car in which they pushed me appeared to be private car, not a police vehicle. They raced it to Noida, inside Uttar Pradesh. After an argument in the car, they revealed that they belonged to the Lucknow police and…

In January 2014, The Hindu carried a review of a concert that Abhishek Raghuram, a leading Carnatic vocalist in his mid thirties, gave at the prestigious Music Academy in Chennai. The concert, which I also attended, would have appeared to many as a great success. The venue was overflowing: after filling all the aisles with extra chairs, the ushers still had to turn many people away. The performance took place in the evening slot, which is reserved for those whom the organisation believes are the most deserving musicians. At the end of the concert, the audience gave the young musician a long standing ovation. In the review, the writer, Veejay Sai, nevertheless wrote the following: Abhishek lacks a sense of proportion and often overdoes his exhibitionist method, almost playing to…

ON 9 AUGUST, the last Friday before Eid-ul-Adha, thousands gathered in the streets of Soura, a neighbourhood in Srinagar, for a massive protest against the Indian state. Four days earlier, the home minister, Amit Shah, had announced the effective abrogation of Article 370 in the Constitution, which had provided Jammu and Kashmir a special status that allowed the state to have its own separate constitution and state flag. In addition, the government also divided the state into two union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The move virtually stripped the local leadership of political power, concentrating it completely in the hands of the central government. According to the New York Times, the crowd chanted slogans of freedom and waved Kashmiri flags. The procession was blocked by security personnel, who, according…

ABOUT ELEVEN YEARS AGO, in November 2008, students of Delhi University organised a seminar, titled “Communalism, Fascism, Democracy Rhetoric and Reality,” in Room Number 22 of the Faculty of Arts building. The talk was to be headed by Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani, a Kashmiri-Muslim professor who taught Arabic in the university. There were few people in the country more suited to speak on the topic. Geelani had been sentenced to death in December 2002 for his alleged role in the attack on the Indian parliament the previous year. A sordid media trial had declared him a terrorist even before the court’s verdict. But, in the course of the next three years, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court acquitted him of all charges. At the event, Geelani was going…

EXQUISITE CADAVERS Meena Kandasamy Meena Kandasamy’s new novel follows the lives of two characters in London: the filmmaker Karim, originally from North Africa, and his partner Maya, who is working at a newspaper while dealing with an unstable father, a difficult job and an unexpected pregnancy. The novel, which alludes heavily to recent political events, including Brexit, toys with form too. Each page is divided into two columns, with Maya and Karim’s story unravelling on the right, while on the left, Kandasamy reflects on her writing, the Indian political landscape and her own life. WESTLAND, 112 PAGES, R 399 VANNI A FAMILY’S STRUGGLE THROUGH THE SRI LANKAN CONFLICT Benjamin Dix and Lindsay Pollock This graphic novel is set in a tumultuous period in Sri Lankan history, one that witnessed the…

The residents of the Jhuggi Jhopri Resettlement Colony in Delhi’s Savda Ghevra are not residents by choice. They have been pushed to the outskirts of the city after waves of evictions, most recently in the run-up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games. On 2 November, I visited the colony to meet a 16-year-old girl whose words had managed to find their way to central Delhi. Aanchal, an eleventh-standard student, had had her first story published, in the October issue of Hans, India’s most prestigious Hindi literary magazine. Aanchal’s short story, titled “Saikal ke Sapne”—Dreams of a Bicycle—is about a young girl’s yearning for a bicycle, with an intensely detailed account of her thoughts as she waits for her parents to come home with it. “Like Premchand, I want to write to…

In 2014, the newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi went on a North American tour, his first visit after the revocation of a nearly-ten-year visa ban. He received an overwhelming welcome from the Indian diaspora at Madison Square Garden in New York, and largely favourable press coverage in the media. At the time, in Canada, the journalist Gurpreet Singh was preparing to present his radio show in Vancouver. The programme was to feature, among others, someone who was planning to protest Modi’s tour. Singh started receiving express instructions from his colleagues not to have anyone—or any content—critical of the prime minister on air. These, we were to understand, were the wishes of the owner of the radio channel. The pressure was being created through the Indian high commission. Singh went…

A WOMAN CLUTCHES AN INFANT in a cloud of dust as three children wait behind her; a flock of sheep made of cement stands in a dusty field with discoloured grass; the skies in Inner Mongolia and Hebei province are uniformly brown and grey. A fog hangs over Lu Guang’s photographed landscapes, adding a dystopian quality to them. The dust and soot on the faces of nearly all of the people photographed by Lu, a Chinese photographer, reveal that despite its formidable economic growth, the country’s ecosystems are in crisis. Lu’s project Aids Village in Henan documents residents of China’s Henan province, many of whom had been subjected to illegal blood transfusions that resulted in an AIDS epidemic. As a consequence of his coverage of the villages, the Beijing authorities…

