Resort of Scoundrels

Resorts, in our country, seem to be the last resort of scoundrels. A piece by very angry G Pramod Kumar on Firstpost gives history of resort politics of Karnataka. (Currently Yeddi has herded his horses to some resort, in his bid to topple the current CM, who belongs to his own party. Yeddi is an RSS product, by the way. And BJP has no guts to throw him out, yet.

Kumar is right, resort politics is a disgraceful evidence of possibility of horse-trading in our politics, and of venality of our legislators. But I disagree when he says Isn't time that the never-happening Lokpal looked at this as well? Or the courts took suo-motu action? No, it's not the time for Lokpal or the courts. Enjoying seven-star hospitality free is no crime. (Nor is watching porn in the Assembly.)  People elected these men, so let the people decide, when the election comes around, how and if to punish them.

In mature democracies such as Britain, such things are unheard of. But in the 18th century, one could blatantly buy a seat in the commons. Many a nawab of East India Company did that, having made fortunes in India. The parliamentary democracy there improved gradually, and I hope that ours would travel on the same path. 

While writing this, a business idea suggests itself to me. The idea behind resort-herding is to cut off your legislators from the wicked outside world, which may offer them money and whatnot to defect. The best way to provide solitude would be to put them on a luxury cruise-liner and set off. A BJP leader may call it `Chintan Yatra'. 

I hereby announce my copyright on  ChintanCruise (TM). 

 

 

Shouting Mubarak in Wilderness

Houbara is a bustard species. It's found in the deserts of India, Pakistan, Iran, UAE, and also in some north African countries. Arabs are crazy about this bird, because its meat is considered to be aphrodisiac. They hunt it using trained falcons.

The bird is now scarce in Arabia, so the Arab hunters, for the last few decades, head for Balochistan, a Pakistani province. Mary Anne Weaver dedicates a full chapter to `Hunting With The Sheikhs' in her 2002 book `Pakistan - In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan'.

It's a readable book, though written a decade back, and I found this chapter especially fascinating. Bustard hunting by Arabs in Pakistan tells you many things about both the Arabs as well as the host country. (Despite dire security situation along Pakistan's north-west border, hunting goes on. Read this report in Dawn, dated December 4, 2011 (`hunting permits issued to Gulf dignitaries')).  Houbara is an `internationally protected' species because of its dwindling numbers. Ordinary Pakistanis (according to Weaver) can not kill it, but the Arabs are above the law, because they bring petro-dollar. Many of them, as the Dawn report makes it clear, are "dignitaries", i.e. the royals. In a modern country, this would be a huge issue. It's an issue an Pakistan, but not enough huge to come in the way of Arabs.

Weaver writes that Arab royals spend millions of dollars on hunting during the season (January-February). Specially modified SUV and modern equipment such as radar (radar!) is used in the hunt. Since the area is a desert, the sheikh's camp has to be self-sufficient. So from water tankers and generator vans to air conditioners and liquor, everything is flown in. 

The men only track the quarry, the actual killing is done by the trained falcon. They are much prized. Weaver quotes a person close to sheikhs: 

"All their falcons have fancy names. They are named either for great Arab heroes or famous falcons of the past. Some years ago, when I went out with one of the sheikhs, his favourite falcon was lost. He sat for four days in the middle of his camp, calling out his falcon's name. Can you imagine? This was the president of a country, and he did nothing but sit and shout `Mubarak' into the wilderness.

  

Hunting, as a sport, is a very medieval, old-world thing, when the notion of wildlife conservation didn't exist. Arab rulers, with their easily governable petro-economies, still live in the old world, while the host, Pakistan, hasn't yet done away with the feudal culture. (Hence the discriminatory application of law.) Indian princes also so did a lot of hunting during the benign days of Raj, when they had nothing better to do. They, along with the British, wiped out the entire Cheetah population of the subcontinent. 

Weaver writes that she once asked personal physician of Saudi prince:

 "Is it true that the houbara is an aphrodisiac?"

He looked amused and shrugged his shoulders. "No. It's basically a diuretic. But they think it's an aphrodisiac." 

A Really Nervous Luca Brasi

If you are a fan of The Godfather, you must read this piece by Mark Seal. My impression on watching the film, especially the opening sequence of Italian wedding, was that this seemed like a documentary, with the actors underplaying and the lighting being dark. Remember Luca Brasi's nervous address to Vito Corleone? The nervousness seems genuine. Turns out that it was indeed genuine, because Lenny Montana, who played the part, was a non-actor.