On 15 September, 26 candidates faced off in Tunisia’s presidential election, the second since the 23-year-long dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown in the first protests of the 2011 Arab Spring. In the runoff, held on 13 October, the independent candidate Kais Saied, a former professor of constitutional law at the University of Tunis who was a political outsider when he declared his candidacy, defeated Nabil Karoui, a media baron who owns the television channel Nessma but has never held political office, in a landslide. Other countries in North Africa and West Asia have seen popular uprisings against authoritarian governments in 2011 not having success in the long run. Tunisia, on the other hand, has been able to hold on to its hard-won democracy, albeit with transitional challenges…

On 24 October, amendments made a few months earlier by the central government to the Right to Information Act, 2005 came into effect. These changes have severely compromised the independence of the commission—among other distressing alterations to the act are provisions that give the government power over deciding the tenure, salary and dismissal of information commissioners. When the RTI Act was passed, 14 years ago, it seemed to present a powerful tool for journalism to expose malfeasance at the highest levels of government. And yet, there has been no concerted pushback from media houses about the government’s current move. It is only activists and a few opposition parties who have protested. But those who have worked in the Indian media for some time know why journalism will be minimally affected…

On 14 October, I logged in to find that Facebook had disabled my account “permanently.” This is the highest level of prohibitory action taken by the platform against a user. I had received no warning, so I wondered if it might be a technical glitch. I asked my friend to look for my page but they texted back: “it is eerie all trace of you is gone.” I went through the now familiar ritual—I have been suspended once before—of scrolling through the help pages to contact Facebook. For even basic support, the user has to furnish a genuine picture identification, along with some other confidential details. The procedure might seem almost comforting, a bureaucratic sequence designed to help lodge a complaint, giving the individual some hope for redressal. And yet,…

{ONE} AS WE HURTLED past the turnstile on the ground floor of the India Today complex in Noida, Anjana Om Kashyap was worried about the state of television news. “The kind of things they are saying,” the executive editor of Aaj Tak said as she speed-walked to the building’s plentifully stocked and populated canteen. “You can’t say blatant things like that. It’s not journalism.” When my taxi had stopped at the complex’s gates, in the late afternoon of 22 August, Kashyap had called, at once apologetic and warm, to say she was going to be delayed. “With all this news breaking about Chidambaram, you know how it is.” In the lobby, a cabinet full of shining trophies stood as a testament to the craft of India Today’s journalists. At least…

At the Indian Defence & Aerospace Summit, French Ambassador to India Emmanuel Lenain said: “Most of our cooperation (terrorism, maritime and space security, cyberspace and digital technology) are framed by joint statements. This strategic partnership has provided excellent foundations for our bilateral relations, which are solid and marked by trust. This is what explains our steadfast support for India’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.”…

WHEN RUDYARD KIPLING FIRST ALIGHTED in Calcutta as a young journalist for The Pioneer, he keenly felt some kinship between the city and London. As the English author took in the view from a new colonial bequest to the city, a pontoon bridge designed by Bradford Leslie, he exclaimed, “Why, this is London! This is the docks. This is Imperial.” He was terribly homesick for the metropole, where the English could revel with “millions of their own kind, and a wilderness full of pretty, fresh-coloured Englishwomen.” Calcutta, Kipling thought, bore “false hopes of some return” to London. In eight vignettes composed over three sweltering months in Calcutta, in 1888, and collected two years later in The City of Dreadful Night, Kipling’s readers will never find a man whose homesickness is…

Theatre Chaheta 15 DECEMBER RANGA SHANKARA, BENGALURU Chaheta—The Beloved—explores the story of the biblical figure Abraham nearly sacrificing his son, Issac, and the psychological scars the latter faced. The play also attempts to question the sanity and sanctity of people who claim to talk with god. For more information, write to aasakta.pune@gmail.com Zoon 7 TO 8 DECEMBER KAMANI AUDITORIUM, DELHI The play is a dramatic reinterpretation of the story of Zoon, a nickname for the sixteenth-century Kashmiri poet Habba Khatoon. According to legend, she was a peasant who married Yusuf Shah Chak, who would go on to rule Kashmir. The couple tragically fell afoul of the Mughal emperor Akbar, who coveted Khatoon. For more information, write to santosh@zimisha.com Music Jazz India Circuit 6 DECEMBER ONE HORIZON CENTRE, GURUGRAM The 2019…