Seal writes: With filming well under way, the part of Luca Brasi, Don Corleone's ruthless henchman, was still not cast....After I made the deal with the league, some of the (mob) guys used to come around," says Ruddy. One day, one of the young dons was accompanied by his bodyguard, a six-foot-six, 320-pound behemoth named Lenny Montana. He was a world wrestling champion who moonlighted in various jobs in the Mob.

Coppola (the director) fell in love with immediately, and he was cast as Brasi. 

Mr Brasi was understandably nervous when facing Don Brando. He in fact blew his lines!

Seal also informs us that the actors improvised during the shooting.  At the wedding,  FBI posts some men outside to keep a watch on the guests. Sonny, the hot-tempered eldest son, confronts a photographer. James Caan, who played Sonny, collars the photographer. According to Caan, this wasn't a part of the script. Then, after others intervene, Sonny throws down some dollar bills, as if to make up for the assault, and storms off. This too was unscripted. If true, then hat's off to Caan. It was an inspiring addition. Writers are said to resent it when actors take such liberties, but additions also show how well the actors have got involved in the roles and in the production.

Director Coppola and Al Pacino later wondered how the film became a block-buster. I agree with them. The Godfather was a film-making sans gimmicks and frills. It is wondrous that masses loved it.     

 

Yashwantrao

2012-13 is the birth centenary year of Yashwantrao Chavan, the first Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Maharashtra government is bringing out a special issue to commemorate it, and recently I was asked  by its editors to translate a few articles for the issue.

Chavan had a long and fairly successful innings in the politics. He replaced Krishna Menon as Defense Minister after the 1962 debacle. From then to 1980 he handled all important portfolios at the Centre: Defense, Home, Finance, External Affairs. He also controlled Maharashtra politics to a large extent.

Towards the end, he joined a splinter group of Congress minus Indira Gandhi. But this move did not work: in the next general election, from this splinter group, only Yashwantrao could win from Maharashtra. Congress under Mrs Gandhi swept the polls. He went back to her faction, and was made deputy chairman of planning commission. 

When he passed away in 1984, childless, he had no flat of his own in Mumbai. Nor did he own land  anywhere in Maharashtra (according to one of the articles that I translated).

I haven't read  much on Yashwantrao, but  what I gleaned from these articles is this: He was a smart politician, but not typical. It could be said that his politics was not entirely selfless. (Can politics be entirely selfless?) When rest of the Maharashtrians were demanding and fighting for a unified state, he did not oppose Nehru's opposition to the idea. He was rewarded; he became the CM of the bilingual state which comprised parts of today's Maharashtra and Gujarat. He is also known to have said, quite infamously, that Nehru was bigger than Maharashtra. For that he was called a quisling. But his fans -- and there were many among Marathi-speaking journalists -- say that he, in fact, persuaded Nehru to accept the demand for the linguistic state.  

Sharad Pawar -- Chavan's protege -- writes that Indira Gandhi, then the Congress president, supported the idea of `Marathi' Maharashtra, and worked on her father. According to Pawar, after Prime Minister Shastri's unexpected death at Tashkent (it was Yashwantrao who brought the dead body back to Delhi), many in Congress  supported, or could have supported, Yashwantrao for the top job. But Yashwantrao decided not to throw his hat in the ring, because he felt he was in Indira Gandhi's debt for the help she had given in 1959-60. This is Pawar's theory, and I am somewhat skeptical, because I believe that given the Indian people's support for Nehru family, there could have been no other contender. Still, I am tempted to think of what if he had become the PM. Perhaps it would have worked, and the country's politics would not have gone through circa 1975.  But Pawar seems to believe that his mentor missed the bus then. Did this perception influence Pawar's own political moves during the 90s? God knows. 

But Yashwantrao really missed the bus, it can be said, during the emergency. He should have parted ways with Mrs Gandhi then, not later. Eventually Mrs Gandhi regained her power, thanks to people's loyalty to the dynasty, but Yashwantrao, at least, could have had the satisfaction of ending his career through an act of moral courage.

The extraordinary thing about Yashwantrao was his love for books. It seems that he mingled with writers because he loved literature, though it could also be a good habit from public relations point of view. Yashwantrao himself wrote a few books. A former journalists says that his speeches at Marathi literary meets would often be better than those of the presiding authors. Sharad Kale, an IAS officer, writes that on trips to USA (he must have traveled a lot, as foreign minister) Yashwantrao always visited bookshops; he  would sometimes spend 3-4 hours in a bookshop.  

A Maharashtrian politician, who spent most of his career in power, but did not own a flat in Mumbai or big chunks of land elsewhere in the state. And who loved books. Unusual, I say. 

Hind Sight

Should I gloat tonight that I had predicted Maya's downfall as early as October? (Read:Caste of PIzza Developers) I should not. I 

hadn't exactly stuck out my neck and said that Maya would lose. In a very nuaaaaanced statement I only said that even Dalits are not going like her vanity. In fact her ouster was predictable (in glorious hindsight). What was hard to foretell was Cycle's terrific ride. As early as this morning, the pundits were talking about hung assembly with so-and-so playing key role, etc. 

The real question is: HAVE THE TWO NATIONAL PARTIES BECOME IRRELEVANT IN UP? You are going to hear Arnab, Barkha and the gang discussing this to death in the next few days. That doesn't mean it's not a REAL QUESTION. It is. And why is it that parties like SP and BSP haven't emerged in other two big states of the Hindi heartland? Congress and  BJP don't have regional challengers in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. I am not making any original point, but let's keep this in mind - a long-lasting, profound social churning has taken place in UP and Bihar in the last two decades. 

At the end of the day, it was fun to watch Congress leaders trying to convince us why Rahul Gandhi was not responsible for the UP flop show. I was convinced even before Digvijay and Abhishek Manu Singhvi opened their mouths that prince Rahul had nothing to do with it. I am not being sarcastic. Emergence and consolidation of backward class politics, along with fading/death of Hindutva of Miss Uma and Miss Sadhvi Rutumbara (remember her? I don't even remember how her name is spelt.) is an overwhelming phenomenon. Prince of Amethi could have done nothing (again, with the benefit of a glorious hindsight.)

1857, The Queen, The Brahmin

Here is the last installment of my serialised, excerpted translation of Vishnu Godse's `Majha Pravas' (My travels.)

The link to that blog is here.

We set out for Kalpi; five-six kos off the town, at a place called Kheda, we decided to stay the night. There is a tamarind grove to the east of the village, just outside the boundaries. We ate our supper there, and slept. In the first hour of dawn, suddenly horses galloped down the road, and the noise wakened us. We too started and followed them. I asked a fellow: whose army is this? where is it heading? He said: We are in the service of his highness Peshwe.  The lady of Jhansi is with us, there was a big battle at Charkhari. But the God did not grant us victory, we were beaten, and are now on the way back to Kalpi. 

We followed after them in the moonlight. The army proceeded ahead of us. Two kos outside Kalpi, we came upon a well. I and uncle stopped there, to draw and drink some  water, and to catch breath. At that point four-five horsemen rode up there. The lady of Jhansi, dressed in a pathan's robe, was among them. She was very thirsty, so she asked without getting down from the horse: Who are you?

We recognised her and stood up quickly to say: we are brahmins. What may be your command? She too recognised us then, and got down from the horse, and came up and sat on the well's parapet. She spoke about what happened briefly, then said; I am thirsty.

So I got hold of the rope and the pitcher to draw the water. The lady said: you are a pundit, I would not drink water drawn by you, let me do it myself. Saying so, she took the rope from my hand, and drew the water, and drank from the pitcher.

Then she spoke: I am a lesser woman, a widow. But I was a proud Hindu, hence I was prompted to do the duty. But the God did not grant me success. We fought a big battle at Charkhari, but to no avail. Very soon Kalpi would be fought over. You are poor brahmins, you can not even ride a horse. Why do you go there?

We replied: Kalpi has a lot of southerners. We hope to earn some money there. Then we plan to cross the Jumna and head to Brahmavart for a bath in Ganges.

So be it, said the lady, and asked us to see her after reaching Kalpi. Then she rode off. 

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Here I am ending this serial excerpting. Godse's book doesn't end at this point, he tells us about the battles that took place at Kalpi and Gwalior, and how the Queen died a heroic death.  His and his uncle's journey continued. They went to Brahmavart, Ayodhya, Kashi, Lucknow, and then looped back to Jhansi. Then they started on the return journey, and reached Nashik after crossing Narmada. Then back to Varsai.

Godse is no `skilled' writer, in the sense he is not good at being lucid. At many places, the narrative confuses you. (And the language he uses is ancient; it's pre-Raj Marathi. That''s a handicap for me. In the later generations, when writing flourished in Marathi, there must have been a great influence of English. But Godse had no English, and his wrote the language of the medieval Maharashtra.)

Still, he wrote a great book, thanks to one attribute: honesty. This is not to say that his account is always accurate. He was no historian, and when he writes about the war of 1857 and events in Jhansi, he essentially reproduces hearsay.  But when he is writing about the self,  his own persona shows through completely. In recounting personal experiences, there is no attempt to garnish, or to exaggerate. He may not be revealing everything; but whatever he reveals, he reveals with most effective candour.  One example should suffice: somewhere along the Ganges, he came to a place where, he tells us, women bathed in the holy river without a stitch of cloth on, without minding if men were around. Therefore, says the writer: "(We) could have an extraordinary pleasure of the eye". And this is written artlessly, with no style.  

Godse was someone who had had no idea of the western enlightenment, of how the world had changed. He was a man of the 18th century. 1857 marked the end of old India, it can be said.  In Godse, we have a narrator/witness of that end-period, a narrator who himself belonged to the era that was ending. The most interesting character in Godse's book is Godse himself.
 His complete lack of consciousness as a writer -- which a modern writer would find impossible to emulate -- makes his book extraordinary.

One day I plan to translate the complete book; provided a publisher is found. For now, good-bye.

The Riddle of Agneepath, Sensex and BMC

There is a famous line by a Hollywood film-maker: In the film business, nobody knows anything. Very true. Sholay, with its meandering script, plays to empty theaters in the first week, and goes on to become a blockbuster thereafter. Shakti, with a great script and great acting (DK and AB) flops. Angneepath, with Amitabh Bachchan at the peak of his career as angry-man, bombs. The remake, with a far, far lesser actor, and made in an age when revenge is no more in vogue, is a super-hit.

I have this to add: In politics, and in stock market, too, nobody knows nothing.

Why the stock market is up since last month? What happened to all those predictions of `range-bound' movement and `may fall beyond 15-k too' predictions of stock pundits? 

And why Shiv Sena has been returned to power by Mr/ Mrs/Ms Voter? The political analysis in today's papers says that MNS, instead of eating into Sena's vote bank, stole Congress-NCP votes. How? Did the north-Indian voters vote for Raj? And if that's true, then why MNS made a clean sweep in Marathi bastion of Dadar-Mahim (all seats)? So is it that upper middle class Maharashtrians in Dadar-Mahim like Raj, and less privileged Maharashtrians in other parts love the uncle more? Is it that Maharashtrians felt a great sympathy for ageing Bal Thackeray? (He, in fact, looks fitter than in 2007.) Then why didn't they feel any sympathy for him in 2009 Lok Sabha election where Sena-BJP was wiped out in Mumbai? Why Congress and NCP, which together could have got 132 seats in Mumbai in 2007 had they fought together (so went Prithviraj Chavan's analysis), could not cross hundred this time even after tying the knot? Or is it that anti-incumbency hit the Congress (in power in Maharashtra since 1999) rather than SS-BJP (in power in Mumbai since 1996)? Did Anna Hazare and Suresh Kalmadi collectively queered the pitch for Cong-NCP? And why Congress could not have a better face in Mumbai than Kripashankar Singh? Did it expect Maharashtrians to suddenly fall in love with Singh and Sanjay Nirupam? Did Samajwadi Party take away Muslim votes?

Enough questions. My wishlist for civic elections this time had following items: 

1. Sena-BJP loses BMC. Not that I trusted Cong-NCP to send lesser thugs to rule the Mumbai corporation, but my philosophy is that the thugs should be rotated. They should not get entrenched. 2. I wanted Sena-BJP to retain Thane (this wish was fulfilled). Because Jitendra Awhad and Ganesh Naik are more unsavoury than Sena-BJP guys. Also, Sharad Pawar insulted us Thane-ites greatly in 2009 by giving us an MP who has not even passed std 12th. 3. I wanted Sena-BJP to come to power in Pune, my hometown. For the reason, refer to point no 1. 4. I wanted MNS to take Nashik. (It has emerged as the largest party there, but 20 short of the clear majority.) That would have given us the chance to test Raj Thackeray. (Ajit Pawar echoed this sentiment last evening. "I wish MNS captures at least one of the corporations," he said. "So that we can see how they perform. It is easier to make speeches.")

Anyway. Now I look forward to reading today's Saamna.